The Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Tim Stevenson, presented the Queen’s Award for Enterprise:Innovation to Oxford Instruments on Friday 2nd July, marking the start of a day of celebrations for the staff at the company’s Oxfordshire facility.

Mr Stevenson (Pictured with Dr Jim Hutchins, Managing Director of Oxford Instruments NanoScience, Chief Executive Jonathan Flint and the company founders, Sir Martin and Lady Wood), congratulated Oxford Instruments on achieving its 11th Queen’s Award, and spoke of the spirit of innovation which continues to drive the company’s growth and success.  The Queen’s Award was awarded for the development of Triton200, the world’s first liquid-helium free dilution refrigerator with integrated superconducting magnet.  This instruments is capable of cooling to near absolute zero temperatures, which is 1,000 times colder than outer space! It is used for fundamental physics research into cutting edge applications such as quantum information processing, which is widely predicted to be the basis of a new generation of ultra fast computers required for applications such as financial security, climate modeling and drug development.

Jonathan Flint, Chief Executive said, "We use innovation to turn smart science into innovative, world-class products and what better example of this than Triton200?  Nanotechnology is beginning to play a significant role in our future , and the part that Oxford Instruments plays is also vital.   The tools we develop help scientists make the world a better place by addressing some of the grand issues of this century".