Materials characterisation is critical to the understanding of key processes in a range of functional and structural materials that have applications across several industrial sectors. These sectors include strategic priorities such as discovery of functional materials, energy storage and conversion and materials manufacturing, and healthcare. Materials characterisation is increasing in complexity, driven by a need to understand how materials properties evolve in operando, over their full lifetimes and over all levels of their hierarchy to predict their ultimate performance. The new generation of materials characterisation techniques will require: 1. Greater spatial and chemical resolution; 2. Correlated information that bridges nano- and centimeter -length scales, to relate the nanoscale chemistry and structure of interest to their intrinsically multi-scale surroundings, and 3. Temporal information about the kinetics of materials behaviour in extreme environments. The CDT will train students in a range of complementary techniques, ensuring that they have the breadth and depth of knowledge to make informed choices when considering key characterisation challenges. Our CDT will use an integrated training approach, to ensure that the technical content is well aligned with the research objectives of each student. This training in specific research needs will be informed by our industry partners and will reflect the suite of research projects that the students will undertake. Our portfolio of research projects will provide an innovative and ambitious research and training experience that will enhance the UK's long-term capabilities across high value industrial sectors. Additionally, our students will receive training in a range of topics that will support their research progress including in science communication, research ethics, career development planning and data science. These additional courses will be distributed throughout the 4-year PhD programme and will ensure that a cohesive training plan is in place for each student, supported by cohort mentors. Each student graduating from the CDT-ACM will leave will a through understanding of the key challenges presented by materials characterisation problems, and have the tools to provide creative solutions to these. They will have first hand experience of collaborating with industry partners and will be well placed to address the strategic needs of the UK Industrial Strategy. Our training will be developed in collaboration with leading partner organisations, and include international collaboration with the AMBER centre, a Science Foundation Ireland centre, as well as national facilities such as Diamond Light Source. Innovative on-line and remote instrument access will be developed that will enable both UK and Irish cohorts to interact seamlessly. Industry partners will be closely involved in designing and delivering training activities including at summer schools, and will include entrepreneurship activities. Overall the 70 students that will be trained over the lifetime of the CDT will receive excellent tuition and research training at two world leading institutions with unique characterisation abilities.

There is an urgent need for new power electronic technologies to underpin the transition to net zero. The imminent risks for our planet have been highlighted by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calling our current status 'code red' for human driven global heating in its scientific report published in 2021. Deploying power electronics in renewable generation systems enables smart control of grid networks and efficient energy utilization. This is also true of transportation, which in turn will support a dramatic reduction of the 72% of global primary energy consumption currently wasted world-wide. In this programme grant (PG), we develop a transformative next generation of Aluminium Gallium Nitride (AlGaN) Solid-State Circuit Breakers (SSCBs), with greatly improved efficiency and greater voltage range, to many kVs, enabling anticipated global energy savings >20% compared to continuing with current technologies. Circuit breakers are critical components for safe, reliable electrical power systems, including for power-electronics-dense grids, but a step-change in performance is needed. According to the major power electronics company ABB / Hitachi Energy, SSCBs are 'the weakest link in next-generation electricity infrastructure'. The slow response time of existing mechanical circuit breakers available on the market risks damaging sensitive equipment. The alternative use of Silicon (Si) - based SSCBs, although providing superior switching speed (<1 microseconds) versus mechanical circuit breakers (>100 microseconds), and offering the fast circuit protection critically needed for high-performance power distribution, presently suffer from high conduction losses and are often limited at best to 4-5 kV safe operation for a single chip. Higher voltage ranges are required in increasingly more complex and varied application areas including electric planes and ships. For example, Si-based SSCB inefficiencies would contribute up to an additional 600 Mtons of CO2 emissions per year if implemented in the global cruise liner industry alone. The vision and ambition is to address current roadblocks in power electronics by developing new SSCBs. The limitations in existing technologies can be largely eliminated using ultrawide bandgap AlGaN SSCBs, which conservatively have a 100x improvement in efficiency compared to existing commercial high-voltage devices such as Si insulated-gate bipolar transistors and Silicon Carbide (SiC) metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors, to enable efficient, compact SSCBs with minimal cooling requirements. In 20 years, it is expected that these highly efficient ultrawide bandgap AlGaN power electronic components will have displaced all other technologies such as Si and SiC for high-current high-voltage uses, e.g. in power distribution and transportation such as in trains, maritime and planes, helping enable a carbon neutral society. The underlying physical reason for the great benefit of using AlGaN is its much greater bandgap (up to 6.2 eV) compared to Si (1.1 eV) and SiC (3.2 eV). The commonly used power electronics Baliga Figure of Merit, i.e. the suitability of a material for power electronics, of AlGaN is nearly 1,800 compared to 1 for Si and 340 for SiC, enabling a revolution in what power electronics will be able to deliver. Many interlinked technological challenges need to be addressed, including AlGaN materials growth, and methods to enable large enough layer thicknesses, alongside the development and fabrication of new device concepts to achieve high performance and reliable AlGaN SSCBs. The PG will be driven by the realization of transformative device prototypes, with ever increasing complexity, challenge and innovation during the course of the PG, ultimately driving UK research in this area towards end-application prototypes. The high-power application space is huge, and developments will be steered by involving end-users in a co-creation role for the SSCB prototypes.

