Celebration of 100 Years of Superconductivity; Support for an International Workshop in Bath

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To coincide with the centenary of the discovery of superconductivity by H. Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 we have attracted a major ESF superconductivity workshop to Bath in May 2011. The 3-day workshop on Mesoscopic Superconductivity and Vortex Imaging has already been awarded Euro30k of core support by the ESF Research Network Programme Nanoscience and Engineering in Superconductivity (NES) . Under ESF rules this funding should be used to cover the local costs of scientists from contributing (or associated) European countries. This proposal seeks a modest EPSRC investment to support seven additional world-leading keynote lecturers from outside Europe, allowing this meeting to be able to set a truly international agenda for future high impact UK research in the area. All the proposed keynote speakers are recognised experts in superconductivity and have been selected to give their unique perspectives on the most important contemporary problems in the field, the results from the latest experiments seeking to address these and the most exciting research directions for the future. We also request funds to partially cover the local costs of 10 additional EPSRC PhD students, allowing us to support at least one student from each of the 13 UK groups participating in the ESF NES Programme. These stand to benefit immeasurably from their exposure to the latest ideas and experiments in the field as well as the opportunity to present their research work to recognised international research leaders. In addition to setting the agenda for future high impact UK research in the field the meeting will serve as a showcase for current world-leading UK work on the physics and applications of superconducting materials, both in academia and the industrial sector. New superconducting materials and devices have very strong potential for contributing towards solutions to several key current national challenges in the areas of energy distribution & carbon emissions, health & medical diagnosis and security. EPSRC support will be fully acknowledged in all workshop and publicity materials.