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Hydrogen and alternative liquid fuels have an essential role in the net zero transition by providing connectivity and flexibility across the energy system. Despite advancements in the field of hydrogen research both in the physical sciences and engineering, significant barriers remain to the scalable adoption of hydrogen and alternative liquid fuel technologies, and energy services, into the UK's local and national whole system infrastructure policy. These are technical barriers, organisational barriers, regulatory and societal barriers, and financial barriers. The vision as Co-ordinator of the Centre for Systems Integration of Hydrogen and Alternative Fuels (CSI-HALF) is to deliver a fundamental shift in critical analysis of the role of hydrogen in the context of the overall energy landscape, through the creation of robust tools which are investment-oriented in their analysis. A Whole Systems and Energy Systems Integration approach is needed here, in order to better understand the interconnected and interdependent nature of complex energy systems from a technical, social, environmental and economic perspective. This 6-month proposal is to deliver key stakeholder engagement, to develop a comprehensive, co-created research programme for the Centre. The Centre is led by Prof Sara Walker, currently Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration, supported by Prof David Flynn of Heriot Watt University and Prof Jianzhong Wu of Cardiff University. The team have extensive experience of large energy research projects and strong networks of stakeholders across England, Wales and Scotland. They bring to the Centre major hydrogen demonstrators through support from partners involved in InTEGReL in Gateshead, ReFLEX in Orkney, and FLEXIS Demonstration in South Wales for example. This 6-month phase is an engagement exercise. It is our responsibility to engage with the community in a manner which respects and supports their motivations. Our philosophy in undertaking this engagement work is based around principles of inclusion, authenticity and tailoring. We will de-risk the integration of HALF into the UK energy system, through full representation of the hydrogen spectrum with open and integrated analysis of top-down and ground-up perspectives, including representation of the immediate and wider stakeholder group e.g. financial markets. We shall engage with this broad section of stakeholders with the support of experts in citizen and community engagement. These expert partners will enable us to produce the highest possible quality of engagement in the 6-month period. Our initial approaches to key stakeholders have been extremely positive. We have already engaged with, and have support from representatives of: pink, green and blue hydrogen production; hydrogen transportation stakeholders; hydrogen end users; policy makers and community groups; financial and consultation organisations; and key academics. We shall engage to create a vibrant, diverse, and open community that has a deeper understanding of whole systems approaches and the role of hydrogen and alternative liquid fuels (HALF) within that. We shall do so in a way which embeds EDI in the approach. We shall do so in a way which is a hybrid of virtual and in-person field work consultation, and develop appropriate digital tools for engagement. This builds on accredited practices and inclusive key performance indicators. The network created as a result of the engagement activity will be consulted on with respect to key research questions for the Centre, to co-create a research programme. Through relationship building, webinars and focus groups, we shall deliver an expertise map for hydrogen integration, an information pack containing the state of the art "commons", and a full proposal with comprehensive research programme which has extensive community buy-in.

This 44-month project will establish "LPIP Strategic Co-ordination Hub - What Works Centre for Place" as the Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Strategic Co-ordination Hub. This will involve bringing together a network of people/organisations who have successfully delivered on place partnerships, engagement, impact, and translational research. The Hub is a national consortium, led by the University of Birmingham, convening stakeholders across the research and policy ecosystem. It is concerned with drawing together understanding of local challenges, and formulating solutions, across the UK through an innovative and effective service-driven approach to place-based policy making and public service delivery. It is designed to lead to a step-change in the quality and impact of the evidence created by universities and their local place partners. Our approach is based on extending and accelerating learning UK-wide from the successful and highly regarded place-based West Midlands Regional Economic Development Institute (WMREDI) partnership. The delivery team will be led by a leadership team, comprising staff from the University of Birmingham, the University of the West of England and Inner Circle Consulting (non-academic Co-Investigator) and a wider network team of 13 delivery partners (a mix of academics and non-academics from different geographical areas and with contrasting thematic specialisms) with a track record of rigorous high-quality engaged research relevant to local policy and practice. The Hub will work with local LPIPs and partnership communities in their places, embedding co-design and co-production. It will develop a programme of capacity-building activities looking at the thematic challenges places face and what works in place partnerships. It will respond to the needs of LPIPs and government. An Advisory Board made up of government and the wider place ecosystem partners and research assets will champion and guide the delivery of the Hive and the broader LPIP programme, as well as peer reviewing applications for funding from the Hub. The Hub will: - Tackle the gap in linking the 'local' with the 'national' in policy development by linking with policy makers at different geographical scales and across policy domains. - Model and scale up innovative and effective practice and deepen the collective knowledge base, so cultivating common purpose and collective intelligence in meeting the needs of places in all parts of the UK. - Act as a front door to national policy stakeholders - Use a 'service' mindset, which starts from the needs of users and designs products and services with their active involvement. - Use a careful balance of intellectual ambition (curiosity to understand what works) with engagement expertise to create the conditions for purposeful partnership working across different constituencies, including LPIP teams, policy makers, researchers, and citizens. - Provide training, secondment and learning opportunities. - Assess the transferability of methods and findings across the LPIP network (and beyond). The Hub will be successful if it has helped shape and grow a thriving place ecosystem that is: - addressing the challenge of making local places 'successful'; and where - government (nationally and sub-nationally) is working with the Hub to share data and enhance policy approaches to take account of place needs; and - UKRI and stakeholders see the LPIP programme pathway as an effective way of expanding place-based activities and programmes.

