University of Sheffield

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Debates about unequal power dynamics in international development have recently entered the mainstream. As articulated by Peace Direct UK: "Decolonising development, humanitarian aid and peace-building-the movement to address and dismantle racist and discriminatory structures and norms that are hidden in plain sight in the aid system-is emerging as an urgent, vital and long overdue discussion". Transforming Architecture in Development takes a close look at the position of Architectural Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) within this debate, through my secondment to one of the UK's leading institutions in the field, Architecture Sans Frontières UK (ASF-UK). The secondment will enable vibrant interaction between London Metropolitan University (LMU) and ASF-UK, to envision, test and disseminate how architectural NGOs can meaningfully respond to the decolonising development agenda. The project links closely to the call's focus area of community and social architecture, and contributes to promoting inclusive architecture and design that truly benefit communities and levelling-up. Whereas the discourse of decolonisation has advanced much in both development studies and in architectural humanities-and many architectural NGOs share an ambition to develop anti-racist, anti-discriminatory, and more inclusive ways of working-little progress has been made in practice so far. For change to happen, architectural NGOs must make space for dialogue and reflection, create opportunities for questioning the current system, and test new ways of working. My secondment will create this critical space for reflection and experimentation within and beyond ASF-UK. Alongside the hosting organisation, the project will involve ASF-UK's partners and user communities, as well as a network of like-minded organisations in the NGO and higher education sectors, to initiate collective dialogue and innovation. This process will have four aims: to learn from experience and co-develop a deep understanding of the work of ASF-UK in relation to the decolonisation agenda; to co-create principles, processes and tools for future action; to nurture a community of knowledge exchange linking social architecture and international development across the higher education and NGO sectors; and to create institutional frameworks that support continued knowledge exchange beyond this secondment. Aligned with these aims, the project will generate four outputs. The Atlas of Practice will consist of a curated online archive analysing and making explicit ASF-UK's culture, structure and ways of working. An online Playbook for the Future will provide ASF-UK with a cognitive map of future practice, outlining what the organisation does and can do to address structural racism and discrimination. A series of Dialogues on Transforming Architecture in Development will support the secondment by situating the collaboration within a broader community of knowledge exchange. Finally, a Knowledge Exchange Guide will articulate ways of supporting the interaction between ASF-UK and LMU in the long term, with potential learning for other NGOs and universities. The project will contribute to transforming ASF-UK's strategy, processes, tools and networks into more inclusive and emancipatory ones, in a way that will have direct benefits not only for the organisation but also for the its partners and user communities, as well as for other architectural NGOs in the UK and internationally. At the same time it will create mechanisms to enable ASF-UK's continued interaction with academic research, as a means of supporting self-reflection and innovation in the long term. Conversely, the project will allow me to advance my own co-produced practice-led research at the intersection between social architecture and international development, and to strengthen my profile as an innovative scholar-practitioner who can drive the knowledge exchange agenda in this field.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Developing new biomaterials that closely reproduce the complexity of the human body and therefore ensure high functionality remains a big scientific challenge. Many biomaterial design approaches have been followed to reproduce chemically and topographically the extracellular matrix (ECM); however, the biomechanics of these biomaterials is sometimes poorly understood as the characterisation of cell-substrate interactions can be an onerous task. The work Dr. Ortega proposes here aims to secure funding to visit a laboratory in Spain to explore the use of new techniques to understand substrate biomechanics in a more approachable, reproducible and reliable way. Specifically, Dr. Ortega plans to explore the use of digital holographic microscopy (DHM) for characterising fibrous substrate biomechanics. The proposal involves the PI visiting a recognised European Centre (Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, UMH) to develop an international collaboration with this university and work together in a project grant proposal for Horizon Europe. Dr. Ortega will visit Prof. Antonio Fimia Gil which is a world-recognised expert in Optics specifically in DHM.