Computational simulations increasingly enable the design of lighter, more efficient, and higher-performance flight vehicles. Current computational capabilities have successfully aided many advances in aerospace design, but challenges remain in the selection of the models used to represent turbulence. Due to practical limits on computing resources, computational simulations for engineering design typically neglect the intricate features of turbulence. The models used to approximate the missing physics contain parameters that must be calibrated to data, which is challenging for unknown flows, and often have simple mathematical forms that limit their accuracy. Recently, efficient numerical methods to calibrate the parameters of complex models during flow simulations have been developed using techniques from machine learning and constrained optimization. These methods have been successful for simple turbulent flows but have not been applied to the complex flows encountered in aerodynamics. The principal objective of this project is to develop methods by which to calibrate turbulence models for simulations of practical aerodynamic flows, which will enhance their predictive accuracy for challenging configurations. The optimization methods to be developed will be broadly applicable across engineering fields, not limited to aerodynamics, and will be made publicly available in an open-source, high-performance software package. This project will address the need for accurate, efficient computational fluid dynamics models by developing deep learning closures and optimization methods for large-eddy simulations of turbulent separated and recirculating flows. The models will be optimized over the compressible Navier-Stokes equations using an adjoint-based approach, which will enable efficient data assimilation by avoiding the need to construct high-dimensional gradients. The resulting models will enable significant accuracy improvements compared to state-of-the-art models for comparable cost, or equivalently, significantly reduced computational cost for comparable accuracy. High-fidelity numerical datasets for several wake geometries and separated airfoil flows will be generated as target data for the optimization procedure. Additionally, a new class of online optimization methods will be developed to enable dynamic, data-free closure models that will learn directly from the governing equations, and a hybrid, multiscale deep learning formulation will be developed to model near-wall turbulent flows. The scientific community more broadly is interested in leveraging large datasets and machine learning techniques; this project therefore has potential to develop methods to be widely adopted across disciplines. The resulting algorithms, methods, datasets, and codes will be disseminated to foster adoption within the aerodynamics community and across scientific disciplines.

This project will: (a) recover the multiple experiences of theology in late-medieval Italy, focusing on Florence in the 1280s and 1290s; (b) examine the way in which Dante engages with the forms of these experiences in his Commedia. The project therefore casts light on the ways in which medieval theology was mediated and experienced within a specific historical and geographical context, paying close attention to its varieties and their effects upon different publics; in doing so, it will re-evaluate a key dimension of a fundamental work of world literature, a work which is increasingly recognised not only as being central within the European literary tradition, but also as a distinctive and unique theological voice in its own right. The project, based in the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies in the University of Leeds, and in the Department of Italian in the University of Warwick, draws on a well-established link with the leading North American centre for Dante studies, the Devers Program at the University of Notre Dame, and benefits from the multidisciplinary expertise of an advisory board of internationally pre-eminent scholars. It builds upon a process of collaborative intellectual preparation which has already helped re-define its field, and which has firmly established the project's research context and questions. The project will, moreover, draw on a very rich, underexamined body of archival resources held in Florentine libraries. Over recent years, Dante's engagement with theology has come to be seen as an increasingly important aspect of his work; and his poetic voice is increasingly prized by theologians as a singular contribution to theological debate. Recent scholarship has shown not only that he engages with particular theological ideas, but that his poetry - itself among the most daringly original in world literature - borrows and alters many of the forms in which theology would have been encountered in the late middle ages. These forms range from scholastic forms of argumentation to less "learned" realms of religious practice such as visual art and liturgy. Yet research into Dante's theology has tended to treat the theological tradition as though it were a single set of ideas and debates, divorced from the precise forms and contexts in which it would have been encountered. At the same time, there is a real danger of scholarship on Dante's theology becoming disparate, as specialised research focuses on particular aspects of Dante's theology. This project therefore proposes to bring together a team of researchers, supported by a strong and established international network, to develop a holistic understanding of the ways in which theology was experienced in Florence in the 1280s and 1290s - the time when, by Dante's own account, he was engaged in theological study. Instead of seeing Dante's theological interests as consisting primarily of a set of ideas, the project asks how theology would have been experienced by Dante and his contemporaries in this specific context. The two primary strands of the project will examine respectively the nature of "high" theology as practised and received in the centres of theological learning, and the nature of forms of religious practice outside those learned milieux. Two secondary strands of the project will deepen and develop the findings of the first two strands, to explore particular aspects of this connection between theology and its social and cultural context: one examines the way in which the identity of theologians is presented in the Commedia and in late medieval Florence; the other will consider the manner in which theology shaped how Dante and his contemporaries thought about society.

