EPSRC Capital Award for Core Equipment 2020/21

The University of Cambridge is buying six new pieces of high-end research equipment with this capital grant, chosen through an internal competition to maximise their impact on research excellence. This funding addresses a practical gap: cutting-edge research often requires expensive instruments that individual grants cannot cover. By pooling capital investment into shared equipment, the university can unlock new research avenues for PhD students, early career researchers, and established groups—particularly in fields where access to advanced tools is a bottleneck. The university is also contributing its own funds for items that exceed the EPSRC's maximum limit, signalling institutional commitment. If successful, this equipment will underpin a wide range of fundamental science and applied research across disciplines. The immediate beneficiaries are researchers, but the medium-to-long-term impacts could include advances in materials, medical diagnostics, energy systems, or manufacturing processes—any area where first-rate instrumentation enables discoveries that would otherwise remain out of reach. This is primarily an infrastructure investment: it does not target a single problem, but rather strengthens the platform from which future breakthroughs emerge.