UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2027 · 2027-03

On our warming planet, spring is arriving earlier and predators are not keeping up with the timing of their prey – a phenomenon known to as “trophic mismatch”. Of concern is that as mismatch increases, species further up food chains will struggle for resources, causing population declines and disrupting ecosystems. While trophic mismatch has attracted attention for over two decades, there are surprisingly few cases where it has led to population declines. We propose that this lack of population consequence is because species higher up food chains benefit from two overlooked forms of resilience, which have been understudied due to researchers focussing on simplified food chains (i.e. one prey type) and isolated populations: 1. Diet switching: Most predators are dietary generalists, so if they are too late to benefit from one preferred resource, they may switch to another. This switching can buffer the impact of trophic mismatch on survival and reproduction. 2. Spatial buffering: Populations of predators distributed across a landscape may experience different amounts of mismatch. Poor reproductive performance due to mismatch in one location can be offset at large spatial scales by other populations being matched, or at a local scale by immigration of individuals from nearby matched locations. We will use the blue tit, an insect-eating bird, that we study intensively across woodlands in Scotland, as a test case. Our data on daily insect abundance, nestling diets, and the number of young that fledge the nest, makes us uniquely well-placed to test if diet-switching can reduce the impact of trophic mismatch on breeding success. Nestbox cameras will collect new data on the food items fed to chicks, allowing us to test whether mismatch with key prey affects what is fed to the young or the feeding rate. By collecting data across 44 woodland and 16 years, we have an ideal set-up to test whether spatial variation in mismatch presents opportunities for spatial buffering. We will assess whether habitat variation is an important driver of spatial buffering. For example, if blue tit populations are matched in birch woodlands but mismatched in oak woodlands in one year, and in the next year these patterns of match and mismatch are reversed, this would demonstrate the value of conserving diverse woodland types. The millions of nest-record and bird-count observations collected nationally by British Trust for Ornithology volunteers, allows us to test whether spatial buffering of variation in fledging success is correlated with the variation among woodland bird species in their stability of year-to-year population sizes at the local or national level. Our work will deliver the first quantitative assessment of the potential for diet switching and spatial buffering to ameliorate the impacts of trophic mismatch. Our insights will benefit: Researchers:  By 1) re-assessing the risk that climate change driven mismatch poses to populations, 2) transforming how we study mismatch, and 3) making our unique new datasets and methods widely available. National and international policy: By generating a policy note reassessing the threat that climate change-induced trophic mismatch poses to population persistence. Conservation: By establishing the effectiveness of habitat variation and connectivity as a conservation strategy to reduce mismatch impacts in a changing climate. This project will move the field of phenology on from documenting mismatched interactions to identifying practical, evidence-based solutions that can promote population resilience in a rapidly changing world.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2027 · 2027-02

Technological advancements over the last 400 years have largely stemmed from a deeper understanding of the fundamental behaviour of matter, which has been harnessed to create breakthrough functional materials. In modern societies, two of the most important classes of materials are high energy density materials (HEDMs) and superhard solids. HEDMs are used in mining explosives, with hundreds of millions of tons annually employed to extract essential minerals, as well as in rocket fuels for space exploration and travel. Intense research is focused on developing higher-performance, non-polluting alternatives. Superhard materials, on the other hand, represent a growing multibillion-dollar international market and are indispensable across a wide range of applications, including machining tools, aerospace, optics, and even jewellery. While diamond is considered the sovereign superhard material, its low abrasiveness and chemical stability limit its use in some applications, necessitating the search for substitutes. The remarkable properties of nitrogen make it an ideal candidate for next-generation HEDMs and superhard materials. Nitrogen-nitrogen single covalent bonds are among the most energetic, storing and releasing nearly ten times more energy than the current best HEDMs. Additionally, nitrogen solids as HEDMs are entirely eco-friendly, releasing inoffensive molecular nitrogen (N2) into the atmosphere. Nitrogen's single bonds are also extremely stiff, enabling the formation of superhard solids. Despite exceptional potential of nitrogen solids, classical synthesis approaches have proven inadequate in producing attractive nitrogen-rich compounds. Recently, high-pressure synthesis has emerged as a leading method for achieving the sought-after nitrogen-based materials. Compression to millions of times atmospheric pressure dramatically alters matter’s behaviour, facilitating new atomic arrangements conducive to high-energy and ultra-stiff nitrogen covalent bonds. Building on the success of our original FLF project, this research aims to exploit high-pressure techniques to unlock nitrogen’s vast potential for creating new technological materials. First, a novel synthesis method utilizing athermal energy transfer will be developed to scale-up the production of materials discovered in the first three years of this FLF that show significant potential as HEDMs and superhard solids. Next, the search for new nitrides will expand to three-element systems, significantly increasing complexity but also offering greater promise for discovering next-generation materials. In collaboration with theorists, these compounds will aid in training artificial intelligence models under high-pressure conditions. Finally, pure nitrogen will be studied at unprecedentedly high pressures, exploring a regime relevant for planetary sciences and for uncovering novel high energy density nitrogen phases, which can later be targeted at lower pressures using alternative methods. This work can only be successfully achieved by exploiting a recently developed technique: synchrotron single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) from polycrystalline samples. The research will take place at the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions at the University of Edinburgh, a world-leading institution in high-pressure sciences, equipped with the necessary tools and expertise for this project’s successful realization. The pressure parameter holds the key to unlocking nitrogen’s full potential. By exploiting novel experimental methods, this project will push the boundaries of our understanding of matter under extreme conditions, ushering a new era in the design of functional materials. The solids discovered in this research will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in technological breakthroughs in the decades to come.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-10

South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. Contemporary approaches to land reform and urban planning and development (UDP) have exacerbated spatial segregation and entrenched inequitable access to land. Reliant on frameworks inherited from colonialism, they negate Indigenous epistemologies and continue to treat land as a commodity to fund economic growth. However, land is much more than a commodity; it is a site of security and resilience, a natural resource that sustains livelihoods and ecologies and a source of communal and spiritual identity. This project challenges conventional approaches to valuing and utilising land, proposing a more inclusive, decolonised strategy towards urban planning that is rooted in and reflective of local realties, knowledge and practice. The overall objective is: to realise new understandings of what urban land is, how it can be imagined, and how it can be used to create more equitable and inclusive cities. We will achieve this objective by combining the following aims: 1. Explore an informal community’s relationships with urban land Archival research, life history interviews, film and participatory drawing and mapping workshops will document the history of a community living in an informal settlement and explore their relationships with the land on which they reside; how they manage the land and their settlement; and what the land means for their communal identities, cultural practices and everyday endurance. 2. Analyse UDP practitioners' approaches to utilising urban land through a contemporary case study Archival research, key informant interviews, photography and film will be used to study the social history of a plot of land currently undergoing development. Research will analyse the ways in which UDP practitioners value, understand and attempt to utilise urban land. We will examine the dominant epistemologies informing their relations with land and explore how they respond to informal and indigenous uses for and conceptions of land. 3. Influence professional practice and shape public debate Following carefully designed pathways to impact, research will yield a public seminar series, a practice brief targeting UDP practitioners, an ethnographic graphic novel and a visual essay. These outputs will allow the project to intervene in contemporary debates and discussions about land in South Africa and inform UDP practice. The project benefit: Informal settlement community Research will act as a bridge between residents in an informal settlement and formal UDP practitioners. Storytelling, documenting histories and participatory workshops will allow a community to tell their story in their own words and have their practices, realities and values recognised. Participating in this project will help the community advocate for themselves and protect their settlement from possible removal. UDP specialists The project will introduce expanded epistemologies and new strategies for realising inclusive urban development. This will be particularly beneficial for practitioners interested in working with communities in informal settlements, exploring new approaches to delivering inclusive housing opportunities, and rethinking existing practices to pursue more equitable forms of urban development Third sector organisations Findings and outputs will benefit third sector organisations representing marginalised and Indigenous communities involved in struggles for urban land rights. Academia The project will shape debates in planning, indigenous urbanism, urban studies and architectural humanities. It will chart new territory in urban scholarship in South Africa by putting South African cities into conversation with other settler colonial cities and exploring ways in which urban development and planning can effectively be decolonised.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-08

