There could be lots of advances in the scientific world thanks to a £20 million investment in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has revealed the money will be ploughed into research infrastructure within the field.

This investment, which comes on behalf of the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council (BBSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), will be put towards new and extremely modern scientific instrumentation for eight universities around the UK, including two 1.0 GHz systems and upgrades to current equipment with field strengths of 800 to 950 MHz.

This will boost capability and capacity of NMR, which will go on to help many areas of scientific research, including medicine and materials, and improve knowledge on chemical analysis in the UK.

Chief executive of UK Research and Innovation – a government-funded public organisation – Sir Mark Walport commented: “The UK’s global stature in research and innovation is founded on access to internationally competitive infrastructure.”

He added that this investment will enable scientists to have equipment that provide “greater understanding of molecular structures, with potential impacts in pharmaceuticals, biomaterials, materials science and biotechnology”.

The universities that will receive funding for NMR systems are the University of Warwick, the University of Oxford, the University of Birmingham, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham, the University of Liverpool and the University of Sheffield.

This comes after the EPSRC, together with the Economic and Social Research Council, announced a £19.5 million investment that will go towards building the UK Centre for Research on Energy Demand. This will help top scientists create internationally leading research on energy demand in the UK.