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Proton transfer (PT) reactions within proteins are fundamental in biological systems, such as within ATP production. To date, there are no direct means to measure specific PT pathways within proteins, and most research is based on following the end-product of the PT reaction across a natural proton pathway. Here, our goal is to develop a novel way to directly measure PT within proteins. Our new approach is based on placing proton donors and acceptors in specific places within proteins, in which the PT will be initiated only after light excitation of the system. To do so, we introduce here two noncanonical amino acids (ncAA) we developed, with a photoacid and a photobase as their residues that serve as the proton donor and acceptor, respectively. Our hypothesis is that the strong light-triggered driving force of PT in the excited-state (of ~11 pKa units) will initiate PT along the pathway from donor to acceptor. In the first objective, we will use our new ncAA with solid-phase peptide synthesis to design several peptide systems that will allow us to decipher the role of specific amino acids, the peptide structure, and the role of water in PT across the peptide using various ultrafast spectroscopy. In the second objective, we aim to design a mutually orthogonal system for the insertion of our two ncAA into a single protein. In our third objective, we plan to use our new experimental system for answering a unique set of questions in the field of biological PT that could not have been answered before, focusing on the systems of ATP synthase transmembrane complex and the soluble carbonic anhydrase enzyme. Our new approach is groundbreaking in the way we study and understand PT in biology and will enable researchers completely new capabilities resulting in fascinating new discoveries. Moreover, our new system can be translated into other fields in biology that require the local change in proton concentration within proteins.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Structural Dynamics (or the Theory of Vibrations), is one of the most important fields of Engineering. Understanding vibrations is vital for new design standards and technologies; it is a key enabler in the design of lighter, greener and safer future-generation structures. A 'Grand Challenge' faced by dynamics is the property of nonlinearity. Unfortunately, almost all real structures are nonlinear to some extent, and highly resistant to mathematical analysis, because mathematics has been built on linear foundations. Although engineers have made progress by using approximations and computer power, they have been denied the insight that comes from exact solutions of structural equations of motion, because those equations have been impossible to solve using traditional methods. The same issue means that it is often impossible to prove that exact solutions even exist, or are unique. The first aim of the programme of research here is to find exact results by non-traditional methods; using state-of-the-art machine learning/evolutionary search methods, based on the PI's 30+ years of experience in nonlinear dynamics and modern machine learning. Because approximation and computation partly removed the need for exact solutions, engineers turned to a more immediately pressing problem - that of finding equations of motion in the first place. This is often impossible from first principles because the unknown physics of joining processes (e.g. welding), obscures the analysis of all but the simplest built-up structures. The problem was solved by developing 'system identification' (SI) methods, where the required equations were inferred from measured data. Again, linear systems were 'solved' first. Although linear SI proved to have technical difficulties, after fifty years of development, it is now established in working theory and practice which engineers can exploit. Arguably the most powerful technology for linear systems is that of 'modal analysis'; this method has the seemingly miraculous property that problems involving many coupled dynamical systems can be reduced to a set of uncoupled problems, each involving a single mass oscillating on its own spring. Unfortunately - as in the case of exact solutions - modal analysis does not generalise to nonlinear systems. Lacking an underpinning general technology, engineers have been forced to develop a 'toolbox' philosophy, whereby different types of nonlinear systems require different nonlinear SI (NLSI) methods. Although there have been hints at general approaches, no one technology has emerged as 'the one ring to rule them all'. Some versions of nonlinear modal analysis have been developed, but none exhibit all the desirable properties of the linear theory. The second aim of this programme will be to create a completely general framework for NLSI, which can derive equations of motion together with statistical confidences in their predictions. The programme will also consider new approaches to decoupling nonlinear systems - new ways of looking at nonlinear modal analysis. The research here will provide very new ways forward in nonlinear dynamics. New and general ways of finding equations of motion will be developed. Given the equations, the programme will provide new ways to solve them; exact solutions to problems which have never been solved before and do not have the prospect of solution using analytical methods. Problems will include: exact solution of nonlinear differential equations; exact and approximate transformation of nonlinear systems into linear ones, and the exact and approximate decoupling of multivariate systems (nonlinear modal analysis). Creating a research culture with an expectation of finding exact solutions is a truly new way of thinking about nonlinear dynamics. In some ways, new exact solutions will be as important as the discovery of new species in zoology; by dissecting them, one can advance knowledge in the whole subject.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