Context:  Microbial keratitis (MK) is a painful and sight-threatening infection of the cornea. While the true incidence and burden of disease is not accurately known, estimates indicate that 1.5-2 million people are unilaterally blinded by MK each year. MK predominantly affects rural communities of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where ~50% of cases are caused by bacteria and 50% by fungi. Across Asia, over 60% of MK patients are left with moderate (or worse) visual impairment, and >10% of patients require surgical intervention (e.g., therapeutic keratoplasty (TPK) – a corneal transplant), the success rate of which is only 10-30%.  Furthermore, MK leads to significant social and economic difficulties for LMIC patients, with quality of life negatively impacted beyond the time of active disease. While there is no doubt that the greatest burden of MK persists across LMICs, MK also exhibits significant morbidity and economic impact within high income countries. In the UK, the annual incidence is >35,000 people, with up to 9% of cases caused by fungi. >80% of UK fungal keratitis patients require in-patient care for over two weeks because the treatment regimen is so demanding, and over 50% of these patients require additional surgical interventions.   Challenge: Poor outcomes for MK patients are related to the infecting pathogen (which can’t be controlled), and inadequacies of the care-pathway – which can be addressed. Currently, MK can only be diagnosed at tertiary care, with specialised ophthalmologists and microbiology infrastructure. These may be hundreds of kilometres from the patient’s home in LMICs, causing patients to access care late, and with significant financial implications. Even when patients can access gold-standard diagnostics, the pathogen may fail to be identified in ~50% of cases, and treatments only target the pathogen, not the immune response, which causes much of the corneal damage and resultant vision-loss.   Aims and objectives: My aim is to develop and implement tools and technologies to address these care pathway inadequacies – bringing point-of-care diagnostics and alternative treatment strategies to the entire microbial keratitis care pathway, including primary care. My objectives are: 1.       Validate our lead MK diagnostic prototypes in a clinical setting with patient samples with Aravind Eye Care System (AECS, India). 2.       Determine efficacy of treatments to influence the immune response in our model MK systems. 3.       Determine clinical feasibility of immunomodulatory treatments for MK with AECS. 4.       Establish a nuanced understanding of similarities and differences in the MK care pathway and patient needs across different settings, with a community of global MK stakeholders.   Applications and benefits Developing and deploying improved diagnostics and treatments for MK will enable correct and better treatments to be initiated earlier – when there is a greater chance of success. This could redefine the definition of MK “treatment success” to maintenance/restoration of the patient’s vision, rather than simply the absence of infection. Improved diagnostics and treatments for fungal and bacterial infections are well recognised priorities of the WHO. The need is specifically highlighted in the context of MK by GAFFI (Global Action For Fungal Infections), who recommend development of a point-of-care test for rapid diagnosis of MK as a key opportunity for improving patient outcomes, and the UK Clinical Eye Research Strategy report, which highlighted improved MK treatments as the top priority for cornea research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-06

Earth is 4.56 billion years old and is unique among known planets in having a life-supporting atmosphere, liquid-water oceans, and continents made of silica-rich granitic crust that cover forty percent of its surface. The remaining sixty percent of the crustal surface is oceanic crust, which is thinner and composed of silica-poor basaltic rock. Plate-tectonic processes re-shape the Earth’s surface today by forming new oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges and subducting it at convergent margins. Silica-rich magmas formed in subduction zones solidify as igneous rocks and are then recycled through erosion, deposition and mountain-building processes to form new continental crust. The continents began to grow and stabilise ~4.0-3.5 billion years ago, at a time when the Earth already had liquid water oceans but an oxygen-free atmosphere. Crucially, although plate tectonics explains continental crust formation on the present-day Earth, the tectonic processes operating on the early Earth are poorly understood. This lack of knowledge about early crust-forming processes, and the influences that these processes may have had on early environments, means that we have limited understanding of: (1) what tectonic processes operated on the early Earth; (2) how the early Earth’s surface differentiated compositionally; (3) how early surface environments were chemically modified during continental growth; and (4) how early continental growth could potentially influence the development of life on our planet. The oldest continental crust is predominantly composed of distinctive granitic rocks called tonalites and trondhjemites (and later granodiorites) that are rarely formed on the modern Earth. REACT aims to understand the tectonic processes that formed the oldest continent crust by determining how these tonalites, trondhjemites and granodiorites were generated. We will use an integrated and multidisciplinary strategy using a strong research team to bring together a blend of field-work and state-of-the-art geochemical, thermodynamic and experimental methods to address our aim. Through an improved and timely understanding of the field geology of ancient rocks and the development of new analytical and modelling methods we will implement complex computer models and carry out laboratory experiments to synthesise melts that match the composition of the earliest continental tonalites, trondhjemites and granodiorites using starting materials that have never been tested before. For the first time, novel isotope analyses coupled with new experiments and models will give us all of the conditions (source region compositions, pressures, temperatures, oxidation states, volatile contents) needed to form the ancient tonalites, trondhjemites and granodiorites. In turn, understanding the conditions responsible for forming the oldest tonalites, trondhjemites and granodiorites will allow us to propose the likely tectonic settings on the early Earth to establish how its crustal surface differentiated 4.0-3.5 billion years ago. These new insights will also allow scientists in other fields to discover how the magmatic and volcanic activity that accompanied the formation of the earliest continental crust would have modified the composition of Earth’s surface environments at a critical stage in the emergence of life on Earth. Our results will have broad appeal to earth and planetary scientists, biologists, and chemists in order to understand how our planet began its evolutionary path towards forming our modern tectonically active and habitable world.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-05

