£8 million gift creates University College London institute to test whether spacetime is quantum

The David Potter Institute will combine theoretical and experimental physics, develop quantum sensors and train students working across quantum information, gravity and high energy physics

Professors Jonathan Oppenheim, left, and Sougato Bose with the interferometer used to levitate nanospheres for experiments investigating whether spacetime is quantum.

UCL is creating an interdisciplinary research institute to investigate whether spacetime is governed by quantum theory, backed by an £8 million gift from the David and Elaine Potter Foundation.

The David Potter Institute for Quantum Information and Spacetime will bring together researchers in quantum information theory, gravity and high energy physics within UCL’s Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Its central question concerns how quantum mechanics, which describes the smallest components of nature, can be reconciled with gravity and its account of spacetime. Scientists have made progress in both fields, but do not yet know whether spacetime itself is quantum.

Many physicists argue that Einstein’s theory of gravity must be modified, or quantized, to fit within quantum theory. Professor Jonathan Oppenheim and colleagues are pursuing another possibility: that spacetime remains classical and is not governed by quantum theory.

The institute will combine theoretical work with experiments intended to distinguish between those competing accounts.

“Quantum gravity research has historically been pure blackboard physics,” says Oppenheim, who will co-direct the institute. “We are now in the position of being able to design and build towards experiments that could settle a question that generations of physicists have struggled with.”

Quantum sensors will test competing theories

Researchers plan to develop quantum sensors capable of measuring small forces at high levels of precision. UCL says many of the experimental approaches have already been developed and trialed at the university.

One experiment uses an interferometer to levitate nanospheres. It aims to place a small mass into quantum superposition, where it exists almost as if it were in two places simultaneously, before measuring how gravity affects it.

Under the experimental premise described by UCL, quantum spacetime should allow gravity to entangle two particles, linking their behavior in a way that cannot be explained classically. If spacetime is classical, that entanglement should not occur.

The program is therefore intended to move the question of quantum gravity beyond theory and into experiments that can produce testable results.

UCL also expects the sensing research to inform possible uses outside fundamental physics, although those applications remain prospective.

Institute researchers will work with the Quantum Biomedical Sensing Research Hub, known as Q-BIOMED, which is led by UCL and the University of Cambridge. The collaboration will explore sensing technology for healthcare settings, including approaches that could enable more sensitive detection of cells, molecules and processes in the body.

UCL also plans for the institute to support the development of spin-out technologies based on its research.

Research program will include students and visiting scientists

The Potter Institute will host students, visiting researchers and workshops while providing training in theoretical and experimental physics. Its researchers will come from UCL’s departments of Mathematics, Computer Science, Philosophy and Science & Technology Studies.

The gift continues the scientific and philanthropic work of Dr David Potter CBE, who died in June 2026. Potter studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, completed a doctorate in mathematical physics at Imperial College London and later taught physics at the University of London and University of California.

He left academia to establish Psion in 1980. The company developed The Organiser, described by UCL as the first handheld computer for personal use, and Potter later led the creation of Symbian Limited with Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushita.

Elaine Potter, Co-Founder of the David and Elaine Potter Foundation, says: “The new Potter Institute is a vehicle through which we can help provide the academic freedom to pursue big ideas, the impact of which may shape the future in ways we cannot yet predict.”

Professors Jonathan Oppenheim and Sougato Bose will co-direct the institute, while Professor Peter Barker will lead its experimental program. UCL has not provided an opening date or details of how students and visiting researchers will join the institute.