Medical imaging has transformed clinical medicine in the last 40 years. Diagnostic imaging provides the means to probe the structure and function of the human body without having to cut open the body to see disease or injury. Imaging is sensitive to changes associated with the early stages of cancer allowing detection of disease at a sufficient early stage to have a major impact on long-term survival. Combining imaging with therapy delivery and surgery enables 3D imaging to be used for guidance, i.e. minimising harm to surrounding tissue and increasing the likelihood of a successful outcome. The UK has consistently been at the forefront of many of these developments. Despite these advances we still do not know the most basic mechanisms and aetiology of many of the most disabling and dangerous diseases. Cancer survival remains stubbornly low for many of the most common cancers such as lung, head and neck, liver, pancreas. Some of the most distressing neurological disorders such as the dementias, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and some of the more common brain cancers, still have woefully poor long term cure rates. Imaging is the primary means of diagnosis and for studying disease progression and response to treatment. To fully achieve its potential imaging needs to be coupled with computational modelling of biological function and its relationship to tissue structure at multiple scales. The advent of powerful computing has opened up exciting opportunities to better understand disease initiation and progression and to guide and assess the effectiveness of therapies. Meanwhile novel imaging methods, such as photoacoustics, and combinations of technologies such as simultaneous PET and MRI, have created entirely new ways of looking at healthy function and disturbances to normal function associated with early and late disease progression. It is becoming increasingly clear that a multi-parameter, multi-scale and multi-sensor approach combining advanced sensor design with advanced computational methods in image formation and biological systems modelling is the way forward. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Medical Imaging will provide comprehensive and integrative doctoral training in imaging sciences and methods. The programme has a strong focus on new image acquisition technologies, novel data analysis methods and integration with computational modelling. This will be a 4-year PhD programme designed to prepare students for successful careers in academia, industry and the healthcare sector. It comprises an MRes year in which the student will gain core competencies in this rapidly developing field, plus the skills to innovate both with imaging devices and with computational methods. During the PhD (years 2 to 4) the student will undertake an in-depth study of an aspect of medical imaging and its application to healthcare and will seek innovative solutions to challenging problems. Most projects will be strongly multi-disciplinary with a principle supervisor being a computer scientist, physicist, mathematician or engineer, a second supervisor from a clinical or life science background, and an industrial supervisor when required. Each project will lie in the EPSRC's remit. The Centre will comprise 72 students at its peak after 4 years and will be obtaining dedicated space and facilities. The participating departments are strongly supportive of this initiative and will encourage new academic appointees to actively participate in its delivery. The Centre will fill a significant skills gap that has been identified and our graduates will have a major impact in academic research in his area, industrial developments including attracting inward investment and driving forward start-ups, and in advocacy of this important and expanding area of medical engineering.

