The RBOC (Resilience Beyond Observed Capabilities) Network Plus will create new knowledge, new capabilities and new opportunities for collaboration to help the UK prepare for security threats in the coming decades. The starting point is a scenario of a catastrophic attack on digital and energy networks in the year 2051. RBOC N+ will convene some of the UK's leading experts in engineering, physical sciences, mathematics, health sciences, social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and cross-disciplinary topics such as AI, security studies and urban planning, together with government and industry, to refine, deepen and test this scenario and to use it to create immersive simulations. These simulations will support 'Reverse COBR' workshops, in which government, industry and academia will work back from the scenario's impacts to understand how they developed and what could have been done to prevent and mitigate them. This and other outputs - a flexible research fund, community events, an online platform developed and maintained by a project partner - will develop insights, innovate and create impact in response to possible and likely security threats and capabilities. Insights will come from the network's investigation into what capabilities, techniques and vulnerabilities could be exploited by adversaries to mount high-impact attacks against the UK, and what capabilities could be used by public authorities to prepare for and respond to them. Innovation will come from original research using novel combinations of disciplines and methods, from new relationships between researchers and policy makers and practitioners in government and industry, and from a prototype simulator for modelling the scenario with outputs addressing policy and practice implications, technology requirements and research gaps. Impact will come from the creation of new understanding and capabilities for government and industry to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the impacts of major attacks from hostile actors through research, academic engagement, cross-sectoral partnerships and a host of technological, organisational, legal and behavioural capabilities ready for practitioner use. RBOC N+ will deliver a simulation toolkit with tools, concepts, definitions, problem spaces and a digital application designed specifically for policy-makers and practitioners. And RBOC's impact will be sustainable: RBOC's demonstrable return on investment will stimulate and support applications for continued funding, through grant applications and direct investment from industry, policy makers and practitioners. RBOC N+ will respond to eight challenge areas, each being an important theme of future security threats or responses. 'Adversary Capabilities' will investigate how the UK's enemies may be able to attack, while 'Our Capabilities' will address how the UK can prepare and respond, particularly through technology. The 'Physical Environment' challenge area will explore how cities will change by the 2050s, and 'Societal Challenges' will address potential developments in the social and political contexts. 'Responding and Decision-Making' will examine organisational and policy responses. 'Data, Information and Communications Infrastructure' will explore developments in enabling digital technologies, infrastructures and resources. To ensure that RBOC and its outputs manage security and ethical risks in ways that maintain trust, the final challenge area addresses 'Responsible Innovation and Trusted Research'.

Industrial Biotechnology (IB) is entering a golden age of opportunity. Technological and scientific advances in biotechnology have revolutionised our ability to synthesise molecules of choice, giving access to novel chemistries that enable tuneable selectivity and the use of benign reaction conditions. These developments can now be coupled to advances in the industrialisation of biology to generate innovative manufacturing routes, supported by high throughput and real-time analytics, process automation, artificial intelligence and data-driven science. The current excess energy demands of manufacturing and its use of expensive and resource intensive materials can no longer be tolerated. Impacts on climate change (carbon emissions), societal health (toxic waste streams, pollution) and the environment (depletion of precious resources, waste accumulation) are well documented and unsustainable. What is clear is that a petrochemical-dependent economy cannot support the rate at which we consume goods and the demand we place on cheap and easily accessible materials. The emergent bioeconomy, which fosters resource efficiency and reduced reliance on fossil resources, promises to free society from many of the shortcomings of current manufacturing practices. By harnessing the power of biology through innovative IB, the FBRH will support the development of safer, cleaner and greener manufacturing supply chains. This is at the core of the UKs Clean Growth strategy. The EPSRC Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub (FBRH) will deliver biomanufacturing processes to support the rapid emergence of the bioeconomy and to place the UK at the forefront of global economic Clean Growth in key manufacturing sectors - pharmaceuticals; value-added chemicals; engineering materials. The FBRH will be a biomanufacturing accelerator, coordinating UK academic, HVM catapult, and industrial capabilities to enable the complete biomanufacturing innovation pipeline to deliver economic, robust and scalable bioprocesses to meet societal and commercial demand. The FBRH has developed a clear strategy to achieve this vision. This strategy addresses the need to change the economic reality of biomanufacturing by addressing the entire manufacturing lifecycle, by considering aspects such as scale-up, process intensification, continuous manufacturing, integrated and whole-process modelling. The FBRH will address the urgent need to quickly deliver new biocatalysts, robust industrial hosts and novel production technologies that will enable rapid transition from proof-of-concept to manufacturing at scale. The emphasis is on predictable deployment of sustainable and innovative biomanufacturing technologies through integrated technology development at all scales of production, harnessing UK-wide world-leading research expertise and frontier science and technology, including data-driven AI approaches, automation and new technologies emerging from the 'engineering of biology'. The FBRH will have its Hub at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at The University of Manchester, with Spokes at the Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology (Imperial College London), Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering (University College London), the Bioprocess, Environmental and Chemical Technologies Group (Nottingham University), the UK Catalysis Hub (Harwell), the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (Glasgow) and the Centre for Process Innovation (Wilton). This collaborative approach of linking the UK's leading IB centres that hold complementary expertise together with industry will establish an internationally unique asset for UK manufacturing.

