The University of Cambridge is to form one third of a new £6 million research collaboration looking at quantum physics.
The University of Cambridge is to form one third of a new £6 million research collaboration looking at quantum physics.
The University of Cambridge is to form one third of a new £6 million research collaboration looking at quantum physics.
The sum, one of several new science and innovation awards, has been given to three UK universities by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College London will share expertise from their respective Physics departments to examine quantum coherence. This promises to improve our understanding not just of the quantum world, but to develop fundamental new technologies in nanoscience.
The money will enable the University to appoint two new specialists in ultracold atoms and another in semiconductor optics. It is also investing an additional £3million of its own money in new equipment and the refurbishment of existing facilities within its Cavendish Laboratory to help further improve its capacity for experimental research in coherent quantum systems.
The new funding adds to a much wider-reaching hiring programme currently underway at the Cavendish Laboratory. During the next two years, six lecturers, two readers and three professors will be added to the Department of Physics' staff. The construction of a £12.5million Centre for the Physics of Medicine to house interdisciplinary research in medicine and biology is beginning. A new Kavli Institute of Cosmology - a joint venture with the Institute of Astronomy and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics - is also planned.
Professor Peter Littlewood, Cambridge's Principal Investigator in the collaboration, said: "We see tremendous opportunities in the science and technology of manipulating the quantum states of light and matter, a discipline that now spans atomic physics, optics and condensed matter, and that is moving forward at a great rate.
"Because of the breadth of this subject, it is important to have a collective national effort. Oxford, Imperial and Cambridge have complementary skills and research programmes so we can help each other to move forward. We already have many collaborative activities, and I am looking forward to making these even stronger."
The science and innovation award is one of seven announced today by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC). The awards were introduced in 2005 to stimulate research and nurture future scholars in important areas where such support is deemed to be lacking.
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