The University of Manchester and BP jointly announced that BP will provide £64M over 10 years to the school to create a multi-institutional international research centre to develop materials for energy and industrial applications. Known as the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials, the program will support 25 new academic posts, 100 postgraduate researchers and 80 post doctoral researchers during the decade. According to a school press release, the centre will have a hub-and-spoke structure similar to the new graphene research centre announce late last year. In this case, Manchester's Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences will serve as the "hub," and University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as the "spokes." BP-ICAM will initially target three broad petroleum-sourcing applications: structural materials (high-pressure, high-temperature materials for deep-water production); smart coatings (for resistance to corrosion and other environmental stresses); and membranes and filters (for separation, filtration and purification throughout the petroleum/biofuel production chain). According to a BP-ICAM document, "Challenges and Goals," specific research responsibilities in the above areas are distributed among the four institutions, based on their particular expertise. The University of Manchester, University of Cambridge, Imperial College and UIUC all have other significant BP-funded research projects which may have facilitated their participation in BP-ICAM.
