UCL celebrates

University College London (UCL) has been awarded £5.4m (€8.1m) in the latest round of funding from the UK government's Basic Technology Programme.

The programme, supported by Research Councils UK, was set up to assist in the development of fundamental new technologies that will 'change the face of scientific, engineering and technology endeavour in Britain over the next 20 years.'

The money will be used to fund two projects:

• Professor Marshall Stoneham, UCL Massey professor and director of the Centre for Materials Research, proposes to put quantum into IT. Just as classical computing manipulates information (as bits, either 0 or 1) using a network of standard components called logic gates, so quantum computing uses a network of gates to manipulate "qubits" (any combination of 0 and 1). The project will centre on a new concept for these quantum gates and a new strategy for creating a network of them for information processing. Many of the ingredients are already available in silicon technology, so they should operate alongside standard devices and be made in future fabrication plants. If successful, these quantum devices should operate at room temperature, possibly in a future generation of personal computers.

• Professor Sally Price aims to develop technologies to predict all the possible crystal structures (polymorphs) of organic materials. All industries involved in the manufacture of organic materials, including the pharmaceutical and speciality chemical companies, would benefit from a method of predicting the likelihood of unknown polymorphs. The project involves many disciplines and will lead to the development of fundamental new techniques in theoretical and experimental studies of the organic solid state.