• Canada
• UK Research and Innovation close

ESRC : Hester Hockin-Boyers : ES/P000762/1 The Mitacs Globalink UK-Canada doctoral exchange scheme would enable PhD student Hester Hockin-Boyers (Durham University) to spend 12-weeks working with Dr Norman and Professor Vertinsky in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), from September-December 2020. The proposed research will explore how Canadian women's interactions with health and fitness content on Instagram impacts upon physical activity participation. This research is sorely needed because, while social media is increasingly pertinent to the formation of everyday health practices, this dimension is seldom explored. In addition, this project will pilot a novel method, developed by Hockin-Boyers, called 'screenshot elicitation', which seeks to capture the fast, dynamic, mobile and everyday nature of interactions with digital content. Whilst Hockin-Boyers has already begun to develop this technique as part of her PhD research, the Mitacs Globalink project will provide the space and resources to pilot and advance this methodology. The findings resulting from this project have the potential to enhance Canadian women's quality of life, health and wellbeing, by informing digital platform design, social media pedagogies, and public policy in Canada. Furthermore, by providing Hockin-Boyers access to the variety of expertise in Digital Health at UBC, new knowledge and methodological techniques will be brought back to the UK, thus enhancing capacity for further research and innovation

Coronaviruses are transmitted from an infectious individual through large respiratory droplets generated by coughing, sneezing or speaking. These infectious droplets are then transmitted to the mucosal surfaces of a recipient through inhalation of the aerosol or by contact with contaminated fomites such as surfaces or other objects. In healthcare settings, personal protective equipment (PPE) plays a crucial role in interrupting the transmission of highly communicable diseases such as COVID19 from patients to healthcare workers (HCWs). However, research has shown that PPE can also act as a fomite during the donning and doffing process as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can survive on these surfaces for up to three days. This creates a need for more effective PPE materials that can provide antiviral protection. In this proposal we aim to develop a dual action antiviral/antifouling coating to lower the risk of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 to HCWs from COVID19 patients. This project will deliver antiviral/antifouling coatings that can be readily applied to PPE surfaces such as faceshields that are likely to encounter a high level of viral load and would be of great benefit to the health of clinical staff. Furthermore, this project has embedded into its planning a rapid pathway for optimisation, translation, and upscaling of manufacture to deliver a low-cost technology within a short timescale.

This proposal will bring together sediment remediation engineers, ecotoxicologists and hydrogeochemists at an early stage of their career. They will gather for a one week launch event at Newcastle University to learn about each others conceptual understanding of sediment pollution issues and to discuss feasible solutions to these. The launch activities will include discipline hopping in oral presentations, one-on-one pairing of researchers from different disciplines explaining their research efforts to each other, practical training in the calibration and use of pollutant fate modelling tools, visits to local sites with sediment pollution, group discussion of possible solutions to international case studies of sediment pollution, and the conceptual design of better interdisciplinary models of sediment pollution and its effect on sediment-dwelling and aquatic organisms.During the launch event the researchers will submit proposals for people exchange activities with the partner institutions. Such individual visits will allow the researchers to deepen the mutual understanding of work at other institutions and in other disciplines. It is expected that future international and interdisciplinary research collaborations will emerge from such opportunities, and that the established personal contacts will continue to pay dividends throughout the career of the young participants.

