The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry visits LCN as part of a tour of UCL

Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alistair Darling MP, paid an afternoon visit to UCL on 14 March 2007, to find out more about how UCL is successfully transferring research to practical applications for ‘real-world’ solutions.

Mr Darling was given a taste of the wide variety of activity at the university by UCL President and Provost, Professor Malcolm Grant, who led a tour round some of the facilities and research groups that have enabled interdisciplinary collaboration and practical applications.

Following lunch with some senior UCL researchers, Mr Darling was welcomed to the UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research by its director, Professor Salvador Moncada, who provided an overview of the institute’s innovative set-up as an interface between basic research, product development and the pharmaceutical industry.

Next stop was the recently opened London Centre for Nanotechnology, a joint venture between UCL and Imperial College London. Mr Darling was introduced by the Centre's director, Prof Gabriel Aeppli, to the centre’s key activities in health care, information technology and environmental science. Details were given on how the centre’s collaborations have already provided fruitful results in diverse areas such as oil recovery, hydrogen storage, bio fuel cells, healthcare products and high-temperature electronics.

After a presentation from Professor Steven Currall, director of the UCL Centre for Enterprise and the Management of Innovation, the final stop of the tour was the fluidisation x-ray laboratory at the UCL Centre for CO2 Technology, where Mr Darling was keen to learn about Professor Stef Simon’s award-winning advances in producing clean energy with zero carbon emissions.

Commenting on his impression of the day, Mr Darling said: “I am very impressed by the huge range of work being conducted at UCL, a lot of which will be transferable into commercial applications of huge benefit to the whole of the UK. UCL is certainly a centre of excellence in the heart of London.”

Image 2: Left to right: Prof Aeppli, Mr Bryant and Mr Darling at the LCN Scanning Tunneling Microscope Lab