Computational simulations increasingly enable the design of lighter, more efficient, and higher-performance flight vehicles. Current computational capabilities have successfully aided many advances in aerospace design, but challenges remain in the selection of the models used to represent turbulence. Due to practical limits on computing resources, computational simulations for engineering design typically neglect the intricate features of turbulence. The models used to approximate the missing physics contain parameters that must be calibrated to data, which is challenging for unknown flows, and often have simple mathematical forms that limit their accuracy. Recently, efficient numerical methods to calibrate the parameters of complex models during flow simulations have been developed using techniques from machine learning and constrained optimization. These methods have been successful for simple turbulent flows but have not been applied to the complex flows encountered in aerodynamics. The principal objective of this project is to develop methods by which to calibrate turbulence models for simulations of practical aerodynamic flows, which will enhance their predictive accuracy for challenging configurations. The optimization methods to be developed will be broadly applicable across engineering fields, not limited to aerodynamics, and will be made publicly available in an open-source, high-performance software package. This project will address the need for accurate, efficient computational fluid dynamics models by developing deep learning closures and optimization methods for large-eddy simulations of turbulent separated and recirculating flows. The models will be optimized over the compressible Navier-Stokes equations using an adjoint-based approach, which will enable efficient data assimilation by avoiding the need to construct high-dimensional gradients. The resulting models will enable significant accuracy improvements compared to state-of-the-art models for comparable cost, or equivalently, significantly reduced computational cost for comparable accuracy. High-fidelity numerical datasets for several wake geometries and separated airfoil flows will be generated as target data for the optimization procedure. Additionally, a new class of online optimization methods will be developed to enable dynamic, data-free closure models that will learn directly from the governing equations, and a hybrid, multiscale deep learning formulation will be developed to model near-wall turbulent flows. The scientific community more broadly is interested in leveraging large datasets and machine learning techniques; this project therefore has potential to develop methods to be widely adopted across disciplines. The resulting algorithms, methods, datasets, and codes will be disseminated to foster adoption within the aerodynamics community and across scientific disciplines.

This project will: (a) recover the multiple experiences of theology in late-medieval Italy, focusing on Florence in the 1280s and 1290s; (b) examine the way in which Dante engages with the forms of these experiences in his Commedia. The project therefore casts light on the ways in which medieval theology was mediated and experienced within a specific historical and geographical context, paying close attention to its varieties and their effects upon different publics; in doing so, it will re-evaluate a key dimension of a fundamental work of world literature, a work which is increasingly recognised not only as being central within the European literary tradition, but also as a distinctive and unique theological voice in its own right. The project, based in the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies in the University of Leeds, and in the Department of Italian in the University of Warwick, draws on a well-established link with the leading North American centre for Dante studies, the Devers Program at the University of Notre Dame, and benefits from the multidisciplinary expertise of an advisory board of internationally pre-eminent scholars. It builds upon a process of collaborative intellectual preparation which has already helped re-define its field, and which has firmly established the project's research context and questions. The project will, moreover, draw on a very rich, underexamined body of archival resources held in Florentine libraries. Over recent years, Dante's engagement with theology has come to be seen as an increasingly important aspect of his work; and his poetic voice is increasingly prized by theologians as a singular contribution to theological debate. Recent scholarship has shown not only that he engages with particular theological ideas, but that his poetry - itself among the most daringly original in world literature - borrows and alters many of the forms in which theology would have been encountered in the late middle ages. These forms range from scholastic forms of argumentation to less "learned" realms of religious practice such as visual art and liturgy. Yet research into Dante's theology has tended to treat the theological tradition as though it were a single set of ideas and debates, divorced from the precise forms and contexts in which it would have been encountered. At the same time, there is a real danger of scholarship on Dante's theology becoming disparate, as specialised research focuses on particular aspects of Dante's theology. This project therefore proposes to bring together a team of researchers, supported by a strong and established international network, to develop a holistic understanding of the ways in which theology was experienced in Florence in the 1280s and 1290s - the time when, by Dante's own account, he was engaged in theological study. Instead of seeing Dante's theological interests as consisting primarily of a set of ideas, the project asks how theology would have been experienced by Dante and his contemporaries in this specific context. The two primary strands of the project will examine respectively the nature of "high" theology as practised and received in the centres of theological learning, and the nature of forms of religious practice outside those learned milieux. Two secondary strands of the project will deepen and develop the findings of the first two strands, to explore particular aspects of this connection between theology and its social and cultural context: one examines the way in which the identity of theologians is presented in the Commedia and in late medieval Florence; the other will consider the manner in which theology shaped how Dante and his contemporaries thought about society.

