University of Warwick

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-11

The project aims to enhance our understanding of the stellar population within 100 pc of the Sun, an area of critical importance yet underexplored in astrophysics. This volume includes the brightest, unreddened specimens of nearly all star and planet types, serving as benchmarks for calibrating both models and observations. The choice of the 100 pc volume is deliberate, corresponding to the maximum distance at which cool white dwarfs and M dwarfs can be identified onboard Gaia. Covering the full HR diagram, i.e. the entire initial mass function from ˜0.07 to ˜10 M? and all evolutionary stages for stars formed within the past ˜12 Gyr, this sample is crucial for testing stellar evolution by comparing star formation histories inferred from white dwarfs and main-sequence stars, which are assumed to be the same. This will be helped by analysing the ages of wide binary components at different evolutionary stages. I am the PI of a 4MOST (4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope) sub-survey on the VISTA telescope in Chile (2026–2031), dedicated to obtaining optical medium-resolution (R˜5000) spectra of ˜200,000 Gaia-selected stars and white dwarfs in the southern hemisphere and within 100 pc of the Sun. This timely project will leverage these data, along those publicly available from Gaia DR4, WISE and Euclid, combined with state-of-the-art stellar models developed locally, to refine our understanding of stellar ages, Galactic disc formation history, and planetary system evolution. The project will take advantage of the well-constrained age dating methods using white dwarfs. The objectives are to 1) lead the characterisation of the 4MOST 100 pc footprint sample which will culminate in the publication of stellar parameters for white dwarfs and A/F/G/K/M dwarfs using pipelines currently being developed in collaboration with the 4MOST infrastructure working groups. 2) Model the 100 pc Gaia HR diagram in terms of stellar formation history, initial mass function and initial-to-final mass relation using established stellar population synthesis codes and 3) Test state-of-the-art grids of stellar evolution and atmosphere models, including current Warwick-led work on white dwarf crystallisation, dense atmosphere opacities, and 3D convection. The project will deliver 4MOST catalogues of stellar parameters stored on the European Southern Observatory’s public archive, enabling community and collaborative studies of intriguing systems, including white dwarfs with exotic planetary debris or double-lined systems indicating short merger/explosion timescales. The project will enable better metallicity/activity/velocity dispersion versus stellar age relations and more accurate white dwarf spectral evolution. As out-of-field impact, we will pioneer a novel methodology bridging the traditionally separate population studies of stars and white dwarfs. This effort will enhance the use of white dwarfs to trace the formation history and radial migration of stars within the Galactic disk and eventually halo when Vera Rubin data become available. Ages determined in this project will be compared to those found from asteroseismic studies of Sun-like stars and red giants in larger volumes. The project will also allow the derivation of improved ages for planetary systems, including planet hosts and white dwarfs with active accretion of planetary debris. Finally, we will provide high-precision and unreddeded white dwarf flux calibrators at <1% accuracy for redshifted SN Ia and cosmological studies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-09

Helioseismology uses oscillations excited inside the Sun to study the solar interior. In this project, we will focus on trapped (p modes) and travelling (pseudomodes) acoustic oscillations, both of which are excited by the Sun’s turbulent convection. Our primary aim is to determine whether their excitation varies through the Sun’s magnetic activity cycle, which would imply a change in the convective properties of the solar interior. This work, will lead to a better understanding of the interplay between convection and the Sun’s internal magnetic fields as they vary through the solar cycle. Our project is inspired by Kiefer and Broomhall (2021), who demonstrated that the rate at which energy is supplied to p modes varies through the solar cycle, and that this variation depends on oscillation frequency, implying changes in the timescales or length scales of convection. We will take a closer look at mode excitation, to determine what about the excitation (e.g. location) changes through the solar cycle. Aside from being an interesting question for helio/asteroseismology, this work is important because of the role played by convection in the Sun’s dynamo, which remains poorly understood. The project will also have important implications for stellar physics, addressing the mystery of why certain stars do not have observable p modes and limitations with stellar modelling that can lead to erroneous estimations of key stellar parameters, such as age. The results will be of interest to both the solar and stellar communities, as well as exoplanet hunters, for whom both oscillations and convection represent noise. We have devised a novel program, consisting of three work packages, which will determine whether the excitation of acoustic oscillations varies through the solar cycle, providing insights into changes in the Sun’s convection. In WP1, we will determine solar cycle variations in the asymmetries of the p-mode peaks observed in frequency space using Sun-as-a-star data. These asymmetries are believed to be related to the excitation and so, we will work with Dr. Philidet, who has produced models of excitation capable of replicating asymmetries to determine what exactly could cause solar cycle variations. In WP2, we will focus on pseudomodes, whose frequencies are incredibly sensitive to the location of mode excitation. We will combine observations of solar cycle changes in pseudomode frequency with novel modelling to infer any changes in the depth of excitation and to associate these changes with magnetic phenomena, such as sunspots, observed in the photosphere. We will also determine whether pseudomodes provide evidence for the Sun’s disputed quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) at solar minimum, a time when the QBO disappears in other activity proxies. In WP2, we will also extend our study to stars observed by Kepler, determining the depth of excitation of stellar acoustic oscillations and its relationship to observed p-mode amplitudes. Finally, in WP3, we take advantage of our membership on the science team of the new Paranal solar Espresso Telescope (PoET), which will have unprecedented spectral resolution in terms of helioseismic data. We will study the variation with observation height of oscillation signal to noise to optimise the data for p modes and pseudomodes. This work may guide future observational efforts to detect gravity (g) modes, which would be ground-breaking for helioseismology, as these modes are far more sensitive to the solar core than their acoustic counterparts.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-09

Over the last 30 years the discovery and characterisation of exoplanets has been a breakthrough in human understanding of our place in the cosmos.  We have found that not only are exoplanets ubiquitous, but there is a variety of other worlds far broader than just the planets we see in our own Solar System - super-Earths, hot Jupiters, and mini-Neptunes just to name a few. However the vast majority of the well characterised exoplanets discovered are in very short period orbits, typically less than 20 days.  Orbiting so close to their host star, they have very hot atmospheres, often between 1000K - 2500K.  We know that long period exoplanets exist, and indeed are more common.  However these long period exoplanets are very difficult to find using the transit method - the primary method that can deliver exoplanets capable of in-depth characterisation. This STFC Small Award will tackle head-on the lack of long period transiting planets, and in an ambitious project which aims to discovery 25 new transiting exoplanets with orbital periods greater than 20 days.  This will approximately double the number of known long period transiting exoplanets.  These new exoplanets will all be well-characterised, with precise radii, masses, and orbital periods.  They will become the next prime targets for studies of cooler atmospheres with JWST and for studies of spin-orbit alignment with high-resolution spectrographs on 8m class telescopes.  Such studies will allow us to probe the formation, migration, and evolution of these exoplanets. Our approach to discovering long period transiting exoplanets combines the power of NASA's TESS all-sky survey for transiting exoplanets with NGTS, the world's most precise ground-based photometric facility for monitoring bright stars.  We will search the TESS data for stars that show a single, long duration transit event or a pair of widely-spaced long duration transit events.  Once identified, we calculate the probability of orbital periods for the system, and then photometrically target the star to search for subsequent transits using the NGTS facility.  Transits detected with NGTS allow us to precisely determine the orbital period and confirm the planetary radius.  We then combine this with radial velocity data taken with high-precision instruments such as CORALIE, HARPS, and ESPRESSO to determine the mass of the exoplanet.  With mass, radius, and orbital period we can then prioritise these newly discovered systems for in-depth characterisation of their atmospheres and spin-orbit alignments. The long period transiting exoplanets discovered in this project will fill in the gap between the current set of short period transiting exoplanets and the very long period (>500 days) exoplanets expected to be discovered astrometrically in late 2026 from Gaia DR4.  The processes and techniques will also act as a precursor to the methods that we can employ for discovering very long period transiting exoplanets from ESA's PLATO mission, set to launch in late 2026. This project makes very effective and efficient use of both the publicly available TESS data and the UK's own unique NGTS telescope facility.  The project builds on a long legacy of UK global leadership in the discoveries of exoplanets, in particular in the WASP, NGTS, CHEOPS, and PLATO projects.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-08

