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Science Breakthroughs

Glasgow's Tiny Tech Marvel Marks 20 Years of Big Breakthroughs

The James Watt Nanofabrication Centre has quietly helped power the modern internet — and its next chapter could be its boldest yet

By Helen Cooper

Twenty years ago, on a quiet Sunday in March 2006, a researcher in Glasgow fired a single beam of electrons at a target the width of a fraction of a human hair. It was the first test run of a new machine — and the start of one of Scotland's most remarkable, and least-known, technology success stories.

The University of Glasgow's James Watt Nanofabrication Centre is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and the milestone is a chance to shine a light on work that touches far more lives than most people realise.

Nanofabrication is, put simply, the art of building things that are almost unimaginably small. The Centre's specialists use focused beams of electrons to etch intricate patterns just a fraction of a micron across — far too tiny to see with the naked eye.

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News Glasgow

Glasgow University Earns Three Top 100 World Rankings

The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 place the city's oldest university among the global elite — with a top-50 finish in Life Sciences and Medicine

By Henry Davenport

The University of Glasgow has been ranked among the world's top 100 institutions in three broad subject areas, in a result that burnishes the city's standing as one of Britain's great seats of learning.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, published on 25 March, placed Glasgow in the global top 100 in three of the five broad subject areas assessed — and, most strikingly, inside the top 50 in one of them.

The university's strongest showing came in Life Sciences and Medicine, which placed 41st in the world. Arts and Humanities followed at 66th, and Social Sciences and Management at 85th.

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AI News

Glasgow Researchers Make the Case for Letting the Public Audit AI

University of Glasgow team says inviting patients, parents and teachers to scrutinise AI systems could make automated decisions fairer — and far more trustworthy

Science Breakthroughs

Glasgow joins UK-Shanghai partnership to fast-track life-changing medicine

University of Glasgow researchers will lend world-class clinical expertise to a new collaboration aiming to speed gene therapy, synthetic biology and medical AI from lab to patient

By Helen Cooper

The University of Glasgow has signed up to an ambitious new partnership designed to speed up the journey of life-changing treatments from the laboratory to the patients who need them.

The university is one of five partners — alongside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, King's College London and HSBC — to put its name to a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Shanghai last month.

The agreement sets out a plan to pool each partner's strengths to tackle some of the biggest challenges in global healthcare, with a particular focus on three fast-moving fields: gene and cell therapy, synthetic biology and medical artificial intelligence.

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What's On Glasgow

Still Glasgow: GoMA Exhibition Frames a City Through the Camera Lens

Over 80 photographs — from Franz Ferdinand portraits to the lost Red Road Flats — capture Glasgow past and present, free to visit until June 2027

By Helen Cooper

Glasgow has been photographed more lovingly, and more honestly, than almost any city its size — and a sweeping new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art gathers more than 80 of those images under one roof.

Still Glasgow looks at the city past and present, pairing famous photographs from Glasgow Life Museums' collection with lesser-known works that have rarely, if ever, been seen in public.

Among the rediscoveries are Alan Dimmick's portrait of rock band Franz Ferdinand and David Eustace's Buskers Portfolio from 1993 — both on display for the first time since the museum acquired them.

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What's On Glasgow

Big Duffy and The Goods Bring Free Live Music to Blackfriars Every Sunday

Classics, rock 'n' roll and country fill Bell Street every Sunday afternoon — and it won't cost you a penny

By Henry Davenport

There are few finer ways to while away a Glasgow Sunday afternoon than with a foot tapping, a pint settling and a band in full swing — and the Merchant City has just the thing.

Every Sunday, Big Duffy and The Goods take over Blackfriars Of Bell Street for a weekly session of live music, and the welcome mat is out for everyone.

The group serve up a generous spread of crowd-pleasers, roaming from the great classics through rock 'n' roll and into country territory. It is the sort of easy, anthem-laden afternoon that asks nothing of you but to enjoy it.

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