Domestic transport is the UK's highest emission sector, and congestion in cities is costly (e.g. London £5.1bn in 2021). Drastically reducing urban car dominance is imperative to reach the UK's 2050 net-zero target, but also an unparalleled opportunity to create more equitable, inclusive and accessible cities of the future across the country. Recent UK investments of approximately £15bn seek to radically transform urban mobility and modality: £2bn for half of urban journeys to be cycled/walked by 2030 (e.g., cycle lanes, mini-Holland schemes), £5.7bn City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (e.g., Manchester bus and cycle schemes), and £7bn to level up local bus services. To realise full investment potential, and develop holistic adoption pathways towards net-zero, inclusive mobility, multimodal transport must be effectively planned, managed and operated, with people and their differences as a core consideration. This is challenging for a complex system-of-systems. On the supply side, modes compete for limited road space on shared infrastructure, creating conflicts. On the demand side, modes complement each other in intermodal journeys, jointly influencing uptake. For example, cycle lanes promote cycling, but may impact road speeds and exacerbate congestion and pollution, highlighting the need to evaluate person-level mobility and system-level emissions. A recent survey reported two-thirds of disabled respondents finding cycling easier than walking, highlighting the need to consider the broad disability spectrum and the potential for cycle lanes to improve access for all. Therefore, holistically optimising cycle lane schemes, as with all multimodal schemes, requires integrated methodologies: fully capturing multimodal transport systems' distributed and interconnected processes, the complexities of modal competition and complementarity, and the heterogeneity of traffic and population. My research will overcome these research challenges and develop the first multiscale digital twin for the transport-people-emission nexus using a truly integrated approach to model and simulate multimodal urban transport, advancing and coalescing my adventurous research in multimodality, using traffic flow theory, agent-based modelling, and machine learning. This will enable the development of holistic adoption pathways towards net-zero, inclusive mobility through scenario testing and optimisation, with guidance and recommendations to support implementation. Leading a strong consortium of 3 cities and 12 partners, covering the entire multimodal transport value chain, I will collaboratively exploit the digital twin to realise UK strategic agendas: net-zero; Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI); and levelling-up. By holistically enhancing mobility for everyone, my Fellowship also will propel the Green Revolution for economic growth, leveraging the net-zero mission to unlock new business opportunities, and establish the UK as a global leader in digital technologies to tackle climate change. I will deliver a strong positive impact on making net-zero a net win for people, industry, the UK, and the planet, thereby enabling both me and the UK to become world leaders in multimodal urban transport, at the forefront of research and innovation.

AI holds great promise in addressing several grand societal challenges, including the development of a smarter, cleaner electricity grid, the seamless provision of convenient on-demand mobility services, and the ability to protect citizens through advice and informed deployment of medical, emergency and police resources to fight epidemics, deal with crises and prevent crime. However, these promises can only be realised if citizens trust AI systems. In this fellowship, I will develop the fundamental science needed to build trusted citizen-centric AI systems. These AI systems will put citizens at their heart, rather than view them as passive providers of data. They will make decisions that maximise the benefit for citizens, given their individual constraints and preferences. They will use incentives where appropriate to encourage positive behaviour change, but they will also be robust to strategic manipulation, in order to prevent individuals from exploiting the system at the expense of others. Importantly, citizen-centric AI systems will involve citizens and other stakeholders in a feedback loop that enables them to audit decisions and modify the system's behaviour to ensure that effective but also ethical decisions are taken. Achieving this vision of citizen-centric AI systems requires several novel advances in the area of artificial intelligence. First, to safeguard the privacy of individuals, new approaches to understanding the constraints and preferences of citizens are needed. These approaches will be distributed in nature - that is, they will not depend on collecting detailed data from individuals, but will allow citizens to manage and retain their own data. To achieve this, I will develop intelligent software agents that act on behalf of each citizen, that store personal data locally and only communicate limited information to others when necessary. Second, to incentivise positive behaviour modifications and to discourage exploitation, I will draw on the field of mechanism design to model how self-interested decision-makers behave in strategic settings and how their actions can be modified through appropriate incentives. A particular challenge will be to deal with limited information, uncertainty about preferences and a constantly changing environment that necessitates incentives to be dynamically adapted via appropriate learning mechanisms. Finally, to enable an inclusive feedback loop involving citizens and other stakeholders, new interaction mechanisms are needed that can provide explanations for actions as well as information about whether the system is making fair decisions. While there is a wealth of emerging work on explainability and fairness in AI, this typically deals with simple one-shot problems. In contrast, I will consider more realistic and complex sequential settings, where actions have long-term consequences (including on fairness) that may not be immediately apparent. As part of the fellowship, I will work with a range of partners to put the research into practice and generate real impact. With EA Technology and the Energy Systems Catapult, I will work on incentive-aware smart charging mechanisms for electric vehicles. With Dstl and UTU Technologies, I will develop disaster response applications that use crowdsourced intelligence from citizens to provide situational awareness, track the spread of infectious diseases or issue guidance to citizens. With Siemens, Jaguar Land Rover, Thales and the Connected Places Catapult, I will develop new approaches for trusted on-demand mobility. With Fawley Waterside, I will work on citizen-centric solutions to smart energy and transportation in the Southampton area. With Dstl and Thales, I will explore further applications to national security and policing. Finally, with IBM Research, I will develop new explainability and fairness tools, and integrate these with their existing open source frameworks (AI Fairness 360 and AI Explainability 360).