Geohazards, such as rock avalanches, landslides and debris flows, are commonly recoganized as the slow-to-rapid gravitationally- driven processes that typically occur in mountain regions, such as Alps in Europe, Himalaya in Asia, Rocky in North Americas and Snowy in Australia, possessing potential hazards societies. With the advancement of computer science, numerical simulations of geohazards have become crucial in the modern geomechanics and geotechnical engineering. The fragmentation of current research into local national projects often falls short in comprehensive understanding of the evolution mechanisms. This gap results in a grey area in modern numerical methods for high-fidelity simulations, limiting accessibility for both scientific researchers and engineering practitioners. MONUGEO brings together the complementary expertise of our consortium members to develop a better understanding of triggering initiation, run-out and deposition (and/or interaction with protective obstacles) processes, and in turn to produce the ground-breaking numerical tools for the high-fidelity predictions. Our international and interdisciplinary consortium will also prefer to an integrated research approach, involving laboratory experiments, scaled centrifuge physics modelling tests, and region-scale application with geological survey. This integrated methodology will serve to validate our developed computing paradigms and numerical toolbox, and to apply them to realistic scenario.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-08

Context Basidiomycota fungi comprise more than 40,000 described species, including mushrooms, puffballs, rusts and smuts. They can inhabit the most complex environments, and they are able to produce potent lignocellulosic enzymes, as well as a variety of high-value chemicals that are used for various applications, including as antibiotics and agrochemicals. Despite their ecological importance and biotechnological potential, no multicellular Basidiomycota fungus heterologous host has yet been developed to allow researchers to study and exploit enzymes and high-value chemicals from Basidiomycota fungi. Phase 1 of my Future Leaders Fellowship focused on developing tools to turn the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) into a universal multicellular Basidiomycota fungus heterologous host. By means of fundamental gene expression studies, we developed and tested new tools to genetically engineer this fungus. During phase 2 of my Future Leaders Fellowship we aim to exploit the tools that we developed in phase 1 to harness bioactive natural products and biocatalysts from Basidiomycota fungi and to investigate how specific engineered traits translate from mycelium to mushroom growth.   Aim and objectives In this work, we aim to exploit the synthetic biology tools that we developed in phase 1 of my Future Leaders Fellowship to harness the chemical and enzymatic diversity that Basidiomycota fungi have to offer. The project objectives are: 1.     To study the biosynthesis of selected anticancer agents made by mushrooms; 2.     To exploit fungal enzymes as biocatalysts; 3.     To optimise heterologous gene expression in solid-state fermentation of fungi.   Potential applications, benefits and relevance to UKRI and Council led strategy The knowledge generated during this project will enable the exploitation of high-value chemicals and enzymes from Basidiomycota fungi. In turn, this will allow researchers to develop engineering biology approaches to improve the bioactivity of fungal natural products with applications to medicine, with benefits to the society and the economy. This multidisciplinary programme will address key UK societal challenges and will be relevant to UKRI and Council led strategy. This project maps onto the UKRI strategic priority area of research of Engineering Biology, as it will make use of genetic engineering tools to exploit useful molecules and enzymes from fungi. This proposal will make use of lignocellulose derivatives that are indigestible by humans (i.e. cellobiose) as carbon sources for P. ostreatus and as gene expression inducers. Hence, this work aligns with the BBSRC area of investment and support of ‘Advanced manufacturing and clean growth’. This work will have an impact on fundamental science, whilst mapping onto BBSRC strategy theme 1 ‘Advancing the frontiers of bioscience discovery’ (Understanding the rules of life), as it will generate knowledge on the biosynthesis of bioactive natural products. Our work further aligns with BBSRC strategy theme 1 (Transformative technologies) and theme 2 ‘Tackling strategic challenges’ (Bioscience for an integrated understanding of health) as it will lead to developing new biocatalysts that will find application in medicine.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-07

The present proposal aims to deepen and advance our understanding of Stochastic (Partial) Differential Equations (SPDEs). S(P)DEs are increasingly central in modern research as they encode, in compact mathematical expressions, extremely complex physical phenomena, such as the growth of combustion fronts or bacteria colonies, the motion of turbulent fluids, particle motion in disordered media, etc. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the large-scale behaviour of these equations can provide unique insight over extremely intricate real-world systems and enhance our ability to precisely forecast their evolution. The SPDEs of interest in describing such phenomena are non-linear. Depending on the nature of their non-linearity, they are classified as follows: sub-critical, when the non-linearity becomes small upon zooming in; super-critical, when the non-linearity becomes small upon zooming out; and critical, when the non-linearity is scale-invariant—meaning it formally appears the same when zooming in or out. Over the last ten years our understanding of subcritical equations has witnessed major advances thanks to the breakthrough theory of Regularity Structures by M. Hairer (Fields Medal 2014), but supercritical and critical equations, which are particularly relevant from a physical viewpoint (think of two-dimensional surfaces growing in a three-dimensional space) are much less understood. Especially for the critical case, the difficulty lies in the fact that finer features of the equations can dramatically change the large-scale properties of their solutions which makes them mathematically extremely challenging and physically remarkably interesting. Building on advances made over the first funding period, the present proposal aims to develop novel and robust techniques that allow to study broad classes of (super-)critical SPDEs, addressing long-standing conjectures and uncovering a host of universal phenomena.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-06

