GEC Plc plans to open a third research laboratory to complement its Hirst and Marconi laboratories, both of which have run out of space to expand. The new UKP10m complex is to be on the Cambridge Science Park, and is planned to be employing 600 researchers within three years, according to the Financial Times. The three areas of research to be based at Cambridge are integrated circuit design, artificial intelligence software and solid-state physics research for semiconductor fabrication. It is not clear how much of an increase in GEC’s total effort the new lab will represent, because some of the 2,000 researchers at the other two labs will transfer to Cambridge. A formal announcement on GEC’s plans for the lab is planned for a couple of weeks.
