Groundwater plays a major role in supplying water to millions of people globally. Across the UK, groundwater contributes >75% of water supplies in some counties and provides crucial baseflow contributions to streams and wetlands, thereby sustaining flow regimes and ecosystem health, respectively. At the same time as water resources are threatened by climate extremes, water demand continues to increase with competing demands from domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Thus, sustainable management of groundwater resources is crucial for communities' resilience and economic development. Cost-effective groundwater monitoring is a key challenge. Installing and maintaining borehole networks is often costly and impractical due to lack of land access. The recent breakthrough invention of a 'gravimeter-on-a-chip' using a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) provides an exciting new sensor to overcome these limitations at a fraction of the cost. The project will evaluate the feasibility of new MEMS gravimeter technology as a low-cost non-intrusive method for monitoring groundwater storage fluctuations and for determining key aquifer parameters in UK bedrock aquifers on a relevant scale for catchment-scale water resource management. The project will advance the generic scientific understanding regarding the hydrogeological application of microgravity methods and establish the new low-cost sensor technology in the field of hydrogeological studies for the first time.

This project aims to derive and develop new theoretical and low-cost numerical methods for analysing general unsteady aerofoil and wing flows that may exhibit nonlinearities such as flow separation and vortex shedding. The solvers implemented through these methods will be made available (open-source) to the public, academia and industry through the UNSflow project. Unsteady fluid dynamics is ubiquitous in modern aerospace research problems such as aerodynamic optimisation of wind-energy harvesting devices, design of flapping wing fliers, use of flapping foils for propulsion/high-lift, and design of aircraft with flexible wings (such as HALE - High-Altitude Long Endurance, or futuristic aircraft with large aspect ratios). Reducing emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, which is the prime motivation behind many of these problems, can only be accomplished by a mix of renewable strategies and incremental improvements. The flow physics in these problems exhibits significant nonlinearities arising from flow separation and vortex shedding which cannot be adequately represented by closed-form theoretical formulations. Though computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental methods have contributed much to the understanding of unsteady flow features, they are unsuitable for use in preliminary design and optimisation because of time and cost considerations. This project aims to develop low-cost, physics-based models for unsteady aerodynamics based on the discrete-vortex method, which will enable fast simulations of medium-fidelity, and provide a simple framework for parametric studies, design optimisation, real-time simulation and interdisciplinary studies (by coupling with other solvers). UNSflow intends to be a new class of low-cost solvers that sacrifice an acceptable level of accuracy in fluid simulations for a tremendous speedup in simulation time, while being fully physics-based and retaining the fundamental flow quantities. The guiding philosophy in development of the solver is to retain only the physics which are significant in the flow regimes of specific applications. They are hence not an alternative to high-fidelity CFD and experiments, which will still be needed in the final phases of industrial production, but for fewer ideas/concepts. In effect, this will lead to reduced time and cost in the design cycle, and perhaps even a better solution in the long run, because more exploration of the design space will be possible. This research also intends to support the activities of teachers, students and hobbyists who may not have access to CFD software and computing resources. Potential applications for this class of users include design of ornithopters, quadcopters, and home-made wind-energy harvesting devices. The research to be carried out in this project is fundamental in nature and underpins several applied problems. It is intended to derive new theoretical and numerical tools to study general unsteady flows with intermittent separation and reattachment. It will assist the principal investigator's research group in its research on applied problems such as aerodynamic optimisation, dynamic stall alleviation, flapping-wing design and wind-energy harvesting. The research will also be useful to other research groups working on unsteady flows (for both fundamental and applied research), as a preliminary design/analysis tool for various applications, and student projects.

Cherenkov light is emitted when a charged particle is traversing a material faster then the speed of light in this material. This faint source of light provides invaluable information on the particle, its path and speed. As such, detector systems using Cherenkov light have been crucial experimental tools for many scientific discoveries, from Astronomy to neutrino physics to the detailed understanding of the subatomic world explored by nuclear and particle physicists. Advances in scientific understanding go hand in hand with advances in the development of instrumentation for the next generation of experiments. In the field of neutrino physics, a large underground detector is planned to be installed in this decade in the Boulby Underground Laboratory in Yorkshire. A crucial next step for our understanding of the ways quarks and gluons act together to form the nucleons and nuclei around us will be made by the planned Electron Ion Collider in the USA. Both project will rely on the next generation of Cherenkov detectors to fulfil their science potential. The detection of the faint signal form Cherenkov light and extraction of the maximum amount of information from this source requires visible light photon sensors covering large area while still providing a very good position and time resolution. They have to operate efficiently in challenging circumstances. A new device based on Micro-Channel plates in a large tile, the LAPPD, has been recently developed and has become available for evaluation. This project will study the properties and performance of this device in detail and evaluate its performance with respect to the challenging demands of the next generation of Cherenkov detectors for fundamental physics research.

