Vic Gill in the Research Support and Development Ofce on ext 67398 or email vic.gill@brunel.ac.uk
Editor: Content and production: Vic Gill, RSDO University Photographer: Sally Trussler, Media Services
Printed by: Brunel University Press
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I am delighted to be able to write an introduction to the 50th edition of the Leading Edge
In celebrating the portfolio of high-quality research taking place at Brunel, Leading Edge both supports and refects our research intensive and technical ethos. In supporting multi-disciplinary initiatives, working with communities and business and research grant applications to challenge led calls, it helps focus our academic work on things that will make a real diference to society. In this way, as an iconic 60s institution, Brunel has remained true to its original mission and purpose.
In talking to other UK Vice-Chancellors, I am always pleased to hear how so many of them recognise Brunel’s distinctive and important position in the UK higher education sector. This reputation is underpinned and sustained by academic work frmly rooted in the challenges faced by society.
Building on this great foundation, our new university strategy places our academic ambition at its core, building on our strengths and reinforcing our position with local, national and international stakeholders. The new strategy will help us leverage the strengths of the rich history we have on campus, and in particular our unique architectural heritage.
Leading Edge is now frmly established as a key part of Brunel’s research environment and infrastructure. The staf and students involved in the projects featured have good cause to be proud of their achievements. My thanks also to the staf in the research Support and Development Ofce, particularly Vic Gill, for painstakingly creating and editing each edition.
Congratulations to you all. It is only with your hard work that Brunel is able to make such a diference to society.
Andrew Jones
Vice-Chancellor
and President
I am delighted to celebrate the milestone of the 50th issue of Leading Edge, our quarterly internal newsletter that has consistently highlighted the remarkable research achievements by our staf and PhD students. This issue is not only a testament to our university’s dedication to research excellence but also a refection of our commitment to fostering a thriving and innovative research environment.
As we celebrate this landmark issue of Leading Edge, we refect on our journey and the strides we have made in advancing our research agenda. The stories and achievements highlighted in this issue serve as a reminder of the extraordinary talent and dedication within our university community.
Looking ahead, we are excited about the future and the continued progress we will make to be a world-class research university. We will strive to achieve our ambitious goals, solidify our reputation for research excellence, and make a lasting impact on the world through the implementation of our strategic Research Academic Delivery Plan. This plan is crucial as we strive to elevate our GPA ranking from 76th to within the top 40 UK universities in the next REF assessment.
Our Research Academic Delivery Plan focuses on fve key areas that underpin our strategic vision:
1. Produce High-Quality Research Outputs: By emphasizing quality over quantity, we aim to contribute signifcant advancements in knowledge.
2. Develop Signifcant Research Impact Cases and External Engagement: We understand the importance of research impact and its ability to drive societal change. Our goal is to create impactful research that resonates beyond academia and engages with external stakeholders.
3. Increase Research Grant Income and Externally Funded Projects: Securing external funding is essential for the sustainability and expansion of our
research endeavours. We are focused on increasing our research grant income to support innovative projects and cuttingedge research.
4. Develop and Implement a Supportive and Inclusive Research Culture and Sustainable Research Environment: We are dedicated to creating a sustainable environment where all researchers can thrive and contribute to our collective success.
5. Support a Strong Community of Doctoral Researchers: Doctoral researchers are the backbone of our research community. We are committed to providing them with robust support and resources to ensure their success and development as future research leaders.
Thank you for being a part of this journey. Here's to many more issues of Leading Edge and the continued success of Brunel research pursuits and impact.
Best Wishes
Hua Zhao Pro
Vice-Chancellor
(PVC) for Research
The frst edition of Leading Edge was published in March 2005. Since then there have been a further 49 editions, with the frst 10 published when Chris Jenks was PVC (Research), 35 during my tenure, and the most recent 5 under the leadership of Hua Zhao.
Of course, there have been signifcant changes since 2005, not least in terms of research at Brunel. Our research base is much larger – in the 2001 RAE we submitted 335 staf compared with 659 in 2021. Our grant income has doubled since 2005, from around £10M per year in 2005 over £20M now, with infation running at slightly less than 50% over the same period. The fuctuations in income per year are large, with three years in the last decade when we booked in over £30M.
We are now well established as a top 40 institution for research in the UK, portfolios from our 4 major funders; the EPSRC, EU, Research England and Innovate UK all being amongst the 40th largest in the UK. In the 2025 QS World University Rankings we have risen to 38th in the United Kingdom and 342nd in the world, a new record high placing in that table. Over the last ten years our improvement in the QS rankings has been assisted by signifcant improvements in our citations per academic, refecting the extent to which our research is used by other academics and helps to set the intellectual agenda.
Back in 2005 the open access movement was in its infancy, and Brunel was one of the early adopters of an open access digital repository (BURA), and a publications database (BRAD), and was one of the frst half dozen UK institutions to sign the DORA declaration on the fair assessment of research outputs. We are currently 82nd in the world for the fraction of our research outputs that are published in an open access format!
Similarly, the idea of “research impact” didn’t really exist in 2005, impact was frst assessed in the REF of 2014, although at Brunel we were well placed for this as we had long been aware of the importance of ensuring that our research was of beneft to the communities and societies in which we are embedded.
This is another area where we have a strong and improving performance; we appear in the 101–200 band out of 1,963 universities worldwide, in broad terms the top 5–10% in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024. These measure how well a research institution is progressing towards delivering on each of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals. We are 15th in the world and 6th in the UK for SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities, 47th in the world for SDG 15: Life on Land and 76th in the world for SDG 14: Life Below Water
According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2023 an impressive 14.3% of our outputs are in the top 10% of their feld, the 18th highest fraction in the UK, and 89.8% involve a collaborator from another institution, the 10th largest fraction in the UK. These positions refect the high-quality of our research, and the extent to which we collaborate and build academic networks. These factors all contribute to our increasingly strong showing in the international league tables, have helped drive substantial progress since 2005 and augur well for the long-term growth and sustainability of the research programmes at Brunel.
Professor Geof Rodgers Pro Vice Chancellor - Enterprise and Employment
When we decided to launch a research newsletter at Brunel in 2004, a competition was held to come up with a suitable name. A panel chaired by then Pro Vice Chancellor Research, Professor Chris Jenks, a keen cricket fan, selected the name - Leading Edge
interdisciplinary research, going back to Issue 13: Winter 2008/9 which focused on the launch of fve Collaborative Research Networks (CRNs) to support multidisciplinary research collaboration in areas including Ageing, Complexity, Energy and Environmental Sustainability and Security, Human Rights and the Media. CRNs were an early iteration of a University mechanism to drive interdisciplinarity, in part in response to the move of funders away from responsive mode to more directed programmes focussing on complex research and innovation challenges. The challenge of embedding interdisciplinary research within traditional University structures continues!
Since then, Leading Edge has been published three (now four) times a year to showcase the research achievements of Brunel academics, to highlight new research policies and initiatives and to inform the research community of important developments in the context of national funding policy.
In Chris Jenks’ very frst editorial, in the Winter 2004 edition, he predicted:
"I think we will all fnd, within a fairly short period, that the newsletter will not only become an index of the scope and quality of our research culture here, but also a pulse, a sign of our vibrant, burgeoning and, most signifcantly, our shared research community".
In re-reading the previous 49 issues of Leading Edge, three things strike me about what the newsletter represents as a record of Brunel’s research over the past two decades. It 1) traces the development and maturation of Brunel’s strategy for research over 20 years, 2) documents the evolving external research and innovation landscape within which our research has taken place and 3) highlights many of the people who have left a permanent legacy through their research achievements.
One feature that comes through strongly is the
University Initiatives to support the research culture are also documented. Issue 3: Summer 2005 marked the introduction of a university wide process for internal peer review for all external research proposals, by staf below professorial level. Now an embedded part of the application process, it was introduced based on emerging sector best practice following a secondment by an EPSRC staf member to Brunel. Issue 4: Autumn 2005 announced the frst new University Research Centres (URCs) and University Interdisciplinary Research Centres (UIRCs) established under a newly introduced policy to formally recognise such centres. Issue 10: Winter 2007 featured the launch of a new Research Incentives Scheme (from 1 April 2007) and the creation of the Research Development Fund to support activities leading to external grant applications.
Leading Edge provides a record and a timeline of the changing external landscape in which our research has taken place. The second edition of Leading Edge in Spring 2005 announced the impending introduction of Full Economic Costing (FEC) for all Research Council proposals from September 2005, moving from the old model of funding research based on a fat 46% overhead. Intended to move research funding onto a more sustainable footing, FEC is now ingrained into the research process, even if it has failed to fully address the national underfunding of research. The same issue gave an update on plans for RAE2008 and the introduction of a quality profle as the outcome of the assessment. We can also trace the development of open access, data management, the introduction of demand management processes by the Research Councils and the development of the ‘impact’ agenda with the introduction (and subsequent scrapping) of pathways to impact sections in research proposals.
Overall, the catalogue of Leading Edge publications traces the increasing professionalisation of research, refected in notions of research integrity, responsible research and innovation, trusted research, collegiality and open science which now permeate the academic environment, bringing challenges and complexity – and the associated risks of managerialism and added bureaucracy.
Most importantly, Leading Edge has captured the achievements and grant successes of Brunel academics over the years. The projects featured refect the changing priorities of research funders over the period. Successful projects have been increasingly interdisciplinary and challenge-based, addressing big socioeconomic problems, such as net zero and social inclusivity. More recently, we have seen a shift towards ‘place-based’ projects in response to the Government’s Levelling Up agenda.
Leading Edge has also documented the signifcant achievements of Brunel staf; among the many highlights were, in Issue 8: Spring 2007, the award of an OBE to Prof Peter Beresford at a ceremony in February 2007 in recognition of his services to social care based on his pioneering work in user engagement research.
Another highlight was the award, on February 26th 2012, of the Queens Anniversary Prize to the Institute for the Environment. This Prize is the highest national honour given to UK universities for work of excellence that delivers real public beneft. The award to the Institute of the Environment, featured in Issue 23: Spring 2012, recognised the global impact of its work on protecting the environment from the efects of hormones and pollution.
