The Imperial College London, UK, one of the top science and engineering universities in England and Europe, has recently become a global partner of SenSIP. Imperial College is the home of the University Defense Research Center (UDRC), which pursues advances in signal processing technology for use in national defense systems. The UDRC is being funded by the UK ministry of defense (MoD).

A presentation on the research project on nanopore sensors was given, in which the use of artificial and natural pores to build accurate analyte detection systems are being investigated. Ion-channel sensors which mimic naturally occurring pore-forming proteins can be used to detect small metal ions and organic molecules. A four chamber ion-channel sensor array is built for accurate analyte detection. Spectral and low rank models for representing ion-channel signals have been developed and an analyte detection framework using sensor array was proposed. Silicon-based artificial micro and nano sized pores have also been fabricated. These are used in a Coulter-counting setup. Signal processing algorithms are being developed to detect the analyte and draw inference on its size, electrical properties and analyte concentration.