Sensors permeate our society, measurement underpins quantitative action and standardized accurate measurements are a foundation of all commerce. The ability to measure parameters and sense phenomena with increasing precision has always led to dramatic advances in science and in technology - for example X-ray imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), interferometry and the scanning-tunneling microscope. Our rapidly growing understanding of how to engineer and control quantum systems vastly expands the limits of measurement and of sensing, opening up opportunities in radically alternative methods to the current state of the art in sensing. Through the developments proposed in this Fellowship, I aim to deliver sensors enhanced by the harnessing of unique quantum mechanical phenomena and principles inspired by insights into quantum physics to develop a series of prototypes with end-users. I plan to provide alternative approaches to the state of the art, to potentially reduce overall cost and dramatically increase capability, to reach new limits of precision measurement and to develop this technology for commercialization. Light is an excellent probe for sensing and measurement. Unique wavelength dependent absorption, and reemission of photons by atoms enable the properties of matter to be measured and the identification of constituent components. Interferometers provide ultra-sensitive measurement of optical path length changes on the nanometer-scale, translating to physical changes in distance, material expansion or sample density for example. However, for any canonical optical sensor, quantum mechanics predicts a fundamental limit of how much noise in such experiment can be suppressed - this is the so-called shot noise and is routinely observed as a noise floor when using a laser, the canonical "clean" source of radiation. By harnessing the quantum properties of light, it is possible reach precision beyond shot noise, enabling a new paradigm of precision sensors to be realized. Such quantum-enhanced sensors can use less light in the optical probe to gain the same level of precision in a conventional optical sensor. This enables, for example: the reduction of detrimental absorption in biological samples that can alter sample properties or damage it; the resolution of weak signals in trace gas detection; reduction of photon pressure in interferometry that can alter the measurement outcome; increase in precision when a limit of optical laser input is reached. Quantum-enhanced techniques are being used by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) scientific collaboration to reach sub-shot noise precision interferometry of gravitational wave detection in kilometer-scale Michelson interferometers (GEO600). However, there is otherwise a distinct lack of practical devices that prove the potential of quantum-enhanced sensing as a disruptive technology for healthcare, precision manufacture, national security and commerce. For quantum-enhanced sensors to become small-scale, portable and therefore practical for an increased range of applications outside of the specialized quantum optics laboratory, it is clear that there is an urgent need to engineer an integrated optics platform, tailored to the needs of quantum-enhanced sensing. Requirements include robustness, miniaturization inherent phase stability and greater efficiency. Lithographic fabrication of much of the platform offers repeatable and affordable manufacture. My Fellowship proposal aims to bring together revolutionary quantum-enhanced sensing capabilities and photonic chip scale architectures. This will enable capabilities beyond the limits of classical physics for: absorbance spectroscopy, lab-on-chip interferometry and process tomography (revealing an unknown quantum process with fewer measurements and fewer probe photons).

Childhood and adolescence are recognised as key life stages that set the foundations for health in adulthood and for the future social and economic development of the societies young people live in. Yet, young people face extraordinary pressures on maintaining health in an ever-changing environment, driven by changes in technology, communications and the media that they are exposed to. This has coincided with an increasing prevalence of mental health problems, especially among girls. The traditional sciences of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine often focus on understanding and solving health problems at the individual level, but many of the risk factors for poor mental health and wellbeing are driven by broader social and environmental factors and affected by the relationships we have, and the settings, neighbourhoods and communities we live within. A different approach is needed to find solutions to address these risk factors and improve mental health. It is important that this new approach takes young people themselves as the starting point to make sure that their voice is heard at every stage of the research process, including when we set research priorities, in co-designing interventions, running trials, and in dissemination. To achieve this, the Transdisciplinary Research for the Improvement of Youth Mental Public Health (TRIUMPH) Network will bring together young people, health practitioners, policy-makers and those working with voluntary organisations, with academics from across clinical, social sciences, arts and humanities, design, and computer sciences disciplines. We will work together to find new ways to improve mental health and wellbeing, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged populations where need is greatest. We will target our efforts at the peer groups, social networks and education settings with strongest influence on health behaviours in adolescence. The TRIUMPH Network will deliver a series of events and activities to focus our attention where mental health need is greatest. This will include workshops to understand the mental health problems facing young people, find possible solutions and take forward project ideas, and information exchange and community engagement events to share learning and increase the involvement of the groups and communities affected by youth mental health issues. Network funding will be used to support small research projects to seek and develop solutions to the mental health challenges that young people face and to prepare for larger funding applications to evaluate these. Young people will be invited, and supported, to take part in all of the activities of the Network. We will employ a Design Innovation approach using different visual methods and creative outputs to support engagement with young people from various backgrounds and to make the decision-making process more accessible. In employing a Research Associate with significant experience of participatory research with young people to lead on this work, we will ensure there is support in place for vulnerable young people who take part in the Network. The TRIUMPH Network will facilitate new research collaborations to strengthen the UK evidence base and, ultimately, to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people across the UK.