Heavy metal (HM) pollution is one of the most serious environmental problems undermining global sustainability. Presence of HM in water further contaminates soil, enters food cycle, and finally accumulates in brains, kidneys, livers, and stomach, undermining human health. There is a market gap in low-cost on-line HM sensor, and this is needed to measure HM in-situ on-demand to reduce, mitigate or control environment contamination. Hence, an innovative solution is required to exploit the advantages of optical fibre sensors (OFS), in developing a compact, cost effective, fast, robust, and portable sensor for the accurate detection of several HM ions, simultaneously. In this project, besides the key focus of training the Researcher, the innovative potential of multiplexing OFS will be additionally combined with an enhanced light-matter interaction in tapered nano optical fibre (NOF) to increase its sensitivity and thus create a new generation of OFS to detect multiple HM ions simultaneously. Subsequently, wavelength selective grating will be inscribed on the NFBG along with Au film coated to enhance sensitivity. Additionally, graphene oxide (GO), and ion imprinted polymer-chitosan (IIP-CS) will be coated, which will not only improve the selectivity, but the added polymer will also strengthen the NFBG. In this project, the Researcher will numerically optimize the structural parameters and study the effect of fabrication tolerances of the OFS by using the finite element method. Subsequently, optimised OFS will be fabricated by a using laser induced grating fabrication technique and the Au/GO/(Pb2+, Cu2+, and Cr2+)/IP-CS will be coated on 3 concatenated sections of the NFBG surface by using dip coating method for simultaneous detection of Pb, Cu and Cr. The project aims to exploit multiplexing capability of OFS, which will use only a single interrogator and thus produce a cost-effective, sensitive, fast and on-line HM ions to provide safe water and safer environment.

There are relatively very few researchers in structural dynamics and aeroelasticity who are not satisfied with numerically based investigations such as the use of conventional finite element methods. These researchers endeavour to seek insight into profound and fundamental behaviour of structures, particularly made of composite materials that are increasingly being used in aeronautical design.The prinicipal investigator (PI) is one such researcher in the UK, whereas Professor Dewey Hodges (DH) of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) and Professor Liviu Librescu (LL) of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) are two amongst the very few in the USA. The PI shares common research interests in structural dynamics and aeroelasticity with DH and LL who have outstanding record and international reputation in research. The PI intends to visit GIT and VPI for a week in each, to interact with DH, LL and their research teams. The visit will provide mutual motivation and enable the PI, DH and LL to exchange ideas and information in the areas of their research interest. It will thus be possible for the PI to prepare necessary ground work for future collaboration with GIT and VPI and initiate a programme of joint research within the field of aeroelasticity. The PI, DH and LL have overlapping as well as complementary expertise. The computer programmes developed by them will be exchanged. As a spin-off from the visit, the PI will attend the 47th AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference and present a paper on the subject.

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of irreversible blindness. It affects 1 in 50 people over 40 years old, all of whom must currently travel to hospital once or twice a year for vision checks. Over 1M such "monitoring" assessments are carried out by the NHS every year. These hospital visits are not only inconvenient: they are unsustainable. Even before COVID, NHS backlogs meant that twenty patients a month were going blind due to delayed glaucoma appointments, and patient numbers are expected to double by 2030. Hospital-only monitoring is also insufficient for the 1 in 23 people with the most aggressive form of glaucoma. Such individuals are liable to experience sudden, irreversible sight loss between hospital appointments. The solution is home-monitoring. If people could check their own vision at home, then sight loss could be detected more quickly, conveniently, and cheaply. People could choose to test their vision more frequently, or when they started to notice a change: allowing sight loss to be flagged and treated sooner. Lower risk patients could attend fewer hospital appointments: reducing unnecessary travel, and freeing up resources to focus on those most in need. And by testing vision at home, more time in the clinic could be spent talking to the doctor face-to-face. That is why over the last eight years we have developed Eyecatcher: the world's first validated vision test for glaucoma home-monitoring. The challenge now is to scale up Eyecatcher, and get it into the hands of patients, in a sustainable, cost-effective way.

This project aims to contribute to a multi-disciplinary understanding of shadow banking and banks’ interactions with it, which includes accounting, banking and macroeconomics, with the purpose to assess their response to monetary policy changes. The financial crisis revealed how the banking system is both intertwined with, and exposed to, (systemic) risks in the shadow banking system. This latter is generally defined as “credit intermediation involving entities and activities outside the regulated banking system”, or non-bank credit intermediation. The complexity of the issue, the heterogeneous legal forms and accounting practice assumed has so far limited empirical research on these “de facto” banks and their activities outside the scope of the regulatory framework. Based on extensive rating agencies’ data, we examine how global shadow banking in the form of asset-backed commercial paper (ABCPs) – where the 2007- crisis started - are affected by monetary policy and can become a potential source of financial and banking instability because of their market-based funding. This research is innovative as it takes a global view of the shadow banking system by: i) focusing on the (lending)-activities of shadow banks, regardless of their legal forms and their reporting practices; ii) including US, but also EU and UK banks as major global players; iii) using micro data at ABCPs-portfolio level. After the crisis, this issue remains relevant in the current global uncertain economic environment and in the Euro Area as early-stage regulatory initiatives (FSB, BCBS) are aiming to transform shadow banking into a resilient market-based financing as an alternative to bank funding to support the recovery of real economy. The project addresses one of the focus areas in the agenda of Horizon 2020 in line with Europe’s main challenge to overcome the economic crisis: i) understanding the evolution of the crisis and ii) understanding the impact of global trends on the EU’s economy. ---

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.