Active volcanoes generate multiple hazards that affect society, with impacts on human settlements, critical infrastructure, aviation, and the economy. To mitigate these risks, many volcanoes are monitored, however providing early warning of eruptions remains a significant challenge. As monitoring instruments have become better and cheaper, large volumes of geophysical data such as seismic and acoustic records are generated, but these data are underexploited due to incomplete understanding of complex volcanic systems and the geophysical signals generated by volcanic activity. State-of-the-art machine learning approaches are being explored to detect hidden patterns in geophysical data with the aim of complementing volcano monitoring activities, but their effectiveness is limited by a lack of connection to the underlying physical processes. Conversely, the geochemical and mineralogical characteristics of erupted material (e.g. ash and blocks) offer crucial insights into the physical evolution of volcanic systems, but long timescales from sample collection to data analysis and interpretation hamper the use of this crucial information for so-called petrological monitoring. The next frontier in understanding and forecasting volcanic eruptions requires an interdisciplinary approach combining geophysical and petrological data, as well as the capacity to rapidly analyse and interpret these data streams to track volcanic activity and provide early warning. Resolving these issues will enable more accurate forecasts and better-informed decision-making for risk mitigation. To achieve this advancement, new methods are needed to rapidly acquire petrological data and process it together with complex geophysical data. In this fellowship, I will take advantage of the large amount of geophysical data and regular ash samples available at persistently active volcanoes (PAVs) to build new rapid petrological data processing tools and the next generation of open-source forecasting models, working with three monitoring agencies as partners. PAVs are common globally, featuring protracted eruptions that often last over 5 years. While these volcanoes display a baseline of small-scale explosions, they also produce larger eruptions that may rapidly escalate and threaten people and infrastructure over a wider area ? for example, >50,000 people live within 10 km of Fuego volcano (Guatemala), which is one of 60 PAVs with eruptions since 1800. Early warning of the approach of these larger events is vital. This fellowship will produce the next generation of forecasting models, integrating petrological and geophysical time series and leveraging machine learning to identify patterns leading to eruption. These models will be implemented in real-time and integrated with routine and crisis operational activities of the partner monitoring agencies to assess their role in supporting decision-making. This work will also generate new theoretical and physical understanding of persistently active volcanic systems within a novel application of machine learning for early warning and risk reduction. The research design encompasses the full range of magma compositions erupted at PAVs to deliver new knowledge and short-term, high-resolution forecasting models applicable at any PAV. These open-source forecasting models are anticipated to be widely used and adapted in the volcanology community, particularly in volcano observatories, to support decision-making as part of ongoing risk management processes. Beneficiaries of this research will include both researchers and practitioners in volcanology, as well as authorities responsible for risk management and people living and working in areas exposed to persistent volcanic activity. This work will also enable a timely wider reflection on best practices around the use of machine learning as part of forecasting methods in volcanology.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-04

Thousands of proteins can be measured from blood samples, offering key insights into disease risk prediction. We were one of the first groups to show how individual proteins and multi-protein signatures associated with disease outcomes in UK Biobank. Others have shown that weighted combinations of blood-based proteins can track the health of 11 organs (organ ageing). A limitation of this work is that many proteins fluctuate over the short-term; a single time-point measure may not reflect important longer-term effects. We have shown that blood-based DNA methylation (DNAm) proxies for proteins (protein epigenetic scores or EpiScores) can yield stronger associations with disease outcomes than measured proteins. EpiScores provide a more stable estimate of chronic exposures than single-time-point protein measurements. We will develop EpiScores for individual proteins and protein-based organ age estimates and their changes over time in minimally and non-invasively collected biosamples (blood and saliva). The EpiScores will then be tested in relation to incident disease outcomes. A novel multivariate GWAS framework and time-aware graphical models will be developed to infer causal pathways between proteins/their EpiScores and disease outcomes. Our data include the world’s largest blood- and saliva-based DNAm cohort (Generation Scotland – GS, n=18,869 and n=10,491, respectively) and a longitudinal study with >10,000 proteins and genome-wide DNAm measured at up to 4 and 6 time-points per volunteer, respectively (Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 – LBC1936, n=795). These data have already been or are currently being generated, independently of this application. In the proposed work, we will conduct a suite of multi-omic analyses to: 1. build EpiScores for 11 organ age measures and >10,000 proteins (LBC1936). These will be projected into blood-based DNAm data from 18,869 GS volunteers and tested as predictors of 10-year onset of 175 diverse disease outcomes (minimum 30 incident cases). 2. extract longitudinal slopes for the >10,000 proteins, 11 organ ages and an overall multi-organ ageing measure and derive EpiScores for their rates of change (LBC1936). The EpiScores will then be considered as predictors of incident disease outcomes as per (1). 3. determine which DNAm organ age and protein EpiScores correlate highly across 600 paired GS blood/saliva samples prior to being projected into 10,491 GS individuals with salivary DNAm and up to 8-years of incident disease data. 4. apply the disease-associated EpiScores to blood- and saliva-based cohorts from two international epigenetics consortia (N>80 cohorts, N~90,000 samples) in external testing and replication of our findings. 5. develop and apply a novel multivariate genome-wide association study framework to identify the shared and unique SNP correlates of a measured protein and its EpiScore analogue. This work will be done for up to 4,000 protein/protein EpiScore pairs in 774 Generation Scotland individuals. 6. use summary-level bivariate associations between the omics layers (SNPs, CpGs, EpiScores and proteins) and disease outcomes to build graph models that identify age-specific causal pathways. All of our findings will be made publicly available and we will create easy-to-use tools and user interfaces to allow the wider scientific community to efficiently and securely generate DNAm biomarkers within their own cohorts. By building signatures for disease risk from an accessible biosample (saliva), cross-referencing these to findings from blood, and developing and applying novel causal inference frameworks, our work has the potential to transform how we assess biomarkers of ageing.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important part of sensitive data research. Among the most powerful recent advances are models focused on understanding language such as transformer models. When applied to unstructured, free-text data (e.g. clinical notes or criminal records), these models can summarise information, extract key details, and help researchers make better use of the data. They are now being trained inside Trusted Research Environments (TREs), secure data centres that allow approved researchers to work with sensitive information without data leaving the protected setting. While TREs are highly effective at keeping de-identified data safe, there is still no agreed way to check whether an AI model trained on free-text is safe to release. Unlike a table or graph, a model can memorise fragments of the data it was trained on, including identifiable information and rare phrases, which may later reappear in outputs or be revealed through clever questioning. This creates a new challenge for TREs, which must decide whether a model can safely leave the secure environment. Any model release must meet strict governance and disclosure-control requirements to ensure it poses no privacy risks. Our project, TranSPECT (Transformer Privacy Evaluation and Checking Toolkit) builds on existing AI and semi-automated output checking frameworks. In partnership with DataLoch (Scotland South-East TRE), we will test methods on sensitive free-text data, shaping the next generation of safe-release processes and tools for text-focused transformers, expanding existing tools into areas not yet covered, and advancing the TREvolution programme and TRE capabilities. Public and stakeholder involvement are embedded from the start. Guided by the Public Engagement in Data Research Initiative (PEDRI) Good Practice Standards, we will bring together operational delivery and stakeholder reference groups including public members, technical, TRE and governance experts. Together, they will define how risks in transformer models can be robustly and consistently assessed, test the clarity of risk ratings, and ensure that our approach is understandable and realistic. We will study three types of text-focused transformer models that are commonly used in TREs: Small language models, less computationally demanding but can memorise rare details. Large language models, such as LLaMA-2-7B, generalise better but have more complex risks. Parameter-efficient adapters, which fine-tune only small parts of a model and are simpler to review. Although transformers are currently the standard for analysing unstructured text, newer lightweight architectures (e.g. MAMBA and RWKV) offer similar capabilities with lower computational costs and will be tested for privacy leakage, providing future-proof guidance for TRE governance. By training models on existing de-identified data (clinical and administrative), we will measure how much information they may unintentionally retain or expose, and test ways to reduce this using differential privacy (adding noise during training), adapter-based fine-tuning, and unlearning methods to remove unwanted information without retraining the entire model. The project will deliver practical tools (extending SACRO-ML) to assess text-focused model disclosure risks before release. All work will follow TREs’ governance conditions to ensure real-world relevance and align with the existing guidelines (e.g. RELEASE-AI lifecycle framework and SATRE), contributing new methods for the disclosure-control release phases. By combining technical innovation with continuous public and stakeholder engagement, the project will strengthen trust in AI. It will support safer model release, and safely advance opportunities of sensitive-data research. It aligns with the TREvolution programme, delivering standards-based solutions on the disclosure risks of AI models.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

