Sir Ronald Ross building opens at Liverpool University

A £23m research facility named after a Nobel Prize-winning scientist has been opened at the University of Liverpool.

The Sir Ronald Ross building is the first phase of a £70m investment at the Institute of Infection and Global Health.

Sir Ronald was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902 for discovering that malaria is spread by mosquitoes.

Two hundred scientists will study infectious diseases and other global health issues at the centre.

Sir Ronald, who discovered the malarial parasite living in the gastrointestinal tract of the Anopheles mosquito in the 19th Century, recruited teams to eliminate the larvae from stagnant pools and marshes.

He was a lecturer at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine when he became the first Briton to win a Nobel Prize.

The following year he was appointed to the Sir Alfred Jones Chair of Tropical Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and became Professor of Tropical Medicine at the university.

The building was opened by his grandson David Ross, who said it was "wonderful to see my grandfather's legacy recognised in this way".

The university's vice-chancellor, Prof Sir Howard Newby, said the facility's labs would bring together "the brightest minds from medicine, biomedicine, veterinary health, and biological sciences".