Lancaster University has won a vote by the readers of Electronics Weekly to select the University Research Group of the Year in the Elektra Awards 2023.

Each year the readers of Electronics Weekly are asked to vote on the research project from the past year that they feel will make the largest impact on the commercial market in the next five years.

Lancaster was chosen from among six universities including Birmingham, Cambridge, Durham, Glasgow and Sheffield.

The vote was based on six articles from the magazine in the past year chosen by the editorial team at Electronics Weekly.

The article about Lancaster’s research investigated the commercialisation of ULTRARAM™ which is a novel type of universal computer memory invented by Lancaster University Physics Professor Manus Hayne.

Professor Hayne said: “We were very pleased to be nominated for this award by the editorial team at Electronics Weekly and absolutely delighted to be chosen by its readers as the winner. The name of the award, ‘University Research Group of the Year’, is really apt, recognising that leading academic research is fully a team effort. I’m very grateful for the privilege of being able to work with a highly motivated, dedicated and creative research team that are turning the promise of ULTRARAM™ into reality.”

In addition, Quinas Technology, the spin out from Lancaster University formed to commercialise ULTRARAM™ memory, was recently named as Best of Show in the Most Innovative Flash Memory Startup category at the Flash Memory Summit in California, the world's largest independent storage and memory conference.

Quinas was recently awarded £300,000 from Innovate UK to commercialise ULTRARAM™ which earlier received funding from the EPSRC via the Future Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing Hub, a Doctoral Training Partnership and Impact Acceleration Account awards, as well as from the H2020 programme via ATTRACT and Quantimony projects.