Canada

This project will quantify the effect of surface generated melt-water fluctuations on ice motion at the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). More specifically, it will provide data that will enable ice-sheet modellers to improve their predictions of the future contribution of the GrIS to sea level rise in response to a warming world. To achieve this aim requires a dedicated field campaign to the GrIS to investigate seasonal ice flow dynamics and runoff processes along flow parallel transects extending from the ice sheet margin to the equilibrium line altitude (ELA) at both tidewater and land-terminating glaciers. The greatest store of fresh water in the northern hemisphere - equivalent to 7m of eustatic sea level rise - is held within the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), and yet its present and future contribution to sea level is poorly constrained (IPCC, 2007). Recent observations suggest that mass loss near the margin of the GrIS is accelerating through a combination of increased surface melting (e.g. Steffen et al, 2004) and dynamic thinning (e.g. Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006). However, the key processes controlling dynamic thinning have yet to be identified (Alley et al, 2005), and in consequence, are not incorporated in the ice-sheet models which form the basis of the IPCC sea level projections. This in part reflects the fact that the satellite data that has revealed the widespread speed-up of glaciers cannot be acquired at the temporal resolution needed to resolve the causal mechanisms. Our present understanding of GrIS mass balance is especially complicated by uncertainties in the sensitivity of ice-marginal dynamics to changes in melt-water induced lubrication resulting from penetration of supraglacial melt-waters to the glacier bed (Zwally et al, 2002). Recent observations on the GrIS Shepherd et al, in review) reveal, over a five day period in July, a strong and direct coupling between surface hydrology and dynamics where diurnal fluctuations in velocity of >100% occur and where maximum daily velocities scale with temperature. Such observations confirm the need to acquire hydrological and dynamic data at high temporal (sub-hourly) and spatial resolution throughout the year to parameterise the coupling between ice melting and flow. This project will collect data at the necessary resolution to quantify the relationship between melt-water production and ice sheet dynamics thereby enabling ice-sheet modellers to improve predictions of the GrIS's response to climate change. We will conduct ground based experiments along two flow-parallel transects at the western margin of the GrIS in adjacent land and marine terminating drainage basins to address the following objectives: 1. Is there a temporal and spatial pattern to any hydrology-dynamic link associated with the seasonal evolution of the supraglacial drainage system (including supraglacial lakes)? 2. Over what area does surface generated meltwater penetrate to the base of the ice sheet? 3. Is there a relationship between the volume of meltwater input at the glacier surface and the magnitude of the dynamic response? 4. Do tidewater and land-terminating glaciers behave differently during the course of a melt-season? Field campaigns will be undertaken during 2008 and 2009 to determine: 1) The rate, extent and duration of melt. 2) The temporal and spatial variations in water volumes stored in and released from supraglacial lakes and delivered to freely draining moulins. 3) The seasonal, diurnal and hourly variations in ice dynamics. 4) The variations in proglacial discharge and water chemistry (at Russell Glacier). As a result of our work, it will be possible to determine whether ice dynamics at the margin of the GrIS is significantly affected by lubrication of the glacier bed following the drainage of surface derived meltwaters. Our results will be delivered to ice sheet modellers to help them constrain predictions for the future of the GrIS

