• Canada
• UK Research and Innovation close
• UKRI|EPSRC close
• 2017 close

Diseases of the brain including neurological conditions, such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and dementia, and common psychiatric conditions such as depression and schizophrenia, have considerable personal, social and economic costs for the sufferers and their carers. Improving the tools at our disposal for quantifying brain function would help with diagnosis, choosing the right treatment for the patient and developing new, more effective, treatments. This proposal aims to develop a reliable non-invasive brain imaging method using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that maps, across the whole human brain with a spatial resolution of a few millimetres, the amount of oxygen that the brain is consuming. The rate of oxygen consumption, known as CMRO2, reflects neural activity and can change through disease processes. It provides a marker of disease and treatment related alterations in brain activity. Our proposed method would also map the functional characteristics of brain blood vessels whose health is crucial for the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain. Until recently, it has only been possible to quantitatively map the human brain's metabolic energy use through positron emission tomography (PET), which relies on radioactive tracers. The application of such measurements is limited, as in order to minimise radiation doses, it cannot be applied many times in the same patients or healthy volunteers. This hampers the repeated study of disease or treatment progression and the study of normal brain development and aging. Our proposed method would avoid the use of ionizing radiation, would be cheaper than PET and more widely available, and would expand the applications of quantified CMRO2 mapping to more centres, leading to improved treatment targeting and potential healthcare cost savings. We have performed some initial tests that show our proposed method to be feasible. It relies on mapping simultaneously the flow of blood to each part of the brain and the oxygenation of the blood leaving each part of the brain. Necessary for the measurement is the modulation of brain blood flow and oxygen levels, achieved by asking volunteers to breathe air enriched with carbon dioxide and oxygen. These procedures involve the volunteer wearing a face-mask but are safe and well tolerated. Our proposed method should yield additional information describing cerebrovascular properties compared to other recently-proposed methods. This means that it would require fewer assumptions which may be not be invalid in the diseased brain, giving our approach a wider scope of application and offering potentially richer clinical information. This proposal optimises our method to ensure it is efficient and reliable for widespread research and eventually clinical use. We propose a close collaboration between physicists developing the neuroimaging methodology and clinical academic researchers who will help us to demonstrate its clinical feasibility in two common neurological diseases, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis (MS). About 70% of the project will be methodological development to optimise our image acquisition and data analysis strategy to yield accurate and repeatable measurements within about 10 minutes of scanning. The remaining 30% of the project will validate the method in groups of epilepsy and MS patients who volunteer to help us with our research. Validation will be performed by comparison with PET, the current 'gold standard.' The project will develop and benefit from partnerships with academic and industrial researchers in the UK and internationally. In particular, the work has good potential for application in the drug development industry, a strong industrial sector in the UK, for the development of new and effective compounds to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders. This project would help maintain the UK at the forefront internationally of neuroimaging research, a position it has long held and from which it has benefitted.

Some of the most fundamental and perhaps bizarre processes expected to occur in the vicinity of black holes are out of observational reach. To address this issue we utilise analogue systems where we study fluctuations on a background flow that in the experiment reproduces an effective black hole. In the literature this line of research is referred to as analogue models for gravity, or simply analogue gravity. Analogue models provide not only a theoretical but also an experimental framework in which to verify predictions of classical and quantum fields exposed to 'extreme' spacetime geometries, such as rapidly rotating black holes. This project brings together two world-wide recognised experts in the field of analogue gravity with the aim of pushing the field in a new direction: we propose ground-breaking studies to mimic some of the bizarre processes occurring in the vicinity of rotating black holes from general relativity and rotating fluids in both water and optical systems. In particular, we will investigate both theoretically and experimentally the interaction between an input wave and a rotating black hole spacetime geometry, here recreated by the rotating fluid. This allows us to mimic a scattering process associated to rotating black hoes called superradiant scattering. From a historical viewpoint this kind of radiation is the precursor to Hawking radiation. More precisely, black hole superradiance is the scattering of waves from a rotating black hole: if the incoming wave also possesses a small amount of angular momentum, it will be reflected with an increased amplitude, i.e. it is amplified at the expense of the black hole that thus loses some of its rotational energy. It has also been pointed out that the same physics may take place in very different systems, for example light incident on a rotating metallic (or absorbing) cylinder may also be amplified upon reflection. Yet, no-one has ever attempted to experimentally investigate the underlying physics that extend beyond general relativity and are relevant to a variety of hydrodynamical and rotating systems. We aim to provide the first ever experimental evidence of this intriguing and fundamental amplification mechanism in two different hydrodynamical systems. The first is a water spout, controlled so that the correct boundary conditions are obtained and optimised for observing BH-SS. The second is a less conventional fluid that is made out of light. Light propagating in a special medium can behave as a fluid or even a superfluid. By building upon highly developed photonic technologies e.g. for the control and measurements of laser beam wavefronts, we will implement very precisely tailored and characterised experiments. One of the unique aspects of this project is the marriage between two very different lab-based systems, one using water the other using light, to tackle an outstanding problem in physics that is of relevance to astrophysics, hydrodynamic and optical systems.