Vision: to drive and promote advances in optical biosensing capable of translation to low-cost monitoring, and to build a broad UK community in low-cost sensing for healthcare. Precision medicine tailors healthcare to individual patient characteristics. We are now entering a new era of precision health, which shifts towards healthy individuals, asking how we prevent disease with appropriate interventions, prolonging healthy lifespans. New challenges include the urgent need for precise technologies to monitor individuals throughout life, and for improved methods to interpret this wealth of data. Precision health demands new physical biosensors that are low-cost but elicit rich biochemical information and can be used outside the clinic. This frees up clinician-time and focusses scarce resources. It is vital to develop methods to extract/exploit downstream patient-specific information from the sensors. Current exemplars ('BioSensors 1.0') are wearable devices (such as Fitbit, Apple watch), which record only superficial parameters (eg. temperature, acceleration, blood oxygenation), while glucose/insulin sensors provide only very specific data; the major challenge of providing comprehensive analytical information with an affordable portable device remains key for healthcare. The SARS CoV-2 lateral flow tests popularised the notion of personalised disease testing and showed it can be a reality however they lack sensitivity, reliable and consistent interpretation, and robust reporting capabilities. The leading groups assembled here have a track record of pioneering optical approaches for new paradigms in the biosensing domain, from conception through to market. Together, they propose to synergistically explore the underpinning fundamental science of 'BioSensors 2.0' and develop key demonstrators that address clinical needs while building a broader UK community of academics, SMEs, institutes, & clinicians to drive this paradigm to real demonstrators. Current portable sensors are too simple and limited in their capability. Instead, we need to translate advanced lab-based technologies into portable devices. Systems aspects need care, while miniaturisation is challenging. Sensors should achieve multiplexing, use machine learning algorithms to interpret outcomes, auto-calibrate to ensure long term operation, survive changing conditions, and attain small-enough limits of detection required for various biofluids. This is a time-critical juncture, as other countries will start to develop in this space, though nothing explicitly exists yet- the NHS as the main UK provider may be a great driver. We also focus on community building, with targeted activities to ensure the UK is placed to capitalise on sensor developments. Through building a Big Idea 'Making Senses' for the Research Councils across the wider Sensors ecosystem, our team identified with EPSRC the lack of UK leadership and joined-up academia-industry-govt networks. Engaging with a wide range of stakeholders from SMEs to large entities (NPL, CPI, LGC, Turing..) and multinationals (P&G, AstraZeneca,..), we find strong appetite and market pull for new types of biosensors with application domains beyond the hospital, as well as industrial settings. New ways to leverage light-matter interactions (in which the is UK internationally strong) for realistic biodiagnostics demands a broad interdisciplinary research focus. This confluence aims to develop entirely new industries of the future, and to energise the UK interdisciplinary science base, which is vital over the next 50 years as we realise the new paradigm of BioSensors 2.0.