In cells there are compartments (endosomes) containing higher concentrations of HCl than are found in the rest of the cell. These comparments have walls consisting of lipid bilayer membranes - which have an oily or lipophilic interior that the HCl cannot cross easily as HCl consists of two charged species (H+ and Cl-) which prefer not to be in a lipophilic environment. The aim of this project is to design smart molecules which can recognise HCl and carry it across the lipid bilayer. The molecules are designed to bind the HCl and wrap it up in an organic coat which is soluble in the membrane. Because there is a difference in HCl concentration across the membrane the molecules will act to equalise the concentration of HCl by diffusing and releasing the HCl on the low concentration side and then diffusing back to the high concentration side to bind another HCl. We will design and test molecules to do this in model systems first and then in collaboration with a group in the US will test them in vesicles and in cells. By transporting the HCl we disrupt chemical potentials in the cell. This might be useful if we wish to kill the cell if it is a cancer cell. Additionally, the transport of HCl can disturb the function of important proteins in the cell membrane by changing the pH (ATPase uncoupler activity). This may lead to other interesting biological activity. The project is a collaboration between the Gale group in Southampton (design and synthesis of receptors and binding studies) and the Smith group at Notre Dame (vesicle and cell studies). The PDRA will visit Notre Dame twice during the course of the project and will transfer the knowledge gained in membrane studies back to Southampton.

Volcanic arcs, like those that form the Pacific Ring of Fire, are markers for the collision and subduction of tectonic plates. These volcanic arcs are typically characterised by water-rich magma, which gives them a distinctive mineralogy and chemistry when compared to volcanoes produced from water-free magma. This water-rich character is what leads to the explosive nature of arc volcanoes, and arguably makes arc volcanoes the most hazardous on Earth. It is also responsible for their ore forming potential, most notably in the formation of copper and gold deposits. Researchers in arc environments have recognised common chemical signatures in the erupted rocks, and have suggested that the mineral amphibole crystallises from the original magmas and is left in the lower crust as residual crystal mush. Previous geochemical studies suggest it exerts strong chemical controls on the crystallising and evolving magmas. However, despite a suggested widespread role for amphibole in these magmas, it is not particularly common in the volcanic rocks erupted at surface. If it forms so readily from the magmas to produce a mush, why do we not see it in the crystal population of the magma once it has moved away from the mush? Experimental work on candidate "parent" magmas suggest that it is not amphibole but another mineral, clinopyroxene, that will be expected to dominate the early crystallisation and thus be the main mineral in the crystal mush. Clinopyroxene is also commonly observed in the volcanic arc rocks. There is a mismatch between observations: chemistry suggests amphibole is the important mineral, but the mineralogy of the rocks at surface suggest a greater role for clinopyroxene. What if amphibole does not form by direct crystallisation from the melt? What if it formed by reactions between the melt and already-formed clinopyroxene? In such a scenario amphibole forms at the melt-mush interface, by altering the clinopyroxene. As melts are periodically released from this melt-mush "reaction zone", the mush (now a mixture of clinopyroxene and amphibole) is left behind. The melt moves to shallower crustal levels, and outside of the pressure stability range for amphibole. Thus, a melt has formed amphibole by reaction, left it behind in the mush, and risen to levels where more amphibole cannot form. Amphibole is not abundant in the crystal content of the melts that reach the surface. The reaction process explains the observation that amphibole is not ubiquitous in volcanic arc rocks, but can it explain the observation that amphibole is a major driver of chemistry? A suite of samples from Savo volcano, Solomon Islands arc, will allow us to test this process. The surface rocks contain nodules of preserved crystal mush material (which are usually left behind in the crust). Detailed chemical analysis