Personally, I am proud that we have delivered Leading Edge for 20 years. I hope that it has made some contribution to our ‘shared research community’ over that time, and that it will continue to do so for the next 20 years. My thanks to Chris Jenks, Geof Rodgers and Hua Zhao who, in their roles as PVC Research, have each contributed thought-provoking and insightful editorial pieces. And special appreciation to Vic Gill who has managed the production of Leading Edge for many years. Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has contributed articles and helped to make Leading Edge a showcase of Brunel research successes.
Teresa Waller, Director, RSDO
I am delighted to write this article for this the fftieth edition of Leading Edge, the Brunel research newsletter. When I frst arrived at the University in 2004, initially as PVC (Research), there was certainly research activity, some of it of very high quality, but it was patchy, concentrated and by no means widely spread across departments and subject areas. There was no recognisable research culture across the whole institution. Indeed, some areas had lapsed into a teaching only ethos and there was little drive or incentive to alter the status quo. The senior management’s response, in the light of the forthcoming Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), was to instigate a redundancy programme targeting research inactive colleagues. The redundancies were completed but it was an ugly and brutal operation which created much unhappiness and ill-feeling as these things always do, especially in a liberal environment like a university. Also, in the blandest and crudest terms, redundancies are very expensive, resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
To continue my historical digression, to provide context, the Research Assessment Exercise was originally conceived as a device to change behaviour. The Thatcher government had noted three areas of the public sector that were too far from the government’s reach, these were medicine, law and education. They were each too powerful, too autonomous and too unregulated. However, of these three zones of public activity and expenditure education was by far the most vulnerable to central control. And so it began.
Previously government distributed taxpayers’ money to higher education institutions in the form of direct grants. There was very little accountability for university expenditure and the Treasury had few objective measures of university performance. Teaching was diferentially funded on a fourpoint scale from clinical medicine through to library-based subjects. Now research was to be peer assessed nationally and then diferentially funded on a scale of 1 to 5* according to national and international excellence. Multiple refnements in methodology and other measures such as the Teaching Assessment Exercise, increased competition through research dual funding and national grant top-slicing for special initiatives have followed - as you all know, only too well.
This inventory of past and current policies and mechanisms of control of higher education is not meant to depress you but to indicate the grounds of what some now refer to as the ‘marketisation’ of HE. We have witnessed a steady movement towards routine competition, unquestioned hierarchy, the individualisation of activity and responsibility and an acceptance of blame, together with a taken for granted division between winners and losers.
When I launched Leading Edge (with considerable help from Teresa Waller and the Research Ofce) I saw it as an articulate component in the development of a university wide research culture, clearly there were others. As Vice Chancellor I strongly believed in collegiality and I pushed this agenda whenever and wherever I could. Academics supporting one another, respecting one another’s work and working for the good of the collectivity is far more productive and rewarding in the long run. This can operate at the level of joint publications, individuals covering colleagues’ teaching or administrative duties while on research leave, colleagues working together as research teams around particular themes or topics, departments or Schools realising that they are supporting or cross subsidising other parts of the university with an anticipation of reciprocity, and administrative ofcers deploying their many skills for the good of all or any academics and not just within silos.
Leading Edge ofers a place to meet and talk, to exchange and transfer experience, to announce and celebrate individual and collective achievements as well as providing a notice board to signal meetings, events and new initiatives.
We academics spend our lives generating new knowledge through both our teaching and our research, and we also require vehicles like Leading Edge to communicate that creativity. We do not do our work for material gain - manifestly! The most we can anticipate is recognition. Leading Edge in large part enables that recognition.
Please keep Leading Edge a robust and thriving voice for your endeavour and collective achievement within Brunel’s research culture.
Professor Chris Jenks
Vice Chancellor and Principal 2006-2012
The Vice-Chancellor is the president and principal academic and administrative ofcer of the University. To learn more about Professor Chris Jenks and Brunel's previous Vice-Chancellors, visit the archive special collections at:
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/life/library/ArchivesAndSpecialCollections/ BUL-Archives/Vice-Chancellors
Brunel’s relationship with Tampere arose from an industrial link with the head of Nokia’s Tampere research and development centre. In 2015, the head of the centre made an introduction between the Director of RSDO at Brunel and the then PVC Research of Tampere University of Technology (TUT). A delegation from Brunel including the RSDO Director and three academics visited TUT in June that year. This initial contact led to a series of discussions and online research conversations, culminating in a senior delegation from TUT visiting Brunel the following year.
In the years that followed, further visits occurred and collaborative links were formed, fostered by four jointly-funded ‘seed-corn’ research awards in the areas of manufacturing, structural integrity and biomedical engineering.
So in early 2019 Brunel was in a strong position to launch an application to a new Research England scheme, the International Investment Initiative (I3), with the newly named Tampere University (after the merger of TUT with the University of Tampere) as partners.
The bid was one of 8 to be successful, winning £343,000 over 5 years to support:
i. Doctoral researcher exchanges of up to 6 months in six key research areas,
ii. Short-term collaborative visits by academic researchers, and
iii. Joint research events, some with industry.
“Our collaboration with Brunel University London is based on a longstanding partnership and mutual trust. It has evolved from single researcher connections to a diverse spectrum of activities spanning across the universities. Research England’s I3 grant has been an important foundation for expanding the collaborations.” –Prof Tapio Visakorpi, VP Research, Tampere University
Our jubilation on receiving this award was however to be cut short. A few months into the programme, COVID struck. Academic travel between the UK and Finland was cancelled and the planned exchanges and seed-corn projects had to be shelved.
We have since recovered some of the ground lost during the pandemic. Doctoral researcher exchanges and PI visits restarted to a limited extent and there were some joint, virtual events including one on Digital Media. A new round of seed-corn projects supported four new collaborations in AI, digital technology and ageing. A no-cost extension will take the end date of the grant to July 2025.
Most signifcantly, Research England agreed to use the grant to partfund joint PhD studentships starting in 2023. Two of these are based at Brunel, on early detection of ovarian cancer (supervised by Dr Manos Karteris) and mulsemedia computing in autonomous vehicles (supervised by Dr Fotios Spyridonis). Another, on robotics, is based at Tampere. The doctoral researchers will spend 6 months of their second years at the partner university.
Since 2019 the partnership has yielded several publications and 5 EUfunded projects worth a total of £2.35m to Brunel.
Inspired by the research links, undergraduate student exchanges and joint educational seed-corn projects have been undertaken and collaborative teaching initiatives are in the pipeline.
Special credit for driving this partnership must go to Prof Geof Rodgers, lead PI for the I3 project; Teresa Waller, Director of RSDO; Dr Angus Bell, Deputy Director of RSDO; other RSDO staf; and Ilkka Virtanen, Head of International Partnerships and his colleagues at Tampere.
Environmental Sciences at Brunel has never had a frm footing; in fact, I think it fair to say that it has had, and still has, a fragile existence. This seems incredulous to me when the biggest issue facing the world today – global warming – presents an existential threat to much of life on our planet.
I believe that the very frst programme in environmental science at Brunel was an M.Sc. programme in Environmental Pollution Science introduced by the Department of Chemistry in the mid-1980s. Many members of staf, both internal and external, and not only from the Department of Chemistry, taught on this programme. It ceased when the Department of Chemistry was closed in 2000 due to the difculty of attracting an appropriate number of undergraduates.
The next signifcant development in establishing environmental science at Brunel occurred in August, 2004, when the Institute for the Environment (IfE) was created. This initially had about 10 academic staf, drawn mainly from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biological Sciences. It was intended that IfE would fund itself through external research grants and a Master’s programme. Relatively shortly after the creation of IfE, the Department of Geography was closed (in 2007), and a few of its staf joined IfE.
Providing enough income to support IfE always proved very difcult. Research income was quite respectable, but funding institutes mainly through research income is extremely difcult. Attracting students to the Master’s programmes also proved difcult, despite intensive eforts and the creation of 3 M.Sc. programmes. Thus, the future of IfE was always precarious.
When the university restructured in 2014, the virtual Institute for Environment, Health and Societies was established. IfE continued to exist as a Strategic Research Institute (SRI), although it sometimes seemed to have no real identity or leadership until it became a Division within the College of Health and Life Sciences in August, 2020.
In contrast to the teaching difculties, some of the research conducted by members of IfE was well received and infuential. For example, research demonstrating that chemicals in everyday household use reached rivers, where they feminised male fsh, made media headlines, and formed a major component of a BBC television programme that won an EMMY. That research also led to the university receiving the prestigious ‘Queen’s Anniversary Prize’ for higher and further education in 2011. More recent research, demonstrating that exposure to mixtures of chemicals can have signifcant adverse efects, on both human health and the environment, when each chemical in the mixture is present at a concentration too low to cause an efect by itself, has also been very infuential. It is leading to changes across the world in how the use of chemicals is regulated, in order that exposure levels are safe.
Finally, the present situation. The Division of Environmental Science remains small. It introduced an undergraduate programme a few years ago, but this has recently closed due to poor student recruitment. In complete contrast, its Master’s programme is thriving; it is attracting around 100 students each year, mainly from overseas. That is largely due to one staf member, Dr. Chaudhary (A.J. to most of us), who put tremendous efort into improving recruitment. Hopefully, some of the staf members who joined Brunel recently, replacing older staf who retired, will establish successful research programmes, to maintain Brunel’s research reputation in environmental science.
It continues to amaze me that when the world is facing an immense environmental challenge, namely global warming, and biodiversity is in crisis throughout the world, so few students choose to study environmental science at university. That is especially true at undergraduate level, and not only at Brunel. However, when students do come to Brunel, they receive an excellent education, as illustrated by the comments below from a student who graduated recently from the M.Sc. in Environmental Management and Legislation, and now has a very good position with the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.
"Dear AJ, I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to you. Thank you for your mentorship, I’ve not only gained knowledge, but also confdence in my abilities. I carry with me the lessons and values instilled by you. I am deeply grateful for the impact you’ve had on my life and career, and I look forward to making you proud as I continue to pursue my passion for environmental conservation."
I hope that Brunel can not only continue to support environmental science, but will strengthen it. The world desperately needs environmental scientists if it is to recover from the extremely difcult situation it is in presently.
