Lighting the way

A relatively small handful of scientific academic institutions truly deserve the tag ‘world-leading’. Yet if the director of a new UK facility gets his way, then Manchester may soon join Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Oxford’s Rutherford Appleton facility on the illustrious list of global centres of excellence.

Late last month the University of Manchesterlaunched a world-class research facility, where it is hoped it will pioneer the latest laser and light technologies, and position it at the forefront of world photonic research (the study of the interaction of photons with matter).

The Photon Science Institute (PSI) is a £40m establishment that will be the largest of its kind in the UK. Research will focus on the development and application of new and existing laser technologies across a variety of fields including medicine, pharmaceuticals, and life and physical sciences.

Fresh from York University, where he was chair of physical chemistry and also established the York Centre for Laser Spectroscopy and Photochemistry, Prof Klaus Muller-Dethlefs, director of the PSI, has an established international reputation in physical chemistry and molecular sciences. He is internationally recognised as inventor of the widely adopted zero electron kinetic energy (ZEKE) technique which allows detailed probing of the quantum states of molecules.