This project develops and applies a key insight from the PL's previous project, 'Intoxicating Spaces': that intoxicant economies - the practices by which psychoactive commodities like alcohol are produced, retailed, and consumed - play an unusually important role in the social life of cities and are integral to transformations in the way urban spaces are perceived, controlled, and used. It focuses on the recent emergence of the appellation 'craft' to designate commercial alcohol enterprises that are positioned against large-scale economic production. This trend is linked to the emergence of 'micro-breweries' and artisanal distilleries as important fixtures in urban environments and economies, along with a burgeoning taste for craft alcohol among groups of consumers. The project will explore for a variety of audiences the ramifications of the contemporary 'craft revolution' for urban space today and consider them in relation to those processes of globalisation and industrialisation that transformed Britain's intoxicant economy from the seventeenth century onwards. One lesson of 'Intoxicating Spaces' was to take how historical actors perceived and experienced intoxicants seriously. Because 'craft' is a slippery and contested concept, especially in the academic literature, this project will present and compare how different individuals and groups with an interest in urban intoxicant economies - as producers, retailers, consumers, regulators, and planners - understand 'craft' in relation to the production, retail, and consumption of alcohol. And just as William Hogarth provided the most memorable response to changes in the alcohol economy during the eighteenth century (in the prints Gin Lane and Beer Street (1751)), so we will invite exciting contemporary artists to respond to the craft phenomenon. A second lesson was the scale of the institutional, material, perceptual, and socio-economic impact of intoxicating spaces on urban environments and their importance in determining a sense of place. This project will identify and map the current topography of craft alcohol in a post-industrial city to provide a resource for assessing its impact, for marketing craft alcohol to current and potential consumers, and for linking to programmes of regional regeneration and growth. A third insight of 'Intoxicating Spaces' was the close relationship between intoxicants and processes of historical change. This project will allow audiences to compare the craft alcohol movement with other historical moments when the production and consumption of psychoactive substances underwent transformations - not least with the industrialization of beer and gin production from the seventeenth century onwards. The project will pursue these objectives through work packages designed to be a resource for producers and consumers, opinion and policy makers, and the general public. They include digital maps showing both the current craft topography in the city of Sheffield and a heritage map of brewing and distilling in Sheffield; a survey of what those involved in the craft economy understand by craft plus oral histories of alcohol in Sheffield; artistic responses to the craft alcohol phenomenon for a portable exhibition; and a podcast series of six episodes discussing moments (from the ancient world to the present) that alcohol changed the world.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

The project is designed to develop a new framework of birational types and invariants of simple normal schemes, and to apply this framework to revisit long-standing fundamental problems in algebraic geometry. This is achieved in three steps. The first key ingredient is introducing the category of birational contractions between simple normal crossing schemes to treat them as if they were smooth. In this category taking limits of rational maps, a very difficult classical problem, becomes an essentially formal step, while the attention is shifted to the properties of the newly constructed category. Second, we investigate new invariants of simple normal crossing schemes, as functors on this birational category. The goals in this part include solving the problem of categorifying recent and very successful invariants such as the motivic volume and the decomposition of the diagonal, and providing a new motivic (universal) construction for the limiting mixed Hodge structure. Finally, we work out applications of the new framework to the old and difficult conjectures in algebraic geometry, such as the Luroth problem. We aim for a substantial progress in the area of rationality problems, where many questions are easily formulated, but have not been solved for at least the last 50 years. This is done by combining the existing degeneration methods, from smooth varieties to simple normal crossing schemes, with the powerful newly constructed invariants.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Hailed by the Romantic literati as the 'first poetess of Romantic fiction', the 'Shakespeare of Romance Writers', the 'mighty magician of The Mysteries of Udolpho' and 'the great enchantress of that generation', Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) was a central figure in British culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Influential upon the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, the Shelleys, Byron, Austen and Scott, she was read across the world in her time. Her later works, almost instantly pirated, translated, abridged, adapted and reissued in new editions for global readerships, were sought out by some of the major publishers of the 1790s and commanded hitherto unprecedented financial advances. Consequently, no history of British Romanticism is complete without a consideration of Radcliffe's works and reputation, the latter resting upon her five Gothic fictions, a substantial European and domestic travelogue, and her posthumously published historical romance and poetry. Despite the writer's success in her day ('then'), and beyond the appearance of some of her fictions on university curricula in eighteenth-century, Romantic and Gothic literary studies worldwide, Ann Radcliffe today ('now') is not well known or read beyond academic circles and anything but a household name: tellingly, a commentator on BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour, responding to Sheffield University's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the writer's birth