Soft matter and functional interfaces are ubiquitous! Be it manufactured plastic products (polymers), food (colloids), paint and other decorative coatings (thin films and coatings), contact lenses (hydrogels), shampoo and washing powder (complex mixtures of the above) or biomaterials such as proteins and membranes, soft matter and soft matter surfaces and interfaces touch almost every aspect of human activity and underpin processes and products across all industrial sectors - sectors which account for 17.2% of UK GDP and over 1.1M UK employees (BIS R&D scoreboard 2010 providing statistics for the top 1000 UK R&D spending companies). The importance of the underlying science to UK plc prompted discussions in 2010 with key manufacturing industries in personal care, plastics manufacturing, food manufacturing, functional and performance polymers, coatings and additives sectors which revealed common concerns for the provision of soft matter focussed doctoral training in the UK and drove this community to carry out a detailed "gap analysis" of training provision. The results evidenced a national need for researchers trained with a broad, multidisciplinary experience across all areas of soft matter and functional interfaces (SOFI) science, industry-focussed transferable skills and business awareness alongside a challenging PhD research project. Our 18 industrial partners, who have a combined global work force of 920,000, annual revenues of nearly £200 billion, and span the full SOFI sector, emphasized the importance of a workforce trained to think across the whole range of SOFI science, and not narrowly in, for example, just polymers or colloids. A multidisciplinary knowledge base is vital to address industrial SOFI R&D challenges which invariably address complex, multicomponent formulations. We therefore propose the establishment of a CDT in Soft Matter and Functional Interfaces to fill this gap. The CDT will deliver multidisciplinary core science and enterprise-facing training alongside PhD projects from fundamental blue-skies science to industrially-embedded applied research across the full spectrum of SOFI science. Further evidence of national need comes from a survey of our industrial partners which indicates that these companies have collectively recruited >100 PhD qualified staff over the last 3 years (in a recession) in SOFI-related expertise, and plan to recruit (in the UK) approximately 150 PhD qualified staff members over the next three years. These recruits will enter research, innovation and commercial roles. The annual SOFI CDT cohort of 16 postgraduates could be therefore be recruited 3 times over by our industrial partners alone and this demand is likely to be the tip of a national-need iceberg.

Complex fluid flows are ubiquitous in both the natural and man-made worlds. From the pulsatile flow of blood through our bodies, to the pumping of personal products such as shampoos or conditioners through complex piping networks as they are processed. For such complex fluids the underlying microstructure can give rise to flow instabilities which are often totally absent in "simple" Newtonian fluids such as water or air. For example, many wormlike micellar surfactant ("soap/detergent") systems are known to exhibit shear-banding where the homogenous solution splits into two (or more) bands of fluid: such flows are often unstable to even infinitesimally small perturbations. At higher pump speeds the flows can develop chaotic motion caused by the elastic normal-stresses developed in flow. Such "elastic turbulence" can also develop for other flowing complex fluids, such as polymer solutions and melts, and give rise to new phenomena. Often such instabilities are unwelcome, for example in rheometric devices when the aim is to measure material properties or in simple pumping operations when they can give rise to unacceptably large pressure drops and prevent pumping. In other cases they can give rise to enhanced mixing of heat and mass which would otherwise be difficult to achieve (e.g. microfluidics applications).