This project will explore interactions between early Quakers and the law in the British Atlantic World. The Quakers were a radical religious group that emerged in Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. Their missionary activities, such as itinerant preaching, led to their persecution by the local authorities they encountered, including for vagrancy. My PhD thesis explores the persecution of early Quakers as vagrants across the British Atlantic. I am investigating the use and potential misuse of laws to persecute this movement, and why secular laws were applied to religious minorities. The legal experiences of dissenters are therefore central to my wider research. Much of what we know about early Quaker interactions with the law comes from their own writings, of which the Huntington Library holds a rich collection. The opportunity to examine this material alongside the extensive collection of early modern legal records, makes the Huntington the ideal institution to reconstruct Quaker legal experiences in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Combining these sources will allow me to consider the legal treatment of Quakers from multiple perspectives, providing a more holistic approach than previous studies. This also means I will explore the legal experience of other dissenters through a comparative study, enabling me to evaluate the distinctive character of Quaker persecution. The particular strengths in legal as well as Quaker history relating to both sides of the Atlantic at the Huntington makes it a unique repository to conduct this transatlantic project and more fully explore the colonial dimensions of my research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-05

The demands on marine space in the EU and worldwide waters have never been greater, driven by the need to provide energy security, develop essential renewable energy infrastructure, create social and economic value and ensure the restoration and future resilience of marine biodiversity and ecosystem services. Whilst Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs) play a key role in combatting climate change, they are not only vulnerable to climate change-induced hazards but also impact marine biodiversity. Focusing solely on engineering aspects to optimise risks and reliabilities in the design of OWFs without addressing the impact on marine biodiversity is sufficient for meeting the requirements of resilient and sustainable development in future OWFs. Therefore, an urgent shift is necessary from the conventional engineering-oriented design approach and mindset to a more comprehensive approach that integrates both engineering aspects and environmental considerations. BETTER assembles a diverse, multidisciplinary team to train a new generation of Doctoral Candidates (DCs) capable of addressing ambitious scientific objectives. The training environment is highly integrated, cross-disciplinary, and intersectoral, enriched through secondments with non-academic partners. This collaborative approach advocates for a paradigm shift in OWF design, promoting a comprehensive strategy that integrates engineering with deep considerations for environmental impacts. BETTER emphasises critical learning, fostering solutions for climate-resilient OWF construction and sustainable marine development. By providing a collaborative, cross-disciplinary training environment, BETTER equips the 15 DCs with the skills, knowledge, and perspectives to navigate the intersection of engineering, environmental sustainability, and marine biodiversity. In doing so, BETTER addresses immediate challenges and lays a foundation for a sustainable and resilient future for offshore wind energy and marine ecosystems.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-04

Language defines being human, yet its evolutionary origins remain obscure. Progress has long been hindered by old assumptions that our closest relatives – nonhuman great apes – lack the vocal abilities necessary to serve as models for language evolution, assumptions made without prior understanding of their natural vocal palette, predispositions or preferences. My research has overturned this outdated notion. Great apes possess far greater vocal control than previously recognised. Indeed, their repertoires include both vowel-like and consonant-like calls – the fundamental building blocks of language. Orangutans go a step further and combine the two into word-sized sequences and sentence-like series, prompting a serious revaluation of the vocal foundations for language evolution among hominids. During the first phase of this FLF, using innovative techniques and technologies, both in captivity and in the wild, the project sough to reconstruct the conditions of language’s “warm little pond” (to paraphrase Darwin) by identifying the articulatory manoeuvrers, control mechanics and combinatoric mechanisms that catalysed the co-evolution of proto-vowels and proto-consonants into the first linguistic structures in the human lineage. In a first of its kind, we remotely and non-invasively collected thermal-based measures of ape’s internal physiology during oral and vocal exercises with all great ape genera in two zoos (UK and US; plus, one upcoming in Ireland). We also implemented the largest coordinated field experiment ever conducted across four wild orangutan populations: a multi-year predator-model protocol involving 60 experiments with 32 individuals across the swamps and low mountain rainforests of Sumatra (Indonesia). We now seek a three-year renewal to build on these successes. Due to timeline adjustments forced by the pandemic, the curation, processing and analyses of captive and wild data will be finalized during the renewal period. Further analyses, centred around rules of assembly and “grammar”, and the role of social learning, will also be conducted during the renewal, as originally planned. This integrated approach will provide the clearest empirical picture to date of the evolutionary roots of human language. So far, this project has yielded 21 peer-reviewed publications (several under review) of which two received awards by the respective journals. It has led to 75+ media interviews, including features across major global news outlets (TV, radio, podcasts, print media; including New York Times, BBC, the Times) reaching an estimated audience in the hundreds of millions. The project team included 14 members across six nationalities, different professional stages and sociocultural backgrounds. Formal collaborative agreements were established with two Indonesian institutions (National University, Jakarta, Java; Foundation for Sustainable Ecosystem, Medan Sumatra) and the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour (Germany). A new agreement with the University of North Sumatra (Medan) is being finalized. Beyond academia, we will remain committed to training a new generation of scientists and students equipped to engage enthusiastically with diverse audiences and the wider public, champion research-driven innovation and techn(olog)ical advance and promote ethical practices in animal research and welfare. As testimony of our innovative scientific approach and global work ethics, the project was recently provided by Indonesian authorities and stakeholders with the once-in-a-life-time opportunity of establishing a new Sumatran orangutan research site, which we will pursue as a new objective during the renewal. Using cutting-edge science, community-based conservation and interdisciplinary training, the project will create unprecedented research and educational capacity – a legacy that will extend well beyond the fellowship.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-04

Three Latin Shijings (3LS) will expand our understanding of relationships between Greco-Roman and Ancient Chinese literature by establishing a new analytical framework that investigates their intertwined influence on early modern literature. European expansion and Jesuit missions (16th–19th c.) saw the ancient languages and literatures of Greece and Rome collide with China’s. Scholars in both Europe and Asia sought to bridge the cultures. Their literary production included translations of Classical Chinese texts into Latin (and European vernaculars) and Chinese translations of Latin/Greek texts, and original writings shaped by both traditions. As access to these intercultural works requires rare combinations of linguistic skills (Chinese & Latin/Greek) and cultural understanding, they have remained understudied, obscuring the dual character of this corpus and its significance within reception of both Greco-Roman and Chinese antiquities. 3LS, the first major step in investigating the crossroads of Greco-Roman and Chinese ‘Classics’, will focus on Latin translations of Chinese poetry. The principal output will be a trilingual critical edition of three Latin translations of the Shijing (Classic of Poetry), a 11th-7th c. BCE anthology central to the Confucian canon, by Jesuit missionaries (Couvreur, Lacharme, Zottoli) [Three Latin Shijings, 1]. The edition will include introduction, English translations, and commentary. There are no English translations of these Latin Shijings or analyses of their strategies for rendering Chinese language and form into Latin for European audiences. 3LS therefore makes accessible to specialists and non-specialists an important source of the global afterlife of Latin and Classical Chinese. Scholarly interest in Classics beyond Greece and Rome, and Latin beyond Europe, has increased over the past three decades. This ‘global turn’ has also seen a spike in research on Classics and Asia within the last decade. 3LS’s aims and objectives will advance this research. While non-contiguous comparative studies of Classical traditions and modern reception studies of Classics in Asia develop, scholarship largely overlooks the simultaneous, intertwined receptions of Greco-Roman and Chinese antiquities in early modern writing. Current scholarship on this exchange concerns reception of Greco-Roman classics by European Latinists. In the cross-cultural context of Sino-European exchange, however, Classical Reception must account for two antiquities. 3LS proposes a new framework, Cross-Classical Receptions, that recognises the importance of Classical Chinese canon in this exchange, illuminating how both antiquities were compared, combined, and refigured in each other’s terms. 3LS thus offers new cultural perspectives to the history of Classical Reception and Comparative Literature, and new interpretive approaches for neglected areas in Global Latin.   3LS will establish a new subdiscipline, Cross-Classical Receptions. It is the first element of a wider research project on Latin written in and about East Asia and on the intertwined receptions of Greco-Roman and Chinese ‘Classics’ in early modern writing. The proposed edition will constitute a pilot contribution towards a digital database, Latin Texts and East Asia (LaTEA) [4], which will be developed beyond the funding period. 3LS will allow the Project Lead to gain necessary digital humanities experience to create the research tools for this larger project. Additionally, 3LS will disseminate its findings through workshop proceedings [Readings on Neo-Latin and East Asia, 2] and other papers [3]. 3LS will create a methodological basis and tools for future study of Asian Neo-Latin andCross-Classical Receptions of Greco-Roman and Ancient Chinese literary traditions.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

