The four groups involved with the project are based in three colleges of the University of London: Imperial College (IC), Queen Mary College (QM), and University College London (UCL).

The project revolves around the London University Search Instrument (LUSI) system which is based at Queen Mary College. Initially, the robot was being used to produce samples of well known materials, which allows the accuracy and performance of the system to be checked. Now that LUSI has been confirmed to function accurately, it is being used to produce as yet untested materials and it is hoped that, due to the speed at which the robot works, new and interesting materials will be discovered.

Each group has particular area of expertise and their specific interests are outlined below:

• Imperial College - Ion diffusion materials
  
  At IC, Professor John Kilner's group is investigating the properties of the Lanthanum Strontium Manganese Oxide system by analysing the samples produced by LUSI using Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and ensuring that they match published results. Information about their research interests is available here
  The work at Imperial College is focused on materials for use in solid oxides, which are used in fuel cells, and also in ionic oxide conductors.
  
  
• Queen Mary College
  
  QM houses the LUSI robot. Professor Julian Evans' group are using the powders supplied by other groups to make inks which are then used by LUSI. Using LUSI, the inks are automatically mixed and printed onto slides. These slides are then processed by heat treatment and returned to the group supplying the original powder for testing.
  
  
• University College London
  
  At UCL, Professor Peter Coveney's group within the Centre for Computational Science are helping to write the LUSI control software. UCL are also responsible for maintaining a database which records all data generated throughout the project. In addition to building a useful reference library, 'data mining' techniques are being used to discover new and interesting materials for analysis. Once possible search areas have been determined, LUSI is 'steered' to produce materials in the search area. These materials are then analysed and the cycle repeated to discover materials with optimal properties.
  
  Data mining techniques being used include artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms.
  
  
• Imperial College - Dielectric materials
  
  The Physical Electronics and Materials Group (PEM) at IC, headed by Professor Neil Alford, is interested in the Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) system. This is a well known ferroelectric ceremic material with established properties and has been useful in determining the accuracy and quality of the robot. The group has recently acquired an Evanescent Microwave Probe [PDF] and a high-throughput X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) machine which will allow quick and accurate analysis of the samples produced by LUSI.
  
  This work at IC is in microwave dielectric and ferroelectric ceramics: These materials are used in mobile and wireless communication equipment. All such communication devices, from phone handsets to base stations to satellites, contain dielectric resonators (DRs) made from ceramics. These DRs are used to both generate and filter the transmitted signals, and are therefore extremely important materials. There are literally billions of mobile phones in use around the world already, and growing at the rate of eight new users every second. Ferroelectrics are used in capacitors and inductors, and are used to tune and filter the signal in microwave communications devices - it is hoped that this project will discover new materials, better suited for this purpose. These more efficient materials will be able to provide more bandwidth on the increasingly congested wireless systems.