John Sumpter
Emeritus Professor in Environmental Science
If the essence of a strategic partnership is that it impacts the core business of the partner organisations, then the relationship developed between Brunel and TWI (The Welding Institute) over the past 20 years certainly qualifes.
Brunel started its collaboration with TWI in 2003, by placing fve students from our Engineering Doctorate in Environmental Technology to pursue research in ultrasonic guided waves for non-destructive testing (NDT) of oil & gas pipelines, rails and aircraft wires.
This successful collaboration led to the creation in 2009 of the Brunel Innovation Centre (BIC), a joint venture between the two institutions based at TWI’s headquarters in Cambridgeshire, whose research focuses on NDT and allied technologies covering a range of materials, sensors, electronics and software systems. Led by Prof Tat-hean Gan, the research supports the innovation challenges of TWI’s 700+ industrial members and complements the applied research and development activities at TWI.
In 2012 the two organisations built a new facility, the National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC), to carry out medium- and long-term research and postgraduate training focused on the structural integrity of products, plants and infrastructure across the energy, transport, advanced manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.
Most recently, in 2016, we have established a second joint Innovation Centre, the Brunel Composites Centre, led by Dr Mihalis Kazilas, focusing on composites modelling and processing and joining technologies.
The relationship has been transformative for both organisations – it has leveraged over £44M in research and innovation funding to Brunel alone, including £15M in capital funds to build NSIRC, has supported the postgraduate training of over 250 engineers who are now working in TWI and other engineering companies worldwide, has resulted in the implementation or improvement of
more than 50 technologies and the completion over 100 externally funded industrial projects.
Prof Aamir Khalid, the CEO of TWI until April 2024, commented on the impact on TWI of the collaboration with Brunel, saying:
"The Brunel partnership was instrumental in transforming TWI’s business strategy, enabling us to provide an enhanced research and innovation ofer to our industrial members, increase their participation in R&D projects, provide high quality training opportunities for hundreds of engineers and to build national capacity in the critical area of structural integrity."
Such has the impact of the partnership been on Brunel that we have now one of the strongest structural integrity research groups in the country and four of our impact case studies for the REF2021 Engineering submissions involved research undertaken in collaboration with TWI.
In 2024, as TWI and Brunel both develop strategies to address the latest research and technology challenges, for example in the area of hydrogen, we will continue to build on our successful, long- term partnership.
As Leading Edge marks 20 years of highlighting Brunel’s cuttingedge research, this special 50th issue celebrates the journey and key achievements of the BCAST (Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidifcation Technology). Join us as we refect on the innovations, key milestones, and future directions in metal research, showcasing the profound impact of BCAST on the feld and beyond.
BCAST is a world leading research centre focussing on the metallurgy of light alloys. It has reached this status following 22 years of growth from its foundation as a small research group by Professor Zhongyun Fan in 2002. Through a series of successful proposals to EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), initially in the area of semi-solid metal processing, BCAST’s potential was initially boosted by becoming one of Brunel’s Specialist Research Institutes in 2006 as part of the University’s strategy to build research intensiveness.
Future LiME Hub (a further £10.5m over eight years). A new vision of full metal circulation emerged: the global demand for metals will be met by the circulation of secondary metals through reduce, reuse, remanufacture, recycling and recovery. This means no more mining, and no more metal extraction, which together account for 12% of global CO2 emissions.
The AMCC was complemented by a second phase of scale-up facilities in the Advanced Metals Processing Centre (AMPC), launched in 2018 with £15m of funding from the HEFCE (now Research England) UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF). These additional facilities allow materials created in the AMCC to be crafted into full-scale working protypes of components and structures. Innovation highlights include:
• The application of BCAST’s high shear technology for liquid metal engineering to a number of industrial casting processes.
• The development of new alloys for die-casting.
• The development of novel grain refners for control of cast microstructures.
• The incorporation of increasingly ‘dirty’ secondary aluminium in vehicle bodies through the JLR-led REALCAR series of Innovate UK projects: frst using clean stamping process scrap, then using end-oflife vehicles, and fnally demonstrating the feasibility of using postconsumer scrap.
• BCAST and Constellium co-developing a new generation of high strength extrudable alloys (designated HSA6). Through a raft of Innovate UK and Advanced Propulsion Centre funded programmes HSA6 alloys have been applied in vehicle crash management systems, lightweight vehicle frames, and battery enclosures for electric vehicles.
In 2010 BCAST was awarded its frst major programme, the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Liquid Metal Engineering (LiME) (£5.1m over fve years), one of EPSRC’s frst two such centres in its Manufacturing the Future programme. Liquid metal engineering is the improvement of the microstructure and properties of metallic materials through manipulating aspects of the molten metal before casting to enhance nucleation of the solid. LiME became the foundation for BCAST’s fundamental research, leverage for innovation programmes and building long-term industrial partnerships (e.g. Jaguar Land Rover, Aeromet, Grainger & Worrall and Sarginsons), and initiated BCAST’s subsequent rapid growth. Constellium, a global supplier of aluminium, became a new partner of LiME in 2011 by funding a single PhD – the frst step in what was to become an ongoing strategic partnership.
Next came the realisation that liquid metal engineering could be used to take care of the impurities and inclusions inherent in secondary (scrap) metals and thus lead to increased recycling, and this was explored in a second major collaborative EPSRC programme – Towards Afordable, Closed-Loop Recyclable Future Low Carbon Vehicle Structures (TARF-LCV) (£4.2m over four and a half years).
In 2014, BCAST was awarded £3.9m for capital equipment from the EPSRC under the Great Technologies programme, and with the support of the University the Advanced Metals Casting Centre (AMCC) was built and launched in 2016. The AMCC houses industrial scale metal casting and processing equipment, and supported by our long-term partners has allowed BCAST to engage in industrial scale-up, from the bottom up –demonstrating technologies developed in the lab at scale – and from the top down supporting industry led innovation. At the same time Constellium and BCAST launched a University Technology Centre as an umbrella for the partnership’s growing portfolio of R&D programmes.
Ending in 2015, the original LiME programme was succeeded by the EPSRC
Concurrently, Constellium decided to establish a dedicated R&D Centre for its automotive structures business and place it at Brunel with BCAST. This close partnership was cemented through establishing an EPSRC Prosperity Partnership in STrain Enhanced Precipitation Aluminium (STEP Al) (a total of £4.5m) to provide the underpinning research for the continued development of high strength aluminium alloys.
Building on the theme of a sustainable metals sector, BCAST currently leads the UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Metals (£4.5m over 4 years), under UKRI’s National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) programme. Recognising BCAST’s excellence in this area, along with the expertise of four other resource management research groups (at Exeter, Swansea, UCL and the British Geological Survey), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) have chosen the UK to establish the world’s frst International Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Resource Management in the Circular Economy. The centre will develop sustainable approaches to the circular economy and resource efciency to enable carbon reduction and the transition to a greener future.
Capital investment in BCAST has also continued resulting in the recent completion of the Future Metallurgy Centre (FMC) supported by a second UKRPIF investment of £16m. The FMC houses a range of state-of-the-art electron microscopes and analytical instruments, enhancing BCAST’s capabilities in underpinning R&D.
BCAST is unique in carrying out R&D across the full range of innovation, from fundamental atomic level understanding, through technology and alloy development, and on to full industrial scale processing and component manufacture. Under Professor Fan’s leadership, BCAST has grown from that small research group of a handful of people, to a centre of 100 staf and Doctoral Researchers with over 50 personnel from Constellium working alongside. Using that expertise and its world-leading range of facilities BCAST will continue to drive positive change in the metallurgical industry.
By Professor Louise Mansfeld; Vice Dean for Research CHMLS, Director of
the Centre for Health and Wellbeing across the Lifecourse (CHWL).
Over the past decade, numbers of grant applications to UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) schemes have risen, and the success rate, whilst fuctuating each year has tended to decrease, hovering currently around the 21% mark. More people are applying and less people are being successful. The process has become increasingly competitive, bringing to the fore some of the most gruelling requirements of academic life into just one part of our work including the constant need for intellectual innovation, methodological rigour, transformative potential and outstanding creativity. It is little wonder that academics fnd the process of grant writing and submission daunting, frightful and worrying. But does it really have to be so overwhelming and demoralising? I am not sure anything can ever be done about the sting of
rejection felt with every failed grant application but there is some potential pleasure to be had if we can collectively focus on the process of grant applications rather than solely on the product or the outcome. A recent pilot of a grant writing bootcamp designed and delivered for the Research Festival 2024 by CHMLS (College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences) academics (Professor Louise Mansfeld, Dr Neil O Connell, Dr Rhona Anderson, Professor Paola Vagnarelli and Dr Wendy Martin) illustrated four overlapping areas of the process that could create some of these potential pleasures. It is possible that successful grant writing and submission can be imbued with meaning, a sense of belonging, increased research confdence and sometimes a little fun.
A frst principle of grant writing lies in the value of creating early support for your research ideas and understanding your own funding landscape and opportunity. Early activities for thinking and talking should include Brunel academics, scholars within your own academic networks and with colleagues in RSDO (Research Support and Development Ofce) who ofer a wealth of professional support for grant writing. The second principle, is the importance of early adoption of peer review processes, viewed not as an end point or tick box exercise but one that can embed valuable and ongoing mentorship from project inception to grant submission. Thirdly, there is an identifable need for ongoing collaboration in grant writing processes which needs to be developed through meaningful and trusting relationships. Partnerships of all types from individual peer-peer to wider group support within and outside the academy are vital to research excellence in all areas including ideas generation, implementation and impact. And fourthly, the value of long-term planning for grant applications cannot be underestimated as a foundational principle for success. Grants are awarded partly on the basis of an excellent track record in a feld of work and this takes time. This means that individual research plans which include strategies for grant writing and submissions need to think beyond the short-term yearly review process and consider what is possible within a 3–5-year trajectory. This kind of longer-term planning may allow for refection about where in the academic year it is possible for you to write and submit grants and what that opportunity for research time means for the grant(s) which might suit your work best.