This project integrates Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Vision to provide a platform for in-home interactive wheelchair skills training. In the UK, more than ten million people live with a disability, and 1.2 million people have a mobility disability that requires the use of a wheelchair on a daily basis. Limited access to wheelchair skills training across the UK with training rates below 20% among young people reduces the independence of persons with mobility impairments, not just profoundly impacting quality of life of the individual, but also leading to medical conditions that result from a lack of physical activity, increasing financial pressure on healthcare systems. This project addresses this challenge through the development of an interactive training program to facilitate in-home wheelchair skills training. It builds on research in computer vision and human-computer interaction to provide a training platform that motivates user engagement, and assesses user performance to provide feedback on movement accuracy previously only available through occupational therapists. To this end, the first stage of this project involves practitioners and academic experts on wheelchair skills training to identify best practices to be integrated into interactive approaches. Based on these results, the second stage of project will provide a wheelchair/body tracking system that is integrated into a sample training tool. This application will be designed to be suited for in-home use by guiding users through training exercises, and provides them with feedback on accuracy and overall performance. In the final stage, the sample training tool will be evaluated together with end-users and experts to gain insights into suitability for skills training along with perspectives on user experience, and pave the way for the development of a comprehensive interactive training application. While the project explores manual wheelchair skills training as the primary application context, it is expected that it will make a significant contribution to technology-supported physical activity for persons with disabilities, and lead to a wider research agenda around the exploration of interactive technologies as a means of improving quality of life of marginalized groups.

The internal combustion engine which is in everyday use in a wide variety of applications remains one of the most cost effective means of generating power. A typical engine however loses substantial amounts of energy in its normal operation and there is clear potential to utilise this energy. The largest flow is in the exhaust system of the vehicle, and it is here that the proposed research is focussed. The main objective of the project is the realisation of an efficient method of energy recovery using a thermoelectric generator and utilising a new type of material known as a skutterudite. By adopting the same internal structure, skutterudites simulate a naturally occurring mineral which has the vital properties of low thermal conductivity with low electrical resistance. The principal advantage of these materials is their potential for cost reduction by utilising low cost metals in their structure. A second and important advantage is the future potential for novel manufacturing techniques in which the active elements of the thermoelectric generator are made using additive methods to build up the kind of complex shapes that are required. The project brings together three universities that can cover the range of capabilities from the chemistry of materials through to systems integration methods. The Heriot-Watt team will synthesise new materials using progressively lower cost materials to demonstrate that the required thermoelectric performance can be obtained using low cost materials. The Cardiff team will integrate modules, incorporating protective coatings to ensure the durability of the generator. At Loughborough, the scope to integrate thermo-electric (TE) generators with other functions such as after-treatment will be explored. The Loughborough team will work with the Cardiff team to identify novel methods of integrating the TE modules into a heat exchange device, regarding the requirements imposed by different types of engine. The project concludes with the practical demonstration of TE generators and a portfolio of simulation results that demonstrate how the cost path and the path to levels of commercial performance will be realised.