This research will create a truly innovative, international research network that will stretch far and wide in the area of "Cultures of Creativity and Innovation in Design". The international research network coordinating body comprises Professors Paul Rodgers and Paul Jones from Northumbria University, Professor Amaresh Chakrabarti, a world-leading researcher in Design Creativity, from the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Professor Lorenzo Imbesi, an internationally-acclaimed researcher in Design Culture, from the School of Industrial Design at Carleton University, Canada. The importance of creativity in the cultural, creative and other industries and the significant contributions that creativity adds to a nation's overall GDP and the subsequent health and wellbeing of its people cannot be overstated. In Europe, the value of the cultural and creative industries is estimated at well over 700 billion Euros each year, twice that of Europe's car manufacturing industry. The value of creativity and innovation, to any nation, is therefore huge. Creativity and innovation adds real value, which enables a number of benefits such as economic growth and social wellbeing. In many societies creativity epitomises success, excitement and value. Whether driven by individuals, companies, enterprises or regions creativity and innovation establishes immediate empathy, and conveys an image of dynamism. Creativity is thus a positive word in societies constantly aspiring to innovation and progress. In short, creativity in all of its manifestations enriches society. This network seeks to gain an understanding of this dynamic ecology that creativity and innovation bring to society. Creativity is a vital ingredient in the production of products, services and systems, both in the cultural industries and across the economy as a whole. Yet despite its importance and the ubiquitous use of creativity as a term there are issues regarding its definitional clarity. A better understanding and articulation of creativity as a concept and a process would support enhanced future innovation. Socio-cultural approaches to creativity explain that creative ideas or products do not happen inside people's heads, but in the interaction between a person's thoughts and a socio-cultural context. It is acknowledged that creativity cannot be taught, but that it can be cultivated and this has significant implications for a nation's design and innovation culture. It is known that creativity flourishes in congenial environments and in creative climates. This research will examine how creativity is valued, exploited, and facilitated across different national and cultural settings as all can have a major impact on a nation's creative potential. The key aim of this network is to investigate attitudes about creativity and how it is best cultivated and exploited across three different geographical locations (UK, India, and Canada), different environments, and cultures from both an individual designer's perspective and design groups' perspectives. The network seeks to investigate cultures of creativity and innovation in design and question its nature. For instance, can creativity be adequately conceptualised in a design context? What role do cultural organisations and national bodies play in harnessing creativity? Where do the "edges" lie between creativity and innovation? Do richer environments and approaches for facilitating creativity exist? What design skills, knowledge, and expertise are required for creativity? Moreover, what are the key drivers that motivate the creativity and innovation of designers and other stakeholders? Are they economical, cultural, social, or political? This research network will host 3 workshops, each one facilitating inquiry amongst invited design practitioners, researchers, educators and other stakeholders involved in design practice.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Renewable Energy Northeast Universities (ReNU) is driven by industry and market needs, which indicate unprecedented growth in renewable and distributed energy to 2050. This growth is underpinned by global demand for electricity which will outstrip growth in demand for other sources by more than two to one (The drivers of global energy demand growth to 2050, 2016, McKinsey). A significant part of this demand will arise from vast numbers of distributed, but interconnected devices (estimated to reach 40 billion by 2024) serving sectors such as healthcare (for ageing populations) and personal transport (for reduced carbon dioxide emission). The distinctive remit of ReNU therefore is to focus on materials innovations for small-to-medium scale energy conversion and storage technologies that are sustainable and highly scalable. ReNU will be delivered by Northumbria, Newcastle and Durham Universities, whose world-leading expertise and excellent links with industry in this area have been recognised by the recent award of the North East Centre for Energy Materials (NECEM, award number: EP/R021503/1). This research-focused programme will be highly complementary to ReNU which is a training-focused programme. A key strength of the ReNU consortium is the breadth of expertise across the energy sector, including: thin film and new materials; direct solar energy conversion; turbines for wind, wave and tidal energy; piezoelectric and thermoelectric devices; water splitting; CO2 valorisation; batteries and fuel cells. Working closely with a balanced portfolio of 36 partners that includes multinational companies, small and medium size enterprises and local Government organisations, the ReNU team has designed a compelling doctoral training programme which aims to engender entrepreneurial skills which will drive UK regional and national productivity in the area of Clean Growth, one of four Grand Challenges identified in the UK Government's recent Industrial Strategy. The same group of partners will also provide significant input to the ReNU in the form of industrial supervision, training for doctoral candidates and supervisors, and access to facilities and equipment. Success in renewable energy and sustainable distributed energy fundamentally requires a whole systems approach as well as understanding of political, social and technical contexts. ReNU's doctoral training is thus naturally suited to a cohort approach in which cross-fertilisation of knowledge and ideas is necessary and embedded. The training programme also aims to address broader challenges facing wider society including unconscious bias training and outreach to address diversity issues in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects and industries. Furthermore, external professional accreditation will be sought for ReNU from the Institute of Physics, Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Engineering Technology, thus providing a starting point from which doctoral graduates will work towards "Chartered" status. The combination of an industry-driven doctoral training programme to meet identifiable market needs, strong industrial commitment through the provision of training, facilities and supervision, an established platform of research excellence in energy materials between the institutions and unique training opportunities that include internationalisation and professional accreditation, creates a transformative programme to drive forward UK innovation in renewable and sustainable distributed energy.