Overall, the development of a network of allies across the University and beyond who understand your work and can support its progress is central to grant writing and submission and likely a determinant of successful award. Crucially, there is a need to raise the profle of research broadly and grant applications specifcally, ensuring dedicated space and time on agendas at University, College, Department, Division and Research Centre and Group levels. For me, the framing of grant writing with the four principles of early support, peer review and mentoring, collaboration and long-term planning are central to the development of a vibrant and sustainable research culture. Positive research cultures are built on identifed, shared and agreed values, expectations and actions linked to collaboration, trust, respect, inclusivity, diversity, support, creativity and openness. Only with this framing can there be pleasure in the grant writing process; an experience that associates success with enjoyment, creativity, cooperation and personal thriving rather than one solely defned by productivity and outcome.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily refect the views or policy of the University.
Dr Hayleigh Bosher has been awarded the British Academy Researcher-led Innovation Fellowship for 2023-24. The award was for £128,000.00, for her project "The Future of the UK Music Industry: Exploring Policy and Practice," in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The project launched in April 2024 and runs until early 2025.
Dr Bosher's project aligns with the ambition of Rt Hon Lucy Frazer, the former Secretary of State for Culture, to enhance the UK music industry's global leadership, recognising its £4bn value and creative potential. The fellowship seeks to address technological and cultural shifts, as well as the impacts of Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The project aims to enhance and strengthen the resilience of the music industry and inform UK policy.
The project focuses on four major pillars: Pillar 1: Recognising Music's Value - Researchbased approach focusing on music's broad economic and social benefts, highlighting the importance of investing in the music industry. Pillar 2: A Sustainable and Inclusive IndustryEmphasising necessary investments for industry sustainability, including funding, tax incentives, and equal access to music opportunities, to combat industry challenges and support talent development. Pillar 3: Regulating and Future Proofng - This pillar aims at regulating to protect music creators and rights holders, ensuring fair copyright and contracts, and adapting laws to beneft from technologies like streaming and AI. Pillar 4: Exporting for Global Success - This Pillar focuses on driving the global recognition of the UK music industry by considering things such as coordinating a creative industries export ofce and resolving challenges around touring.
Learn more about Dr. Bosher and her project at: https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/projects/ the-future-of-the-uk-music-industry-exploringpolicy-and-practice
Dr. Eleni Iacovidou, alongside co-applicants Dr. Spyridoula Gerasimidou (Dept. of Life Sciences) and Dr. Susy Katikana Sebayang (Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia), has secured a £9,971 grant through the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme for their project, "Integrating plastics with the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus: a systems approach to combating plastic pollution."
The project also includes an MSc student, Paula Garcia Ramos, from Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark. Paula is currently completing a 6-month internship, followed by a 6-month MSc thesis dissertation, collaborating closely with the team and under the primary supervision of Dr. Iacovidou.
Dr. Iacovidou commented:
“We are excited to embark on this research, as it will lay the foundation for groundbreaking studies on the interrelationship between food, energy, and water systems operating in tandem with the plastics system. This research will illuminate the realities of tackling plastic pollution in local and regional contexts and establish a baseline for interventions that can achieve the desired outcome”
The project aims to address the complex challenge of plastic waste in Indonesia by integrating it with the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus. Traditional eforts to combat plastic pollution often overlook the interconnectedness of plastics with essential systems like food, energy, and water, potentially leading to unintended consequences. To tackle this issue comprehensively, the team will utilize the Complex-Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery (CVORR) approach. This systemsbased tool will provide a holistic analysis of plastic pollution's impacts across various Indonesian settings, identifying both barriers to and drivers of sustainable interventions.
The research will focus on understanding and integrating FEW systems with the plastic waste management framework. By doing so, the project aims to uncover practical strategies tailored to local and regional contexts. This approach promises to deliver efective solutions for mitigating plastic pollution while ensuring the sustainability of local ecosystems and communities.
The British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme has awarded 308 grants worth over £2.7 million to support primary research in the SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy) disciplines. Each grant is worth up to £10,000 over a period of up to two years, covering expenses arising from specifc research projects.
Dr Marianna Ercolino (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) has been awarded a small research grant (£9,769.00) in the framework of the “British Academy’s Pump Priming Collaboration between UK and EU Partners 2024 Programme” with the project titled: “An innovative Framework for Integrated Structural Health Assessment of Infrastructure Systems”.
Infrastructure systems have a critical role in the economic development of regions by connecting communities to schools, hospitals, and cities. They also have an essential part in managing times of emergencies (e.g., after a natural disaster). In the last decades, concerns about the aging infrastructure networks became a signifcant issue, which poses potential risks on human lives and economic stability. Moreover, the expenditure on maintenance and repair can signifcantly impact investments and resources. Only in the UK this annual expenditure is around £494m.
The awarded research project aims to develop a consortium of experts to enhance the collaboration between academic institutions while working on the joint proposal on "Resilient Infrastructure 2024" in the framework of the Horizon Europe Framework. The fnal aim of the research will be the identifcation of risks due to natural or man-made hazards in a very early stage by preventing disastrous consequences on communities. An innovative aspect will be the introduction of AI in validating the techniques as well as the scenarios of risk.
The Pump Priming Award Funding will support networking activities to strengthen the collaborative work on the forthcoming Horizon Europe call in November 2024. The funds will also support a preliminary study to defne the limitations of the proposed techniques as well the main case-studies to include in the experimental and numerical tasks.
Dr Farah Al Taji, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Strategy, has successfully secured £294,289 for a two-year research project titled ‘Doing Good, Growing Strong: Catalysing Economic and Social Impact in Jordan through Sustainable Social Enterprises’. The project is funded by the British Academy and is part of a programme designed to support UK-based early career researchers working with global partners on interdisciplinary, ODA-eligible* projects in the humanities and social sciences. Dr Al Taji's project exemplifes the programme’s commitment to fostering impactful research that addresses global challenges through innovative, interdisciplinary approaches.
This interdisciplinary project aims to investigate and develop a holistic, culturally informed ecosystem for nurturing and fostering social entrepreneurship in Jordan. Firstly, it seeks to identify success factors crucial for Jordanian social enterprises and develop strategies to amplify their positive contributions. Secondly, the project will analyse the infuence of Jordan's cultural and societal contexts on these enterprises, crafting strategies to enhance their cultural responsiveness. Lastly, it will examine existing policy frameworks in Jordan and produce recommendations to foster a more supportive environment for social enterprise growth and efcacy. The project aligns with SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
A diverse team from the UK, Jordan, and Sweden will utilise mixed methods to conduct their research, engage in capacity building for stakeholders in Jordan’s social entrepreneurship ecosystem, and create an online platform aimed at promoting sustainable social entrepreneurship. This holistic approach is designed to provide actionable insights and tools to bolster social enterprises in Jordan, enabling them to thrive and adapt within their unique cultural context.
*Ofcial Development Assistance https://www. oecd.org/en/topics/ofcial-developmentassistance-oda.html
Brunel is delighted to announce that Dr Sotirios Argyroudis, Reader in Infrastructure Engineering at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. This prestigious grant (£206K) will enable Dr Argyroudis and his team to advance the FIREWISE project with Dr Stavros Sakellariou joining their research group.
FIREWISE is led by Dr Stavros Sakellariou (Fellow), an expert in wildfre simulations and spatial optimisation for efective initial attack and immediate wildfre detection, supervised by Dr Sotirios Argyroudis, an expert in multiple hazards infrastructure resilience and co-supervised by Professor Simon Taylor, with expertise on agent-based modelling and digital infrastructure. The research involves secondments in Factor Social (FS), providing expertise to holistic wildfre management. Additionally, the EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC) will ofer access to building data in Europe and facilitate interaction with the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) and EU policy. Prof Mike Flannigan from Thompson Rivers University, renown expert in climate change and fre management, will serve as Advisor, bringing valuable experience from practices in Canada.
The two-year project titled ‘FIREWISE: Proactive wildfre resilience assessment and management’ is dedicated to developing innovative vulnerability models using wildfre simulations and multi-objective spatial optimisation for ground-based and aerial frefghting resources. These models will feed the evacuation planning module that will be enhanced by agent-based modelling, aiming to establish a pioneering framework and a web-based tool for proactive wildfre resilience assessment and management. The project includes two case studies in wildfre-devastated areas of Rhodes, Greece (2023 megafre), and Leiria, Central Portugal (2017 megafre).
This grant marks a signifcant step in enhancing wildfre resilience, underscoring Brunel's commitment to leading-edge research in proactive wildfre risk assessment and management, a top priority both in Europe and worldwide.
By Joanna M. Bridger, Carly Randall, Alessandro Esposito, and Emmanouil Karteris.
Brunel is no stranger to space research. The late Professor Heinz Wolf developed the ‘Anthrolab’ platform for ESA (European Space Agency),
as well as the Glovebox for NASA missions. Professor Wolf was the director of Project Juno, sending Dr. Helen Sharman, the frst British astronaut, into space. He was also the founder of the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA), and the Chair of ESA’s Life Sciences Committee for 15 years.
Indeed, a new space-race is unfolding, with renewed interest and resources to study how humans will manage in space. Aerospace research of course continues in CEDPS (College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences) but has now been joined with enthusiasm from researchers all over Brunel. This build-up of interest has led to brain-storming, a BRIL (Brunel Research Interdisciplinary Lab): Our Outer Space, spawning 8 new projects covering many diferent aspects of space travel from cell behaviour, food, 3D printing, accessibility, mining, gestation and parenting in space and even the launch of a new space tax institute with collaborators in Basel (Jelfs and Conway). There was a need for a coherent network, within which to build ideas, and so with an RDF (Research Development Fund), the Brunel Space Travel and Applied Research (B-STAR) network was created.
The network was launched, with special guest speakers Professor Martin Barstow from Leicester University’s Space City and Dr. Phil Carvil, President of ELGRA and Head of Space Clusters (NW), and an exciting session at the Research Festival, presented at international conferences and workshops, and already have new external academic and industrial collaborators.
With the support from an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), we have now also established a strategic ground-based facility to run experiments in simulated microgravity. A YURI Random Positioning Machine (RPM) is now hosted within the Division of Biosciences in the Heinz Wolf building supporting Brunel scientists and external collaborators to immediately progress with microgravity research supporting the development of research projects that will later go into low orbit facilities.
