Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are found in many consumer products including cosmetics and personal hygiene goods. Nanomaterials are also found in additives for diesel fuels to improve fuel efficiency. These materials will come into contact with the environment, for example, if they are washed down the sink, or if they become airbourne, however we currently have no idea about whether they are hazardous or not and regulations are not in place to control their release or treatment. The life cycle of ENMs in the environment is not known and there exist large knowledge gaps in this field. The reason for this is that the concentrations and properties of ENMs in consumer products are largely unknown (or not indicated by companies). Very little is known about the behaviour or lifetime of ENMs in the water effluent and soils as it's extremely hard to monitor this behaviour, as we do not have the tools to detect these tiny materials in very complex environments. This project will apply new and sophisticated experimental characterization tools for predicting potential environmental risks associated with the use of selected consumer products incorporating ZnO, Ag, TiO2 and CeO2 ENMs. An overarching goal is to evaluate which are the critical charateristics of ENMs (size, chemistry etc.) which may cause damage to the environment through two of the most predominant environmental pathways - from the effluent of a waste water treatment plant to waters and also from sewage sludge to soils. This information will ultimately to provide guidance to regulators on policy and to industry about how to design "safe" classes of ENMs and mitigate against risk, while avoiding overregulation. Avoiding overregulation is vital, as we do not want to re-experience what happened e.g. at Fukushima, where 160,000 people were forced to relocated without need, since the risk presented to regulators and the government was too high. This has since resulted in 1,599 deaths, as the displaced residents are suffering from health problems, alcoholism and high rates of suicide. Our team has an extensive track record in developing unique techniques to track these nanomaterials in complex environments and will apply their knowledge of this field to tackle this extremely pertinent concern. The projects experimental approaches include both physical science experiments and toxicological approaches, generating results to improve our limited understanding of the potential environmental hazards. The results generated from the project will also contribute to our very limited knowledge on various aspects of the fate, transport, bioavailability, and ecotoxicity of ENMs and will allow us to answer questions such as "can toxic doses of ENMs reach organisms or are these concentrations negligible at the point of exposure to the organism?", "if they are toxic, is it possible to re-engineer ENMs such that they do not present a risk", "do the nanomaterials dissolve or change their chemistry in the environment and ultimately detoxify and how does this vary between the different nanomaterials?", "which nanomaterials present the greatest risk and how do we minimise the environmental and health risks of these hazardous materials without overly precautionary regulations". This multifaceted strategy will make a major development in understanding the fate of ENMs in the environment to guide policy regulation whilst avoiding unnecessary overregulation, and ultimately guide the safe development of these materials for future commercial exploitation.

Treatment of wastewater is an essential process that is performed in all parts of the world. Each one of us typically produces more than 200 litres of wastewater per day. What happens to this wastewater? In an industrialised country like Britain the wastewater is collected for treatment and is then discharged into either a river or a coastal region. The treatment ensures that our rivers are not transformed into toxic soups and that most of the coastal waters remain safe for swimming. Presently our water treatment systems operate well to remove dangerous microorganisms and remove most of the organic and solid materials. Some components are more difficult to remove, such as nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients cause damage to natural water systems such as rivers and coastal waters, as they encourage unwanted microbial growth, such as algae. This can damage the ecology of these waters and transform clear waters into green microbial soups. If a wastewater treatment facility is designed and operated in a particular manner, microorganisms (bacteria) in these systems can be encouraged to take up the phosphorus (P) and remove it from the wastewater. This is called biological P removal. It is the future aspiration of modern governments (e.g. the EU) that wastewater treatment facilities are improved and operated for this sustainable biological P removal. There are in fact many treatment facilities that already operate for biological P removal around the world. However, the performance of the biological systems is sometimes variable, and improvements in the performance and reliability would result in savings in the operation and construction of these systems. To achieve improvements in the biological systems we need to be able to understand how the bacteria carry out the P removal. There have been many investigations to gain understanding of these systems over the past 35 years. However, many of these investigations are flawed as they are studying the wrong bacteria, the ones that grow easily in the laboratory, and not the ones that grow well in the wastewater treatment systems and perform the P removal. Thankfully, modern methods to analyse DNA and protein directly in these systems are now being used to gain understanding of what the bacteria are doing. By analysing the DNA directly in the system we can now identify the bacteria important for the P removal. This has been a recent important achievement. Recently, the US government has invested heavily into understanding the bacteria of these systems, as they have obtained large amounts of DNA sequence from P removing systems (this is somewhat similar to whole genome sequencing programmes, such as the sequencing of the human DNA). This information will inform us of the genes that are present in these systems. It is important now to study the proteins of these systems. Proteins are produced by the bacteria, and are the molecules involved in carrying out the work, such as the reactions that result in the P removal. In our laboratory we operate small-scale wastewater treatment reactors that are performing biological P removal. A main part of this study is to analyse the proteins that are produced by the bacteria as they carry out the P removal. In these laboratory reactors we can alter the P removal performance and observe how the levels of the different proteins may vary. With this approach we will associate particular proteins with the biological P removal process. This information will enable us to put together an improved picture that explains how the bacteria are carrying out the P removal. This is a very important process for the water companies that treat the wastewater. Engineers and microbiologists are very interested to improve the understanding and details of the bacterial process, as they strive to develop strategies to improve the biological P removal performance in the wastewater treatment systems.

