First residents move into new Mountbatten Building

Group Secretary Maggie Bond is the first member of ECS staff to be fully settled into her new office in the Mountbatten Building.

Maggie was in the advance party of key staff and researchers who are the first to move into the new Building, which has been planned since late 2005 and under construction since January 2007. 'I'm delighted to be here at last,' she said, 'and feel very settled.'

The £55M Mountbatten Building provides four floors of complex clean rooms, labs, offices and research space for the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. Its facilities and equipment are state-of-the-art, and will provide new opportunities for the University's research in nanotechnology and photonics.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, paid tribute to all members of the School and to members of the University for the hard work that has gone into making the new Mountbatten Building such a successful reality. 'There have been many milestones in the construction process over the past few years,' he said, 'but this is the most meaningful. Now that staff are actually in the Building all our plans take on a new reality and we can begin to see a very exciting future.'