This project will build capacity in Eastern Africa in optical astronomy through three related routes. First, we will deliver hands-on training in observational astronomy to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Second, we will carry out advanced site testing activities to identify a location for a future large permanent optical observatory in Kenya, and explore options for similar development in other East African countries. Finally, we will train local rural community members in meteorite search, recovery, and identification techniques using a network of meteor cameras that we have installed.   This project leverages previous UK investment in Kenya in this area, including the installation of a 40cm telescope at the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) in Ileret in northern Kenya by the University of Edinburgh and the Kenya Optical Telescope Initiative (KOTI) in 2022, and the development of basic optical astronomy training courses as part of the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) programme. These projects have established a foothold for optical astronomy in Kenya; the work we propose here will expand this to neighbouring countries that were not part of previous projects (Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda), and  extend capacity in Kenya to the next level. Basic optical astronomy training schools will be run at Ileret for 60 students from Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda, giving physics students hands-on experience with a professional telescope. We will introduce an advanced school, aimed at graduate students in astronomy, which will be held in Nairobi and focus on cutting edge data analysis techniques that can be applied to data accessed from major international optical facilities such as Integral Field Unit Spectrographs, that are available on the Very Large Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.   Areas of Kenya, and neighbouring countries, appear to be very promising for optical astronomy, being sparsely populated and arid regions, with some significant mountain peaks, located near the equator with access to both Northern and Southern skies. KOTI, DARA, and the University of Edinburgh have taken the first steps to establishing a permanent observatory in Kenya, by installing weather stations on promising peaks to investigate the local climatic conditions. In this project we will install additional sensors on the mountain sites and a seeing measurement device at Ileret to test the quality of the sky for optical observations, and train Kenyans in how to install, maintain and use them. This will build capacity to enable future testing of mountain sites within the country and beyond.   The flat dry plains around Lake Turkana are also excellent for the recovery of meteorites seen to fall, and we will train staff at TBI, and members of the local rural community, to identify and collect meteorites. This activity builds on the existing work of TBI in fossil hunting, through which they train and employ local people in skills that are directly applicable to finding meteorites. Hence, we will create additional jobs for the local community. UK meteorite experts will also advise Kenyan academics on the analysis of any recovered meteorites.   A final workshop in Tanzania will discuss possible sites for optical telescopes and meteor cameras in the neighbouring countries. The skills that have been transferred by this project will enable the East African team to develop this capability in the future. These skills are also applicable to other areas such as meteorology and materials science.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Psychosis is a mental illness where individuals interpret or perceive reality differently, experiencing muddled thoughts or seeing/hearing things others do not. People with psychosis die up to 15 years before those without it, mainly due to preventable health issues like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Obesity is a major factor in these health issues and is more common in people with psychosis, partly because of antipsychotic medications. Weight gain starts early in treatment and may be related to changes in the immune system or how the body responds to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar levels. My research aims to understand and address early weight gain to prevent long-term obesity and related health issues. Currently, people with psychosis are offered the same standard treatments for managing obesity, if any are offered at all. Precision medicine could offer a solution by tailoring treatments for individuals using prediction models. A prediction model is a set of rules that forecasts an individual’s risk of something happening in the future based on a set of risk factors. However, current models do not focus on including risk factors that are causes of what they predict. Just because two things often happen together, like more people wearing sunglasses and increased ice-cream sales, does not mean one causes the other; they may share a common cause, like sunny weather. Additionally, currently treatments are recommended based on how they work on average across the population. However, we know that every individual responds to treatment differently. I will work with people with real-life experience to creating prediction models based on causes, which can account for individual differences in treatment responses. I aim to improve how healthcare professionals help people with psychosis choose their treatments for obesity, including testing new treatment options, and to advance the prediction modelling field.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

The Covid-19 pandemic laid bare the shortcomings of the data landscape in the UK. Professor Cathie Sudlow, in her major review, argued that “we are simply not maximising the benefits to society from the already-existing  [data] sources”. Faster cross-cutting evidence, using systematically linked health and administrative data, represents a critical opportunity for timely policy insights and evaluations. For Scotland, better linked data can ensure value for public spending to maximise outcomes for the population. Our vision is for a trusted and efficient data research infrastructure in Scotland, underpinned by a need to maximise the efficiencies, sustainability and impact of research for Scotland’s public services. This is at a time when value for money is more important than ever. Together our Co-Directors, leaders from academia and government, have driven forward this vision with a renewed focus on influencing decisions and affecting real change through impactful research which have now developed into five co-produced strategic research themes – developed within a ‘One Team’ approach. Our delivery partners are transforming the research approvals and data operations in Scotland to make the National Safe Haven (NSH) scalable and sustainable, establishing common best practice arrangements and moving to a single front door for data controllers and researchers. To deliver feasible efficiencies for systematically linking health and administrative data, enable better access to economic linked data, and smooth the researcher journey, our ADR delivery partners have co designed and are collectively advocating for the full implementation of One Approvals Pathway and One Process Model. These are a unique selling point that will push the target operating model in Scotland closer to the world-renowned Nordic population-based registers. By the end of the present ADR investment period, Scotland will have set the foundations for a highly flexible, scalable, and sustainable data linkage system. Going forward, our data linkage experts will develop cutting-edge approaches to household and inter-generational linkages, and make greater use of causal AI analysis, and economic data. Collectively, this will ensure we deliver high impact, policy-driven research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

This project will create new, secure, and standardised ways to bring together housing, environment, location, and health data. Once linked, the data will support research into how where we live, work, and age, influences our health, wellbeing and health inequalities in Scotland. We will build and test federated, standards-based data pipelines for data linkage. This will be undertaken in two Scottish Safe Havens; DataLoch in Edinburgh, and the Health Informatics Centre (HIC) in Dundee. Both regions have different characteristics that impact the population, e.g., urban-rural communities, deprivation levels, aging profiles. Data will be combined in a single Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for research access, meeting the highest standards of security, data protection, and research integrity. HEAL-Scot will develop and test data pipelines for linking the different types of data, preserving accuracy and privacy. The data will be linked and analysed at three levels: -          Individual level – data about people, such as age, sex, ethnicity. -          Property level – data about homes, using a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). -          Area level – data about local areas known as Data Zones, such as air quality, access to green/blue space. This is the first demonstration of cross-sectoral linkage in a federated project in the Scottish Safe Haven Network (SSHN). We will link these non-health datasets to health data and evaluate a range of DARE UK TREvolution tools not yet tested with non-health data. This includes advancing inter-TRE collaboration between DataLoch and HIC, adopting new federation standards (such as the DIRECTOR-MESH functionality). We will also test K8TRE, a standard implementation of TRE, and SACRO, for automated output checking for data release. HEAL-Scot will help to identify any additional safeguards needed when working with linked non-health sensitive data. Public engagement and involvement are central to our approach, helping us identify and address governance, privacy, and ethical issues resulting from combining geospatial and health data.   We will create a reusable blueprint for cross-sector data linkage within the SSHN, showing how federated TREs can advance population scale-research. This will make future geospatial research more efficient, faster, cost-effective, and consistent. It will strengthen Scotland’s capacity to link and use data safely for public benefit and support research into reducing health inequalities. Alongside the proposed infrastructure development, a research study will explore key factors that shape health outcomes including housing, environment, and financial factors. It will be based on the Marmot Principles, which focus on the social conditions that affect people’s health and health inequalities. The study will analyse data related to housing, economics, and location – key social factors that shape health outcomes. Comparing data from the two regions, will provide a scalable pilot approach for national population-level analyses. By improving the technical, governance, and public engagement frameworks for linking sensitive geospatial and health data, HEAL-Scot will lay the foundation for faster, safer, and more effective research across the SSHN and the UK, strengthening the evidence base for policies addressing inequalities.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

