FITNESS is a Doctoral Network at the intersection of electric power distribution networks optimization, electricity markets, communications, and control systems. The project will develop new methodologies for active distribution networks services in the era of smart grids. FITNESS is the first training network dedicated to this challenge and involves 5 Beneficiaries and 5 Associated Partners from 7 EU countries, guaranteeing a pan-European approach in a multi-sectoral context (universities, research centres, and SMEs). FITNESS will train a new generation of scientific professionals who can transition between disciplines and between the public and private sectors based on (i) Recruited Researcher (RR) projects; (ii) courses and workshops, with the emphasis on hands-on, collaborative learning and attention to transferable skills; (iii) mobility, knowledge transfer, all within a training network that includes some of Europe's finest researchers.

Public sector resource allocation is an important area for research, especially now, when spending cuts are inevitable. In the health sector this frequently attracts media attention, especially with respect to the recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the denial of drugs to patients. However decisions to provide one treatment from a limited pot of resources will always mean that something else cannot be funded. Effective policies should incorporate the opinions of the general public and so policy makers need information about the views held by people in society. Firstly, information is needed about the nature of public opinion. What values and arguments exist around the topic in question? Usually there are a number of opinions about a particular issue and these can be described in terms of the features that set them apart as well as issues of consensus. Secondly, information is needed on how those views are distributed in a population - is there a dominant view? and what kinds of people subscribe to different opinions? This is often important for decision makers but requires a different kind of data based on larger samples of people. Research methods exist which can provide information of both types, using different approaches. In this project, we develop methods using an approach called Q methodology, which can link these two types of information within a consistent methodological approach. The issue we address here is the value to society of ?end-of-life? technologies. Decisions about the denial of expensive drugs for terminally ill patients, which extend life by only a short time, are controversial. We will explore the views of the general public regarding the provision of end-of-life technologies which will inform NICE and local organisations who make decisions about resources in health care. Our research will be conducted in two phases: the first will involve 250 people sampled from the general population and 50 from specific interest groups. They will sort cards, printed with statements of opinion, onto a grid, according to agreement. Based on an analysis of common patterns between respondents? sorts we will identify and describe shared views. In a second phase we will use these findings to design a survey which will allow us to analyse how common these views are in a large, representative sample of the population.

The electronics industry "ElecTech" sector is central to the UK's future economy, environment, and society. With over 1 million employees in sectors enabled by electronics, the contribution of electronic technologies is indispensable. At the heart of electronics are nanoelectronic semiconductor "chips", and it has a leading position in semiconductor intellectual property vendors and emerging areas such as quantum technologies, sustainable electronics manufacturing, and compound semiconductors. The UK's potential lies, and where its future role in the global semiconductor value chain lies, as evidenced in the BEIS committee inquiry. We will establish an Automated Nano AnaLysing, characterisatiOn and additive packaGing sUitE (ANALOGUE) suite. ANALOGUE will be an exemplary facility that provides a fully automated platform for semiconductor processing, from devices to applications, with centralised workflow design, data collection/capture and real-time analytics. ANALOGUE will enable wafer-scale fully automated electrical characterisation of devices including reliability and temperature cycling capabilities. A fully automated back-end processing platform is integrated enabling die- and wire-bonding, 3D printed electronics and additive heterogenous packaging, co-located with high-resolution printed circuit laser patterning. Co-located with the £35M James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC), and the Centre for Advanced Electronics (CAE), the facility will enable devices-to-systems across the ICT spectrum, towards a user-centric and responsible design approach for electronics manufacturing. With a team representing two application-oriented user groups, medical and industrial nanoelectronics, we will create an ecosystem whereby manufacturing, users, and circular economy experts are brought together as users of ANALOGUE. ANALOGUE will support research on implantables, wearables, and diagnostics, through ultrasonic devices. Embedding sustainable manufacturing and onshoring the research into the backend processes of electronics is crucial to meeting the requirements of future electronics design flows. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) buyers like Apple are already demanding commitments from suppliers to decarbonise their products, with distributors expected to assess each product's environmental impact throughout its lifecycle - from design and manufacture to end-of-life. As such, ANALOGUE allows UK researchers to explore the "black-box" of the semiconductor supply chain using automated characterisation and heterogenous packaging, encompassed by an automation and data collection framework for evaluating the efficacy of our experimental workflows. ANALOGUE will be accessible to the UK's research community across HealthTech, Beyond-Moore Computing, and Circular and Sustainable Electronics. Owing to its automated and streamlined nature, ANALOGUE will allow users from different institutions to utilise the suite remotely, facilitated by expert technical support, enabling rapid innovation across the nanoelectronics spectrum, insulating the UK's electronics research eco-system from global supply chain interruptions, e.g. chip shortages, and underpinning new research into otherwise offshore aspects of the electronics manufacturing. ANALOGUE builds on the UK's internationally acknowledged strengths in low-power IC Design, electronic materials, and applications in sustainable manufacturing. The Glasgow collaboration as an essential link in the supply chain linking materials producers (e.g., IQE), designers (Arm) manufacturers (PragmatIC Semiconductors, Printed Electronics, MTC), with academic users. The ANALOGUE team will regularly engage with these stakeholders through joint projects, meetings, workshops, and targeted events. The alignment of the proposal with the strategic sustainable systems focus of UofG will also help the envisaged research's long-term planning and strategy building.

