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Researchers have successfully used quantum states to mix a molecule with light at room temperature, which will aid in the exploration of quantum technologies and provide new ways to manipulate the physical and chemical properties of matter.When a molecule emits a blink of light, it doesn’t expect it to ever come back. However researchers, including…

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge led a delegation of academics to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2016, to explore issues including carbon reduction technologies and how science and engineering can best address society's greatest challenges.Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, i…

The remarkable performance and quantum efficiency of biological light-harvesting complexes has prompted a multidisciplinary interest in engineering biologically inspired antenna systems as a possible route to novel solar cell technologies. Published in Nano letters, the research groups of Dr Alex Chin (Winton Advanced Research Fellow) and Dr Ulrich…

The £26 million Maxwell Centre will focus on “blue skies” research and will house much of the activities of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability.  The official opening was on 7th April 2016 by David Harding, whose generous gift of £20 million established the Winton Programme.Hosted by the Cavendish Laboratory, the Centre provides …

Scientists have discovered that a highly promising group of materials known as hybrid lead halide perovskites can recycle light – a finding that they believe could lead to large gains in the efficiency of solar cells.By showing that they can also be optimised to recycle light, the new study suggests that this could just be the beginning. Solar cell…

Otti Croze has been awarded a £15k Royal Society Research Grant. The grant will allow to purchase industrial photobioreactors from Variconaqua solutions to be sited in the Algae lab in the Physics of Medicine building and at the Algal Innovation Centre in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. The project is entitled "Using microswimmer biophysic…

Professor David MacKay, Regius Professor of Engineering, Cambridge University Engineering Department and Winton International Advisory Board member was knighted in the New Year's Honours 2016 'for services to Scientific Advice in Government and Science Outreach'.Prior to becoming Regius Professor, David served as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Dep…

Richard Friend was awarded the 2015 Von Hippel Award, which is the Materials Research Society's highest honour, at the MRS Fall Meeting.  The annual award is given to an individual in recognition of their outstanding contribution to interdisciplinary research on materials.The award was given for his pioneering research on highly original materials …

Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising.One of the recipients of the 2015 prize is Dr Suchitra Sebastian, Lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory and affiliated with the Winton Programme for the Physics of…

An international team of scientists that include Winton Advanced Research Fellows Akshay Rao and Alex Chin and Winton Scholar Sarah Morgan, have observed how a mysterious quantum phenomenon in organic molecules takes place in real time, which could aid in the development of highly efficient solar cells.The researchers used ultrafast laser pulses to…

Cavendish inspiring women (CiW) is an initiative started by Winton scholars, Sarah Morgan and Hannah Stern, to bring PhD students and postdocs in the Cavendish Laboratory in contact with inspirational female leaders. The motivation behind the newly formed group is to raise the visibility of successful women, in a bid to inspire younger women to con…

Scientist from the University of Cambridge have found that the performance of novel thin film solar cells based on lead-halide perovskite could be further improved, since different parts of these films show different properties. The team lead by Dr. Felix Deschler studied the light emission from thin films of these materials with high spatial resol…

The causes of a hitherto mysterious process that could enhance the power of solar cells have been explained in a new studyThe underlying mechanism behind an enigmatic process called “singlet exciton fission”, which could enable the development of significantly more powerful solar cells, has been identified by scientists in a new study.The process i…

Suchitra Sebastian was invited to speak at the prestigious Falling Walls Conference in Berlin 2014.  This annual one-day scientific conference coincides with the fall of the Berlin Wall and showcases the research work of international scientists from a wide range of fields.Suchitra’s talk “Breaking the Wall of Energy Loss. How Quantum Materials Hol…

How do you fold DNA into the shape of a crocodile? Kerstin Göpfrich is a Winton Scholar at the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, researching on DNA origami. DNA origami is the art of folding DNA into three-dimensional nanoscale structures. While smiley faces and various artistic shapes have been created from DNA as proof of principle,…