Details included in lead institution application – APP70417: Hyper-K - CIC Grant

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-03

The past few summers - with wildfires raging across Europe, the US, and Canada, and the hottest average temperatures ever recorded around the globe - have shown us what our future looks like if we do not reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. According to the UN IPCC, we have, at best, a few decades before we reach ‘tipping points’ of irreversible and catastrophic climate change- without scientific efforts to develop new capture, recycling, and re-use technologies for CO2, the world that future generations will inherit will be significantly poorer, less stable, and less healthy, and our natural environments will be decimated. There is no question about the urgency of addressing CO2 mitigation. Chemical scientists are best placed to develop new chemical technologies to mop-up and re-use CO2 - but progress in such efforts have been fitful and unfocussed. For example, many different chemical systems have been experimentally-developed that are capable of transforming CO2 into other useful species, like recyclable polymers, fuels such as methanol, or hydrogen-storage vectors like formic acid - but adoption and wider awareness of these is too often hampered by reliance on expensive and/or toxic metals and cost-benefit properties that are not compatible with industrial economic realities. Furthermore, the reality of designing new chemistry to recycle CO2 too often relies on trial-and-error experiments and serendipity - an approach that is too slow and expensive to match the urgency required to address climate challenges. Here, we instead propose the first large-scale computational discovery study focussed exclusively on identifying promising new metal-free reactive systems that could transform our capability to re-use CO2 as part of cost-effective recycling systems. We will develop a computational approach that mimics, as closely as possible, the typical experimental design of new chemical reactions for CO2 recycling. Building on our expertise in automated reaction discovery, machine-learning, and chemical reaction kinetics, our new simulation approach will function as a “virtual reaction flask” that mirrors the experiments used to study different CO2 reactions in the lab. Our simulations will be used to design and optimize the performance of different molecular catalysts for CO2 utilisation - being completely “virtual", our strategy will be more cost-effective, faster, and less wasteful than traditional trial-and-error lab experiments. Importantly, our approach is based on extensive proof-of-concept demonstrating how we can already generate accurate models describing the emergent chemistry that might happen when one mixes together hundreds of different reactive molecules - the key goal of this new project is to couple this predictive power to computational approaches that enable design of new catalysts to recycle CO2. A primary output of this project will be a new computational tool (released to all as open-source software) for designing and optimising new catalysts to re-use CO2 - by demonstrating and disseminating our approach, we anticipate that this software will be taken up by both wider experimental and computational colleagues to accelerate the design of new catalysts to address global environmental challenges. Furthermore, this project will employ this new software to optimize new metal-free catalysts that can accelerate several important chemical reactions that utilise CO2 - by identifying new catalysts that are more reactive, selective, and stable than existing molecular catalysts, this research can help draw together researchers across the experimental/computational divide with the goal of developing future systems to address societal challenges such as CO2 recycling.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Understanding the bulk chemical composition of exoplanets is critical for advancing our knowledge of planetary formation and evolution. However, direct measurement of compositions for planets orbiting distant stars remains impossible. This limitation is addressed through the study of white dwarfs – the remnants of Sun-like stars – which offer a unique window into the composition of exoplanetary material once these stars die. White dwarfs form when a main-sequence star expels a significant portion of its mass, leaving it to collapse into a dense, compact object. The gravitational perturbation caused by this mass loss can redirect nearby planetary bodies to spiral inward and accrete onto the white dwarf's surface. Spectroscopic analyses reveal the presence of metals in over a quarter of white dwarf atmospheres, evidence of accreted debris from planetary disintegration. This process presents a rare opportunity to decipher the elemental make-up of these exoplanetary bodies. To harness this opportunity, accurate atmospheric models of white dwarfs are crucial, particularly in understanding how convection operates within these remnants. Traditional one-dimensional models significantly underestimate the extent and effects of convection, in particular convective overshoot – a phenomenon where turbulent convective motions extend beyond their expected boundaries. During this fellowship, I plan to address this gap by developing sophisticated three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations, which provide a more realistic depiction of convection in white dwarf atmospheres, specifically focusing on convective overshoot and mixing processes. The primary focus will be on ageing white dwarfs, older than 450 Myr, where convective zones deepen and dynamic processes like internal gravity waves become significant. By producing state-of-the-art 3D models, I aim to better capture the behaviour of these evolving atmospheres and improve the accuracy of chemical abundance measurements derived from spectroscopic data. My interdisciplinary approach bridges fluid dynamics and astronomy, employing advanced computational techniques and leveraging novel observational strategies for the Galactic population of white dwarfs. These efforts will be aligned with the latest observational data from next-generation instruments, enhancing our ability to interpret white dwarf spectra and the history of accreted material. Currently, there are about 360,000 known white dwarfs, with an estimated one-third actively consuming remnants of exoplanetary systems. This provides an unparalleled dataset for examining the lifecycle of exoplanetary material and offers crucial insights into the ultimate fate of our own Solar System. My research will significantly advance our understanding of the elemental composition of exoplanets, contributing to the broader field of planetary science.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

