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Research Infrastructure

Other Selected Facilities

  • Specialised laboratory facilities including dedicated biocontainment level 2 and level 3 microbiology laboratories, an extensive cell culture facility, an analytical facility which includes UPLC-MS/MS, 2D Nano LC-MALDI-QTOF and Biacore instrumentation.
  • The Bio-Functional Food Engineering Facility supports the development of dairy based ingredients and is specifically designed to support R&D associated with dairy powders.
  • The Bioactive Protein Discovery Unit, a world class facility used for peptide purification, identification, analysis and generation via Ion Exchange, Reverse Phase and Size Exclusion chromatography, mass spectrometry, peptide synthesis and amino acid analysis.
  • Bioactive evaluation; a broad series of bioassays are available for bioactive evaluation including the analysis of antimicrobial, anti-infective, antithrombotic, anti-proliferative, antihypertensive, anti-obesity, pro-satiety, prebiotic and immunomodulatory activities.
  • The Flavour Chemistry Facility contains state of the art gas chromatography equipment including GCxGC TOF MS and GC olfactory analysis and a range of automated extraction techniques (TD/SPME/SPME Arrow/Hi-Sorb). This facility and research expertise are available to support product development, flavour/ aroma characterisation, product matching, identification of off-flavours (aromas) or taints, oxidation stability in a wide range of foods and beverages, and total and free fatty acid analysis.
  • The Nutraceutical Research Facility has expertise in extracting and purifying biologically active components from natural resources, quantifying potential and chemically characterising components via state of the art instrumentation including a High Resolution NMR Suite, Nano-liquid chromatography, UPLC-tandem mass spectrometry and Quadrapole Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer.
  • Cereal Chemistry Laboratory and Test Bakery Facilities include a mill room, test bakery, and rheology and food structure laboratory, which supports industry-led research for ingredients and novel formulations for baked goods and snacks.
  • The Meat Centre of Excellence comprises the Meat Industry Development Unit and analytical labs in the areas of meat texture, biochemistry, proteomics, molecular biology and meat quality, as well as a biofermentation suite and meat processing suite.
  • Meat digitalisation testbed – comprises vision system, novel grading equipment, such as Q-FOM ribeye camera, portable spectral imaging and sensors, robot arm and tooling to facilitate research on automation in meat plants, CT-Scanner for meat and food characterisation
  • Spectroscopy suite – comprises hyperspectral imaging system (Vis-NIR and NIR), FT-NIR Bruker MPA II, ASD LabSpec 4 (Vis-NIR), Perten DA7250 (NIR), DXR Smart Raman Spectrometer.
  • The Tissue Culture Facility contains the TFRC master stocks of mammalian cells,  microscopes, CO2 incubators, Cryogenic storage system (Dewars), biological safety cabinets, centrifuges and an xCelligence system for label-free and real-time monitoring of cell-viability and barrier function.
  • The Robotics Platform consists of a dual arm collaborative robots (Cobots) with vision systems. The platform is used for evaluation of the reconstitution performance of nutritional powders.
  • The Culture Collection provides bacterial cultures with potential for exploitation as dairy starters, adjunct cultures and probiotics for the Food and Pharma industries and the research community.
  • The Microbial Safety and Shelf Life Suite is a biocontainment unit that facilitates the development and validation of new approaches to control microorganisms and to assure microbial food safety. Equipment includes a range of processing, packaging and storage instruments, as well as a flow cytometer and MinION for the detection and identification of microbes.