The increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the future such as heat waves and droughts is likely to induce long lasting changes of soil wettability. This is important because pore water pressure, which controls water flow, the deformation and shear strength characteristics of soils, depends on the spreading of small water menisci at the surface of the soil particles. Our current understanding is for conditions where the water spreads continuously (i.e. the soils are wettable), but little is known when water has limited spreading (i.e. the water menisci have contact angles greater than zero degrees). To predict the engineering behaviour of soils with variable wettability (frequently those with high organic carbon content), the relation between soil wettability and pore water pressure has to be determined. There are several methods for pore water pressure from unsaturated soil mechanics. However, the existing soil wettability methods have been developed for soil science applications (e.g. agriculture) and are not directly suitable for ground engineering. For instance, several methods use a single layer of particles to measure the water menisci contact angles but this is not appropriate to soil mechanics where testing is conducted in bulk samples. Funds are requested to travel to Prof. Jörg Bachmann laboratory (world leader on the measurement of soil wettability) at the Institute of Soil Science, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany to learn and adapt the existing soil science methods to ground engineering. This will provide the basis for future studies where the interaction of liquids with the surface of soil particles is important. Applications are in geoenvironmental and geotechnical engineering, earth surface processes (erosional and landsliding in slopes subjected to wildfires), soil carbon sequestration, development of new materials (granular, water repellent) and particle surface processes (long term effects).

As the global climate warms, thawing permafrost may lead to increased greenhouse gas release from Arctic and Boreal ecosystems. Scientists agree that this permafrost-climate feedback is important to the global climate system, but its magnitude and timing remains poorly understood. The overall aim of COUP is to use detailed understanding of landscape-scale processes to improve global scale climate models. Better predictions of how permafrost areas will respond to a warming climate can help us understand and plan for future global change. In recent years much scientific progress has been made towards understanding the complex responses of permafrost ecosystem to climate warming. Despite this, large challenges remain when it comes to including these processes in global climate models. Permafrost ecosystems are highly variable and studies show that very detailed field investigations are needed to understand complexities. Because global scale models cannot run at such high-resolutions, we propose an approach where local landscape-scale field studies and modelling are used to identify those key variables that should be improved in global models. We will carry out careful field studies and high-resolution modelling at field sites covering all pan-Eurasian environmental conditions. The system understanding gained from this will then be used to (1) scale key variables so they are useful for global models and (2) improve a new global climate model. In the final step, the improved global climate models will be run to quantify the impact of thawing permafrost on the global climate. Datasets produced in COUP will be freely available online so that they can be used by other scientists and help improvement of all global climate models. COUP is designed to maximise synergies with ongoing projects. Much of the needed data and system understanding was generated in other research programmes.

This proposal is for a Doctoral Training Centre to provide a new generation of engineering leaders in Offshore & Marine Renewable Energy Structures. This is a unique opportunity for two internationally leading Universities to join together to provide an industrially-focussed centre of excellence in this pivotal subject area. The majority of informed and balanced views suggest approximately 180 TWh/year of offshore wind, ~300km of wave farms (19 TWh/year), 1,000 tidal stream turbines (6 TWh/year) and 3 small tidal range schemes (3 TWh/year) are desirable/achievable using David MacKay's UK DECC 2050 Pathways calculator. These together would represent 30% of predicted actual UK electricity demand. This would be a truly enormous renewable energy contribution to the UK electricity supply, given the predicted increase of electricity demand in the transport sector. The inclusion of onshore wind brings this figure closer to 38% of UK electricity by 2050. RenewablesUK predicts Britain has the opportunity to lead the world in developing the emerging marine energy industry with the sector having the potential to employ 10,000 people and generate revenues of nearly £4bn per year by 2020. The large scale development of offshore renewable energy (Wind, Wave and Tidal) represents one of the biggest opportunities for sustainable economic growth in the UK for a generation. The emerging offshore wind sector is however unlike the Oil & Gas industry in that structures are unmanned, fabricated in much larger volumes and the commercial reality is that the sector has to proactively take measures to further reduce CAPEX and OPEX. Support structures need to be structurally optimised and to avail of contemporary and emerging methodologies in structural integrity design and assessment. Current offshore design standards and practices are based on Offshore Oil & Gas experience which relates to unrepresentative target structural reliability, machine and structural loading characteristics and scaling issues particularly with respect to large diameter piled structural systems. To date Universities and the Industry have done a tremendous job to help device developers test and trial different concepts however the challenge now moves to the next stage to ensure these technologies can be manufactured in volume and deployed at the right cost including installation and maintenance over the full design life. This is a proposal to marry together Marine and Offshore Structures expertise with emerging large steel fabrication and welding/joining technologies to ensure graduates from the programme will have the prerequisite knowledge and experience of integrated structural systems to support the developing Offshore and Marine Renewable Energy sector. The Renewable Energy Marine Structures (REMS) Doctoral Centre CDT will embrace the full spectrum of Structural Analysis in the Marine Environment, Materials and Engineering Structural Integrity, Geotechnical Engineering, Foundation Design, Site Investigation, Soil-Structure Interaction, Inspection, Monitoring and NDT through to Environmental Impact and Quantitative Risk and Reliability Analysis so that the UK can lead the world-wide development of a new generation of marine structures and support systems for renewable energy. The Cranfield-Oxford partnership brings together an unrivalled team of internationally leading expertise in the design, manufacture, operation and maintenance of offshore structural systems and together with the industrial partnerships forged as part of this bid promises a truly world-leading centre in Marine Structures for the 21st Century.