In our daily lives we routinely encounter small liquid drops; from the first shower of the day, through a rainy morning commute and onto the final drops of espresso completing a morning coffee. Usually, it is the interaction of these drops with other surfaces which concerns us – will the impacting drop bounce, merge, or shatter?  The outcome is crucial to a spectacular range of processes, from the very small scale, where liquid drops form the building blocks of bespoke 3D-printed objects, up to to the vast scales on which clouds (composed of trillions of droplets) evolve.  In the latter case, it is the collective interaction of droplets that dictates a cloud’s behaviour and thus impacts upon both weather and climate prediction.  Remarkably, despite the existence of robust computational fluid dynamics (CFD) packages and rapid advances in experimental methods, predicting the outcome of droplet collisions remains a remarkably complex and currently-open problem. The complexity of drop collisions comes from the ubiquity of gas nanofilms, i.e. thin layers of fluid which are trapped between converging interfaces with a ‘height’ on the submicron scale, which usually cannot be resolved experimentally. These generate such strong lubrication forces that, for example, air nanofilms can cause water droplets to bounce from other droplets or to skate over solids. The effect is compounded by the presence of hot surfaces, held above the drop’s boiling temperature, which trigger the Leidenfrost effect, so that drops can bounce-off and levitate-on their own vapour film. It is the existence of flow-dictating nanofilms, that are governed by unconventional physics and create a viciously multiscale problem, that renders current CFD impotent. This Fellowship will develop the first framework capable of predicting droplet collision outcomes, their manipulation by complex environments and their collective effect on large-scale flows.  To overcome fundamental flaws in existing modelling, it will harness and develop cutting-edge mathematical modelling techniques from scientific domains that are usually segregated.  Our initial foci will be on how drop collision outcomes govern the dynamics of (i) clouds and (ii) sprays. For (i), we will collaborate with the leading meteorological services to improve models that affect both climate, i.e. the future of planet earth, and weather, where extreme precipitation warnings can prevent loss of life and financial damage.  For (ii), we will work with a globally-prominent agricultural company on crop sprays, to ensure sustainable food whilst preserving biodiversity (that is damaged by ‘spray drift’). At its core, the fellowship will develop new mathematical and computational models embedded with nanofluidic information to understand the collision of droplets,  their interaction with other free-surfaces and their collective behaviour.  This will provide an injection of new ideas into a vibrant UK fluid dynamics scene and naturally stimulate new unforeseen connections between sub-fields therein. The Fellowship will drive and thrive-on naturally new collaborations across disciplinary boundaries that connect applied mathematics, experimentation and application; creating symbiotic feedback between these elements.  Through partnerships and network-building activities, particularly workshops, it will build a new community of researchers, traditionally siloed at their own scales, ambitiously targeting crucial connections spanning from nanofilm to cloud dynamics.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

  Context The UK faces a persistent challenge with underperforming firms, largely due to weaker management practices in smaller businesses. The Business Basics programme, led by BEIS, aimed to assist SMEs in adopting productivity-enhancing technologies and management practices. From 2018 to 2022, it funded 32 projects involving nearly 3,500 SMEs at a cost of £6.4 million, including 17 Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs). Experimental approaches to business support are rare; a 2016 review by the UK’s What Works Centre for Local Growth found only four RCTs out of 700 evaluations of business advice. Business Basics offers a unique opportunity to learn about the design, delivery, and evaluation of small business support through experimental data. This project uses this data to tackle key challenges in business support evaluations: a) assessing longer-term effectiveness, b) identifying biases in quasi-experimental evaluations, c) profiling business support participants d) validating interim outcomes. These insights can inform better evaluation methodologies, improve policymaking, and enhance the targeting of business support, ultimate contributing to stronger outcomes. Challenge Policymakers and researchers face a consistent challenge in robustly evaluating the impact of business support (Dalziel, 2018; Novelli & Spina, 2024). Methodological challenges include impact attribution over long timelines, accounting for unobserved business characteristics, and selecting appropriate interim evaluation metrics. Practical challenges include low take-up of support, as seen in the Government’s 'Help-to-Grow: Digital' programme (BEIS, 2023). We propose exploring the longer-term impacts of Business Basics trials, the merits of RCTs versus quasi-experimental approaches, the value of interim behavioural changes as indicators of longer-term impact, and characteristics of businesses likely to seek support. With 3-5 years since trials were conducted, we can now explore longer-term productivity and growth effects (Drews and Hart, 2015) and wider methodological and practical learnings from the trials. This analysis offers a profound opportunity for robust insights on small business support, and is timely given the increasing need for robust assessments of longer-term effectiveness of business support, especially in light of recent economic shifts and growing demand for evidence-based policymaking (DBT, 2024). Aims and Objectives This research is structured around four research objectives: Assessing the longer-term impacts of the Business Basics programme  Identifying potential selection biases in quasi-experimental approaches evaluation approaches compared to RCTs; this advances research methodology in this field. Examining the characteristics of participating businesses to assess the determinants of take-up and generalizability of outcomes. Determining whether interim evaluation outcomes predict future productivity. Potential Applications and Benefits This research can influence research and policy in business development by providing actionable insights into: Longer-term effectiveness of management and digital training programmes Business characteristics and openness to different interventions, informing better-targeted support. Factors (typically unobserved, e.g., motivational) that complicate robust evaluation. This can inform data collection and improve the quality of matching in future quasi-experimental evaluations. Validity and reliability of RCTs versus quasi-experimental techniques, guiding future research methodologies and policy decisions. Usefulness of interim outcome measures in evaluating interventions, which can inform policy design. Ultimately, the research aims to enhance understanding of effective business support in the UK and guide the design of targeted interventions to strengthen the UK's business support system. The research will inform (i) enhanced accuracy in measuring the impact of business support programmes (ii) an understanding of the types of business likely to access business support, exploring implications for targeted support and interpreting evaluation outcomes.    

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Random planar geometry is a flourishing branch of modern probability theory. It draws motivation from connections to physics, and combines a large variety of deep machinery into a melting pot of mathematical creativity. The proposed project studies a novel model of random geometry, and aims to make advances that parallel some of the spectacular results of the mainstream models, such as the BS-convergence of the uniform random triangulations (Angel--Schramm), the scaling-limit convergence to the Brownian map (Le Gall--Miermont), and the fact that the Brownian map coincides with Liouville Quantum Gravity (Miller--Sheffield). The vision is that our new model, which is defined as a natural generalisation of the well-studied Random Travelling Salesman Problem to higher dimension, will provide a missing and much wanted combinatorial way to approach continuous models of random geometry.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

We live in an era in which mathematics is employed in almost every academic discipline. Despite its traditional focus, philosophy is by no means exempt from this trend. This project provides a critical framework for addressing the increasing role of mathematics and computation in several of its core areas. The entanglement of mathematics with philosophy arises in two principal ways. The first is when mathematics is used to formulate philosophical claims, such as when real numbers are used to measure credences (degrees of belief), or when partial orderings are used to represent agents’ preferences. The second is when mathematics is used to derive philosophical conclusions, such as the use of Dutch book theorems in epistemology, or impossibility theorems like Arrow’s or Sen’s in political philosophy. But the use of these mathematical frameworks sometimes induces idealizations. For example, the  mathematical theory of probability tacitly assumes “logical omniscience”: ideally rational agents are assumed to be able, when given any sentence, to determine whether it is a logical truth or not. Depending on the logic in question, this is either an infeasibly hard problem to compute (what computer scientists call NP-complete) or outright impossible (as hard as Turing’s halting problem). Even highly idealized or “artificially intelligent” agents are subject to these limitations. Our overarching objective is to develop a unified methodology for understanding the mathematical turn in contemporary philosophy. We aim to achieve this by employing a group of related methods from mathematical logic and computer science clustered around the subject known as reverse mathematics. These tools will be used to isolate the mathematical and computational principles required to sustain various philosophical arguments and theories via a novel method we call “reverse philosophy”. We investigate this concretely by investigating three interlinked case studies of the application of mathematics in philosophy: paradoxes of truth and vagueness, subjective probability in epistemology and artificial intelligence, and voting theory as applied to political philosophy.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

