Boris Johnson tours construction of new Mountbatten Building

Boris Johnson MP, Shadow Minister for Higher Education, spent over an hour today (22 June) touring the construction of the new £55M Mountbatten Building. He was particularly impressed by the scale of the building and the potential of the work to be carried out there.

He was accompanied on his tour by Professor Harvey Rutt, Deputy Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, and Professor David Payne, Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre, along with Professor Adam Wheeler, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University, and David Amos, Project Director for Bovis Lend Lease.

Mr Johnson was particularly interested to hear about Moore's Law and the extent to which the nanotechnology research to be carried out in the new Mountbatten Building would play a vital role in future developments as devices continue to gain in speed and decrease in size.

He was impressed by the scale of the building and the University's ambition for it to be world-leading research centre.

His tour of the Mountbatten Building site was part of a day-long visit to the University of Southampton which also included a tour of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.