In the diagnosis and treatment of disease, clinicians base their decisions on understanding of the many factors that contribute to medical conditions, together with the particular circumstances of each patient. This is a "modelling" process, in which the patient's data are matched with an existing conceptual framework to guide selection of a treatment strategy based on experience. Now, after a long gestation, the world of in silico medicine is bringing sophisticated mathematics and computer simulation to this fundamental aspect of healthcare, adding to - and perhaps ultimately replacing - less structured approaches to disease representation. The in silico specialisation is now maturing into a separate engineering discipline, and is establishing sophisticated mathematical frameworks, both to describe the structures and interactions of the human body itself, and to solve the complex equations that represent the evolution of any particular biological process. So far the discipline has established excellent applications, but it has been slower to succeed in the more complex area of soft tissue behaviour, particularly across wide ranges of length scales (subcellular to organ). This EPSRC SoftMech initiative proposes to accelerate the development of multiscale soft-tissue modelling by constructing a generic mathematical multiscale framework. This will be a truly innovative step, as it will provide a common language with which all relevant materials, interactions and evolutions can be portrayed, and it will be designed from a standardised viewpoint to integrate with the totality of the work of the in silico community as a whole. In particular, it will integrate with the EPSRC MultiSim multiscale musculoskeletal simulation framework being developed by SoftMech partner Insigneo, and it will be validated in the two highest-mortality clinical areas of cardiac disease and cancer. The mathematics we will develop will have a vocabulary that is both rich and extensible, meaning that we will equip it for the majority of the known representations required but design it with an open architecture allowing others to contribute additional formulations as the need arises. It will already include novel constructions developed during the SoftMech project itself, and we will provide many detailed examples of usage drawn from our twin validation domains. The project will be seriously collaborative as we establish a strong network of interested parties across the UK. The key elements of the planned scientific advances relate to the feedback loop of the structural adaptations that cells make in response to mechanical and chemical stimuli. A major challenge is the current lack of models that operate across multiple length scales, and it is here that we will focus our developmental activities. Over recent years we have developed mathematical descriptions of the relevant mechanical properties of soft tissues (arteries, myocardium, cancer cells), and we have access to new experimental and statistical techniques (such as atomic force microscopy, MRI, DT-MRI and model selection), meaning that the resulting tools will bring much-need facilities and will be applicable across problems, including wound healing and cancer cell proliferation. The many detailed outputs of the work include, most importantly, the new mathematical framework, which will immediately enable all researchers to participate in fresh modelling activities. Beyond this our new methods of representation will simplify and extend the range of targets that can be modelled and, significantly, we will be devoting major effort to developing complex usage examples across cancer and cardiac domains. The tools will be ready for incorporation in commercial products, and our industrial partners plan extensions to their current systems. The practical results of improved modelling will be a better understanding of how our bodies work, leading to new therapies for cancer and cardiac disease.

Remaking Society will be: 1) Working with local partners in demonstrating and assessing participatory cultural activities in four contrasting contexts of deprivation - Bradford, Glasgow, Fraserburgh and Newcastle. 2) Using these four pilots to generate new forms of evidence about the lived experience of poverty and exclusion. 3) Creating opportunities for marginalised and less visible sections of society to communicate with wider audiences, including policy-makers. In this project, the concept of community is not restricted to communitarian accounts of 'a group of people in a given place', or as a site of consensus and constructed oneness based on social categories such as race, class, gender or location. Ours is a dynamic model in which community formation is seen as a continual re-negotiation of co-existence and interdependence, not confined by place, as illustrated by the thirty years of pioneering work by Southall Black Sisters. Questions about how communities conduct these negotiations become particularly important now, at a time of economic crisis, when resources are scarce and stress levels among vulnerable individuals are high. The study will make critical connections between our understanding of community performance and participatory process across academic fields - including conflict resolution, cultural geography, public health, social psychology and sociology. It will allow a re-examination of inter-disciplinary concepts of community through arts and media practices. Belonging to a community is critical to a sense of wellbeing for individuals and families, particularly significant for those who live on the breadline. The second element of Remaking Society is the generation of narrative evidence on the cultural dimensions of poverty and social exclusion. It will add a unique inter-disciplinary arts and humanities perspective to the ESRC's national study, Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (www.poverty.ac.uk). Running until 2013, it is the UK's largest ever research project on the impact of poverty.

Our proposal requests five distinct bundles of equipment to enhance the University's capabilities in research areas ranging across aerospace, complex chemistry, electronics, healthcare, magnetic, microscopy and sensors. Each bundle includes equipment with complementary capabilities and this will open up opportunities for researchers across the University, ensuring maximum utilisation. This proposal builds on excellent research in these fields, identified by the University as strategically important, which has received significant external funding and University investment funding. The new facilities will strengthen capacity and capabilities at Glasgow and profit from existing mechanisms for sharing access and engaging with industry. The requested equipment includes: - Nanoscribe tool for 3D micro- and nanofabrication for development of low-cost printed sensors. - Integrated suite of real-time manipulation, spectroscopy and control systems for exploration of complex chemical systems with the aim of establishing the new field of Chemical Cybernetics. - Time-resolved Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry - Digital Image correlation system to simultaneously measure and quantify fluid and surface/structure behaviour and interaction to support research leading to e.g. reductions in aircraft weight, drag and noise, and new environmentally friendly engines and vehicles. - Two microscopy platforms with related optical illumination and excitation sources to create a Microscopy Research Lab bringing EPS researchers together with the life sciences community to advance techniques for medical imaging. - Magnetic Property Measurement system, complemented by a liquid helium cryogenic sample holder for transmission electron microscopy, to facilitate a diverse range of new collaborations in superconductivity-based devices, correlated electronic systems and solid state-based quantum technologies. These new facilities will enable interdisciplinary teams of researchers in chemistry, computing science, engineering, medicine, physics, mathematics and statistics to come together in new areas of research. These groups will also work with industry to transform a multitude of applications in healthcare, aerospace, transport, energy, defence, security and scientific and industrial instrumentation. With the improved facilities: - Printed electronics will be developed to create new customized healthcare technologies, high-performance low-cost sensors and novel manufacturing techniques. - Current world-leading complex chemistry research will discover, design, develop and evolve molecules and materials, to include adaptive materials, artificial living systems and new paradigms in manufacturing. - Advanced flow control technologies inside aero engine and wing configurations will lead to greener products and important environmental impacts. - Researchers in microscopy and related life science disciplines can tackle biomedical science challenges and take those outputs forward so that they can be used in clinical settings, with benefits to healthcare. - Researchers will be able to develop new interfaces in advanced magnetics materials and molecules which will give new capabilities to biomedical applications, data storage and telecommunications devices. We have existing industry partners who are poised to make use of the new facilities to improve their current products and to steer new joint research activities with a view to developing new products that will create economic, social and environmental impacts. In addition, we have networks of industrialists who will be invited to access our facilities and to work with us to drive forward new areas of research which will deliver future impacts to patients, consumers, our environment and the wider public.

