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New EPSRC funding for intercollegiate platform announced

20 April 2007

Professor Mohan Edirisinghe, Chair of Biomaterials at UCL Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a second platform grant from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to further develop his advanced materials synthesis, processing, forming and modelling research, encompassing biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, energy and electronics.


The Intercollegiate Platform on Powder-Based Processing and Modelling (worth around £300,000 to UCL out of a total of around £800,000 spanning the period 2007-11) will be in collaboration with professors Xiao Guo and Julian Evans at Queen Mary, University of London. Three new postdoctoral fellows will be appointed, one at UCL and two at QMUL, with regular transfer between laboratories. The money also covers travel funds to develop current and new national and international collaborations and some consumable money to expand and integrate the group's key research projects. The group's aim is to enhance its international stance in the research field and to facilitate strategic changes of research, directing them towards tangible and potentially urgent applications of advanced processing in biomaterials, clean energy generation and storage.

The group's processing techniques involve particulate suspensions containing powder particles of nano- to micro-sizes, solutions and precursors. Modelling methodologies range from atomistic first-principles simulations to macroscopic finite element analysis. The range of activities and the unique strength of closely coupled experimental and theoretical approaches establishes this team as one of the world's leading groups in this important subject area.

This award is the second that the team has received and follows their very successful first platform grant (2003-07). Jointly, the group secured nearly £4 million in research funding from the EPSRC, the Royal Society, industry and other organisations, and generated over 70 journal publications and similar number of invited presentations. Their research is also linked through other collaborative grants to Imperial College, King's College and London South Bank University, providing a London-based materials network that now extends to several London medical schools. The collaboration has also widened to include other leading materials centres in the UK (such as Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Nottingham, Bath, Salford, Surrey, Cranfield, University of East Anglia, Glasgow and Glamorgan) and several international centres in Europe, the USA and China.

To find out more, follow the links at the bottom of this article.

Image: Professor Mohan Edirisinghe