Brunel's new £5m collaboration to help UK prepare for climate change
Climate change is one of the world’s biggest challenges, and Brunel is working with other universities and policymakers as part of a new £5 million hub - Maximising UK Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) hub - to assess how the UK can best adapt to extreme weather and other efects of climate change.
Brunel’s Dr Shona Paterson has joined the new MAAC hub alongside academics from seven other UK universities and fve climate partnership organisations. The Hub is funded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) as part of the Maximising UK adaptation to climate change programme, which has been co-designed by UKRI, Defra (Dept. for Environment, Food & Rural Afairs), the Met Ofce and the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee.
Led by King’s College London, the Hub will work to deliver faster and more impactful action in the UK to help all four nations prepare better for the predicted efects of climate change over the next three years. It will inform a national climate change adaptation plan by addressing current barriers around public awareness, policy, legislation and climate data that might be hindering the UK’s ability to adapt to global warming.
Key to the Hub is the idea of ‘transformational adaptation’ – any action taken to protect people’s way of life from climate change should drive positive change, especially for the poorest and most marginalised members of society who are usually also the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. There will also be a specifcally targeted £750,000 fexible fund to accelerate ‘on the ground’ activities in partnership with local communities.
Dr Paterson, Director of the Global Lives Research Centre, said:
"It's a privilege to be involved in a Hub that brings together such a diverse group of partners and thought leaders to be really implementation-focused – fguring out what works on the ground, and driving a step change in the UK's climate adaptation practice."
HarmonicAI will address current gaps by creating concrete guidelines and frameworks for trustworthy AI, promoting ethical and reliable applications in digital health.
The initiative brings together experts in AI, healthcare, IoT, data science, privacy, cybersecurity, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and industrial design. HarmonicAI also aims to accelerate the deployment of ethical AI in digital health, providing the public with greater assurance in AI technologies.
The Staf Exchanges action funds international and inter-sectoral exchanges of staf members involved in research and innovation activities of participating organisations. To learn more, visit: https://mariesklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/staf-exchanges
Dr. Paula Westenberger, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University London, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship under the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) programme. Her research focuses on the intersection of AI and intellectual property law within the heritage sector.
As a BRAID Fellow, Dr. Westenberger will collaborate with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Her work will examine how copyright law can responsibly facilitate the use of AI in heritage applications, an area where Kew is leveraging AI to enhance biodiversity and manage extensive heritage collections. Dr. Westenberger aims to fnd a balance between enabling AI's use and protecting creators' rights, while addressing socio-ethical issues such as AI biases.
Hub activities will be implemented through regional centres, each leading on one of the key barriers to adaptation. Dr Paterson will work with the London Climate Change Partnership and with Sustainability West Midlands, leading work on public awareness of climate adaptation and the barriers to engagement. Their overall aim is to develop more efective ways to reach and engage members of the public.
Dr Kezhi Wang from Brunel University London has been awarded £140,253 in research funding under the MSCA Staf Exchange programme (Horizon Europe Guarantee) for his project, ‘HarmonicAI: Human-guided Collaborative Multi-objective Design of Explainable, Fair, and Privacy-Preserving AI for Digital Health.’
HarmonicAI aims to transform the role of artifcial intelligence (AI) in modern healthcare systems. As AI-driven digital health solutions rapidly expand, it is vital to ensure these systems are explainable, fair, and privacy-preserving. The project will develop a human-machine collaborative framework to incorporate these essential elements into AI design.
Refecting on her appointment, she said, “AI is transforming our approach to cultural heritage, but it also raises complex copyright challenges. I’m honoured to partner with Kew at this crucial time for AI policy, to explore how intellectual property law can support responsible AI use.”
The Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) Fellowships are part of the BRAID programme. BRAID is led by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the BBC. The £15.9 million, six-year programme is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI).
In 2024 Brunel Sociology celebrates 50 years. This milestone occasion was marked in May by a refective session on the signifcance of Sociology as a discipline for both teaching and research, and its increasing relevance in addressing social change and global challenges. Students and staf celebrated on campus with a diverse and warm gathering that included a quiz, talks and a panel discussion in a room adorned with a gigantic timeline capturing signifcant milestones over its dynamic half a century.
Sociology has been around as a disciplinary group since the foundation of Brunel in 1966. Today, Brunel Sociology encompasses a broad
diversity of work with key strengths in cultural sociology, creative industries, ethnicity and critical race studies, social movements and urban and digital research. This builds on a rich Brunel history of sociological work in science, technology and medicine.
Led by interdisciplinary approaches, Brunel Sociology has been uniquely located at the intersections of Media and Communications. Roger Silverstone played a pivotal role here. The late Professor established the Centre for Research into Innovation, Communication and Technology (CRICT) that attracted seminal fgures working in Media and Communications including Salvador
Giner and Jenny Kitzinger. Silverstone insisted on the importance of providing Brunel students with an education that spanned theory and practice, and this is an approach that is strongly embedded in the division’s pedagogic provision – and vision – today.
With thanks to all colleagues for their contributions, and to former Brunel professor, Ian Robinson, whose historical insights we draw on for this piece.
written by Sarita Malik and Monica Degen
Fiona recently joined the Department of Health Sciences as Professor, Social Work Division. She moved to Brunel University from Swansea University, Wales, where she held the role of Professor/ Head of Social Work, and for 5 years, between 2016-2020, was Director of the Wales School for Social Care Research (WSSCR). Funded by Health and Care Research Wales, the WSSCR worked across Wales to support research capacity building in social care.
Prior to her time in Wales, Fiona lived and worked in South Australia where she did her undergraduate studies (BA, Classical Studies, Adelaide University) and a postgraduate Bachelor of Social Administration (Flinders University). Her PhD (Sociology) was undertaken at the University of Newcastle (NSW) and was focused on localitybased community participation. She has held academic positions at the University of South Australia and Flinders University.
One of the threads throughout Fiona’s research has been community-based prevention, which has been informed by social justice values and her practice background in community development. In the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s, she worked in the community health
sector in Adelaide, South Australia whose locality based primary health care included community development and supporting the creation of healthy environments. Research was part of practice to inform change and developments.
As an academic researcher she has been part of studies exploring areas such as the implications of risk management for community development; community development in childhood obesity prevention; refning community-based hospital discharge supports; evaluating the implementation of the Welsh Government social services prevention agenda, and has supported practitioner-based research.
Fiona is looking forward to working with colleagues across the University. She will be continuing her engagement in the work of the Developing Evidence Enriched Practice Programme (DEEP), a dialogue-based approach to exploring and using diferent types of knowledge in organisational learning and development; funded evaluation research about the efectiveness of a Welsh Government initiative to support the integration of health and social care; and research on understanding complexities in implementing prevention in social care.
Dr Marianna Ercolino joined Brunel University London in January 2024 as a Senior Lecturer in Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has
been an active researcher since 2011 with focus on earthquake engineering and non-invasive monitoring of structures.
She received her PhD at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) where she studied the risk of damage in industrial facilities due to seismic events. She was awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2014 to visit the State University of New York at Bufalo (USA) where she worked on innovative techniques to monitor corrosion damage in reinforced concrete structures. Marianna has been leading several research and academic committees/panels since 2020 as a senior HE representative in the UK. She established a new experimental facility at University of Greenwich (2016-2023) for the structural monitoring of civil engineering systems. The new laboratory equipment enabled new students’ projects on non-destructive techniques, and attracted post-doc researchers who worked on her projects by enhancing their careers. She is an active member of the scientifc community. Marianna has a strong experience in emergency planning and management. She took part to post-earthquake missions in Italy
(2012) and she was selected by the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) to co-lead the hybrid mission after the 2020 Aegean earthquake and tsunami.
Marianna has been also focusing on global challenges in developing countries. She was awarded the British Council Climate Challenge Workshops Grant (£48,850) in January 2021 as Principal Investigator. The project aimed to organize the “Indonesia-UK Workshop on reduction of climate change impact on food risk in urban areas”. They proposed a set of networking activities to investigate the impact of climate change on the food risk of infrastructure systems in Indonesia. She is currently developing new research projects with international collaborations (UK, Indonesia and Vietnam) to assess the state of Cultural Heritage under the threats of climate change.
Dr Marko Aunedi joined Brunel University London in September 2023 as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He is also a member of the Brunel Interdisciplinary Power Systems (BIPS) Research Centre. He has an extensive research experience in the area of low-carbon energy systems, optimising portfolios of energy supply and storage technologies in net-zero energy systems,
decarbonisation of heat and transport, value of fexible technologies such as energy storage and demand-side response, system integration of renewables and the role of hydrogen in decarbonising energy supply.
Marko is currently a Co-Investigator on EPSRCfunded grant “Data-driven exploration of the carbon emissions impact of grid energy storage deployment and dispatch (DIGEST)”, a £1m, 2-year project where he is studying the role of grid energy storage in decarbonising UK’s energy system in collaboration with academics from Oxford and Imperial College London. In his previous position of Advanced Research Fellow at Imperial College London, he was a Research Co-Investigator on “Integrated Development of Low-Carbon Energy Systems (IDLES)”, a 5-year, £7m EPSRC Programme Grant that looked at multi-disciplinary assessment of low-carbon energy systems. Marko’s contribution on this project included a new concept of system-driven design of energy technologies in low-carbon energy systems.
Marko’s publication track record includes 45 scientifc papers and 2 book chapters, as well as over 20 technical reports. A paper he coauthored won the Best Paper Award at SDEWES 2021 conference for the assessment of fexible nuclear power plants in the UK’s low-carbon electricity system. In addition to academic publications, he has also published a large number of strategic policy-oriented studies on various issues related to energy system decarbonisation,
commissioned by organisations such as BEIS, the Climate Change Committee, Ofgem, and various industrial partners. He has led several policyoriented academic reports such as the white paper on cost-efcient technology portfolios in net-zero electricity systems or the briefng paper on system value of Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES).
Marko has used his research fndings to consult a wide range of stakeholders in the UK’s energy sector. Marko has established ongoing relationships with many policy organisations (such as DESNZ, Climate Change Committee, Carbon Trust, National Infrastructure Commission) and major industrial partners (UK Power Networks, BP, BHP Billiton, Innogy, RES, ScottishPower, EDF Energy, GDF Suez, Hitachi, Honda, National Grid, Origami, OVO Energy, PassivUK). He has also established collaborations with many international organisations such as the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). He regularly reviews manuscripts for leading journals and evaluates project proposals submitted to EPSRC, Innovate UK, European Commission and Latvian Research Council. He has represented the UK’s energy system research community in international workshops and delivered a large number of invited talks in distinguished international conferences and seminars.