Within almost every discipline related to the digital economy, there are critical and emerging issues around humans and the data they generate either directly, or as a byproduct of their endeavours. Equally, the data economy has stimulated a range of initiatives responses within each of the three sectors (public, private and third), as well as a broad portfolio of research across relevant disciplines. However, while such important work is ongoing, such these efforts are often disparate and tend not to feed directly back into the science of data-driven systems itself. There is an urgent need to guide the realisation of system design principles that are productive, and yet fit with the ethics and values acceptable to wider society. Those who are expert in development of the systems, algorithms and analytics that raise such issues face challenging culture gaps: firstly, with regard to those who are expert in areas such as the arts and humanities, and secondly with regard to those who are inexpert in technology but who are increasingly impacted by it in their everyday lives. Core to these divisions are issues such as a lack of social understanding of the technical capabilities of data-driven systems, inconsistency of research and development effort across sectors and disciplines, and tensions between industrial, societal and academic drivers, and human needs. Such tensions are visible in several domains, though few as pointedly critical as health. One need only look at NHS' efforts to protect individuals' medical records, in contrast to contrasted against the corporate monetization of DNA samples, as individuals take advantage of advances in low-cost mobile self-monitoring and diagnosiseek low cost solutions to their health-managements. Here, state, corporate and individual-level drivers create inconsistent approaches to the management and value of data. It is time to draw together, consolidate and formalise our efforts across disciplines. We must now seek to structure further endeavour, while considering how new and emerging systems are realised, received and responded to-not just within the bounds of the DE but cross-sector, i.e. within the range of organisations and communities that reflect and support daily human activity and concern. At a sectoral level, industry has often focused narrowly on either corporate monetisation of data from individuals, or individuals' efficiency and short-term optimisation of personal metrics (e.g. the 'quantified self'). Market pressures mean that technical advances are increasingly implemented before social and cultural effects can be determined. This means, however, that data-intensive systems to support long term social, cultural and creative benefits are rare. At the same time, academic research has often focused on questions of interest more to itself than to other sectors. Academic work with public and third sector organisations has been fragmented, with interactions often weighted in favour of shorter term innovation cycles rather than longer term social needs. Such challenges, divergences and tensions lead to duplications, contradictions, and unproductive effort. This is the problem space within which we operate. Our network a holistic and inclusive network approach, sensitive to the socially situated nature of such systems. To achieve this we will (a) develop and sustain a collaborative, cross-sectoral community under the banner of Human Data Interaction, (b) develop a portfolio of system design projects addressing underexplored aspects of the DE (c) create cross-sectoral interdisciplinary synthesis of research under the HDI banner (d) conceptually develop and flesh-out the HDI framework, (e) create a suite of policy and public-facing case studies, papers, prototypes and educational materials, and (f) develop a set of core guidelines intended to inform the design of human-facing data-driven systems.

Growth factors are molecules within our body that participate in many physiological process that are key during development as they control stem cell function. These molecules thus have the potential to drive the regeneration of tissues in a broad range of medical conditions, including in musculoskeletal (bone repair), haematological (bone marrow transplantation) and cardiovascular (infarction, heart attack) diseases. Growth factors are currently produced commercially and are used regularly in clinical applications. However, they are very power cell signalling molecules and dose is critical as balance between effect and safety has to be considered. To date the use of growth factors in regenerative medicine has been only partially successful and even controversial. The growth factors are rapidly broken down and cleared by the body. This makes prolonged delivery (as is required to effect repair) a problem and typically higher than wanted doses are administered to get around this. While their help in regeneration is undoubted, collateral side effects can be catastrophic e.g. tumour formation. We have developed new technology that directly addresses these concerns as it uses materials (that can be topically implanted) to deliver low, but effective, growth factor doses; this programme is about the safe use of growth factors in clinical applications. This will not only reduce risks for patients who currently receive growth factor treatments, but will open up therapies that can include co-transplantation with stem cells to a wider range of patients as doctors would not have to keep these therapies back for cases of most pressing need. This increased use would minimise costs as growth factors are very expensive and reduced dose would save money per treatment. Our approach is unique and this programme grant will allow us to enhance the UK's world leading position through innovative bioengineering. We know that stem cells have huge regenerative potential and that growth factors provide exquisite stem cell control - both are currently untapped. We will engineer new materials to enable growth factor technology, and critically stem cell technologies, where traditional approaches are falling very short of the mark.