A Witney, Oxfordshire company that designs and builds custom ultra-cold cryogenic systems, used by quantum computing and physics research teams worldwide.
ICEoxford builds the very cold machines that quantum research needs. Many quantum devices only work when they are cooled to within a few degrees, or even a fraction of a degree, of absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible. ICEoxford designs and makes cryostats, which are insulated chambers that hold a sample at a precise low temperature, and its range includes dry systems that need no liquid helium, plus dilution inserts that reach millikelvin temperatures. Its Dry Ice 1.0K system is described as reaching 0.8 kelvin with over 250 milliwatts of cooling power at the sample, and it won a Queen's Award for Enterprise in the innovation category in 2020.
The company was founded in about 2004 by Chris Busby and Paul Kelly, who saw that few suppliers focused on high-performance dry cryostats. Mr Busby told The Quantum Insider in 2022 that the company chose to work on products its bigger competitors were not pursuing. Its stated founding value, in the words of sales director Chris Snelling, is "to provide the best service possible to their customers". Mr Busby also talks about making systems easy to operate, close to plug and play, and says he takes it "very personally if they don't work". We did not find a longer written mission statement.
ICEoxford is based in Witney, Oxfordshire, according to a 2019 Oxford Times report. Its customers are research groups and quantum computer developers around the world, including teams working on photonic quantum computing and silicon spin qubits. It was one of five winners of the Institute of Physics Business Innovation Awards in 2017, presented in London. The articles we read do not give staff numbers or the address of its workshop, so we cannot say how many people work there.
Mr Busby describes the company as "smallish" and says it keeps a "scrappy startup mentality". He explains that its sales engineers pass a customer's expectations to a project engineer, who then acts as that customer while the instrument is built. That is the company's own account of its culture and we have not verified it independently. It suggests a small team where engineers talk directly to the people who will use what they build.
The roles at a company like this are mostly practical engineering: mechanical designers, cryogenic and vacuum engineers, electronics and control engineers, the technicians who build and test each system, and sales engineers who work out what a research group needs. Physics, engineering and materials subjects are the usual background. It will suit someone who likes hands-on making and wants to be close to cutting-edge science without working in a laboratory. Check the ICEoxford website for current openings.
Website: www.iceoxford.com
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