In open surgery, surgeons are able to directly access soft tissue/organs and perform manual palpation to understand the texture, size, consistency and location of soft tissue areas. Stiffer areas than the surrounding tissue might suggest the presence of tumours. Through vision and, most importantly, tactile sensation of the surgeons' fingertips, surgeons are able to accurately localise unhealthy tissue areas by distinguishing cancerous soft tissue from healthy tissue, and remove tumours. Open surgery has been increasingly replaced by Minimally Invasive Surgery from the mid-1980s and by Robot-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RMIS) from 2000. Surgical instruments are introduced through small incisions ranging from 3-12 mm into the human body to perform surgery. Though RMIS has many advantages over open surgery, including improved therapeutic outcome, shortened postoperative recovery, less immunological stress response of the tissue, reduced tissue trauma, lower postoperative pain, and less scarring, current robotic systems do not provide any type of sensation (haptic feedback) to the operating surgeon. The lack of direct palpation can lead to insufficient tumour excising resulting in an increased rate of biochemical relapse and influence decisions about future treatments such as additional surgery and radiation. Just as the definition of 'instinct' , the vision of this project is to intuitively provide surgeons with soft tissue stiffness information when performing soft tissue palpation during RMIS. Based on previous research creating soft, stiffness-controllable robotic structures and haptic feedback interfaces, the aim of this project is to design, model, fabricate and validate a soft, stiffness-controllable haptic feedback actuator which will be integrated into the da Vinci Research Kit. Of key importance for the success of this work is close collaboration with experienced clinical and industrial experts. Prof. Shervanthi Homer-Vanniasinkam (Professor of Surgery (Founding)), University of Warwick Medical School, Prof. Prokar Dasgupta (Professor of Robotic Surgery and Urological Innovation), King's College London, and Prof. Alberto Arezzo (Associate Professor of Surgery), University of Turin, Dr Alastair Barrow (MD), Generic Robotics, Dr Jerome Perret (CEO), Haption GmbH, and Dr Chris Wagner (Senior Consultant), Cambridge Consultants will consult over the duration of the project on clinical and translational aspects. These Project Partners will form the Expert Working Group meeting at least two times a year, providing feedback and critical appraisal of the experimental design, implementation and outcomes from the research project. The key objectives through which this ambition will be realised are: 1) Creating pneumatically actuated, soft, stiffness-controllable fingertip interfaces made of silicone with integrated fabric meshes. 2) Integration of stiffness sensor and actuators with the da Vinci Research Kit. 3) Benchmarking tests of different haptic actuator designs distinguishing between healthy and tumorous tissue. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS: To maximise economic and clinical impact, INSTINCT project partners Generic Robotics, Haption GmbH, and Cambridge Consultants will advise on the design process, exploitation opportunities and certification procedure. These internationally operating companies aim at revolutionising therapy through ground-breaking surgical devices and simulators drawing on deep experience in simulation, haptics, engineering, electronics, control systems, Virtual Reality, medical device regulations, and commercialisation. The expertise of the industrial partner and guidance of clinical partners are of paramount importance to translate the results of the INSTINCT projects into a medical device/training simulator. Beyond the healthcare sector, possible application areas include wearable haptic devices for Virtual Reality environments and E-Learning technologies.

Fast data rate communication over wireless networks like 5G and WiFi has become immensely important to our society, influencing livelihoods, economy and security on every level. The recent experience of home working has highlighted our dependence on reliable and resilient high-speed connectivity, in particular, real-time and streaming video services over wireless networks. These trends are set to grow and with them the need for more data traffic in support of the metaverse, holographic telepresence and cyber-physical systems delivered via a global network of networks. To address this future internet, research into 6G networks is underway and central to this new connectivity paradigm is the use of sub-terahertz electromagnetic waves, which bring bandwidths above 10GHz to achieve data rates above 1 Tbit/s. At the heart of realising the 6G ambition is the design of the radio system from the choice of waveform, through transceiver circuits and signal processing to protocols for controlling the flow of data over the air-interface. The SDR6G+ facility proposed here aims to support the UK's academic and industrial sectors undertaking research and development into 6G radio systems by providing a versatile capability to experimentally test at full scale and across realistic environments all aspects of the radio system performance. The facility will enable users to take research from fundamental concepts at Technology Readiness Level 1 to technology demonstration at Technology Readiness Level 6, thereby accommodating academic and industry interests. These capabilities will be achieved via a cutting-edge SDR platform incorporating advanced waveform generation, multiple over-the-air sub-terahertz paths, extreme wide bandwidth digitisation and software control of the signals and system. These capabilities allow full performance characterisation at the system as well as device and component level. The versatility of the SDR6G+ platform will enable different types of users to experimentally evaluate their research concepts and prototypes. For example, user groups studying waveforms will be able to synthesise new waveforms and evaluate their behaviour and resilience over realistic sub-terahertz channels. User groups researching power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, bandpass filters and antennas will be able to characterise their devices and assess their impact on 6G radio performance. Users researching digital acquisition will be able to test direct sub-terahertz sampling schemes to determine optimum SDR architectures. Users studying medium access control protocols will be able to measure throughput performance on realistic end-to-end transmission channels. A major facet of the facility will be its ability to produce raw data for machine learning/ artificial intelligence applications used at the Physical layer. The facility is both timely and important and will position the UK at the international forefront of new radio systems research and development for 6G networks and beyond. The facility will support the UK requirement for national capabilities in advanced wireless communication systems aimed at addressing major challenges in a rapidly changing international landscape. For example, to develop energy efficient radio technologies for disaggregated network standards, which facilitate the UK's supplier diversification and 2050 net-zero targets. The facility will support a broad cross-section of the UK telecommunications industry including mobile radio and satellite vendors, and their supply chains. Importantly, the facility will train and inspire diverse cohorts of future UK academic and industrial leaders and innovators in a holistic, collaborative, and vibrant cross-disciplinary environment.