The proposed research contributes to fundamental topics in Combinatorial Optimisation, aiming to devise strongly polynomial algorithms for new classes of linear and nonlinear optimisation problems. The notion of polynomial-time complexity, introduced in the 1970s, is a standard way to capture computational efficiency of a wide variety of algorithms. Strongly polynomial-time algorithms give a natural strengthening of this notion: the number of arithmetic operations should not depend on numerical parameters such as costs or capacities in the problem description, but only on the number of such parameters. Strongly polynomial algorithms are known for many important optimisation problems. However, it remains an outstanding open problem to devise such an algorithm for a very fundamental optimisation problem: Linear Programming. The most important goal of the proposal is to develop a strongly polynomial algorithm for linear programs with at most two nonzero entries per column. The problem is equivalent to minimum-cost generalised flows, a classical model in the theory of network flows. Finding a strongly polynomial algorithm was a longstanding open question even for the special case of flow maximisation, resolved by the applicant in a recent paper. Further goals of the proposal include strongly polynomial algorithms for related nonlinear optimisation problems. Nonlinear convex network flow models have important applications for market equilibrium computation in mathematical economics. Very few nonlinear problems are known to admit strongly polynomial algorithms. The proposal aims for a systematic study of such problems, and will also contribute to the understanding of computational aspects of market equilibrium models.

This project focuses on energy and more specifically on nuclear fission. Core material such as fuel assemblies are exposed to irradiation from the moment a nuclear reactor is switched on. The bombardment of material with neutrons creates collision cascades that immediately produce point defects and dislocations in the material. This results in very significant changes of the material properties compared to non-irradiated material.Nuclear fuel for light water reactors is contained by so-called cladding tubes, which are made from zirconium alloys because of their excellent corrosion resistance, sufficient mechanical properties and their low neutron absorption coefficient. Nuclear fuel is enriched initially with 5% 235U. However, the fuel cannot be fully burned due to the uncertainty of clad material degradation and dimensional instability of fuel assemblies. The dimensional instabilities are related to irradiation growth and creep of zirconium alloys. Irradiation growth occurs in zirconium alloys without applying any external load and is due to the hexagonal close packed crystal structure of zirconium. Irradiation creep is significantly faster than thermal creep due to the increased density of vacancies in irradiated material. The safe operation of nuclear fuel assemblies requires dimensional stability to ensure sufficient coolant flow and the safe operation of control rods when needed. Irradiation growth and creep can lead to bowing and buckling of fuel assemblies, which is of concern with current plants and even more a concern for increased burnup of the nuclear fuel. Consequently, we need to develop a detailed understanding of the mechanisms leading to these phenomena and how they are affected by material chemistry and the microstructure evolution during irradiation.Traditionally, microstructure and damage characterisation of irradiated material is mainly carried out by electron microscopy. However, in the last decade, very powerful 3rd generation synchrotron radiation sources have been built, which represent a tremendous opportunity to develop complementary tools or quantitative characterisation of irradiation damage and microstructure evolution.During the 1960s and 70s many countries including the UK had test reactors that allowed scientists to undertake research on irradiated material. However, most of these test reactors are gone now and it is unlikely that the UK or other countries will build many new test reactors. For this reason, governments have invested in proton/ion accelerators to simulate neutron irradiation. The advantage of such facilities is that they are by many order of magnitudes cheaper to run than a test reactor. However, our understanding of how well neutron induced damage is related to proton/ion induced damage is limited. Since Zr alloys are relatively mildly active when irradiated by neutrons, they represent also an ideal material to calibrate proton/ion against neutron irradiation.During the fellowship my research group will:- identify the role of alloy chemistry and microstructure on irradiation growth and creep of fuel clad,- for the first time extensively use synchrotron radiation to characterise irradiation damage and- calibrate proton/ion irradiated against neutron irradiated cladding material in order to use the convenience of the former (non-active material, easily irradiated to different levels in a short time) to identify the route cause for loop formation resulting in breakaway growth