Routledge has recently published a new book by Dr Francesco De Pascalis (Senior Lecturer in Brunel Law School) with co-author, Dr Alan Brener (Associate Professor, University College London). Titled Open Banking: Global Development and Regulation, the book is about consumer empowerment in banking across the world based on new fnancial technology and regulation.
This book compares a number of diferent open banking national strategies. These range from the focus of the UK and EU on enhanced competition to the more collaborative approaches in many East Asian jurisdictions. It also looks at the use of open banking for socioeconomic purpose in Brazil and India. Here open banking forms part of a wider government programme to increase fnancial inclusion coupled with encouraging economic growth.
New edited handbook: Practice supervision and assessment in nursing, health and social care
How can health and social work students learn within complex landscapes of practice? What knowledge and skills are required to support pre-registration students, apprentices, trainees and learners so that working and learning is coincident? Why does emotion play such an important role within workplace learning? Why is learning within the workplace problematic and how can learning environments be compassionate and inclusive?? Academics from The Open University, Bournemouth University and the University of Bedfordshire; and senior
educators from Bedfordshire, Milton Keynes & Luton Integrated Care Board and East London Foundation NHS Trust have collaborated in this book edited by Dr Mark Wareing, Reader in Practice Education at Brunel University London. Published by Routledge, the book places a strong emphasis on the context of practice learning, the role of the supervisor/assessor and educator, coaching, assessment and supporting the learner in difculty, among others. It also spotlights practice learning in a range of settings, from working with children, through social care and maternity care. Mark added “the personal experiences of the writers as students, mentors and professionals is shared with the reader to highlight the importance of practical wisdom and tacit knowledge to support students as they make sense of their emerging professional identity. And we have also included chapters on the support of neurodivergent learners and how to provide alternate, blended and digital placement experiences”. The text has also been written to help fnal year students to become ‘educator ready’ and supports Brunel’s recently launched MSc in Clinical Education.
The Brunel Research Festival returned with a packed programme of over 50 activities across May 2024, celebrating cutting-edge and challenge-led research at Brunel and beyond. Welcoming around 2000 attendees, highlights of the public festival included a debate on the UK and US elections; an Ageing Research Showcase; a guest lecture on Country Walks in Colonial Britain, from Prof Corinne Fowler; and lively family-friendly Research Jamboree.
See more at brunel.ac.uk/BRF
Electrostatics Conference at Brunel
Electrostatics 2023 Conference Attendees by the statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel
In September 2023, Brunel hosted Electrostatics 2023, the prestigious quadrennial conference dedicated to the feld of electrostatics and its diverse applications. Organized by the Dielectrics and Electrostatics Group of the Institute of Physics (IoP), the conference attracted experts from academia and industry across the globe.
The event welcomed over 70 scientists, scholars, and early career researchers, who shared their latest discoveries, research developments, and advancements. Spanning four days, the conference featured thirteen oral sessions and two poster sessions.
The conference commenced with a welcome address by the chair, Dr. Nadarajah Manivannan (Senior Lecturer, Brunel Design School). This was followed by the esteemed Bill Bright Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Wamadeva Balachandran (Research Professor, Electronic and Electrical Engineering) on “Non-Thermal Plasma for Medical Applications.”
The lecture set a high tone for the event, emphasizing the groundbreaking potential of electrostatic applications in medicine.
Delegates attended from an impressive list of countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, USA, Canada, India (Bharat), Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Poland, China, Slovenia, South Korea, Netherlands, Algeria, Latvia, Czech Republic, and Austria. This diverse attendance highlighted the global relevance and collaborative spirit of the conference.
Delegates at the Research Staf 2024 Conference
In April, the Graduate School was delighted to reintroduce the annual Research Staf Conference, bringing together postdoctoral researchers and research fellows from Brunel and other London institutions. Attendees heard from Professors Jason Arday (Cambridge), Tina Ramkalawan (Brunel) and Richard Freeman (UCL) about diferent pathways to professorship and ‘the alternative CV’. Dr Inês Perpétuo from Imperial’s Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre emphasised the importance of ‘person, project, place’ when interactively exploring how to be successful with fellowship applications. Dr Neil O’Connell from CHMLS (College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences) shared his team’s mission to develop a novel integrated framework for enhancing and facilitating the trustworthiness of evidence for chronic pain, and Brunel technician Graeme Shaw demonstrated the many ways in which technicians make research happen. Guests from the National Centre for Universities and Business—Anna Dent-Davies (Universities Partnership Manager) and Danni Croucher (Policy Lead for Skills and Talent)—will continue working with Brunel on the movement of researchers between academia and industry. For more information contact Dr Victoria Schuppert, Senior Researcher Developer (Research Staf), Graduate School
On the 30th April, the Human Geography: Space, Place and Society research group held a one-day symposium on 'Experiencing and reimagining the university campus: critical, creative and equitable places of higher education'. This interdisciplinary theme comes at a time when changes in higher education, the student body and student experience, the increased digitalization of society, along with the challenges of postCOVID engagement, have begun to prompt a review of both the physical form of university campuses and their civic role. The event, opened by the Vice Chancellor with a talk on the importance of Brunel’s changing campus space and interactions, drew an audience of 40 academics and non-academics from universities across London and the southeast, as well as internationally. The symposium heard from national and international scholars looking at diferent aspects of the contemporary campus including campus architecture and design, campus-community engagements, and campus-based welfare support and quasilegal student controls. Talks covered research undertaken in the Global South and North refecting the importance of interrogating the role of universities in the UK and globally. The event included a tour of Brunel’s campus and discussions of its re-visioning. The symposium ended with a roundtable discussion through which ideas for future collaborative research were pursued
Professor Asoke Nandi
his wife
Professor Asoke Nandi (Electronic and Electrical Engineering), alongside Nobel Laureates Michael Levitt and George Fitzgerald Smoot, participated in the Green Development Forum in Shenzhen, China, in April 2024. The international
event focused on Innovation in Intelligent Manufacturing, Frontier Materials Science and Technology, New Energy and Sustainable Development, and Biomedical Industry Development. Professor Nandi presented on “Greener Framework for Fault Diagnosis with Compressive Sampling and Artifcial Intelligence” on the frst day. Day two featured a Top Wisdom x Industry Leaders Dialogue session with a panel including Professors Levitt, Smoot, Rodrigo Martins, Rachid Yazami, and Professor Nandi. The Forum concluded with cultural programs and a gala dinner, promoting global discourse on sustainable development and cutting-edge technology.
Professor Guglielmo Maria Caporale, from the Department of Economics and Finance, has been awarded the prestigious Adam Smith Prize for his co-authored paper, "Shadow Rates as a Measure of the Monetary Policy Stance: Some International Evidence." Written in collaboration with Dr. Christina Anderl (London South Bank University), the paper was recognised as the best publication in volume 70 of the Scottish Journal of Political Economy last year. The award was presented in April 2024 at the Gala Dinner during the annual meeting of the Scottish Economic Society. This accolade underscores Professor Caporale’s signifcant contributions to the feld of monetary policy through the innovative analysis of shadow rates.
Professor Asoke Nandi Honoured by Two European Academies
Professor Asoke Nandi from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering has received prestigious invitations to join two esteemed academies. He has been honoured by the Academia Europaea, also known as The Academy of Europe, which promotes excellence in scholarship across various disciplines worldwide. The Academy's mission includes advancing education and advising on scientifc matters to governments and international organisations. Additionally, Professor Nandi has been recognised by the Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, established to foster scientifc and societal progress through interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange among leading scientists, artists, and governance practitioners. These honours highlight Professor Nandi's signifcant contributions to research and underscore his commitment to advancing knowledge and fostering international cooperation in academia and beyond.
British Academy Researcher at Risk Fellowship
Dr Daniil Hulak was appointed as a Senior Lecturer within the Department of Economics and Management, Cherkasy State Technological University, Ukraine from September 2020 to August 2022 and his research activity included aspects international and local energy markets, market liberalization and renewable energy. Dr Hulak was subsequently awarded a prestigious British Academy Researcher at Risk Fellowship in August 2022 that included mentoring by Professor Gareth Taylor within the Brunel Interdisciplinary Power Systems (BIPS) Research Centre of Brunel University London. Earlier this year, a 12-month extension to the original Fellowship was awarded. To learn more, visit:
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/projects/ energy-markets-policy-and-regulation-interms-of-reaching-net-zero-emissions
Dr. Yohan Noh Presents Robotics Research in Japan
Dr. Yohan Noh, a lecturer in manufacturing engineering, has secured a £4,000 grant from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation to support research travel for himself and his PhD student. Their goal is to introduce cuttingedge sensing technology—specifcally force/ torque sensors and shape sensors—to Japanese society. These sensors are crucial for enhancing the accuracy of artifcial intelligence (AI) systems integrated into daily life. Dr. Noh and his student plan to showcase their innovations at the upcoming Robotics Society of Japan conference. In addition to the conference presentation, the grant will facilitate visits to several academic institutions and industry partners in Japan.