We envision a future in which every secondary school and university in under-resourced regions across sub-Saharan Africa has access to high-quality, well-designed virtual physics laboratories that effectively complement and where necessary, substitute traditional physical laboratories.  Our research will be about enhancing physics virtual laboratories from the Global North, to suit the Global South, and in particular, the northern Ghana region's challenges, including adapting our instant formative feedback generation tool to support teachers as well as students. Context: In Ghana, particularly the Northen region, physics education at secondary and early university levels is constrained by limited access to laboratory infrastructure, financial and safety concerns, and a shortage of qualified instructors. These challenges disproportionately affect students in rural and low-income communities, particularly girls and other marginalized groups. Previous educational technology initatives have demonstrated the transformative power of modern approaches in Ghanian classrooms, but also the pitfalls of having unreliable electrical power, expensive or no internet access, or a lack of technical and pedagogical support. Challenges Addressed: We will provide a holistic socio-technological solution, that addresses the persistent infrastructure challenges as well as the community engagement, training, and gender equity work required to embed our developments in high schools and universities in Ghana. Aims and Objectives: Our aims are to sustainably increase educational equity and build physics education capacity, in a way that can scale cost-effectively in future. Objective 1: Create a suite of virtual labs that offer visual, interactive, and repeatable experiments that make abstract physics concepts accessible. Objective 2: Develop and deliver a teacher training program that goes beyond one-off workshops, providing ongoing support and fostering a community of practice, creating long-term teacher confidence and ensures meaningful integration of the technology into classrooms, including teacher support tools such as dashboards and feedback. Objective 3: Providing tablets and solar power systems, the project bridges the digital divide in under-resourced schools. Objective 4: Use gender-responsive training and dedicated workshops to create inclusive, supportive spaces for girls, helping to overcome socio-cultural barriers to their participation in Physics and STEM fields. Potential applications and benefits: Our approach will be applied to physics teaching at Junior High School, Senior High School, and University level. Our project focuses on northern Ghana, which is most affected by the infrastructure issues, hence the use of solar-power standalone WiFi boxes that don’t need a web connection, because they store the files locally to serve to students that are within WiFi range. However the web-delivery mechanism means we can quickly scale to support any student that has a web connection, by hosting the same files on a standard web server, thus providing a low-cost way to help students and staff across the country and indeed the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. We have structured the project to focus on stakeholder involvement in setting social and technical priorities, and planned for a significant effort in translating simulators and virtual laboratories experience from the Global North into a Global South setting – rather than simply lifting and shifting existing resources. Outcomes include improved student understanding of physics, enhanced teacher capacity, increased digital literacy in rural areas, and adoption by educational institutions and ministries in Northern Ghana and further afield. Long-term impacts include reducing the urban-rural STEM education gap, supporting SDG 4 (Quality Education), boosting local innovation, and providing a scalable model for Sub-Saharan Africa.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

The biggest mammal is 75 million times larger than the smallest; hence, the greatest difference between species is organism size. This intellectual problem is best articulated by Haldane’s essay On Being the Right Size: “The most obvious differences between different animals are differences in size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them”. While cell number is the major determinant of body size in mammals, the mechanisms regulating cell number during development remain poorly understood. Yet, proliferative disorders underlie some of the most devastating human health conditions including cancer, affecting 1 out of 3 individuals in their lifetime. In addition, loss of stem cell renewal and tissue repair capacity are hallmarks of aging and degeneration. Humans develop from a single cell into a complex organism containing 1015 cells, and the human brain contains the largest number of cortical neurons in the animal kingdom. With the highest number of specialized cell types, and a complex degree of functional specialization exemplified by neuronal connectivity and function, it is highly prone to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, and very difficult to repair. While of basic biological significance, understanding how cell number is determined during development to achieve appropriate organ and organism size and function is an important and pressing question for society. This fellowship work is inspired by human disorders of extreme growth restriction, which surprisingly produce tissue-specific manifestations such as microcephaly, despite being caused by mutations in ubiquitous genes. These single-gene conditions provide direct causal links between genes and phenotypes, with large and tractable biological effects. From these studies, the replisome, the machine replicating DNA, emerges as growth and cell fate determinant during development. Informed by these Mendelian conditions, I will address how DNA replication and cell cycle dysfunction determine organism and brain growth and development.  Precisely how defects in DNA replication lead to growth failure, as well as the reasons for organ-specific phenotypes in microcephalic dwarfism, remain to be defined. Central to these questions is how perturbed DNA replication acts in primary cells, and how this differs in different tissues. Hence, this proposal will investigate: 1. The molecular and cellular mechanism of Replisome progression defects in microcephalic dwarfism 2. How DNA replication controls cell fate and brain development This work will shed light on the relationships between DNA replication, growth, and development to advance our understanding of human-disease mechanisms and improve our understanding of the cell cycle determinants of brain development. Emerging results therefore have the potential to inform cancer therapies, neurodevelopmental disorders, and future strategies for tissue repair and regeneration.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

This proposal seeks funding to develop a unique detector test facility at the Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA) utilising a laser-driven particle accelerator and radiation sources. The test facility will have the capabilities to underpin UK detector development and testing. By bringing together leading groups at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, with expertise in detector development and laser-plasma physics, we will set up a dedicated beam-line at SCAPA and build a telescope facility for testing of new detector technologies. A high repetition rate, high-power, ultra-short pulsed laser at SCAPA will be used to drive a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) capable of producing GeV-level, low-emittance, femtosecond duration, 10-100 pC electron bunches at rates of 1-5 Hz. This project will address the operation of a telescope in these beam conditions. This will be the first step to provide a  test facility that will provide essential capacity and enhanced capability for development of  detectors for future particle and nuclear physics experiments to meet an urgent community need in the light of the increasing scarcity and availability of test facilities. In addition to providing state-of-the-art equipment for use by the particle detector development community, the facility will provide new tools for scientists investigating the physics of matter in extreme conditions,  new healthcare modalities and damage studies for the nuclear and space industry sectors. This flagship facility will provide UK scientists and their collaborators with unique resources and enable the UK-wide community to expand capabilities for enhancing the range of detectors that can be developed. It will also help meet the demand of a rapidly growing user community of high power lasers by providing unique training opportunities for postgraduates and early career researchers. The next generation of detectors for particle and nuclear physics will require excellent timing resolution as well as spatial resolution. The availability of femtosecond bunches will provide a unique opportunity to characterise the timing performance of new detector technologies and their associated electronics. This new capability will promote leadership and enhance excellence in the UK in the development of particle detectors with excellent timing and spatial resolution.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Electrical engineering, through power electronics, machines and drives, underpins all renewable electricity generation, conversion and integration. The drive to achieve higher power and higher efficiency, use more sustainable materials, and provide greater control and reliability for next generation renewables relies on rapid step changes in technology for the underlying power electronics, machines, drives and control systems (PEMD). The drive for improved efficiency in industry alongside the increasing electrification of transport and heating and cooling is encouraging the development of PEMD in academia and industry. The UK government and industry are building the skills, knowledge and supply chain to support these sectors, but sustainable renewable generation is making slow progress towards the PEMD technology that is needed to underpin next generation renewables. N-ZEEE will bring together for the first time the diverse and disparate research activity in emerging electrical engineering for next-generation renewables to form a coherent community of engineers that can empower significant change in the approach to this critical and enabling field. N-ZEEE will be a community of academia, industry, policy makers and wider stakeholders to ensure cross-sector technology transfer in addition to renewables-specific developments that will enable next generation wind, marine, photovoltaic and novel future energy generation and allow the UK to deliver its energy and climate priorities and pioneer underpinning PEMD research. The N-ZEEE Network will enable the transition to future PEMD generation, conversion and integration technologies by: 1. Building a strong academic and industrial research community focused on delivering next-generation-enabling PEMD technologies by fostering new relationships and building on established relationships to grow an extensive and coherent network of knowledge, research and practice. 2. Providing a network of research excellence in enabling PEMD technology leading to a Supergen Hub of excellence in PEMD whilst enhancing existing and future sector-focused Supergen Hubs. The current hub model has a patchwork of narrowly-focused PEMD research into application-specific technology; instead, N-ZEEE will provide a centre of critical mass that can be tapped into by existing and future sector-specific Hubs. 3. Creating a Network within which cross-cutting themes will strengthen the UK's ability to develop next-generation-enabling PEMD technology for renewable generation, conversion and integration. The Network will nurture the integration of ideas between different PEMD fields (e.g. electric automotive and aviation), creating a community that can make the rapid progress required to achieve net-zero within the critical timescales. 4. Providing support for early career researchers to build solid relationships and develop their networking expertise so that they can drive forward future research in enabling electrical engineering. The early career researchers of today will be supported to become the research leaders of tomorrow. 5. Providing a forum for doctoral students researching PEMD within existing application-focused Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) to come together to share ideas and develop their networks in an open and constructive environment (e.g. Aura, IDCORE, Sustainable Electric Propulsion, ReNU).

