The CDT in Molecules to Product addresses an overarching concern articulated by industry operating in the area of complex chemical products. It centres on the lack of a pipeline of doctoral graduates who understand the cross-scale issues that need to be addressed within the chemicals continuum. Translating their concern into a vision, the focus of the CDT is to train a new generation of research leaders with the skills and expertise to navigate the journey from a selected molecule or molecular system through to the final product that delivers the desired structure and required performance. To address this vision, three inter-related Themes form the foundation of the CDT - Product Functionalisation and Performance, Product Characterisation, and Process Modelling between Scales. More specifically, industry has identified a real need to recruit PGR graduates with the interdisciplinary skills covered by the CDT research and training programme. As future leaders they will be instrumental in delivering enhanced process and product understanding, and hence the manufacture of a desired end effect such as taste, dissolution or stability. For example, if industry is better informed regarding the effect of the manufacturing process on existing products, can the process be made more efficient and cost effective through identifying what changes can be made to the current process? Alternatively, if there is an enhanced understanding of the effect of raw materials, could stages in the process be removed, i.e. are some stages simply historical and not needed. For radically new products that have been developed, is it possible through characterisation techniques to understand (i) the role/effect of each component/raw material on the final product; and (ii) how the product structure is impacted by the process conditions both chemical and mechanical? Finally, can predictive models be developed to realise effective scale up? Such a focus will assist industry to mitigate against wasted development time and costs allowing them to focus on products and processes where the risk of failure is reduced. Although the ethos of the CDT embraces a wide range of sectors, it will focus primarily on companies within speciality chemicals, home and personal care, fast moving consumer goods, food and beverage, and pharma/biopharma sectors. The focus of the CDT is not singular to technical challenges: a core element will be to incorporate the concept of 'Education for Innovation' as described in The Royal Academy of Engineering Report, 'Educating engineers to drive the innovation economy'. This will be facilitated through the inclusion of innovation and enterprise as key strands within the research training programme. Through the combination of technical, entrepreneurial and business skills, the PGR students will have a unique set of skills that will set them apart from their peers and ultimately become the next generation of leaders in industry/academia. The training and research agendas are dependent on strong engagement with multi-national companies, SMEs, start-ups and stakeholders. Core input includes the offering, and supervision of research projects; hosting of students on site for a minimum period of 3 months; the provision of mentoring to students; engagement with the training through the shaping and delivery of modules and the provision of in-house courses. Additional to this will be, where relevant, access to materials and products that form the basis of projects, the provision of software, access to on-site equipment and the loan of equipment. In summary, the vision underpinning the CDT is too big and complex to be tackled through individual PhD projects - it is only through bringing academia and industry together from across multiple disciplines that a solution will be achievable. The CDT structure is the only route to addressing the overarching vision in a structured manner to realise delivery of the new approach to product development.

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

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Our proposal concerns the development of a world-leading instrument that will characterise more effectively and efficiently than ever before the intense highly collimated X-ray beams produced at Synchrotron Radiation (SR) facilities. The device will combine high-speed performance with extremely sensitive beam position measurement and beam imaging capabilities. For the first time, one instrument will provide a comprehensive set of X-ray beam characteristics: focal size, position, intensity distribution and energy (wavelength). Uniquely for the X-ray region, these measurements can be performed during an experiment: it will be an in situ - but virtually transparent - device, the product of state-of-the-art detector and signal processing technology. The high temporal resolution of the proposed device will enable the fast detection of beam defocus, vibration, shift and intensity fluctuations. Crucially this capability will be augmented by the possibility of feedback of the output signals into the surrounding optical infrastructure to facilitate correction of any beam motion or indeed accurate tracking across a target to perform a two-dimensional scan.In brief, our world-class system will exhibit several innovative features that will significantly improve the accuracy, reliability and scope of data acquired using micrometer-sized X-ray beams. Looking at the wider community of scientists using synchrotron radiation, it should be stressed that the underlying technology of this cutting-edge device is transferable. It will benefit all scientific experiments conducted at all SR facilities, irrespective of their methodology or wavelength range utilised. For example, in imaging experiments, it will lead to sharper images: any blurring and anomalies due to uneven illumination can be removed. In all experiments, energy shifts in the beam impinging on the sample due to angular drift of the beam entering the monochromator may be eliminated. In X-ray diffraction and scattering, intensities may be recorded on an absolute scale doing away with the ubiquitous scale factor and corrections between successive individual measurements taken with varying beam intensities. Experiments in the domain of microscopic imaging and spectroscopy that require the maintenance of a steady incident flux of a highly collimated beam of a microscopic target area provide a challenge for which the new technology is particularly suitable, especially if, as is often the case, a wavelength scan is also required. As examples of nascent fields that would benefit, we cite the study of biological species using fluorescence tomography and microspectrometry.The topicality of the proposed project and general level of interest in the area is indicated by the exponential increase in published research on X-ray beam position monitoring in recent years. Our approach is original and superior to existing solutions, extending the performance envelope of existing in situ beam monitors that monitor beam position alone. Our multidisciplinary research team has already demonstrated the potential of the technology in two successful proof-of-concept experiments [1-3; part 1]. Furthermore, we have dedicated academic and industrial partners on board who are committed to helping us to develop and enable take up of this novel technology.