(1 November 2023 – 31 January 2024) £5,220,842
BCAST - Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidifcation Technology
Dr Chamini Mendis (PI): Constellium UK LTDInvestigation on the Sub-structure development in HSA6 alloys to maximise strength via Thermomechanical simulations - ICASE Studentship 230041, £34,968
Professor Geofrey Scamans (PI): Constellium UK LTD - Compositional analysis of the ageing precipitates in HSA6 alloys via Atom Probe Tomography - EPSRC ICASE 230040, £34,968
Professor Hamid Asadi (PI): Constellium UK LTD - Manufacturing made smarter (UKRI/ ISCF Research Centre) - Constellium support, £300,013
CBASS – College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences
Dr Navid Sahebjamnia (PI): UKRI (EC)UK Research and Innovation - NARRATE: regeNerAtive Resilient smaRt mAnufacTuring nEtworks, £326,173
Dr Ashkan Pak Seresht (PI): BBSRCBiotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council - BBSRC CDT Studentship - Elizabeth Rainey, £131,927
Dr Eleftherios Kretsos (PI): British Council - DigitAll Empowerment: Towards the development of a seamless network of female students, academics and practitioners to foster women’s participation in STEM, £11,957
CEDPS – College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences
Dr Michail Kazilas (PI): BEIS - Department for Business Energy and Industrial StrategyReComp: Recovery and reuse of waste heat for composite manufacturing, £324,462
Professor Hua Dong (PI): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and Innovation - VOICE: Valorising Artist-led Innovation through Creative Citizen Engagement, £127,241
Dr Evelyne El Masri (PI) Professor Tat-Hean Gan (Co-I): Innovate UK - Solar ERA: Solar Electrifcation of Rural Areas (SolarERA), £251,543
Dr Lorna Anguilano (PI) Dr Eujin Pei, Dr Uche Onwukwe (Co-Is): Innovate UK - Rethinking Phyona, £29,998
Professor Mizi Fan (PI) Professor Xiangming Zhou (Co-I): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and Innovation - CELLMEMBRANE: Development of delignifed nanocellulose based gas transfer scafold membrane for artifcial lung
applications, £397,619
Dr Kezhi Wang (PI): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and Innovation - Cooperative and Intelligent unmanned aerial vehicles for emergency response applications, £98,935
Dr Kezhi Wang (PI): Innovate UK - COMET: Communications Enabled, AI/ML based Digital Twins for Smart city Logistics and Last Mile applications, £379,729
Professor Akram Khan (PI): STFC - Science & Technology Facilities Council - Grid PP7, £98,273
Professor Tatiana Kalganova (PI) Professor Ashley Braganza, Dr Nikolaos Boulgouris, Dr Stelios Andreadakis (Co-Is): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and Innovation - ELOQUENCE: Multilingual and Cross-cultural interactions for context-aware, and bias-controlled dialogue systems for safety-critical applications, £382,893
Dr Joanne Cole (PI) Professor Akram Khan (CoI): STFC - Science & Technology Facilities Council - The High-Luminosity Upgrade of the CMS Detector (2024/25 extension), £60,694
Professor John Cosmas (PI) Dr Rajagopal Nilavalan, Professor Hamed Al-Raweshidy (CoIs): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and InnovationOpti-6G: Optic 6G Cell Free Networks, £410,356
Professor Tatiana Kalganova (PI) Dr Nikolaos Boulgouris, Dr Chun Sing Lai (Co-Is): Innovate UK - Intelligent D-XPERT, £69,677
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): London Mathematical Society - Support of joint research group: Algebraic Geometry Seminar (COW), £1,200
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research - COW and CALF seminar in Algebraic Geometry 2024, £3,000
Professor Savvas Tassou (PI) Dr Harjit Singh (CoI): Innovate UK - SolarSaver II - Solar powered modular food drying system to reduce food losses for of grid Africa, £164,173
Dr Xinyan Wang (PI) Professor Hua Zhao (Co-I): Guangxi Yuchai Machinery Company Ltd - Zero Carbon Engines R & D (Studentships), £400,000
Dr Dong Zhang (PI): Shandong Linglong Tire Co. Ltd - Development of tire models considering temperature and road conditions, £210,000
Dr Valentina Stojceska (PI) Dr Lorna Anguilano, Dr George Fern, Professor Savvas Tassou (Co-Is): British Council – Decarbonisation of the food
industry, £20,000
Dr Harjit Singh (PI) Professor Savvas Tassou (Co-I): Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Ofce - Decentralized Solar Hydrogen for rural India (DeSHI), £116,570
Professor Atanas Ivanov (PI) Professor Tassos Karayiannis (Co-I): Innovate UK - SiC ECM, £145,554
Professor Hussam Jouhara (PI): Air Products Plc - Cryogenic Research into Indirect Cooling Techniques, £127,500
CHMLS – College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences
Dr Alessandro Esposito (PI): UKRI (EC) - UK Research and Innovation - HILIGHT: Highly Integrated Versatile Laser Source enabling two-photon excitation in digital diagnostics and biomedical research, £536,696
Dr Jacqueline Clif (PI): Medical Research Foundation - Infammatory responses in tuberculosis-diabetes comorbidity, £4,767
Dr Sara Anjomani Virmouni (PI): Ataxia UKEfect of targeting sphingolipid-metabolising enzymes in iPSC-derived sensory neurons obtained from FRDA patients, £4,955
Professor Alexandra Blakemore-Walters (PI): Rhythm Pharmaceuticals - Phenotype-genotype correlation of individuals with early onset obesity that have undergone bariatric surgery and/or any type of bariatric surgery failure, £15,000
(1 February 2024 – 30 April 2024) £6,042,422
BCAST - Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidifcation Technology
Professor Zhongyun Fan (PI): EPSRCEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - STEP Aluminium 2018 (EPSRC)SUPPLEMENT, £98,940
Professor Hari Nadendla (PI): Royal Society - Tackling the strength-ductility trade of by nanoparticle reinforced metal matrix composite via non-equilibrium solidifcation, £12,000
Dr Zhongping Que (PI): Aeromet International Limited - Aeromet Circular Aluminium, £77,335
CBASS – College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences
Dr Dominik Havsteen-Franklin (PI) Dr Maria Dima (Co-I): Innovate UK - Creativity and Co-Design: Developing a Framework for Assessing Arts’ Impact on Wellbeing at Southbank Centre, £18,613
Dr Syed Sardar Muhammad (PI): British Council - Gender equality and enhancing employability for women in academia and other sectors in Pakistan, £1,150
Dr Farah Al Taji (PI) Dr Syed Sardar Muhammad, Dr Awele Achi, Dr Ibrahim Al-Jubari (Co-Is): The British Academy - Doing Good, Growing Strong: Catalysing Economic and Social Impact in Jordan through Sustainable Social Enterprises, £193,090
Dr Hayleigh Bosher (PI): The British Academy (Gov) - The Future of the UK Music Industry: Exploring Policy and Practice, £102,917
Dr Matteo Pazzona (PI) Dr Jan Auerbach (CoI): The British Academy - Funding practices, politician characteristics, and politician behaviour, £9,994
Dr Ayushman Bhagat (PI): Gerda Henkel Stiftung - Forced Migrant Labourers: A Study of Abandonment, Desertion and "Strandedness" in Asia, £7,588
Dr Katalin Halasz (PI): Leverhulme TrustLeverhulme Halasz, £12,500 CEDPS – College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences
Dr Evelyne El Masri (PI) Professor Tat-Hean Gan (Co-I): Innovate UK - AI-Powered VR Construction Training Environment and Platform – SafeXtend, £199,319
Dr Abhishek Lahiri (PI): Royal SocietyInterfacial reactions of bio-ionic liquids on carbon materials for energy applications, £12,000
Dr Abhishek Lahiri (PI): Innovate UK KTNRemoval of Iron (Fe2+ and Fe3+) from mixed metal oxide powders, £24,997
Dr Ruoyu Jin (PI) Professor Xiangming Zhou, Dr Weifeng Chen (Co-Is): Academy of Medical Sciences - Integrating digital transformation and Circular Economy for decarbonised construction & demolition waste diversion: enhancing Vietnam and UK's Research & Practice, £7,300
Dr Muhammad Shafque (PI) Professor Xiangming Zhou (Co-I): Academy of Medical Sciences - Fuel Cell and Battery Electric Vehicles – Enhancing Pathway Analysis for Future Transportation Systems, £8,650
Professor Mizi Fan (PI) Dr Philip Collins (Co-I): British Council - Advancing bioconversion technology for transforming urban bio-wastes into sustainable materials and products ‘Grow2Sustain’, £27,090
Dr Marianna Ercolino (PI): The British Academy - An innovative Framework for Integrated Structural Health Assessment of Infrastructure Systems, £9,769
Professor Xiangming Zhou (PI): The British Academy - Design for adaptability, re-use and deconstruction of buildings, in line with the principles of circular economy - pump-priming collaborative fund to support brainstorming, networking, brokerage, consortium building, and proposal drafting, £9,760
Professor Xiangming Zhou (PI) Dr Rabee Shamass (Co-I): British Council - Nurturing Early Career Fellows in Climate Resilient and Sustainable Built Environment Research Agenda (ISPF Early Career Fellows), £174,816
Professor Xiangming Zhou (PI) Dr Ruoyu Jin, Dr Muhammad Shafque (Co-Is): British Council - Nurturing Early Career Fellows in Climate Resilient and Sustainable Built Environment Research Agenda (ISPF Early Career FellowsTaiwan), £174,816
Dr Allan Tucker (PI): NERC - Natural Environment Research Council - The London NERC DTP Studentship - Anna Pazola, £92,956
Dr Kezhi Wang (PI): Royal Society - LEARN: Deep Intelligent Framework for Future LargeScale and Dynamic Networks, £160,967
Dr Fang Wang (PI): Royal Society - Symbolic Planning for Decomposed Temporal Equilibrium Strategies in Continuous Multi-Robot Collaboration, £11,860
Dr Derek Groen (PI): Open Doors (Nederland)Data Exploration and Prototype IDP model for East Nigeria, £8,403
Dr Kezhi Wang (PI): Innovate UK - 5G4PHealth: Enhanced 5G-Powered Platform for Predictive Preventive Personalized and Participatory Healthcare., £247,750
Dr Theodora Koulouri (PI): Innovate UKRegulatory compliant LLMs for customer service in banking, fnancial services and insurance, £31,392
Dr Yongmin Li (PI): Innovate UK KTNAutomating Tax Coding and Cost Breakdown for Capital Allowance Assessments, £35,658
Dr Federico Castagna (PI): Innovate UKRevealing pension members' ESG preferences using conversational AI, £18,084
Dr Derek Groen (PI) Dr Diana Suleimenova, Dr Yani Xue (Co-Is): United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - Prototype Development and Application of an AgentBased Returnee Forecasting Model (Phase 1), £55,083
Professor Akram Khan (PI): STFC - Science & Technology Facilities Council - GridPP7 Brunel Tier-2 Hardware Tranche-1 (2024-2026), £32,000
Dr Marko Aunedi (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Data-driven exploration of the carbon emissions impact of grid energy storage deployment and dispatch, £134,234
Dr Ruiheng Wu (PI) Dr Zhengwen Huang, Dr Yohan Noh (Co-Is): Royal Society - Research on fexible sensing and intelligent processing methods for physical signs, £11,994
Dr Ioana Pisica (PI) Professor Hua Zhao, Dr Xinyan Wang (Co-Is): Innovate UK - Shoreside Power from Optimised Hydrogen Lifecycle (SPOHL), £267,674
Professor Stephen Langdon (PI): EPSRCEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Maths DTP 2021/22 Brunel University London, £11,428
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): Leverhulme Trust - Visiting Professorship - Dr Kento Fujita, £25,632
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): London Mathematical Society - Support for international short visit with Celestin Kurujyibwami at University of Rwanda, £1,640
(continued on p22)
(continued from p21)
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): London Mathematical Society - Visit by Dr Kento Fujita to give lectures at University of Edinburgh, Brunel University, University of Nottingham, £1,500
