EPSRC Core Equipment Award to University of Surrey 2024

A university is buying two pieces of high-end equipment—a single-crystal X-ray diffractometer and a digital manufacturing unit for circular materials—to upgrade its core facilities for catalysis and sustainable materials research. This matters because many research groups rely on shared, central equipment to do their work. Without it, they cannot determine the atomic structure of new materials or test ways to recycle and reprocess them. The grant fills a gap in institutional capacity, not a gap in scientific knowledge. If the equipment works as intended, it will train doctoral students and postdocs in essential skills, foster collaborations across engineering and science faculties, and accelerate research into materials that can be reused rather than discarded. That could eventually affect manufacturing supply chains and waste reduction, though the immediate impact is on research capability, not on a product or process. This is a fundamental science investment: the equipment enables discovery, but does not itself deliver a specific application. Past investments in shared diffractometers, for example, have underpinned breakthroughs in battery materials and pharmaceuticals.