University success at national engineer...(t uses hydrogen at a very high pressure ...)

Professor Snape has been working with the industry partners to develop a professional piece of laboratory equipment for use in specialist commercial and research laboratories.

The project has even allowed Professor Snape and Nottingham research fellow Dr Will Meredith to develop new applications for HyPy, including more accurate carbon dating, in which the process strips away everything but the carbon present in the original organic matter which is used for dating an object. A further surprising application, developed in partnership with drug testing experts at Imperial College London, could see the equipment used to catch athletes using banned drugs, particularly steroids, by detecting carbon produced by the drugs in the athlete's urine sample.

The development work is being funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the teams at Nottingham, Imperial College and Strata hope to commercialise the technique in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Susan Huxtable, Director of Technology Transfer says: "The University of Nottingham has an excellent track record for generation and successful commercialisation of new ideas and an equally good track record for working in collaboration with industry. We are delighted to have won two categories of the Engineer Technology & Innovation awards along with our industry partners."

Andrew Lee, editor of The Engineer, the only magazine serving the UK's engineering community, said: "The awards, now in their second year, were set up to recognise the fantastic collaborative work undertaken by the UK's most innovative companies and its world-class universities.

"The Engineer, in conjunction with the awards main sponsor, BAE Systems, launched them because we believe this work does not alw
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