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Recent technological advances in imaging and genomics have highlighted cellular heterogeneity as a fundamental characteristic of biological systems, playing a critical functional role in processes ranging from development and cell differentiation to neuronal activity and hormone secretion. While technologies like Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) have facilitated the isolation and analysis of cell populations based on a static reading of a fluorescent signal, a significant gap remains: the ability to link dynamic, time-dependent cellular responses to changes in molecular, metabolic, and integrative functions at the single-cell level. This gap limits our ability to understand the impact of cellular dynamics on specific biological outcomes. The proposed project addresses this limitation by developing a transformative technology that enables high-throughput sorting of cells based on the time-course of intracellular events. By leveraging state-of-the-art microfluidic systems, we will encapsulate single cells in microdroplets, allowing us to measure and analyze their time-dependent changes in intracellular pathways (e.g. a response to a stimulus) in real-time. Our platform will integrate advanced image analysis and machine learning to classify and sort these cells depending on these dynamic changes, capturing dynamic functional states that cannot be detected with current static methods. The significance of this innovation lies in its ability to isolate cells depending on the specific temporal profile of a response, a characteristic that is crucial to generate different biological outcomes. This will be delivered in a way that is scalable for high-throughput sorting of large numbers of cells of interest, also allowing to capture rare cell states, and compatible with existing FACS probes. We will use this system to investigate functional states in pituitary corticotrophs, key modulators of the hormonal stress response, as an example of a highly plastic cell population that needs to respond to unpredictable, time-varying external stimuli, linking their intracellular calcium dynamics to their dynamic transcriptional states and hormonal output. In summary, this transformative technology will allow the selection of specific functional cell states, allowing further downstream single-cell analyses to link dynamic intracellular pathways to specific biological outcomes. The potential impact is vast, from providing new insights into fundamental cellular functions and behaviours, to understanding developmental processes, selecting specific cell sub-populations for cell therapy, and informing novel treatments for diseases.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Theileria are amongst the most impactful tick-borne parasites of livestock in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Theileria annulata and Theileria parva are the most prevalent Theileria species causing reduced productivity and 100% mortality in tropical and sub-tropical livestock systems. Current Theileria control strategies, which include acaricides, chemotherapy, and live attenuated vaccines, have many limitations including environmental toxicity, drug resistance, and difficulty to produce and deploy. Additionally, animals that recover from Theileria infections remain carriers and play a significant role in parasite transmission in endemic areas. Therefore, developing novel effective Theileria control strategies is an important priority for veterinary research. T. annulata and T. parva infection outcomes have many similarities, including the transformation of infected white blood cells into immortalized cancerous-like cells - which the parasites achieve by co-opting different host cell signalling pathways. However, although both parasite species can transform B cells, T. annulata and T. parva can also transform and replicate in monocytes/macrophages and T cells, respectively. Currently, there are gaps in our knowledge of the molecular factors that underpin this similar and distinct infection outcomes in B cells, monocytes/macrophages, and T cells.  For example, do both parasites co-opt the same host cell signalling pathways to transform B cells? Second, what are the unique host cell signalling pathways co-opted by T. annulata and T. parva to enable parasite species-specific transformation of macrophages/monocytes and T. cells? We recently, identified a region in the genome linked with tolerance to T. parva in native cattle in T. parva-endemic areas of East Africa. Interestingly, we observed a high frequency of the same T. parva tolerance haplotype in native cattle breeds and Asian buffalos in India, where T. annulata, not T. parva, is prevalent, suggesting that the same host-derived molecular factors control T. annulata and T. parva infection outcomes. Guided by these observations and strong preliminary data, we aim to address current gaps in our knowledge on how Theileria subvert normal host cellular processes to facilitate parasite replication, and how these host-parasite interactions may vary between T. annulata and T. parva. We will do this by deploying parasitology and unbiased genetic screening protocols that are well-established in our labs to pursue the following objectives: 1. Identify how host regulatory genetic variants control gene expression in T. annulata-infected bovine cells. 2. Identify how host genes control the transformation and proliferation of T. annulata-infected cells. 3. Identify how parasite species-specific and non-specific host-derived factors control T. annulata and T. parva infection. Collectively, our proposal will broadly impact the Theileria field by providing the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the molecular events controlling T. annulata and T. parva infection outcomes. The studies have the potential to uncover novel insights that can be exploited to combat these parasites. Theileria transformed cells exhibit a malignant phenotype, but without damage to host cell DNA. Therefore, besides Theileria biology, the project can also contribute to the field of cancer biology.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