A limited budget makes health and social care 'economic goods' (scarce relative to demand). Institutions such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) set guidelines which influence resource allocation decisions in the NHS and social care. Decisions by NICE are informed by clinical evidence and economic evaluation. Economic evaluation is the systematic comparison of different interventions/options in terms of both their costs and their impact on the service user. Currently, in the NHS, impact is defined in terms of increased life expectancy and improved health functioning. However, the focus on health is problematic in the case of social care, which is broader in its scope and impact. Social care aims to help people to retain their dignity and independence (hence being able to live an active life). Some economists have begun to explore a different framework for the economic evaluation of social care, one that is based upon the capability approach. The term capability reflects a person's ability to be and achieve the broad things that they value. Questionnaires have been developed to measure wellbeing in terms of capability. One such questionnaire is the ICECAP-A, which assesses a person's capability to experience security, autonomy, enjoyment, love and friendship, and achievement in life. By asking service users to complete the questionnaire we can assess what impact a service has had on their wellbeing (wellbeing in a broader sense than just health functioning). The ICECAP-A is one of a small number of questionnaires recommended for use by NICE for the evaluation of social care. Research into the capability approach is still at a relatively early stage. When evaluating healthcare using health functioning there is a clear way of presenting information to decision-makers and clear rules that decision-makers follow when deciding whether fund a new treatment. The aim of this project is to develop a way of presenting capability information to decision-makers and to provide evidence on the public's preferences, to help guide decisions in the social care/public health contexts. The first phase of the project will answer the question "what level of wellbeing should be deemed by society as 'sufficient', if those experiencing levels of wellbeing below this are prioritised for state funded support?" The question will be addressed by members of the public in a series of six citizens' workshops. We will recruit 12-15 people per workshop by sending invitation letters to those on the edited electoral register, working with charities and community groups and via social media. We will provide participants with relevant background information and encourage them to discuss their thoughts in order to reach a group consensus. 2-3 participants from each workshop will take part in an additional workshop to arrive at a final consensus, a consensus from across the six groups. The output will be to define a meaningful and standard quantity of benefit (an improvement from no capability at all up to a sufficient level of capability). We will then conduct a further six citizens' workshops with a new sample of the public. The question to be addressed by participants in phase II will be: "how much (in monetary terms) is our standard unit of benefit worth to society?" I.e. how much is society willing to pay to improve a person's wellbeing from no capability to sufficient capability? Deliberation means participants can be informed about the context and share and challenge each other's views in a supportive environment. Experiences of participating in the workshops will be understood through individual follow-up interviews; this will be published to inform the design of future studies. We will contrast results from the public workshops with separate results from three policy-maker workshops and from individual responses to an online survey. In such a survey, respondents have less scope to consider and form their views.

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.