Work is set to begin on a new building which will see Aberdeen become home to the best facilities in Scotland when it comes to human nutrition and health. The state-of-the-art new home for the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health will be on the Foresterhill campus.
Work will begin in the New Year on a new building which will see Aberdeen become home to the best facilities in Scotland and arguably the UK when it comes to human nutrition and health.
Full planning permission has been granted for a state-of-the-art new home for the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health on the Foresterhill campus.
The building, which will be situated next to the University of Aberdeen’s Institute for Medical Sciences, will allow researchers and scientists at the Rowett Institute to team up with clinicians at Foresterhill – already Europe’s biggest health campus – to further progress their world-leading work.
Professor Peter Morgan, Director of the Rowett Institute, said the move would equip the Rowett with the best facilities for human nutrition research in the country.
“The Rowett is already at the forefront of the UK’s research capability in nutrition and its research outputs provide evidence for policy development and support the food and drink industry to produce healthier foods.
“However, with rapidly growing rates of obesity much more work is needed, particularly when it comes to understanding how and why people eat in the way that they do and to understand what can be done to change eating behaviour.
“The new building will allow us to further expand research underway in this area, and many others which contribute to improved human health and nutrition, by bringing Rowett staff together with researchers, scientists, clinicians, volunteers and patients at Foresterhill.”
The new Rowett Institute will be a glass-fronted building spread over five floors covering a total of more than 10,000 square metres (107,639 sq ft)and will be equippedwith state-of the-art laboratory facilities and write-up areas.
A key aspect of the facility will be its specialist Human Nutrition Unit which will enable volunteers who take part in dietary trials and studies to do so in modern and comfortable surroundings, yet at the same time provide a facility set up to undertake scientifically rigorous studies.
The unit will include eight bedrooms for those taking part in longer-term research that may require them to stay overnight, a lounge area and social spaces and a large glass-fronted dining area offering views across the campus.
Professor Morgan added: “Rowett research benefitted from the merger with the University of Aberdeen in 2008 and moving to Foresterhill signifies another important step forward for us.
“The facilities required for high-level research are not only very specialist but also very costly. The Foresterhill health campus is the largest of its kind in Europe and we will be able to make better use of existing facilities, as well as the state-of-the art laboratories and equipment at the new Rowett.
“As well as the healthy volunteers we study, being on the doorstep of the clinical wards at Foresterhill will give us access to patient groups, who will add another important dimension to our research studies.
“The major achievement of nutrition research over the century the Rowett has been in existence is in preventing illness as a result of poor diet and nutrition,” said Professor Morgan.
“Our research in the future will continue to address how to prevent ill health through nutrition, but increasingly we are recognising that to be most effective dietary advice needs to be stratified or increasingly tailored to the individual, as ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to diet and nutrition are not optimal for all members of the population.
“In addition we are increasingly embracing psychological, social and economic research to address some of the barriers that stop people adopting a more healthy diet and lifestyle. Moving to the new site will help us to strengthen our interactions with our colleagues in Health Psychology and Health Economics at Foresterhill”
Another area in which the Rowett expects to make a strong contribution is addressing the global challenge of food security and sustainability.
“Now we face a growing global population and the demand for food is expected to rise by 70% by 2050. We also know that if the rest of the world were to consume food in the way we do in the UK, we would need three planets to feed ourselves.
“Meeting this growing demand is a major challenge and the need to find healthy but sustainable diets has never been greater.
“To meet this challenge requires a multi-disciplinary approach and again being part of the University of Aberdeen put us in a good place to contribute research towards this important problem’.
“It is a very significant time for the Rowett Institute and fitting that we should reach this important milestone in our history, with work beginning on the new building, in the year the Institute celebrates its centenary.”
A main contractor for the Rowett project is scheduled to be appointed in the New Year and work on site will begin in the Spring. The new building is expected to open in late 2014 or early 2015.