Dr Chuong Thai Doan (PI): London Mathematical Society - Support for international short visit with Nguyen Dong Yen at Hanoi University of Science and Technology & Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, £1,993
Professor Keming Yu (PI): London Mathematical Society - International short visit with Nguyen Dong Yen at Hanoi University of Science and Technology & Hanoi Pedagogical University 2, £2,000
Dr Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros (PI): Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research - K-stability of smooth Fano 3-folds, £7,980
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research CouncilDriving productivity for sustainable growth - An industry-focussed engineering doctoral training programme for leaders in sustainable technology, £15,892
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Maths DTP, £3,905
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), £72,709
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Industrial Case Account, £8,153
Professor Savvas Tassou (PI): EPSRCEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - STREAM 1: Park Royal Place Based Impact Acceleration Account (PBIAA) Net-Zero Food Supply Chains, £50,000
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) - Additional Funding 01/11/2023 - 31/03/2024, £128,746
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Industrial CASE Account-Brunel University London, £1,606
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Industrial CASE Account-Brunel University London, £22,913
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): EPSRC - Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council - Industrial CASE Account - 2024, £784,000
Dr Colin Axon (PI): BBSRC - Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council - Risk and resilience in UK Food Supply chains: food security in times of polycrisis - Sarah Davenport - BBSRC CDT Studentship, £49,020
Dr Xinli Du (PI) Dr Ruth Mackay, Dr Hongying Meng (Co-Is): Royal Society - Technical research and equipment development of peritoneal fuid ventilation for sepsis-induced lung injury, £11,990
Dr Bin Wang (PI) Dr Marius Gintalas (Co-I): Royal Society - Measurement and evaluation technique of the potential drop method for hydrogeninduced cracking of structural materials, £11,750
Dr Bin Zhang (PI) Dr Ruth Mackay, Professor Joanna Bridger, Dr Gudrun Stenbeck (Co-Is): Royal Society - 3D printing continuous gradient scafold for osteoarthritic joint tissue repair, £69,831
Professor Savvas Tassou (PI): BEIS - Department for Business Energy and Industrial StrategyReengineering supermarket refrigeration for net zero, £40,391
Dr Harjit Singh (PI) Professor Savvas Tassou (Co-I): Innovate UK - SuBiDi: Sustainable biogas plants via valorisation of digestate through solar drying, £108,142
Professor Hua Zhao (PI) Dr Ioana Pisica, Dr Xinyan Wang (Co-Is): Innovate UK - WAVESWind and Aquaculture Vessels: Emission less Sailing, £264,574
Dr Xinyan Wang (PI) Professor Hua Zhao (Co-I): Innovate UK - Novel High-Efciency Ammonia engine Technology for Heavy Duty marine applications (Heat-HD), £187,693
Dr Qingping Yang (PI): Innovate UK KTNEnhancing SME knowledge capture with AI for improved design efciency and energy consumption, £34,693
Professor Hussam Jouhara (PI): Air Products Plc - Temperature Communication Sensors for Cold Chain Perishable Food and Pharmaceutical Sectors, £55,000
CHMLS – College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences
Dr Claire Nolan (PI): NIHR - National Institute for Health and Care Research - Co-design and feasibility testing of a brief behavioural counselling tool and online training course for pulmonary rehabilitation referrers with consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion to increase pulmonary rehabilitation referral and uptake rates in people living with COPD, £450,333
Professor Fiona Verity (PI): NIHR - National Institute for Health and Care Research - NIHR ARC Social Care Research Capacity Building, £220,000
Dr Claire Nolan (PI): Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust - CHAT Study Expenses, £9,284
Professor Fiona Verity (PI): Social Care WalesDeveloping Evidence Enriched Practice, £4,710
Dr Ronan McCarthy (PI): NC3Rs - National Centre for the Replacement, Refnement and Reduction of Animals in Research - Insects as models to study wound healing, infection and the wound microbiome, £3,668
Dr Ronan McCarthy (PI): BBSRC - Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research CouncilEnvironmental Biotechnology Innovation Centre, £726,256
Professor Susan Jobling (PI): Research England - ISPF ODA Funds for PISCES 30/10/2331/03/24, £51,000
Professor Louise Mansfeld (PI): What Works Centre for Wellbeing - Creativity and Wellbeing, £1,800
Dr Jacqueline Clif (PI): NIH - National Institute of Health - Human Herpesvirus 6B in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome pathogenesis: temporal analysis of viral reactivation and immunity to elucidate cause vs efect, £149,994
Institutional
Professor Hua Zhao (PI): UKRI - UK Research and Innovation - Open Access Block Award 2024, £161,497
Brunel continues to have success with Innovate UK applications, winning funding this year in several programmes including KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership), Smart grants, CMDC (Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition) and CELTIC NEXT (part of the Eureka programme). We have also had success collaborating in bilateral competitions including ones co-funded by Australia, Germany and India.
Our most recent KTP award is for a project in collaboration with Advanced Innovate Engineering (AIE), with Prof. Hua Zhao as PI and Dr Xinyan Wang as Co-I. The project will develop a new engine for a hybrid electric powertrain system and will be realised through the transfer of our academics’ internationally leading research expertise and co-creation of the new product development process. As with all KTPs the project will address a capability gap within the company and will leave them with the ability to grow their business by continuing to develop new products in response to market need. Prof. Zhao and his team have been developing the collaborative relationship with AIE over a number of years, learning about the company’s plans and areas where Brunel’s expertise would complement the company’s existing knowledge.
Innovate UK has launched a number of competitions recently which have ofered relatively small budgets (generally between £25k and £50k total budget) to carry out short projects of between 3 and 6 months. Such schemes are designed to accelerate the development process for ambitious innovative businesses, and may be targeted at a particular sector or geographical
area. In the case of the Design Foundations scheme the target is businesses who have no design expertise and have yet to engage with using design in development of their products or services. These schemes ofer an ideal opportunity to start developing a relationship with a company who may be inexperienced in working with universities or applying for Innovate UK funding. In some cases, the company will be fully funded by Innovate UK, which is an added incentive for small companies or start-ups.
At the other end of the scale are competitions such as Smart grants which allow a larger maximum budget (up to £1 million) and longer projects (up to two years) but which are not fully funded for the companies. These competitions can still be suitable for small and micro companies who either have existing revenue or investment, and projects can be smaller than the maximum allowed. The advantage of Smart grants is that they are open to any sector and any technology, but this makes them highly competitive. Other, more targeted, competitions may ofer a greater chance of success if your project is clearly in scope.
The main criteria for Innovate UK projects are that they are innovative and have a strong business case. Close collaboration between the university and its non-academic partners in shaping proposals will ensure that both aspects are covered.
RSDO (Research Support and Development Ofce) can help you with all aspects of Innovate UK and KTP applications, from helping to establish
relationships with potential collaborators, through preparing and submitting your application to running a successful project and taking the relationship forward to the next project.
To learn more, contact rachel.burch@brunel.ac.uk (Business Projects Manager, RSDO)
Delegates at the West London Business Awards 2024 Research, Innovate and Emerge (RIEm) was highly commended in the 2024 West London Business Awards. Judges commented it as "a national exemplar for how a university can combine external funding and use it to serve and support SMEs with a regional focus." The programme connects SMEs with world-class research experts and investors, ofering access to university resources for innovation validation.
The 2024 RIEm Programme guided participants through identifying research needs, assessing Technology Readiness Levels, and exploring open innovation and collaborating with Brunel University experts to optimise innovation. Entrepreneurs pitched to judges including investors and funding experts. Feedback emphasized proposal credibility, storytelling, future outlook, and understanding competition. Key advice included demonstrating sound research, realistic forecasts, and addressing risks and impact potential.
To discuss opportunities for RIEm 2025, please contact riem@brunel.ac.uk or visit www.brunel.ac.uk/riem
Did you know Brunel subscribes to the Research Professional system, and it is available to all members of staf? Research Professional is the University’s database for accessing research funding opportunities and much more. Find out about all the benefts of having an account with Research Professional, the University's database for research funding opportunities and news.
1) Create personalised funding alerts
Get personalised funding opportunities that are most relevant to you.
Create and save funding searches tailored to your research interests and receive weekly alerts of new opportunities from Research Professional. The comprehensive database includes opportunities from funders in the UK, Europe and globally, covering all disciplines and all career stages.
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Get news, analysis and commentary on research policy, research funding and research politics.
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Research Professional news includes Research Fortnight, their fortnightly publication.
3) Search the awards database
Research Professional has a searchable awards database going back to 2006.
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Get guidance on developing winning proposals from leading PIs and managers, organised by topic.
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This summary of top funders from Research Professional includes the Research Councils, Innovate UK, NIHR and DoH, Leverhulme Trust, Wellcome Trust, British Academy, European Commission, and the Royal Society. You can also access a calendar of deadlines on all the top funders.
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See calls for papers from forthcoming conferences and scholarly journals in your discipline.
The service collates calls for papers from a wide range of conference organisers and journals in all disciplines and from all over the world. The Conferences and Papers database provides a searchable function for researchers and scholars seeking opportunities to present and publish their research.
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Contact vic.gill@brunel.ac.uk (Communications and Systems Manager, RSDO) for a demo and to register for a free account.