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Manchester University wins ?3.4m research boost

Manchester University has secured a €3.4m fund, which will boost research at two of its science institutes and create a series of industrial partnerships.

The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) and Photon Science Institute (PSI) raised the fund from a Marie Curie training network grant to train future investigators.

Twelve early stage researchers will be appointed to three-year PhD programmes under the four-year grant known as the MAGnetic Innovation in Catalysis, or MAGIC Innovation Doctoral Programme.

The scheme will see Manchester’s institutes partner with six international universities, including Tokyo, Freiburg, Lund, Joseph Fourier in France, Edinburgh and Copenhagen.

Five companies will also be involved in the project, including AZ, Bruker, TGK, Conformetrix and SarOMICS.

Industrial and international partners involved in the scheme will be heavily involved in the research projects, according the the university.

Professor Nigel Scrutton, Director of MIB, said: “The concept of team-based activity is well founded across research groups in MIB and PSI and will enrich the training experience by bringing multiple skills embedded in these teams to MAGIC programmes.

“Our aim is to train the future generation of leading investigators of biological catalysis/enzymology in developing new enabling technologies that can advance physical understanding of catalysis and mechanism.

“These collaborative research projects will explore the mechanistic details of enzyme systems by adopting innovative, versatile and unique experimental techniques to probe the contributions of motions across multiple spatial and temporal timescales and quantum chemical effects.

“In turn, these novel methods will transform current experimental capabilities and will be applied to a range of important biological catalysts to probe the mechanistic importance of coupled motions and quantum physico-chemical effects.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .