The next small thing: pioneering nanotech centre is launched

London Centre for Nanotechnology opens new landmark facility<em> - News</em>

By Danielle Reeves
8 November 2006

A unique multidisciplinary UK research facility that will be at the forefront of delivering applied nanotechnology solutions was officially opened yesterday in London.

The London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN), which is a joint venture between Imperial College London and UCL, harnesses the world-class expertise of the two institutions across the physical, engineering and biomedical sciences to meet the needs of society and industry – and in particular improve patient care.

The GBP 25 million Centre occupies a purpose-built eight-storey facility in Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, as well as extensive facilities within different departments at Imperial's South Kensington Campus. Designed by the architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, the Bloomsbury site embraces 21st-century equipment crucial to the application of nanotechnology. The fabric of the building had to be purpose-designed for ultra-low vibration which will allow experiments with molecules – which are so sensitive that in a normal environment, the vibrations of a person walking at the other side of the building could destroy the experiment – to be conducted.

The opening of the building was marked by a symposium where the future of nanotechnology and its application was discussed by the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Office of Science and Innovation, Sir David King, Director of The Wellcome Trust, Professor Mark Walport and the joint directors of the LCN, Professor Gabriel Aeppli and Professor Tim Jones .

The symposium was followed by a reception in the UCL Jeremy Bentham Room, attended by many of the 200 LCN researchers.

Imperial's Professor Tim Jones, Co-Director of the LCN, says: "The LCN is truly interdisciplinary in its nature and brings together leading researchers from two of the UK's most successful universities. Researchers from science, engineering and medicine are working together on projects which require skills that no individual scientist or even traditional academic department can contribute. We also have a unique balance of experimental work and theoretical modelling and it is this combination of skills which will enable the LCN to tackle some of the most important challenges in technologies as diverse as energy, healthcare and information technology."

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