In cells there are compartments (endosomes) containing higher concentrations of HCl than are found in the rest of the cell. These comparments have walls consisting of lipid bilayer membranes - which have an oily or lipophilic interior that the HCl cannot cross easily as HCl consists of two charged species (H+ and Cl-) which prefer not to be in a lipophilic environment. The aim of this project is to design smart molecules which can recognise HCl and carry it across the lipid bilayer. The molecules are designed to bind the HCl and wrap it up in an organic coat which is soluble in the membrane. Because there is a difference in HCl concentration across the membrane the molecules will act to equalise the concentration of HCl by diffusing and releasing the HCl on the low concentration side and then diffusing back to the high concentration side to bind another HCl. We will design and test molecules to do this in model systems first and then in collaboration with a group in the US will test them in vesicles and in cells. By transporting the HCl we disrupt chemical potentials in the cell. This might be useful if we wish to kill the cell if it is a cancer cell. Additionally, the transport of HCl can disturb the function of important proteins in the cell membrane by changing the pH (ATPase uncoupler activity). This may lead to other interesting biological activity. The project is a collaboration between the Gale group in Southampton (design and synthesis of receptors and binding studies) and the Smith group at Notre Dame (vesicle and cell studies). The PDRA will visit Notre Dame twice during the course of the project and will transfer the knowledge gained in membrane studies back to Southampton.

Understanding the impacts of environmental change and changing land use on biodiversity and how ecosystems work require comprehensive knowledge of communities and their ecology. Molecular biodiversity identification is emerging as a high throughput and cost effective alternative to traditional approaches and in particular, the analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) provides an opportunity to measure biodiversity in space and time at unprecedented scales. Unlike DNA obtained through direct analysis of communities, eDNA refers to shed cells or free-DNA from organisms as they pass through an environment, or die and decay. eDNA is being applied for various uses such as identification and monitoring of endangered/invasive species and analysis of biodiversity. It is very clear that researchers can detect eDNA from a variety of natural environments and in particular, freshwater environments. However, understanding how those sources of eDNA relate to living biodiversity and associated ecological function in ecologically and socio-economically important river ecosystems is at the heart of the eDNA:LOFRESH proposal. Focusing on a range of exemplar experimental semi-natural and natural freshwater catchment systems from local to national scales, we will (a.) improve understanding of the movement, and persistence of lotic eDNA, (b.) quantify the relationship between lotic eDNA and the in situ community using different combinations of genetic and genomic approaches, (c.) improve methodological approaches for eDNA data acquisition and interpreting eDNA data using novel ecological and phylogenetic algorithms, (e.) develop and test new models relating lotic eDNA to stream biodiversity and ecosystem function and their variation in response to land use pressures. Over a 4 year period, five work packages (WPs) will be delivered by the Universities of Bangor, Birmingham, Cardiff and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. In WP1, we will use artificial stream channels in a series of experiments to assess the effects of a range of physical and chemical drivers on the loss of lotic eDNA and to compare and contrast genetic and genomic approaches for assessing known sources of lotic eDNA. In WP2, we will test our experimental findings from WP1 by tracking natural lentic (i.e. lake) and experimentally introduced control lotic eDNA through the natural stream network of the intensely studied Conwy River research catchment in north Wales. WP2 will also assess relationships between observed lotic eDNA and the in situ community in selected tributaries of the Conwy displaying a range of physicochemical characteristics and experiencing different land use pressures. WP3 will sample lotic eDNA in coordination with an on-going national survey in Wales to up-scale the experimental and catchment-scale findings of WP1 and WP2 to the Welsh landscape and national scales. WP4 will provide informatics support, but specifically, develop workflows to identify species level diversity in eDNA datasets. Finally, in WP5 we will further test our model findings, by manipulating the experimental stream systems with emulated land use pressures, quantify the ecosystem functions of decomposition and food web structure and test linkages with eDNA signals. Effective engagement with a broad range of stakeholder groups (government, end-users, environmental agencies) and project partners (research institutions and academic partners specialising in eDNA, sequencing and informatics) will optimise impact and research synergies of potentially transformative science throughout the consortium network.

In the last decade, the role of software engineering has changed rapidly and radically. Globalisation and mobility of people and services, pervasive computing, and ubiquitous connectivity through the Internet have disrupted traditional software engineering boundaries and practices. People and services are no longer bound by physical locations. Computational devices are no longer bound to the devices that host them. Communication, in its broadest sense, is no longer bounded in time or place. The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) group at the Open University (OU) is leading software engineering research in this new reality that requires a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used. This platform grant will grow and sustain strategic, multi-disciplinary, crosscutting research activities that underpin the advances in software engineering required to build the pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems that will be tightly woven into the fabric of a complex and changing socio-technical world. In addition to sustaining and growing the SEAD group at the OU and supporting its continued collaboration with the Social Psychology research group at the University of Exeter, the SAUSE platform will also enable the group to have lasting impact across several application domains such as healthcare, aviation, policing, and sustainability. The grant will allow the team to enhance the existing partner networks in these areas and to develop impact pathways for their research, going beyond the scope and lifetime of individual research projects.