Digital technologies and services are shaping our lives. Work, education, finance, health, politics and society are all affected. They also raise concomitant and complex challenges relating to the security of and trust in systems and data. TIPS (Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security) issues thus lie at the heart of our adoption of new technologies and are critical to our economic prosperity and the well-being of our citizens. Identifying and addressing such issues requires a coherent, coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach, with strong stakeholder relationships at the centre. SPRITE+ is a vehicle for communication, engagement, and collaboration for people involved in research, practice, and policy relevant to TIPS in digital contexts. Since launching in 2019, we have established ourselves as the go-to point of contact to engage with the broadest UK network of interdisciplinary, cross-sector digital TIPS experts. The second phase of SPRITE+ ('SPRITE+2') will continue to build our membership, whilst expanding the breadth and depth of our innovation, and deepen our impact through proactive engagement. SPRITE+2 will have the following objectives: 1. Expand our TIPS community, harnessing the expertise and collaborative potential of the national and international TIPS communities 2. Identify and prioritise future TIPS research challenges 3. Explore and develop priority research areas to enhance our collective understanding of future global TIPS challenges 4. Stimulate innovative research through sandpits, industry led calls, and horizon scanning 5. Deepen engagement with TIPS research end users across sectors to accelerate knowledge Exchange 6. Understand, inform, and influence policy making and practice at regional, national and international level These will be delivered through four work packages and two cross cutting activities. All work packages will be led by the PI (Elliot) to ensure that connections are made and synergies exploited. Each sub-work package will be led by a member of the Management Team and supported by our Expert Fellows and Project Partners. WP1 Develop the Network We will deliver a set of activities designed to expand, broaden, and engage the network, from expert meetings and workshops to student bootcamps and international conferences. WP2 Engage stakeholders to enhance knowledge exchange and deliver impact. We will be greatly enhancing our purposive engagement activity in SPRITE+2. This activity will include a new business intelligence function and PP engagement grants, designed to enhance mutual understanding between researchers and stakeholders. WP3 Identify, prioritise, and explore future TIPS challenges We will select and then investigate priority areas of future TIPS. Two areas are pre-scoped based on the work we have done so far in SPRITE+ (TIPS in digital cities; trustworthy digital identities) with a further two be identified during the lead up to SPRITE+2. WP4 Drive innovation in research This WP concerns the initiation and production of high-quality impactful research. Through horizon scanning, sandpits and industry-led calls, we will steer ideas through an innovation pipeline ensuring SPRITE+2 is future focused. Cross cutting activities The first cross-cutting activity will accelerate the translation of TIPS research into policy and practice for public and private sector end uses. The second focuses on mechanisms to facilitate communication within our community. The experiences of SPRITE+ and the other DE Network+s demonstrate that it takes years of consistent and considerable effort for a new network to grow membership and develop productive relationships with stakeholders. In SPRITE+2 grant we would hit the ground running and maximise the impact of four additional years of funding. A successful track record, a well-established team, and a raft of ambitious new plans provide a solid foundation for strong delivery in 2023-27.