The mechanical bond is an interlocking linkage between molecular components that combines the robustness of the covalent bond with dynamics of supramolecular interactions. Mechanical bonds have broad applications in fields such as sensing, catalysis and artificial molecular machines, but perhaps the most promising venue for these units is in mechanically interlocked materials (MIMats). When mechanical bonds are incorporated into polymers, it often results in drastically improved materials properties and new features like stimuli-responsiveness and self-healing Surprisingly, the use of MIMats for biological materials applications is highly underdeveloped, despite the constant need for disruptive technology and innovative approaches in the biomedical sciences. The reason for this is mainly the synthetic difficulty in obtaining biocompatible interlocked systems, which limits the range of accessible polymeric interlocked architectures. In this fellowship, I will use state-of-the-art methods for mechanical bond synthesis to access an entirely new category of MIMats based on polyamide backbones. Polyamides (and its sub-categories polypeptides and nylons) are ubiquitously used as biomaterials for applications in drug delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, to name just a few examples. However, there are no general ways to install and hence make use of the mechanical bond in these systems. With access to mechanically interlocked polyamides, the mechanical bond could be used to efficiently modify physical materials properties such as solubility, improve mechanical performance and add functionality such as stimuli-responsiveness, adaptability and self-healing. I will use kinetically controlled active template synthesis to make linear and cross-linked polyamides and polypeptides that are encircles by rings - compounds known as polyrotaxane materials. The fellowship will (1) explore multiple synthetic approaches to create novel mechanically interlocked polypeptide biomaterials and mechanically interlocked nylons, (2) study the properties of these materials and (3) demonstrate their application in fields such as drug delivery and tissue engineering. Synthetically, I will explore both discrete approaches where pre-made rotaxanes are incorporated into materials and integrated approaches to linear interlocked polymers and crosslinked slide-ring networks where the mechanical bond is established during the polymerisation process. These interlocked biomaterials will then be tested for applications in for example small molecule drug delivery (with a model anti-cancer drug), photopatternable hydrogels (where the mechanical bond controls cell adhesion at the materials/cell biointerface), and to control parameters such as migration and differentiation for stem cells. In particular, I want to use the variations in surface structure between different polyrotaxanes to change the mechanotransduction efficiency at the biointerface, which will lead to differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells to either osteogenic or adipogenic cells depending on the polyrotaxane structure. This strategic merging of supramolecular chemistry, organic synthesis, polymer chemistry, peptides and cell biology is perfectly adapted for my research background. This makes me the optimal candidate to execute this groundbreaking research, which will greatly expand use of polyamide biomaterials and hence have wide societal and economic impact. Successful completion of this project will realise the full potential of the mechanical bond for biomaterials applications, and open a wealth of new opportunities in a range of areas associated to bioengineering, biotechnology and chemical biology (all focus areas in the UK research landscape). The award of a prestigious and flexible EPSRC Open Fellowship will be crucial to establish me as a global scientific leader in this highly important field, and is integral to realise the vision in this highly ambitious program.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

In this small grant project, I will take the first steps toward developing a continuous-time probabilistic control framework to address the challenges of manipulating stochastic systems. The proposed project is motivated by the need to develop robust methods for controlling practical stochastic systems to advance real-world applications. While this has been successfully demonstrated in idealised, isolated settings, many real-world systems, such as autonomous vehicles and energy systems, operate in open environments where external factors introduce uncertainties such as noise and disturbances. These uncertainties challenge reliable system control, scalability of stochastic systems, and their accurate operation. Traditional control strategies often assume idealised conditions, leading to incomplete system characterisations and compromising the reliability and precision of control strategies. By treating these uncertainties as sources of valuable information rather than problems to be eliminated, this project aims to develop an innovative probabilistic approach that effectively characterises system dynamics and integrates uncertainties as an essential part of the control solution, enabling robust control strategies for real-world stochastic systems. The framework will offer a principled approach to managing uncertainty in dynamic and partially controllable systems. Specifically, it will establish the mathematical foundation for continuous-time probabilistic control by optimising a continuously evolving probability density function of control inputs rather than directly shaping the probabilistic evolution of system states. It will also develop computational methods for real-time implementation in high-dimensional stochastic systems. By leveraging recent advancements in probabilistic estimation and optimal transport, the framework will enable adaptive and timely control. Simulation-based case studies will evaluate its effectiveness in improving system manipulation in uncertain and dynamic environments, such as optimising energy storage systems under fluctuating demand and stabilising financial markets amid stochastic variations. My three objectives to be met over a 12-month period are as follows: Establish the theoretical underpinnings of the unified continuous-time probabilistic control framework. Design computational tools and validate my framework. Develop a long-term roadmap for the advancement of my proposed framework. While this research is primarily theoretical, its outcomes will pave the way for advanced monitoring, forecasting, and adaptive system manipulation in uncertain environments. Academically, this work will advance ongoing research in stochastic modelling, Bayesian inference, and optimal transport, establishing pathways for future applications and fostering collaborations with researchers and industry stakeholders. In the longer term, the framework has the potential to impact areas requiring uncertainty-aware decision-making, such as risk-sensitive control in engineering and data-driven system optimisation. Achievement of these objectives will lay the groundwork for a broader research programme, pursued through more comprehensive funding, such as an EPSRC standard grant.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the largest health crises humanity is facing in the 21st century, with the number of annual deaths projected to eclipse any other death cause by 2050. Bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) represent an exciting and valuable research area, because they offer a promising alternative to antibiotics. However, in spite of being the most numerous biological entity on the planet, the vast majority of bacteriophages are completely unknown to us, due to the fact that current research methods enable us to investigate bacteriophages infecting only 30 bacterial genera. Moreover, most predicted genes (70-95%) in isolated bacteriophage genomes are of an unknown function and are dissimilar to any currently known genes, presenting a vast, unexplored territory with novel metabolic, therapeutic, and biotechnological applications. Since bacteriophages kill bacteria, a lot of these cryptic genes have antibacterial activities that can greatly improve our arsenal of weapons against antibiotic-resistant pathogens. As a phage researcher with demonstrable experience in characterisation of cryptic viral genes, I have developed and tested a high-throughput method to decipher the role of unknown phage genes. This method represents a significant upgrade on currently available phage research methods because it avoids the need to isolate and culture the bacterial host before isolating the specific phage that infects it. Instead, it can identify viral genes with antimicrobial activity, providing direct pipeline from environmental or clinical samples to utilisation of viral products in our fight against AMR pathogens. Using this method, I have already identified and characterised a previously misannotated viral enzyme responsible for recycling of bacterial nucleotides and assigned a lipid-remodelling function to a novel viral phospholipase, dissimilar to previously known bacterial or viral enzymes of similar function. In this proposal I will use this method to identify and test novel viral products with anti-biofilm activity against cystic fibrosis-relevant bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  I will accomplish this through three work Aims in which: I will create viral metagenomic libraries from from several clinical, industrial and environmental sources. I will identify novel viral genes with anti-biofilm activities by performing high-throughput screening of my viral metagenomic libraries. I will characterise identified viral gene products via molecular, biochemical and bioinformatic methods, and test their anti-biofilm activity in several respiratory disease lab models. The fundamental scientific outcomes of this project will shine a light on the bacterial and viral “dark matter” – cryptic genes without any similarity to previously known genes in our databases. Understanding the role of these genes will also enable me to characterise new bacteriophages in the future and thus empower the whole of biomedical scientific community, by providing tools for identifying potential therapeutic bacteriophages essential in our battle against drug-resistant bacterial infections. Additionally, the work described here will serve as a blueprint for performing similar functional metagenomic screens of cryptic viral genes in a variety of different systems, forming a solid basis for a promising, independent research career.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of bacterial death in children under 5 years old worldwide, however it is also capable of infecting other demographics, particularly the elderly and immunocompromised. With over half a billion infections worldwide, approximately half a million deaths are associated with the pneumococcus, and Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) suffer disproportionately. Despite pneumococcal vaccines existing for several decades, total prevention and eradication remains elusive due to a myriad of reasons. Current vaccine technology relies on targeting the polysaccharide capsule which covers the surface of the pneumococccus. However, with over 100 variations (serotypes) of these polysaccharide capsules, total coverage is not possible with our current vaccine strategies. Present licensed vaccines (PCV13, PPSV23, PCV15 and PCV20) only target approximately 30% of all known serotypes. This low-valent solution is limited by current technology, expanding manufacturing costs as polysccahrides are added on, and serotype replacement disease, the major achilles heel of polysaccharide vaccines. Therefore, an alternative technology or target must be developed to combat pneumococcal disease across all of it serotypes. A recent discovery from our research group has shown that a highly conserved domain of an essential protein from Streptococcus pneumoniae confers protection against pneumococcus infection. Importantly this protein is essential to and present in, all pneumococcal strains. This domain remains in an inactive and shielded form when the bacteria are in a dormant state but becomes exposed during active cell growth. As growth is an essential part of carriage, transmission and eventually invasive disease, our vaccine candidate would target disease-causing bacteria without any implication for strain or serotype specificity, making this a novel universal (cross serotype) vaccine candidate, a long standing holy grail in the pneumococcal field. Our vaccine candidate protein has the potential to ultimately replace current polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccines with limited serotype coverage and could be the first universal vaccine aganist Streptococcus pneumoniae infection. The next step in our vaccine development pathway is a series of essential pre-clinical animal experiments focused on determining the protective efficacy of our identified protein domain against pneumococcal disease (invasive pneumonia and sepsis). This will provide the key pre-clinical data required to assess the efficacy of this strategy and the next steps for development of our vaccine development programme.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