This fellowship will provide important tools and knowledge to deliver the Government's ambitious Industrial Strategy. Specifically, it will develop, test, apply, and promote innovative appraisal and evaluation approaches for understanding public-private-partnerships (PPP) in food-energy-water-environment Nexus domains, with a particular focus on infrastructure. PPP in these areas might be for energy plants, waste management infrastructure, reservoirs, or water treatment plants. Partnerships of these types, for infrastructure and other purposes, are a key delivery mechanism for many of the Industrial Strategy's goals. The Strategy repeatedly makes clear the importance of PPP in delivering innovation, growth, and infrastructure. The fellow will develop frameworks for both appraising (i.e. assessment before a PPP has started) and evaluating (i.e. understanding if and why a PPP has been a success or not) PPP in food-energy-water-environment Nexus domains. These frameworks will set out the important questions to address when studying PPP, the appropriate methods to use to answer them, and the data which will be needed. These frameworks will be published freely and actively shared with appraisal and evaluation communities in the UK and beyond, and experts in PPP, infrastructure, and other relevant areas. The fellow will also deliver a critical review of the types of PPP used currently and in the past. The development of the frameworks will also be supported by regular interaction with those who will use them, to ensure their needs are accounted for. A key part of this will be a project within the fellowship with Anglian Water and the South Lincolnshire Water Partnership (the SLWP is a group of public, private and third sector organisations collaborating to plan the management and use of water resources in the South Lincolnshire Fens and adjacent areas). This project will explore old and new models of PPP that the partnership could adopt. It will help the group explore options to better share risk and reward across the partnership, improve project delivery, and maximise benefits. The project will also explore options for updating water abstraction licensing strategies as part of Defra's 'Water Abstraction Plan' initiative (the partnership is a pilot catchment in this initiative). The project will serve to underpin the development of the frameworks through the understanding it will generate of user needs, and the space it will allow for testing the approach to be used. The fellowship also has ambitious plans for delivering unique career development and training to the fellow via: (i) a distinctive and comprehensive mentoring programme (including mentors from industry, government, and academia); (ii) a shadowing and short-term placement plan at industry partners such as Anglian Water; and (iii) an intensive professional development and training programme including training provided by the University of Surrey, but also industry and government partners. All of this work will be underpinned by the novel methodological approach of the fellow's host, the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, which combines the tools and thinking provided by Complexity Science and the food-energy-water-environment Nexus approach, with social research methods and effective policy evaluation approaches. The fellowship will deliver a range of outputs, the most important of which will be both an academic journal paper and a freely available report on each of the following topics: (i) reviewing types of PPP; (ii) appraising PPP; and (iii) evaluating PPP. The appraisal and evaluation reports will each go through two iterations of development, to allow the time for meaningful input from users between iterations.