How and why do individuals perceive tastes differently? Our sense of taste evolved to encourage the consumption of nutrients, and to avoid ingestion of dangerous substances. However, today, the positive experience of sweet and salty taste can lead to the overconsumption and its associated detrimental effects on health. Conversely, bitterness and acidity can also prevent some individuals from consuming healthier foods such as bitter tasting green vegetables. Research progressing our fundamental understanding of taste perception will inform nutritional policy makers and the food industry to develop healthy diets and food products, hence improving the health and well-being of society in general. There are five categories of taste: sweet, bitter, umami, salty and acidic, and the receptors for these tastes have been identified on taste receptor cells housed in papillae on the tongue. This proposal focuses on mapping how the brain processes these taste signals from the mouth. Modern neuroimaging methods have made it possible to study many neuroscience questions directly in the human. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, we can track changes in the local blood flow that accompanies increased neural activity. We can measure which parts of the brain are more active while subjects consume different tastants. One of the problems with studying the neural mechanisms underlying our sense of taste is that in the human brain, these responses are relatively small. Using cutting-edge technology we can measure neural responses in the human cortex at very high spatial resolution in the living human brain. By using ultra-high-field magnetic resonance imaging techniques, we can measure robust neural responses non-invasively at a much higher spatial resolution than has previously been possible, whilst concurrently assessing perceived taste sensations, linking perception and the brain's responses. In this proposal, we will investigate whether specific areas of the brain in the primary taste cortex can be identified that process sweet, bitter, umami (a savoury sensation), salty and sour tastes using improved state-of-the-art brain scanning technology. There is debate as to whether certain other 'tastes' exist, in particular 'fat' (fatty acid) and metallic 'taste'. We plan to determine if, and where, these stimuli are processed in the primary taste cortex, providing evidence as to whether these sensations should be termed tastes. In addition we will study a recent phenomenon known as thermally induced taste whereby some individuals report a taste sensation, although there is no physical taste stimulus present, when the tongue is rapidly heated or cooled. As sensitivity to taste varies across individuals, we will determine how brain processing is affected by these known differences in taste perception. We are also interested to see if, and how, the phantom taste induced by temperature changes the brain's response in the primary taste cortex. The brains of thermal tasters (previously reporting sweet or bitter taste upon thermal stimulation) will be scanned whilst their tongue is rapidly cooled or warmed. This will enable us to determine if the phantom taste sensation modulates the same area of the primary taste cortex as is related to real taste stimuli. Using different concentrations of taste stimuli we will also explore how concentration modulates brain response. Combinations of tastes are known to modify perception, for example sweetness reduces bitterness, and umami enhances saltiness. In a final experiment, we will ask the question of why mixing tastants can lead to enhancement or suppression of taste perception by assessing the brain's response to paired mixtures of tastants, and investigating the cortical representation of these suppression and enhancement effects. Overall, this research will considerably advance our understanding of human taste perception.

Moore's Law states that the number of active components on an microchip doubles every 18 months. Variants of this Law can be applied to many measures of computer performance, such as memory and hard disk capacity, and to reductions in the cost of computations. Remarkably, Moore's Law has applied for over 50 years during which time computer speeds have increased by a factor of more than 1 billion! This remarkable rise of computational power has affected all of our lives in profound ways, through the widespread usage of computers, the internet and portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately, Moore's Law is not a fundamental law of nature, and sustaining this extraordinary rate of progress requires continuous hard work and investment in new technologies most of which relate to advances in our understanding and ability to control the properties of materials. Computer software plays an important role in enhancing computational performance and in many cases it has been found that for every factor of 10 increase in computational performance achieved by faster hardware, improved software has further increased computational performance by a factor of 100. Furthermore, improved software is also essential for extending the range of physical properties and processes which can be studied computationally. Our EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Computational Methods for Materials Science aims to provide training in numerical methods and modern software development techniques so that the students in the CDT are capable of developing innovative new software which can be used, for instance, to help design new materials and understand the complex processes that occur in materials. The UK, and in particular Cambridge, has been a pioneer in both software and hardware since the earliest programmable computers, and through this strategic investment we aim to ensure that this lead is sustained well into the future.

Plants produce a wide range of diterpenoids, many of which are used commercially such as a paclitaxel, employed in the treatment of cancers, and steviol glyclosides which are used as zero-calorie natural sweeteners. Many other useful diterpenoids cannot yet be commercially exploited due to their limited availability and/or high production costs. Using synthetic biology it is now possible to engineer organisms such as yeast so that they are able to convert simple sugars to high-value chemicals. This project will develop yeast, algae and higher plant species as "chassis organisms" which can be used for the scalable production of diterpenoids. Our project will focus in particular on compounds which could be used in the treatment of cancers, or used in skin products such as sunscreens to protect skin against harmful UV light. These biological production systems will also be useful in producing many other diterpenoids that are found in nature.