This is an application based in Mathematical Analysis, but with an emphasis on the use of ergodic theory to study applications to geometry, and areas of mathematics and the physical sciences.  The strategy is to  harness the power of new algorithms originating in ergodic theory to address  problems in hyperbolic geometry and related fields which may depend on precise numerical values. In particular,  I aim to refocus my research in a new direction to apply my expertise in computational ergodic theory  to  applications to (hyperbolic) geometry and spectral theory. My recent progress in related areas (for example, applications to number theory and fractal geometry using  a variety of different approaches) and the techniques developed there give the prospect of deriving very high accuracy estimates, applicable to wide range of geometric problems (including those highlighted above) where it is important to have numerical values which are validated with complete rigour.  Furthermore, continuing advances in computer hardware and memory storage should allow now most of the necessary computations to be be performed on a standard laptop. The novel interplay of rigorous computation and geometric problems should allow for a greater impact than more conventional methods. It is anticipated that the algorithms developed in the course of the programme would also contribute ideas to the mathematical proofs. Moreover, the  techniques developed should be transferable more widely to problems in other areas, including Ergodic Theory,  Dynamical Systems, Fractal Geometry and analytic number theory. The symbiosis between ergodic theory and geometry  is recognised as among the most important and vibrant branches of mathematics: e.g. recent Fields medallists such as Avila, Bourgain,  Lindenstrauss, Smirnov, McMullen, Yoccoz, who have been active in the interplay between these areas. The likely transformative impact of my programme has the potential to invigorate the subject in the UK, in particular by infusing it with new  techniques to carry out further empirical investigations in a wide range of geometric problems where the values of numerical quantifiers are important. Often research on one topic has surprising applications in other areas.  The study of resonances, one of the themes of this programme,  has widespread implications far beyond geometry, dynamics or even pure mathematics.  For example, they appear in the paper Rough parameter dependence in climate models and the role of Ruelle Pollicott resonances  by M.Chekroun, J.Neelin, D.Kondrashov and M.Ghil, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Their work describes turbulent atmospheric flows and ocean currents and their recurrent large scale patterns have low frequencies that can be formulated in terms of Ruelle-Pollicott resonances. This is illustrated in the case of the El Nino climate model.   My original work was in pure mathematics (Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems) but has had impacts far beyond this setting, as illustrated by this example. The project will  strengthen the overall UK knowledge base in the various fields concerned, notably  Hyperbolic Geometry, Ergodic Theory, Algorithms and related fields, and establish establish a world-leading team in this niche of numerical validation of ergodic-theoretic computations and their applications to other fields.  I have a track record of mentoring PDRAs who went on to very successful careers. The programme will fund two PDRAs who will be trained in this niche area, keep it vibrant, energized and lively, and move it forward and in new directions in the future.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