One quarter of adults in the UK are obese with over two-thirds classed as at least overweight. Increased weight is associated with development of other conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease and certain cancers. Public health initiatives to limit food intake and encourage exercise have failed to halt the rise in obesity and diabetes, so new approaches are required. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a special type of fat that generates heat when we’re placed in a cold environment. In mice, prolonged cold exposure increases BAT mass and protects against the development of obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol. In human adults, the presence of BAT is associated with protection against weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease, so strategies to increase BAT mass may improve metabolic health. While cold acclimation (repeated short term cold exposure) improves markers of metabolic health in humans, it is unclear whether cold acclimation increases BAT mass or whether these metabolic benefits are mediated by other important metabolic tissues such as skeletal muscle, and it is unclear how cold acclimation alters the function of these tissues. To determine how cold exposure alters BAT, white fat (WAT) and muscle function, we will recruit normal weight and obese healthy volunteers to a study investigating the effect of cold acclimation. Participants will undergo special scans (called whole body positron emission tomography (PET) using radioactive glucose and acetate tracers) during mild cold exposure to quantify oxidative metabolism, and quantify glucose uptake into various metabolic tissues (BAT, WAT, muscle, liver, heart). Thereafter, we will take biopsies of their BAT, WAT and muscle that will be analysed to measure the different cells in those tissues and the genes those cells express. Following a period of cold acclimation, the PET scan and biopsies will be repeated. We will determine whether cold acclimation increases the number of brown fat cells and other cell types in this tissue, and identify the pathways that have been activated in BAT, WAT and muscle by this intervention. We will then investigate the role of these genes and pathways that have been altered by cold acclimation in human brown fat and muscle cells obtained from patients undergoing elective surgery, to determine how these pathways alter energy expenditure by these cells. These studies will inform us how cold exposure improves metabolic health and may well identify new pathways amenable to therapeutic manipulation to create new treatments for obesity and associated diseases.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Language is one of humanity’s most remarkable inventions, yet across the thousands of languages spoken/signed worldwide, we see striking similarities in how meaning is structured. These recurring patterns—semantic universals—suggest deep constraints on how languages evolve. But what explains these universals? Do they stem from the way humans communicate, or are they rooted in innate structures specific to our linguistic ability? This project investigates whether the communicative function of language plays a key role in shaping semantic universals. It will explore how fundamental principles governing the evolution of communicative systems—such as the need for clarity and learnability—constrain the meanings that languages can encode. Understanding these principles will not only shed a light on why languages take the forms they do but also provide insights into human cognition and the development of artificial communication systems. Despite the broad recognition of semantic universals, their origins remain debated. Some researchers argue that these patterns arise from innate cognitive biases, while others suggest that they are products of cultural evolution of communicative systems. A major challenge is distinguishing between these explanations and identifying whether semantic universals emerge due to the demands of communication. This project comes this challenge by taking an innovative, interdisciplinary approach, combining experimental, computational, and theoretical methods. The goal is to address the question: to what extent do communicative pressures shape semantic universals, and ultimately human linguistic cognition? To do this, we will focus on three key areas: Compositionality and Lexicalisation. We will investigate how languages balance between simple building blocks (words) and more complex expressions (phrases built from words). As an approach, we will use artificial language learning experiments and computational models to explore why certain meanings tend to be lexicalised (expressed as a single word) while others are left for compositional constructions. 2. Logicality and Grammar. We will examine why languages often avoid trivial or contradictory meanings in their grammatical structures. To do this, we will conduct iterated learning experiments and computational modelling to test whether these patterns arise from minimum assumptions about how pragmatic speakers communicate and learn the grammar from others. 3. Semantic Universals in AI. We will test whether large language models (LLMs)—trained on vast amounts of human language data—exhibit semantic biases similar to those found in human languages. We will investigate whether these models can help us understand the cognitive and communicative foundations of linguistic universals. This research has broad implications beyond language sciences. Understanding the forces that shape language can inform fields such as: Artificial Intelligence & NLP: Insights from this study could improve how AI systems process and generate natural language, leading to more effective human-computer interaction. Language Learning & Education: Findings could contribute to better language teaching strategies by revealing what structures are more easily learnable and why. Cognitive Science: The project will shed light on fundamental aspects of human cognition, such as how we categorize and communicate meaning. Preserving Linguistic Diversity: A deeper understanding of universal patterns can aid efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages. By integrating linguistic theory with experimental and computational methods, this project aims to uncover the deep principles that shape all human languages. Its findings will enhance our understanding of both the nature of language and the cognitive and social factors that drive its evolution.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

The archival record of slavery was produced in a context of domination, making it difficult for historians to reconstruct the perspectives and experiences of enslaved people. This project responds to this problem by analysing the largest collection of first-person or reported speech testimony of enslaved people from the Caribbean: the Reports of the Protectors of Slaves of British Guiana. These documents contain thousands of pages of testimony from enslaved people who travelled often long distances to seek legal redress in judicial institutions newly available in British Guiana in the 1820s. By mapping these testimonies, reading them critically, and connecting them to another set of sources which allows for the partial reconstruction of kinship ties (the Returns of Registers of Slaves), Voices in Slavery’s Archive addresses questions about the impact of enslaved people’s use of the law and develops new ways of understanding their politics and centring their voices. Important scholarship uses fragmentary sources and critical imagination to subvert the power relationships through which the archive of slavery was created (Hartman, 2008; Fuentes, 2016). This work has sometimes been counterposed to research using large-scale datasets presented through digital resources (Slave Voyages, Legacies of British Slavery). Voices in Slavery’s Archive draws on the best of these two traditions by combining large-scale analyses of enslaved people’s legal engagement with a person-centred approach to the individual voices and experiences of the enslaved. It does this in the pursuit of three goals: To generate new understandings of enslaved people’s engagement with the law in British Guiana, and of how that engagement affected enslaved people’s politics and the broader power relationships of colonial slavery To pioneer new methods for the historical examination of slavery by combining archival research with digital tools, community engagement, and family and community history To overcome global barriers of access to these important records – held in the UK - by making them accessible to researchers anywhere in the world Voices in Slavery’s Archive is a collaborative project between scholars and heritage organisations in the UK (University of Edinburgh (UoE), the National Archives (TNA), Guyana SPEAKS), Guyana (the University of Guyana (UG)), and the US (Xavier University (XU). The project will work in partnership with the National Archives of Guyana (Walter Rodney Archives) to ensure that the records of the Protectors of Slaves, which preserve the testimony of enslaved people in British Guiana, become permanently accessible to the twenty-first century descendants of those whose voices they represent. Its mode of analysis and presentation of data will begin from principles of accountability and responsiveness to communities descended from enslaved people in Guyana and the diaspora, providing a model for future digital humanities work. It will lead to a deeper understanding of the changing nature of slavery and the conflicts it generated in its last decades, attuned to the specific geographies and landscapes of British Guiana, to familial and community ties, and to the increasing importance of the law.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

The discovery of functional chemicals has revolutionised and continues to benefit human society. They serve as the pharmaceuticals that underpin our health systems, the agrochemicals that sustain crop production and the materials integral to modern devices. Due to the continued emergence of new societal challenges, such as diseases, climate change and plastic pollution, chemical discovery remains an ongoing venture. Thus, a critical challenge in modern chemistry is providing strategies that facilitate simple access to new chemicals. Catalysis is the preeminent technology to achieve this and the impact of this technology is underlined by the regular conferment of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for advances in this field (asymmetric catalysis in 2001, alkene metathesis in 2005, cross-coupling reactions in 2010, organocatalysis in 2021 and click chemistry in 2022). A key driver in the success of catalysis is its ability to yield the selective formation of one particular chemical and avoid the formation of undesired by-products. To achieve this, catalysts must be judiciously designed to favour the formation of the desired product and are often applicable to a small range of substrates. As a consequence, there are still incalculable numbers of chemicals that are challenging to access. This project will establish a new framework for the design of catalysts that, instead of providing just one catalyst to facilitate selective access to a small range of chemical products, will provide a family of catalysts to facilitate selective access to a wide range of products. This catalyst design framework is ideal for addressing this challenge as it intrinsically provides rapid and flexible access to a markedly larger and more diverse library of catalysts in comparison to previous approaches. To demonstrate the utility of this framework, it will be applied to the discovery of novels catalysts that promote the transformation of C–H and O–H bonds, both of which are ubiquitous in bioactive chemicals. One of the key impacts of this project is that it will enable the chemical community to more readily access previously undiscovered chemicals. This will have considerable societal impact by facilitating the discovery and development of new pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and other chemical products. Within academia, this work will serve as inspiration to other research groups and the simplicity of the framework will encourage its facile adoption to tackle other challenges in catalysis.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