in 2014, opened with a question that would not have been asked of a contemporary such as Byron or Austen: 'Who was Ann Radcliffe?' Seeking to breach the divide between the 'then' and the 'now' of Radcliffe's reputation, this project has three primary aims. First, it seeks to bring the writer's works to a new generation of readers by overseeing the production of The Cambridge Edition of Ann Radcliffe, a major new edition of her complete oeuvre. Secondly, it aims to address in an accompanying volume, Ann Radcliffe in Context, the conditions that made her distinctive in the period 1789-1826 as well as some of the challenges that the editing and reading Radcliffe in the twenty-first century bring to light. Thirdly, through an exciting programme of outreach and knowledge exchange, the project seeks to intervene in current perceptions of Radcliffe beyond immediate academic contexts. In order to achieve these aims, the project seeks funding for two face-to-face meetings of the edition's editorial and advisory boards; the three-year appointment of a named full-time Research and Innovation Associate (RIA) who will oversee the work of collation, resource-finding, website management and dissemination; four public lectures; buyout for the Project Lead (PL) and three Project Co-Leads (PcL); and the resourcing of a series of podcasts on the theme of 'Ann Radcliffe: A Gothic Heroine for Today?' Through such scholarly and public-facing interventions, the project will make available the complete works of Ann Radcliffe to a new generation of students, scholars and readers, contributing in the process to the ongoing diversification of the English literary canon and restoring her culturally to the position of centrality that she enjoyed during the Romantic period.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Vision: SPARC will accelerate a recently discovered low avalanche noise semiconductor, AlGaAsSb, to become the preferred solution for a variety of important low photon sensing applications. We will demonstrate the transformative impact of AlGaAsSb avalanche photodiodes (APDs) on two key themes: (i) 25 Gb/s and beyond optical fibre-based communication systems and (ii) km-range free-space optical communication (FSOC) links. AlGaAsSb APDs' unique features; the lowest excess avalanche noise and the highest gain-bandwidth product for infrared APDs, will provide the underpinning solution to overcome data bottlenecks in many data communication systems. Ambition: Our first grand challenge is to develop the best AlGaAsSb APDs with gain-bandwidth products (GBPs) > 400 GHz - significantly higher than the best offered by commercial Ge-on-Si APDs (273 GHz). Our AlGaAsSb APDs will exhibit lower dark current density and avalanche noise, offering low-noise performance at high-speed operation. They will enable 10 and 25 Gb/s data rates in Fibre-To-The-x (FTTx) systems, where x typically represents home, building and distribution point. We will then overcome the second grand challenge of high-speed communication through free space, i.e. Fibre-To-The-Space (FTTS). The APDs will be customised to achieve sensitivity limit as good as few-photon level to enable FTTS (including licence free communication channels) at data rate > 1 Gb/s.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Few problems in fundamental physics are as clearly motivated or as important as discovering the nature of the elusive dark matter that accounts for most of the mass of the universe. Direct detection experiments located deep underground are searching for the rare interactions of these well-motivated, relic particles in very sensitive detectors. Liquid xenon (LXe) technology has led these searches for over a decade. Recently, the top international collaborations in the field have come together in the XLZD consortium to build the definitive experiment: one able to discover or rule out electroweak-scale particle dark matter in the accessible parameter space remaining above the very challenging neutrino background. Exciting opportunities exist also in neutrino physics, including establishing the existence of neutrinoless double-beta decay; this is another paradigm-shifting discovery which may be accessible to such an experiment, which could explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. This proposed 'rare event observatory' will deploy a LXe detector with up to 80 tonnes of 'active' mass in an ultra-low-background experiment to address these and other questions, at least two of which could entail Nobel-Prize worthy discoveries. This Pre-Construction project prepares the UK contribution to the XLZD experiment and builds the case to bring this ambitious international experiment to the UK. STFC is developing a major new underground laboratory at the Boulby mine, and XLZD would be the centrepiece of the new state-of-the-art facility. A future construction project must be carefully prepared, and this development work is delivered through this Pre-Construction project. The proposed UK contribution to XLZD includes major experimental hardware systems, especially those most naturally suited to the host nation; these will be designed and prepared in this phase. In addition, we will deliver with key industrial partners bold programmes for clean manufacture underground, for engineering and skills development, and for environmental sustainability. These programmes relate to challenges that must be addressed, but which we deliberately develop into opportunities: to provide return to UK industry and wider economic impact, to develop capabilities that support future STFC and UKRI projects, and to be a pathfinder in how Big Science moves towards Net Zero.

Other NSERC · FY 2024

Carbon capture and storage, Electricity generation, Hydrogen production, Energy systems, Direct air capture, Process design, Life cycle assessment, Natural gas, Greenhouse gas emissions, Environmental impacts