Insects are the little things that run the world (E.O. Wilson). With increasing recognition of the importance of insects as the dominant component of almost all ecosystems, there are growing concerns that insect biodiversity has declined globally, with serious consequences for the ecosystem services on which we all depend. Major gaps in knowledge limit progress in understanding the magnitude and direction of change, and hamper the design of solutions. Information about insects trends is highly fragmented, and time-series data is restricted and unrepresentative, both between different groups of insects (e.g. lepidoptera vs beetles vs flies) and between different regions. Critically, we lack primary data from the most biodiverse parts of the world. For example, insects help sustain tropical ecosystems that play a major role in regulating the global climate system and the hydrological cycle that delivers drinking water to millions of people. To date, progress in insect monitoring has been hampered by many technical challenges. Insects are estimated to comprise around 80% of all described species, making it impossible to sample their populations in a consistent way across regions and ecosystems. Automated sensors, deep learning and computer vision offer the best practical and cost-effective solution for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. Inter-disciplinary research teams are needed to meet this challenge. Our project is timely to help UK researchers to develop new international partnerships and networks to underpin the development of long-term and sustainable collaborations for this exciting, yet nascent, research field that spans engineering, computing and biology. There is a pressing need for new research networks and partnerships to maximize potential to revolutionise the scope and capacity for insect monitoring worldwide. We will open up this research field through four main activities: (a) interactive, online and face-to-face engagement between academic and practitioner stakeholders, including key policy-makers, via online webinars and at focused knowledge exchange and grant-writing workshops in Canada and Europe; (b) a knowledge exchange mission between the UK and North America, to share practical experience of building and deploying sensors, develop deep learning and computer vision for insects, and to build data analysis pipelines to support research applications; (c) a proof-of-concept field trial spanning the UK, Denmark, The Netherlands, Canada, USA and Panama. Testing automated sensors against traditional approaches in a range of situation; (d) dissemination of shared learning throughout this project and wider initiatives, building a new community of practice with a shared vision for automated insect monitoring technology to meet its worldwide transformational potential. Together, these activities will make a significant contribution to the broader, long-term goal of delivering the urgent need for a practical solution to monitor insects anywhere in the world, to ultimately support a more comprehensive assessment of the patterns and consequences of insect declines, and impact of interventions. By building international partnerships and research networks we will develop sustainable collaborations to address how to quantify the complexities of insect dynamics and trends in response to multiple drivers, and evaluate the ecological and human-linked causes and consequences of the changes. Crucially, this project is a vital stepping-stone to help identify solutions for addressing the global biodiversity crisis as well as research to understand the biological impacts of climate change and to design solutions for sustainable agriculture. Effective insect monitoring underpins the evaluation of future socio-economic, land-use and climate mitigation policies.

There are clear drivers in the transport industry towards lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions through the introduction of designs involving combinations of different material classes, such as steel, titanium, magnesium and aluminium alloys, metal sheet and castings, and laminates in more efficient hybrid structures. The future direction of the transport industry will thus undoubtedly be based on multi-material solutions. This shift in design philosophy is already past the embryonic stage, with the introduction of aluminium front end steel body shells (BMW 5 series) and the integration of aluminium sheet and magnesium high pressure die castings in aluminium car bodies (e.g. Jaguar XK).Such material combinations are currently joined by fasteners, which are expensive and inefficient, as they are very difficult to weld by conventional technologies like electrical resistance spot, MIG arc, and laser welding. New advanced solid state friction based welding techniques can potentially overcome many of the issues associated with joining dissimilar material combinations, as they lower the overall heat input and do not melt the materials. This greatly reduces the tendency for poor bond strengths, due to interfacial reaction and solidification cracking, as well as damage to thermally sensitive materials like laminates and aluminium alloys used in automotive bodies, which are designed to harden during paint baking. Friction joining techniques are also far more efficient, resulting in energy savings of > 90% relative to resistance spot and laser welding, are more robust processes, and can be readily used in combination with adhesive bonding.This project, in close collaboration with industry (e.g. Jaguar - Land Rover, Airbus, Corus, Meridian, Novelis, TWI, Sonobond) will investigate materials and process issues associated with optimising friction joining of hybrid, more mass efficient structures, focusing on; Friction Stir, Friction Stir Spot, and High Power Ultrasonic Spot welding. The work will be underpinned by novel approaches to developing models of these exciting new processes and detailed analysis and modelling of key material interactions, such as interfacial bonding / reaction and weld microstructure formation.