Private funding for shock institute

AWE, the private company that operates and manages the Atomic Weapons Establishment on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, is providing major funding for a new £10 million institute based in Imperial’s Faculty of Natural Sciences.

San Francisco, California, United States smoldering after the 1906 earthquake. The new institute will provide insight into the response of materials to the high pressures generated by extreme shocks

The new Institute - a first for the UK - will specialise in the development of expertise in hydrodynamics, the science which explores the response of materials to the high pressures generated by extreme shocks in a variety of environments.

Imperial Physics Professor Steven Rose, appointed interim director of the new institute, said: “The institute will bring together a team of scientists and engineers who each specialise in different aspects of shock physics: experimental, theoretical and computational. Together this group of specialists will work to understand and accurately predict the outcomes of very fast impacts wherever they take place.”

The AWE has provided five years’ worth of funding for new staff and for laboratory equipment capable of mimicking very high-pressure conditions akin to those resulting from the collision between a meteorite and a spacecraft.
Don Cook, managing director of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, said: “Although the institute will not carry out any defence research, it will nurture the talent which will help us to ensure the UK remains at the leading edge of this crucial area of science.”