University of Glasgow Experimental Equipment Proposal

Our proposal requests five distinct bundles of equipment to enhance the University's capabilities in research areas ranging across aerospace, complex chemistry, electronics, healthcare, magnetic, microscopy and sensors. Each bundle includes equipment with complementary capabilities and this will open up opportunities for researchers across the University, ensuring maximum utilisation. This proposal builds on excellent research in these fields, identified by the University as strategically important, which has received significant external funding and University investment funding. The new facilities will strengthen capacity and capabilities at Glasgow and profit from existing mechanisms for sharing access and engaging with industry.

The requested equipment includes:
- Nanoscribe tool for 3D micro- and nanofabrication for development of low-cost printed sensors.
- Integrated suite of real-time manipulation, spectroscopy and control systems for exploration of complex chemical systems with the aim of establishing the new field of Chemical Cybernetics.
- Time-resolved Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry - Digital Image correlation system to simultaneously measure and quantify fluid and surface/structure behaviour and interaction to support research leading to e.g. reductions in aircraft weight, drag and noise, and new environmentally friendly engines and vehicles.
- Two microscopy platforms with related optical illumination and excitation sources to create a Microscopy Research Lab bringing EPS researchers together with the life sciences community to advance techniques for medical imaging.
- Magnetic Property Measurement system, complemented by a liquid helium cryogenic sample holder for transmission electron microscopy, to facilitate a diverse range of new collaborations in superconductivity-based devices, correlated electronic systems and solid state-based quantum technologies.

These new facilities will enable interdisciplinary teams of researchers in chemistry, computing science, engineering, medicine, physics, mathematics and statistics to come together in new areas of research. These groups will also work with industry to transform a multitude of applications in healthcare, aerospace, transport, energy, defence, security and scientific and industrial instrumentation.

With the improved facilities:
- Printed electronics will be developed to create new customized healthcare technologies, high-performance low-cost sensors and novel manufacturing techniques.
- Current world-leading complex chemistry research will discover, design, develop and evolve molecules and materials, to include adaptive materials, artificial living systems and new paradigms in manufacturing.
- Advanced flow control technologies inside aero engine and wing configurations will lead to greener products and important environmental impacts.
- Researchers in microscopy and related life science disciplines can tackle biomedical science challenges and take those outputs forward so that they can be used in clinical settings, with benefits to healthcare.
- Researchers will be able to develop new interfaces in advanced magnetics materials and molecules which will give new capabilities to biomedical applications, data storage and telecommunications devices.

We have existing industry partners who are poised to make use of the new facilities to improve their current products and to steer new joint research activities with a view to developing new products that will create economic, social and environmental impacts. In addition, we have networks of industrialists who will be invited to access our facilities and to work with us to drive forward new areas of research which will deliver future impacts to patients, consumers, our environment and the wider public.

By improving the facilities available at the University of Glasgow (UoG) researchers will extend academic collaborations and grow their industrial engagement and collaborative research to deliver wide-ranging economic, environmental and societal benefits through a number of sectors.

Aerospace, energy, transport, security and defence: Aeronautics is recognised as one of the top five advanced technology sectors, providing ~9 million skilled jobs directly and indirectly, and contributing 600 billion euros to Europe's GDP. Demand for safe, secure, fast, affordable and environmentally responsible air transport is certain to grow over the coming decades.

Collaborations with industry partners will advance technologies to higher TRLs to create competitive advantage. Current links with ESA, Qinetiq, Tektonex, Lockheed Martin UK, East Kilbride Engineering Services, US Air Force, BMT Fluid Mechanics Ltd, GE, and Airbus will be developed through joint access to the facilities. These collaborations will result in advanced vehicles with reduced overall weight, drag and noise, and design of novel integrated compact and economical airframe-engine concepts.

Healthcare and life sciences: We already collaborate closely with companies taking research outputs from bench to market, including GSK, Merck, Unilever, BAE, Zeiss, Qioptic, Optos, Boulder Nonlinear Sytems, Elliot Scientific, Epigem, NHS, Shadow Robotic Company and Touch Robotics. Securing improved facilities for additive manufacturing, complex chemistry, advanced magnetic materials, and microscopy will enable advancements in low-cost sensor systems for health monitoring and diagnosis, novel molecules and materials, characterisation and imaging, delivering economic and societal benefits to commercial suppliers, healthcare systems and practitioners and patients. Our researchers and their industrial partners will benefit from advanced techniques, including the ability to image deep and understand the activity within biological structures,helping deliver medical advances through improved understanding of cell and tissue function. We envisage in future new disposable and wearable technologies with multiple functions, such as remote, non hospital-based, patient monitoring.

Defence, security, electronics, scientific and industrial instrumentation: Our researchers will be able to develop even stronger relationships with companies such as Gatan, Jeol and Bruker through the acquisition of new equipment and resulting strengthened capacity in technologies and demonstrators. Our industrial partners will be able to access novel techniques, understanding and processes to add to their existing electron microscopy instrumentation portfolios. Impacts will be felt by industry and researchers worldwide.

Quantum Technologies: UoG leads one of the new four Quantum Technology hubs that will develop and commercialise a range of camera-type systems offering novel imaging technologies (new wavelengths, timescales and sensitivities). The imaging and microscopy facilities will prove a fantastic resource on which the new cameras can be assessed, and demonstrated to our QT industrial network, which already numbers 40+ UK companies.

General Public: In the longer term, the research outputs and collaborations made possible by the new facilities will of course deliver benefits to the wider public - reduced emissions from aircraft improving air quality and environmental performance; advanced imaging capabilities improving their healthcare technologies; and improved manufacturing processes and new products delivering lower costs and better performance in aerospace, transport, healthcare, and other sectors.