Peter Weightman and Trevor Farrell

Long Term

In the long term I hope to establish a fourth generation light source as a UK national facility. The first proposal was termed 4GLS and this was subsumed into NLS. My own interest in these sources is in their potential for studies of biological systems and mechanisms of biological organisation.

I believe that the current focus of a lot of biological research on structural biology is missing the point. The most important characteristic of biological systems is their function not their structure. Real time techniques like RAS and the range of techniques made available by 4th generation light sources open up the possibility of studying biological function directly. RAS and terahertz techniques have considerable potential to research the dynamic of biological systems.

In the long term I hope that the primary aims of my research programme will come together in a particular programme to investigate the use of specific DNA sequences for the construction of metal nanowires and nanoparticles. These would be relevant to the study of electron confinement, an important issue in the development of the single electron devices in electronics and in the nanofabrication of alloy systems for applications in catalysis.