In the current world characterised by migration waves, many migrant children grow up in the country of residence speaking a language in the home and/or community, their heritage language, that is different from the societal language. This language acquisition context, characterised by reduced input conditions and influence of a more dominant societal language, can impact the learning mechanisms and outcomes of heritage language development. Despite the growing numbers of bilinguals across the world, our understanding of how heritage language processing mechanisms develop under reduced input and under influence of the dominant language remains limited. The present project aims to fill this gap by examining how heritage bilingual children of migrant background develop their heritage language skills in the country of residence, and whether properties of the societal language facilitate or slow down that development. To address this aim, we focus on children’s comprehension and production of grammatical properties in their heritage language, properties which may overlap or differ from those of the societal language. For example, understanding who did what to whom is a fundamental property of human communication. Languages differ, however, in the linguistic devices that they use to convey this information. English relies on word order to denote the agent and the patient; in contrast, Greek and Romanian – the two heritage languages targeted in this project – employ case and Differential Object marking/DOM, respectively, to denote agent-patient relationships. By implementing a cross-national project across five European countries, we will address the following three objectives: 1) to determine whether children integrate linguistic information in their heritage language to predict upcoming input and how this is linked to production, 2) to assess if the presence or absence of overlapping morphosyntactic properties between the heritage language and the societal language impacts production and predictive processing, and 3) to unravel how experiential and exposure factors in heritage communities modulate language outcomes beyond typological proximity. To address objectives 1 and 2, we will test Greek and Romanian heritage language children growing up in three countries: the UK, Germany and Spain, and monolingually-raised children growing up in the countries of origin (Greece and Romania). The language combinations have been strategically selected because of their overlapping or contrasting grammatical properties: Spanish and Romanian share DOM; German and Greek share case marking; all four languages but English share grammatical gender (the other grammatical property targeted in the project). We will administer child-friendly eye tracking tasks that capture how children comprehend language in real time as they hear it, and elicited production tasks. To address objective 3, we will measure children’s bilingual experience using a parental questionnaire. This questionnaire captures the large variability that characterises heritage development (due to differences in age of societal language exposure, heritage language use, input quantity/quality, schooling) and heritage language community profiles (e.g., migration generation). The project has theoretical and empirical contributions for formal linguistics, developmental linguistics, bilingualism and cognitive psychology. It advances our understanding of how bilingual children process linguistic information, how processing and production are shaped by the societal language and by the diverse profile of heritage language communities. Crucially, it is highly relevant for language educators, language policy stakeholders, and parents. Our project will highlight the heterogeneity of heritage language communities and their needs for heritage language maintenance across different European countries, potentially informing language education and policy.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Context: The local availability of unhealthy commodities, including tobacco, vape and alcohol products, normalises, reinforces and promotes their use, and is a vector for ill health, particularly in more socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The consumption of unhealthy commodities is strongly shaped by local environments with adolescence a key period for initiating health behaviours and inequalities. Therefore, identifying environmental risks factors related to initiation is a policy priority. Challenge the project addresses: Most research into the availability of unhealthy products focuses on adults. Yet (pre)adolescence is a formative period when knowledge and attitudes to health-related behaviours become ‘hard-wired’.  Research on adults finds consumption is higher in neighbourhoods with more outlets.  Similarly, research on children shows greater knowledge of tobacco products and increased initiation in areas of high availability. To date this work has been cross-sectional and there is no longitudinal evidence on how growing up in neighbourhoods with differing levels of availability shapes health behaviours in later years. Further, earlier work relies on static exposure measures overlooking people’s movements between different social and physical environments (work, school, recreation) over the course of their daily lives. Another criticism is the under theorisation of availability and consequently how it is operationalised. Most studies measure availability using count of outlets or rates per area or at best density surfaces representing accumulative exposures. However, the precise mechanisms linking availability, consumption and harm for different socio-demographic groups are unknown, undermining the development of robust exposure metrics and subsequent policy options. Aims and objectives: The aim is to use longitudinal data to examine how neighbourhood availability of unhealthy commodities (tobacco, alcohol, vapes) in childhood and adolescence (age 10-17) affects adolescent health behaviours and inequalities. The specific objectives are to: develop theoretically-grounded spatial measures of exposure to unhealthy commodities using individual-level GPS data to account for when (e.g. time of day, duration) and where (e.g. near home or school) children and adolescents interact with unhealthy commodity retailing; assess whether the local availability of unhealthy commodity retailing during childhood and adolescence (age 10-17) is associated with adolescent health-related behaviours (smoking, drinking, vaping), how local availability is associated with inequalities in these behaviours, and how exposure in different spaces (e.g. around home, school) relates to behaviours; examine how individual, family/household and neighbourhood-level pathways mediate or moderate the impact of the local availability of unhealthy commodities on adolescent health-related behaviours. Potential applications and benefits: Our focus is Scotland where population health outcomes are poorer and health inequalities higher than the rest of the UK and other western European countries. The consumption of unhealthy commodities are important contributors to these public health challenges. There is a commitment to substantively diminish the health and societal impact of unhealthy commodities, for example Scotland’s National Performance Framework targets reducing the prevalence of smoking and harmful/hazardous drinking, and the Scottish Government’s tobacco strategy pledges achieving the tobacco ‘end game’ by 2034 and addressing children’s use of vape products. However, the specific policy levers for achieving these ambitions are not in place. This project responds to this challenge and has been co-produced with key partners concerned with addressing the impact of unhealthy commodities in shaping health inequalities including Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, Alcohol Focus Scotland and ASH Scotland.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Our economy is structured in a linear way, beginning with the extraction of resources and ending with waste. Such linearity is unsustainable – it exists at the expense of the environment and global justice. On the input side, the linear economy (LE) relies on natural resources – energy, water, raw materials – that are scarce. On the output side, our economy of consumption, destruction, and ever-faster renewal creates accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and growing piles of solid waste and landfills across the globe. Amongst the most promising responses lies the shift to a circular economy (CE). CE creates a loop between input and output by turning the latter into the former – either by maintaining or improving the usefulness of goods instead of discarding them (repair, upcycling, etc.), or by turning such wasted goods into resources (recycling). Law is crucial for such a shift, yet its role remain under-researched. Particularly, private international law (PIL), the law that determines jurisdiction in cross-border cases, their applicable law, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign decisions. Private law (PL) institutions – property, contract, employment and consumer law – shape the LE from creation to waste; PIL gives these institutions cross-border effects. PIL is tied to, and reinforces, the power imbalances of the LE within which it developed. Fast fashion (FF) provides a highly relevant case study to examine PIL threads in the LE and its rethinking for the just transition to CE. Many current practices in the global fashion industry are highly unsustainable. Fast- and ultra-fast fashion exacerbate these problems because of its super-rapid inventory turnover, low-quality goods, manufactured in countries with low wages and weak regulatory frameworks leaving workers and the environment unprotected. There is near consensus that transformation is needed. Circular economy (CE) models appear to have potential for the sector to foster sustainability without eliminating economic gains. They have started to gain traction on political agendas, industry practices, and regulatory frameworks. Pioneering CE business models in the fashion industry spanning from small local business in the Global South and the Global North to large global enterprises have shown the feasibility of such circularity for the industry. This project provides an analysis of the legal landscape for such a circularity transition. It explores the PL and PIL components of global value chains (GVCs) along the journey of textiles – from the places of production, via the marketplaces of consumption, to the places of disposal. FF relies on complex and fragmented GVCs. These GVCs span several countries and continents, economies and legal systems. The proposed study is the first of its kind in this field of crucial practical and theoretical importance. It builds on earlier studies of the PIs and Co-Is. Michaels/Ruiz Abou-Nigm/van Loon (eds.) (2021) established the role of PIL for sustainable development, including sustainable consumption and production. Ruiz Abou-Nigm and Sommerfeld (2024) provided the first in-depth analysis of circular fashion and legal design. Integrating empirical, analytical, comparative, interdisciplinary and doctrinal approaches, the study will provide a diagnosis of the PL/PIL impact on the fashion industry to contribute to a prognosis towards a more sustainable future for GVCs. This, in turn, will enable transformative rethinking of PL and PIL to enable the just transition to CE models.