Our society is highly dependent on catalytic science which is central to major global challenges such as efficient conversion of energy, mitigation of greenhouse gases, destroying pollutants in the atmosphere and in water, and processing biomass which all rely intrinsically on catalysis. In addition, catalysis is a key technology for the chemical industry; it is estimated that catalytic science contributes to 90% of chemical manufacturing processes. Chemistry-using industries are is a major component of the UK's manufacturing output and vital part of the overall UK economy, generating in excess of £50 billion per annum. The ONS Annual Business Survey (2012) estimated chemical and pharma manufacturing to be worth £19 billion p.a. and predicted that by 2030, the UK chemical industry will have enabled the chemistry-using industries to increase their Gross Value Added contribution to the UK economy by 50%, from £195 billion to £300 billion. Understanding how catalyst work is notoriously difficult because of the low concentrations and transient nature of catalytically active species. In this project will develop new equipment based on state-of-the-art flow NMR methods that will enable the rapid development of new catalysts for academic research and industrial processes. Crucially the equipment we propose will allow high sensitivity and real-time monitoring of catalytic reactions under a wide range of realistic reaction conditions (e.g., concentrations, temperatures and pressures). This will provide a unique facility to study the scope, productivity, selectivity and deactivation of catalysts, which in turn will provide insight into mechanisms and allow us to develop new catalytic systems. The equipment will be utilized by academic and industrial scientists and engineers at the University of Bath and throughout the UK to understand and develop catalysts for a wide range of processes of academic and industrial relevance. Areas that will benefit from the equipment will include; catalysts for renewable polymers, catalysts for utilisation and valorisation of biomass, catalysts for sustainable energy, and catalysts for sustainable synthesis of pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. The progress that will be enabled by the equipment will be exploited, particularly within the pharma and fine chemicals sectors, through collaboration with a wide variety of UK catalyst companies and chemical producers.

Synthetic biology is a new scientific discipline that aims to make the engineering of biological systems easier, more predictable and more reliable. Synthetic biologists aim to develop new techniques, technologies and reagents that will allow biological or biologically based products to be made easily, quickly and cheaply, and in sufficient quantities to make them useful. Advances in this area have the potential to provide us with new fuels, materials, diagnostics and medicines, and offer solutions to many of the major global challenges that we face today. For example providing sufficient food for the world's population and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. For synthetic biology to meet these challenges, however, will require the concerted efforts of large groups of scientists working together in teams combining their expertise, skills and knowledge. To achieve this we aim to establish BrisSynBio (BSB), a Bristol-based Synthetic Biology Research Centre, which will bring together a group of scientists from a range of different research backgrounds, e.g. biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering and robotics, mathematics and physics. BSB researchers will combine their expertise in such a way that global challenges can be met and resolved. Examples of the type of work that BSB scientists will carry out include: modifying biosynthetic pathways in microorganisms such to produce new antibiotics; assembling virus-like particles to present new routes to vaccines; building simple cells from scratch for use in the production of important but sometimes toxic chemicals; using red blood cells to deliver complex molecules like anti-cancer drugs directly to tumours; and reprograming bacteria to perform useful tasks like sensing environmental pollutants. Within the BSB, researchers will be organised into teams with complementary skills who will work together on these challenging projects. There will be lots of communication between the teams, and new and exciting research will emerge as a result. Teams will be linked together by cross-cutting themes to promote interdisciplinarity and exchange of ideas. To help foster and develop interactions further, BSB academics will attend monthly discussion meetings, and all BSB academics and researchers will attend monthly research seminars and an annual 2-day regional symposium. The University of Bristol has recently invested heavily in new buildings and laboratory space, perfect for housing BSB. Now we need further investment to purchase the essential equipment that we will need to underpin and progress our research, and also to attract more scientists to expand synthetic-biology activities. We will also work in collaboration with a range of different project partners including researchers form around the world, the public and policy makers, and industrialists, such that we can maximise the impact of BrisSynBio. Finally, synthetic biology is not without controversy, the notion of tinkering with biology and life does not sit comfortably with everyone. Therefore, it is very important that all BrisSynBio members are trained to consider the ethical, legal and social implications of their work, placing it in a broader societal context. To achieve this BSB members will be trained in responsible innovation and public engagement, and encouraged to put these new skills into practice through commercialising their work where appropriate, and at 6-monthly science cafes and public dialogues.