The Hartree Centre gains Royal seal of approval

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HRH Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, officially opened the new Hartree Centre building at Sci-Tech Daresbury on 31st May 2017 during a visit to the world-leading campus.

HRH Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, is the latest evolution of the long-running collaboration between Sci-Tech Daresbury and IBM. His Royal Highness, who is patron of Sci-Tech Daresbury, devotes much of his time to promoting the awareness of British science, technology and engineering expertise.

The Hartree Centre is a high performance computing and data analytics research facility founded by the UK government in collaboration with IBM. The new building brings together under one roof staff from the Hartree Centre, IBM, the University of Liverpool’s Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) and Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Scientific Computing Division, and will firmly enhance the capabilities and close collaborations that are at the heart of the centre.

The Virtual Engineering Centre, in collaboration with Alder Hey’s Children’s Hospital Trust has developed a pre-operative planning tool using the latest developments in Virtual Reality. Consultant Congenital Cardiac Rafael Guerrero and the VEC’s Andy Levers demonstrated the newly developed tool to HRH Prince Andrew, the Duke of York at the official opening of the new Hartree building yesterday.

The visit went very well and HRH Prince Andrew even revealed a beautiful plaque in honour of the grand opening which currently sits proudly in the foyer for all to see.