Enhancing 800 MHz NMR Capabilities at Nottingham

NMR spectroscopists from across the UK are working towards the establishment of a co-ordinated strategy for provision of world-class NMR infrastructure. Establishing a linked network of facilities will provide for UK-wide access to new state-of-the-art capabilities, training and expertise in NMR technologies for the physical and life sciences. Here we demonstrate how the proposed investment at the University of Nottingham will contribute to the national effort and promote regional collaborations and access to the facilities to researchers across the Midlands. We are committed to being fully integrated within the UK NMR community across academia and industry and to engage with funding agencies to establish a sustainable network and funding mechanisms, and to share best practice.

NMR is a key analytical technique for studying the molecular composition, structure and properties of novel materials and real-time monitoring of processes and reactions. There are no other techniques which offer such versatility and breadth of potential applications to interdisciplinary researchers at all of the key interfaces across the physical sciences, engineering, biosciences and medicine. The current collaborative open-access framework around our high-field NMR facility embraces all of these disciplines and impacts widely in areas of public interest, for example, around food security and food nutrition; the development of new sustainable materials and processes for every day devices and for energy storage; studies of fundamental bioscience for understanding of aspects of human health; chemical biology linked to drug-discovery in areas from autism to neurodegeneration and stroke; development of novel biocatalysts linked to industrial biotechnology and our sustainable future. The Nottingham Facility is already supporting this incredible breadth of activity, and this proposed upgrade will extend the lifetime, sensitivity and capabilities to the next level, to continue to support Nottingham's, and hence the UK's, international research competitiveness.

By upgrading the 800 MHz high-field NMR facility we will provide our broad user base, which reaches across the physical and life sciences, with the NMR infrastructure to address a myriad of questions, to allow researchers at Nottingham to remain competitive and at the cutting edge in key research areas, allow us to extend the breadth of our activities into new areas and draw in new collaborations, and maximise the wider impact of our research. The upgrade, and suite of new probes for different applications, will allow key research questions to be addressed that were previously out of range of our current capabilities. Significantly, the proposed upgrade accommodates new capabilities to now study solid-materials at high resolution and sensitivity where previously this was only possible on a lower-field (600 MHz instrument) of lower-sensitivity and more limited capabilities.

This suite of instrumentation presents a diverse multi-functional facility for the integrated characterisation of both large and small molecules, solutions and solids, in a single facility. The requested spectrometer upgrade will: (i) ensure that the current 800 MHz magnet has the highest performance currently possible at this field strength, (ii) will open up previously inaccessible areas of research particularly in the study of solid materials, (iii) add new capacity and capabilities to the network of UK NMR facilities and provide local and regional access to researchers across the Midland HEIs and Industry, (iii) provide unprecedented versatility to support a wide range of research projects across the RCUK physical and life science priority areas, (iv) contribute to high quality publications in internationally leading journals, (v) support the international research competitiveness of Nottingham and the UK.

Impact on Society: The general public will benefit both directly and indirectly from the proposed projects which impact on improvements in well-being and the quality of life, on issues such as food composition, diet and healthy eating, antibiotic resistance, generation of new medicines and healthcare products, better understanding of disease and prevention, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, improved diagnosis of diseases, sustainable processes linked to renewable feedstocks, waste processing, minimising environmental pollution, the impact of industrial biotechnology, developing smart new materials for high-tech applications in portable devices, computing and energy capture and storage, are all areas of public interest and areas where major advancements will impact on quality of life. The upgraded high-field NMR Facilities will deliver underpinning analytical support for the development of a wide range of products, for example, biopharma-ceuticals, agrochemicals and new materials which can then be used to manufacture medicines, produce food and to manufacture consumer goods: all having potential societal impact.

Impact on Private and Public Sectors: Companies and those individuals working in the public and private business sectors are all potential beneficiaries of the research described in this proposal, which addresses important areas for the UK, including resource and sustainability issues within the chemicals and pharmaceutical industries, NHS and analytical instrument manufacturers and in identifying new targets for drug discovery. Previous experience has shown that major impact from analytical research is often made when new or improved measuring techniques with enhanced sensitivities are applied to previously inaccessible materials. The private sector will benefit from the specific outputs outlined in the application, through access to instrumentation, new methods, and the skills of trained analytical scientists who will move into areas of industry to influence and lead multidisciplinary collaborations.
Economic Impact: Through the proposed research, new materials, products and intellectual property will be developed in the longer term leading to increased sales and thus fostering the economic competitiveness of the UK. The UoN has well-established business development units that will allow us to manage interactions with private and public sector bodies, as well as with charities to maximise the impact of this research.

Scientific Knowledge and Technological Impact: Impact will be generated by using the latest and most advanced analytical NMR equipment to generate novel ideas and technologies which will then be published in academic journals for wider access, or patented for further development in the commercial sector. The application of the advanced capabilities of the upgraded instrumentation, now with extensive solid-state capabilities, will accelerate progress in key areas of research across a broad front, and at a range of different interfaces that have not been explored previously.

Measuring impact: We will measure the reach and significance and growth in impact from our extended user-base using the following metrics which will be derived from the UoN Research Information System: (i) Citations, collaborations, industrial partnerships as measured by standard scientific metrics such as SciVal; (ii) Media impact metrics are those gathered as a matter of routine by UoN and include reach, value, positive/ negative coverage, media type, source (international and national), press release impact, and (iii) follow-through and monitoring of all intellectual property, products in development, patents, and industrial involvement.