The Scottish Doctoral Training Centre in Condensed Matter Physics, known as the CM-DTC, is an EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) addressing the broad field of Condensed Matter Physics (CMP). CMP is a core discipline that underpins many other areas of science, and is one of the Priority Areas for this CDT call. Renewal funding for the CM-DTC will allow five more annual cohorts of PhD students to be recruited, trained and released onto the market. They will be highly educated professionals with a knowledge of the field, in depth and in breadth, that will equip them for future leadership in a variety of academic and industrial careers. Condensed Matter Physics research impacts on many other fields of science including engineering, biophysics, photonics, chemistry, and materials science. It is a significant engine for innovation and drives new technologies. Recent examples include the use of liquid crystals for displays including flat-screen and 3D television, and the use of solid-state or polymeric LEDs for power-saving high-illumination lighting systems. Future examples may involve harnessing the potential of graphene (the world's thinnest and strongest sheet-like material), or the creation of exotic low-temperature materials whose properties may enable the design of radically new types of (quantum) computer with which to solve some of the hardest problems of mathematics. The UK's continued ability to deliver transformative technologies of this character requires highly trained CMP researchers such as those the Centre will produce. The proposed training approach is built on a strong framework of taught lecture courses, with core components and a wide choice of electives. This spans the first two years so that PhD research begins alongside the coursework from the outset. It is complemented by hands-on training in areas such as computer-intensive physics and instrument building (including workshop skills and 3D printing). Some lecture courses are delivered in residential schools but most are videoconferenced live, using the well-established infrastructure of SUPA (the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance). Students meet face to face frequently, often for more than one day, at cohort-building events that emphasise teamwork in science, outreach, transferable skills and careers training. National demand for our graduates is demonstrated by the large number of companies and organisations who have chosen to be formally affiliated with our CDT as Industrial Associates. The range of sectors spanned by these Associates is notable. Some, such as e2v and Oxford Instruments, are scientific consultancies and manufacturers of scientific equipment, whom one would expect to be among our core stakeholders. Less obviously, the list also represents scientific publishers, software houses, companies small and large from the energy sector, large multinationals such as Solvay-Rhodia and Siemens, and finance and patent law firms. This demonstrates a key attraction of our graduates: their high levels of core skills, and a hands-on approach to problem solving. These impart a discipline-hopping ability which more focussed training for specific sectors can complement, but not replace. This breadth is prized by employers in a fast-changing environment where years of vocational training can sometimes be undermined very rapidly by unexpected innovation in an apparently unrelated sector. As the UK builds its technological future by funding new CDTs across a range of priority areas, it is vital to include some that focus on core discipline skills, specifically Condensed Matter Physics, rather than the interdisciplinary or semi-vocational training that features in many other CDTs. As well as complementing those important activities today, our highly trained PhD graduates will be equipped to lay the foundations for the research fields (and perhaps some of the industrial sectors) of tomorrow.