Osborne pledges £50million for graphene research
Chancellor George Osborne has pledged an investment of £50million into researching graphene, the thinnest and strongest material known to science
Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference 2011, Osborne said the money would be used to conduct further research and commercialise the material.
Graphene was discovered in 2004 by Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim, from the University of Manchester. In 2010, as a result of their work on graphene, the researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Osborne also pledged £145m to support high performance computing and the associated e-infrastructure. According to the Chancellor, this will help make Britain a 'world leader in supercomputing'. A commitment of £150m was also made to build extra mobile phone masts, increasing the UK's coverage from 95% to 99%.
