Welcome to the web pages of the Analytical Science Projects (ASP) Group.

Stop Press:

Letter from Professor Paulo B. Lourenço (University of Minho, Portugal) Recieved 4th March 2012

Dear Colleague,

In the proposal of the European Commission for the 8th EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, HORIZON 2020 cultural heritage has been omitted completely, thus taking away all the funds previously available for research in this field. This decision has serious consequences, since the whole basis for the conservation of cultural heritage in Europe will be eliminated, probably for many years to come.
Against this background, members of the Focus Areas Cultural Heritage (FACH) of the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) have taken action for an online petition to be addressed to the European Parliament and the European Council in order to plead strongly for the inclusion of cultural heritage research in HORIZON 2020.
In signing this petition, the cultural heritage research community requests the EU to acknowledge fully its responsibilities, now and in the future, to put cultural heritage research back high on its agenda and to address the topic appropriately in the next Framework Programme.
Please support this petition with your vote to ensure further promotion of cultural heritage research and also forward this link to your personal network:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cultural-heritage-research_8th-framework-programme/

Thank you very much for your attention.

Kind regards
Paulo B. Lourenço on behalf of FACH
Professor
University of Minho, Portugal

• First results from our new X-ray excited optical luminescence microscope here!

• We host BROMEC (Bulletin of research on Metal Conservation) here!

• Invited paper presented at ISRP 11, Melbourne, September 2009 here

• ASP has contributed an article on the future needs of heritage science in the areas of nanotechnology, synchrotron and neutron source provision to the influential EU White paper GENNESYS.

Overview

Our research focuses on the development of novel instrumentation, methods and data processing techniques to analyse the previously unanalysable, preferably at high spatial resolution. We currently have two main areas of activity:

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS)

Heritage science studies in controlled environments

We also provide a research-based analytical service, principally for other universities.

The group has been part of the Physics Department at Warwick since 1986, and was originally devoted to the development and application of novel instrumentation for secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), especially in the area of Advanced Semiconductors; hence our original name "Advanced SIMS Projects". Since then we have diversified, and now work both in SIMS and other areas of analytical science - especially in the development of synchrotron-based analytical tools and methods for cultural heritage and other research. So, in 2007, we changed our name to Analytical Science Projects, keeping the same acronym and logo.

The human race's 30,000 year old struggle to develop new materials has always thrown up similar challenges and problems (materials recognition, miniaturization, corrosion and its prevention, tailoring of properties ...), but with increasing levels of refinement and (usually) decreasing scale-lengths. Novel analytical instrumentation must be invented to enable such developments, and this must be supported by robust application and data analysis methods. So, our remit is to find an analytical challenge, devise instrumentation to meet it, apply the instrumentation and develop data processing methods to handle the output.

PhD and MSc students, and PDRAs are at the heart of these activities. They can expect to enhance their expertise in some or all of the following areas:

• Scientific instrument design and realization
• Ion and electron optics
• Programming for instrument control and data analysis
• Cutting edge analytical techniques (uleSIMS, SRXRD, XAS)
• Time resolved analysis in controlled environments

See here for more information