This proposal falls within the broad area of Geometry and Topology and is in the more specific area of Noncommutative Geometry. The main goal of this proposal is to use the recent theory of noncommutative motives to prove the celebrated conjectures of Beilinson, Tate and Serre in new cases. This will improve their state-of-the-art. The theory of noncommutative motives began in the eighties when the Moscow school (Beilinson, Kapranov, Manin, and others) started the study of algebraic varieties via their differential graded (=dg) derived categories of coherent sheaves. Motivated by this, Kontsevich later suggested that a general (smooth proper) dg category should be conceptually understood as a (smooth proper) noncommutative algebraic variety. Since then, this noncommutative viewpoint has been greatly developed, and a theory of noncommutative motives was built. As documented in the PL’s book “Noncommutative Motives”, this new theory led to numerous applications and is nowadays considered a cornerstone of modern mathematics. The Beilinson, Tate and Serre conjectures belong to the realm of L-functions. In a nutshell, the L-function of a smooth proper algebraic variety X encodes a lot of important information about X on its poles/zeros and the aim of the celebrated conjectures of Beilinson, Tate and Serre is to explicitly describe this information. These conjectures, which are only proved for some particular cases of X, play a central role in mathematics. For example, in the particular case where X is an elliptic curve, the Beilinson conjecture reduces to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, which is one of the seven Millenium Prize Problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. In this proposal the PL plans to achieve two objectives. The first one is to establish the noncommutative counterparts of the Beilinson, Tate and Serre conjectures, where a smooth proper algebraic variety X is replaced by a smooth proper dg category. The second one is to use this noncommutative viewpoint to prove the original conjectures of Beilinson, Tate and Serre in new cases. This research project is expected to have a significant impact because it will offer a completely new viewpoint on the Beilinson, Tate and Serre conjectures. This novel viewpoint, brought by noncommutativity, is very useful because it will provide a pathway to the proof of new cases of the aforementioned conjectures. The PL foresees that in the future this will lead to an intense research activity as the mathematical community will have access to this pathway to prove increasingly more general new cases of the Beilinson, Tate and Serre conjectures. This project will also develop new mathematical tools of independent interest within the broad noncommutative setting of dg categories. These new tools will directly impact all those different areas of mathematics where dg categories are used, such as algebraic geometry (via dg derived categories), representation theory (via dg derived categories of representations), symplectic geometry (via dg Fukaya categories), mathematical physics (via dg categories of matrix factorizations), etc. Unfortunately, due to elderly family caring responsibilities, the PL is on career break during the academic year 2024/2025. The EPSRC Mathematical Sciences Small Grant will enable the PL to quickly get his research back to full speed, and also will enable the PL to quickly return to the high level of research performance that he has demonstrated before the career break.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) account for over 20% of the total years lived with disability and are the second leading cause of disability globally. These conditions pose both physical and mental health challenges, impairing patients’ mobility and diminishing overall quality of life. Improving clinical assessment and rehabilitation is therefore essential to improving patient outcomes. In this context, motion tracking plays an important role in clinical practice by providing insights into patients’ movement patterns for effective treatment strategies. However, traditional motion tracking requires controlled laboratory environments, which can alter natural movement and fail to replicate real-life activities such as walking in park/supermarket, reaching or multi-task activities. These activities are essential for patients with MSDs, especially those with multi-joint problems. Virtual Reality (VR) offers a solution by providing immersive environments in a laboratory, that mimic real-life. VR combined with motion capture, is being explored in different fields such as manufacturing, entertainment industry and rehabilitation, but there are still substantial challenges.  The use of VR environment, headsets and wearable devices can affect patients both physically and psychologically. These can lead to inconsistent results impacting on the reliability of clinical measurement. Moreover, how movement patterns relate to mental health and sensory experiences have not been fully explored.  This project seeks to integrate eye-tracking technology and psycho-physiological monitoring to develop a more personalised understanding of a patient’s physical and mental state during clinical assessment and rehabilitation. The integration of these modalities generates substantial volumes of sensitive personal data, necessitating robust cybersecurity measures, to ensure data integrity and confidentiality. Current approaches often lack such controls, thereby risking patient privacy and public trust. The project aims to develop a cohesive and secure-cyber-physical-psychological-system, combining VR, motion capture, eye-tracking and psycho-physiological monitoring, for improved clinical assessment and personalised rehabilitation of MSDs. This integrated system will enable health professionals to assess both patients’ physical and psychological states using real-world scenarios in clinical settings, improving the overall clinical assessment and rehabilitation treatment. This needs an interdisciplinary approach, involving experts in engineering, psychology, digital technology, and healthcare. The objectives are to: Develop VR-integrated motion measurement for diagnostic scenarios using lower limb motions (e.g., walking in park/supermarket), and rehabilitation tasks for upper limb motion (e.g., reaching-out with adjustable difficulty levels). Integrate eye-tracking technology to monitor attention and mental effort. Measure psycho-physiological responses (heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and electrodermal activity, and blood pressure) and questionnaires to assess participants’ experience, emotions, stress and fatigue. Test the integrated system with healthy participants to evaluate its utility, acceptability and capability through two clinical feasibility studies: upper limb motion monitoring for rehabilitation, and lower limb motion/gait measurement for diagnostic assessment. Work closely with patients with lived experience and advisors to ensure the system is practical, patient-centred and clinically applicable. The potential project benefits and impacts are: Improved clinical assessment of MSDs enables earlier clinical assessment and holistic, personalised treatment by combining physical and psychological data to enhance both physical recovery and mental well-being. With better assessment and rehabilitation, the system has the potential to reduce healthcare cost through faster recovery, reduced waiting time with fewer sessions, resulting in accelerated return to work for wider socio-economic-environmental benefits. The research creates academic impact by developing a reliable, integrated system that enhances understanding of the physical and psychological aspects of MSDs’ assessment and rehabilitation, advancing scientific methods, technologies and interdisciplinary applications.    

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Children and young people now grow up inside highly digital environments where gambling-like design and AI-driven personalisation influence everyday play, spending, and decision-making long before legal gambling age. Features such as loot boxes, prize draws, microtransactions, reward loops, and influencer-led promotions have become common across apps, social platforms, and gaming ecosystems. Simultaneously, AI systems that curate content, personalise adverts, and optimise engagement shape what children see, click, and adopt - often opaquely, and at scale. Because children’s skills for impulse control, financial understanding and risk perception are still developing, children represent a uniquely sensitive user group within digital gambling risk pathways. Despite strong policy momentum, the current evidence base on AI, digital platform mechanics, gambling-like features, and childhood wellbeing remains fragmented across fields such as psychology, education, media studies, and human-computer interaction. Critically, no dedicated integrated synthesis exists that examines these issues specifically for children aged 0-18, or systematically connects gambling harms to AI-mediated exposure and digital design in a youth-focused way. Without this integration, platform designers, educators, regulators, and families lack a unified, credible foundation for understanding how harm is accelerated or mitigated and what kinds of early-stage interventions work best. This project is a six-month Rapid Evidence Review (RER) designed to close this gap. It approaches AI and digital platforms as key environments where harm prevention, safer design, and literacy-building can scale most effectively when informed by trusted evidence. A central challenge this project tackles is ensuring that child protection and harm-prevention frameworks evolve at the same pace as modern platform design and AI personalisation systems, while grounding responses in a credible research base instead of speculation or siloed findings. The core aims and objectives are to: Map all high-trust research on gambling-like features children encounter across digital platforms, gaming and AI-curated feeds, Trace evidence on how AI-driven recommendations, algorithmic curation, and personalised adverts affect gambling-risk pathways for children and adolescents, Identify protective and preventive strategies that can scale across platform, school, and family environments, particularly around parental safeguards, transparent, age-appropriate disclosures, resilience-building, and digital literacy, Highlight clear evidence gaps to inform future investment and research phases, and Produce outputs that are immediately actionable for policy experts, regulators and platform designers. Thereby, the project advocates better-informed innovation rooted in the science of child development and trustworthy evidence synthesis. The outputs include a full UKRI RER report, a 10-12-page policy brief with visual summaries, a cross-sector policy roundtable for practitioner insights, and an academic journal article submission. All dissemination formats - policy briefs, evidence tables, infographics, conference outputs and blog summaries – will be created for diverse, external-facing audiences including opinion-formers, policy teams, the public, and platform-design researchers.