of clinopyroxene and amphibole from Savo will determine the chemical effect the reaction has on the evolving melt. Two hypotheses will be tested: 1) chemical signatures of amphibole crystallisation can instead be developed by clinopyroxene mush-melt reactions, therefore reconciling the chemistry with the minerals observed in the rocks; 2) clinopyroxene mush in the crust acts as a sponge, drawing water and copper out of the evolving melts, and thus acting as a buffer or barrier for their transfer from the mantle to the upper crust and surface. Rather unusually, the mush nodules at Savo contain two different amphiboles - as well as the amphibole replacing clinopyroxene in the mush nodules (as per the scenario above), high water and sodium contents of melts at Savo helped to stabilise amphibole, and so it forms by direct crystallisation. This direct crystallisation amphibole will be used as a frame of reference to critically assess the two hypotheses - are the chemical effects of the two processes and produced amphiboles identical, therefore allowing the reaction process to reconcile the conflicting observations made in arc rocks?

Quranic studies, a vibrant field of research essential to the humanities and to contemporary culture, is deeply polarized roughly along the same lines that defined biblical studies in the past two centuries: one camp holds the Quran to be revealed verbatim, while the other camp operates within a historicizing paradigm focusing on origins and external influence. Putting it crudely, one could argue that the extreme adherents to the traditional approach do not allow any challenges to the integrity of the text and instead focus on medieval commentaries, while the extreme adherents of the revisionist approach hardly grants the text any degree of cohesion and autonomy and instead sees it as the barely cohereing imitation of specific aspects of preceding religious movements. The key to moving the discussion forward may be found in a middle position which, on the one hand, recognizes the coherent hermeneutics and intellectual independence of the Quran, and on the other hand recognizes that the Quran stands in a demonstrable continuous intellectual tradition with previous religious movements. The fact that the Quran explicitly affirms its own traditional nature allows for such a moderate approach. As a scholar trained broadly in the history and literature of Late Antique Judaism, Christianity, and early Islam, I bring a specific perspective to the study of the Quran that allows me to argue for a new field of inquiry, focusing on "deep" continuities between Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic literature from Late Antiquity to the Quran. My innovative approach to the Quran is complemented by a simultaneous re-examination of the ethnic, ritual, and Christological concepts handled in Late Antique literature such as the Didascalia. My research in this field began in 2006. I have presented preliminary results in a series of lectures and a conference dedicated to the subject matter of Jewish and Muslim cultural exchange which I co-organized in Berkeley from 2007 to 2010. The Quran's claim that it is a mere "confirmation of what was before it" (tasdiq alladhi bayna yadayhi, Q. 10:37, 12:111) can indeed be justified by a close examination of the Syriac Didascalia and related documents, a fourth century church order which circulated widely throughout Late Antiquity. In this literature we find specific aspects of many Quranic phrases as well as a broad range of ritual, ethical, legal and Christological concepts which anchor the Quran securely in previous religious tradition. I will be on research leave in the period preceding the proposed AHRC fellowship. I have completed all textual studies and much of the analysis of the collected data already, and have already partially drafted just under half of the chapters of the proposed monograph. The present proposal seeks to evaluate my research results with a cross-disciplinary perspective, through collaboration with leading academic as well as religious scholars on Quranic and Late Antique studies in Europe and the US, and to complete my monograph. I will organize a conference at the University of Nottingham and participate in a seminar under the direction of Gabriel Said Reynolds (Notre Dame). In addition, the project will bring together religious scholars working together with the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in order to transmit the research to practitioner groups.