The central aim of the proposed research is to maximise the use of biowastes as a nutrient resource and enable long-term food security in the UK, whilst ensuring food safety and environmental and soil sustainability. The vision is to achieve a paradigm shift where biowastes are no longer considered as a waste, but as a nutrient resource, and used sustainably to ensure food security beyond 2020. Using nutrients from wastes is essential to close the nutrient loop, and in the case of P, the global supply is limited, and its sustainable use has been placed in the top three emerging environmental issues. The research will adopt a 'whole systems approach', encompassing the treatment e.g. AD or MBT, of biowastes from a range of commercial, industrial or municipal sources, through to the soil-plant interactions of biowastes, nutrients and contaminants, to develop innovative and creative processes to improve nutrient content and availability, and minimise contaminant contents, availability and impacts. A key aspect will be minimising risks to the environment when biowastes are used as a nutrient resource; we will use state of the art techniques to examine the fate of nutrients and contaminants in biowaste and amended soil to maximise the agronomic value and protect the environment. The collaborative relationships combine world-leading expertise in waste treatment technologies in AD (University of Southampton) and MBT (University of Leeds) with world-leading expertise in the agronomic and environmental impact of using the resources produced by these processes as a nutrient source (Imperial College London and University of Reading). This collaboration presents unique opportunities for manipulating and managing treatment processes so that, in addition to achieving the other objectives of the process (e.g. maximising biogas production during anaerobic digestion), the nutrient value of the residues is maximised but at minimal risk to the environment. Complementary skills and techniques will be applied to investigate the agronomic and environmental impact of using waste as an environmental resource. For example, expertise at Imperial in quantitative agronomic assessments of nutrient availability by incubation, plant bioassays and field trials, will complement techniques used at Reading such as molecular microbial ecology, isotope ratio mass spectrometry and GC-MS. Within the Catalyst Grant, the collaborating institutions will review the current state of knowledge on recycling nutrient resources in waste, each focusing on their areas of expertise and role in the strategy for the full proposal. This presents a unique opportunity to combine the different aspects together in a cohesive, integrated and holistic assessment. The planned innovative and interdisciplinary programme addresses national and international research needs, and will inform and impact on policy and industry in the UK, Europe and further afield. During the Catalyst Grant, we will conduct a programme of 'Research Strategy Development' workshops, involving participants from the four Universities, and, additionally, a number of key project partners from the water and waste industries, and from Government and the Environment Agency. The programme of activities during the Catalyst Grant will enable us to identify key areas for targeted and hypotheses-driven interdisciplinary research, and define the specific objectives for the full Research Programme.

Water for all is the aim of this consortium. The UK water sector faces grand challenges over the coming decades: increasing population, ageing infrastructure, and the need to better protect the natural environment all under conditions of uncertain climate change. The application of traditional technology-based solutions alone is not the way forward. We propose the use of 'tailored solutions' to address these challenges by combining measures to suit specific circumstances and constraints to achieve flexible and adaptive water systems. The project will undertake research in 8 technical themes, each of which individually pose disruptive questions, demonstrate the potential for, and lead transformation. However, they will not be viewed in isolation. When considered in combination, taking a systems view, they can be combined as 'silver baskets' of broader tailored solutions able to work synergistically for existing and new infrastructure in order to achieve transformative impact. Tailoring water solutions does not mean lower quality water services for different sectors in society; rather, it means fair, bespoke solutions appropriate to variations in the natural environment, population distribution, and legacy infrastructure. In this way the project will address the needs of water for all. Our consortium is built around a core based on the Pennine Water Group (PWG) which has been supported continuously by three EPSRC platform grants since 2001. The PWG's strength and international reputation is founded on a balance of fundamental and applied research via a multi-disciplinary approach focusing on urban water asset management. This consortium broadens the PWG to include new expertise to provide tailored water solutions for positive impact. At Sheffield, this will include new collaborations with experts in energy systems, robotics, automation, and management. Externally, the consortium includes internationally-leading experts from Exeter for household and community scale water efficiency, Imperial College for treatment and emerging contaminants, Manchester for social practices, Newcastle for climate change impacts, risk modelling and cities/infrastructure integration, and Reading for catchment processes. All members bring wide international collaborative networks that will link with the scientific and engineering research needed to deliver the silver baskets of tailored solutions. To achieve the envisioned transformation requires time and a step change in the way in which the UK water sector identifies, develops and applies innovation. Stakeholders need to move out of traditional silos and collaborate to creatively co-produce knowledge and action. Academics, scientists and engineers must work across disciplines and stages in the knowledge production process to deliver the complex socio-technical solutions needed to meet the challenges facing the UK water sector. Collaboration is especially relevant in a sector that is not accustomed to working together and does not have a shared vision of how to meet its grand challenges. A unique feature of this consortium is the development of the Hub that will revolutionise the way innovation is delivered to the UK water sector. The Hub aims to provide transformative leadership and accelerate and support innovation through partnerships for the co-production of knowledge across the water sector. Underpinned by world class science and engineering research the Hub will facilitate the development and communication of a shared visionary roadmap for the UK water sector, stimulate and demonstrate new tailored approaches to address the grand challenges, create a process for selecting potentially transformative tailored socio-technical solutions in line with the roadmap and enable the accelerated generation of collaborative, responsible innovation across the UK water sector.