EPSRC : Evelyn Tan : EP/L015846/1 Digital games are becoming an irreplaceable part of our culture. According to the 2019 Global Games Market Report, there are 2.5 billion gamers across the world and the global games industry is set to generate $152.1 billion in 2019. Some of the most popular digital games are team-based, for example League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009), Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Valve Corporation, 2012), Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment, 2016) and Dota 2 (Valve Corporation, 2013). These games have competitive leagues (termed 'esports') with prize pools exceeding $30 million. They are watched and played by millions. Players enjoy the high level of challenge and social interaction that team-based games afford. However, working together with others is not always an enjoyable experience. While teamwork is a core component of the game, it is difficult to achieve since players are typically placed in teams with strangers. This means that teams have no prior experience working together but the game requires close collaboration and effective coordination for success. Team success depends on the rate in which players learn to work together. It also depends on the ability of the team to overcome negative events that can erode team morale. For example, it is common for players to blame each other when the team underperforms. Since constructs like trust and cohesion, which develop through prior experience and sustain teams during adversity, do not exist, players are susceptible to exhibit dysfunctional behaviours. This is known as 'toxic behaviour' and is a huge problem in the game community. According to Riot Games, a new player who encounters toxic behaviour in their first game is 320% less likely to return. Toxic behaviour not only reduces player retention but negatively affects players' mental well-being. Given the millions of people who spend hours on competitive team-based digital games daily, this is an important problem to solve. This project proposes that teamwork can be facilitated through developing effective communication processes. Specifically, this project focuses on 'closed-loop communication', a type of coordination mechanism where it is made clear that a sent message has been received and understood. In new teams, it is important for players to make their behaviours predictable. Using closed-loop communication when coordinating an attack, for example, will enable players to ensure that their teammates share the same situation awareness and are committed to carrying out the attack. As a result, players would develop a greater sense of trust and cohesion, since they know that they can rely on their team. We suggest that by enabling better teamwork, toxic behaviour can be reduced. To achieve this, this project will carry out a laboratory study to investigate the effect of closed-loop communication on team performance, cohesion and player satisfaction. Players will be placed in a team belonging to one of two groups: (1) the experimental group, where closed-loop communication is taught or (2) the control group, where no closed-loop communication is taught. Players will play a match and asked to complete a questionnaire on their subjective experiences. They will also be asked to go through the match replay to identify instances of effective teamwork. Through this project, we can identify whether developing an effective communication process facilitates teamwork in new teams and leads to better performance and greater feelings of cohesion and satisfaction. Findings from this project can be used to inform design features that facilitate teamwork in new teams and can also be used to improve teamwork in teams outside of digital games.

EPSRC : Nouf Zaghloul : EP/L016648/1 Conjugated polymers can potentially provide flexible and lightweight conductors and semiconductors that can be used in wearable electronics. Polymer-based materials are highly desirable due to their attractive properties such as intrinsic flexibility and electronic tunability. Among these polymers, polyaniline (PAni) is particularly unique due to its readily controlled doping level by simple redox processes, or the addition of acid or base for doping and de-doping processes, respectively. When nanostructured, PAni (such as nanowires, nanofibers, and nanorods) displays enhanced performance due to its high surface area to volume ratio. The interfacial area between the PAni and its environment is significantly increased, and this is particularly useful in applications such as sensors. Compared to its bulk form, nanostructured PAni displays faster response time and improved sensitivity due to the increased surface area, and target molecules can be sensed at low penetration depths. However, due to the lack of facile and reliable methods for making high-quality conducting and semiconducting polymer nanostructures and thin films, these properties have not yet been widely exploited. One of the techniques recognised as providing significant control for film deposition since the 1920s is the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method, which can deliver films that are one molecular layer thick. This technique has been increasingly used to deposit various nanomaterials including PAni, PAni nanocomposites, graphene, and graphene oxide onto a wide array of substrates. These materials have potential use in a broad range of applications, including flexible and/or transparent electronic devices. The aim of this project is to utilize the Langmuir Blodgett (LB) deposition technique at the University of Waterloo to form uniform thin films layers of PAni nanocomposites layers. Successful production of thin film PAni nanofibers will allow research into laser writing and the fabrication and testing of simple proof-of-principle flexible sensor devices. This will facilitate the development of a direct patterning method for producing high-resolution features, that is both simple and inexpensive, and, realization of a new class of polymer printed devices and soft robotics.

EPSRC : Keenan Smith : EP/L015749/1 Sustainable energy generation and storage devices are critical to mitigate the continued impacts of climate change on the environment and society. Proton exchange membranes (PEM) are vital components of energy storage and conversion devices, such as fuel cells (FC), electrolysers and redox flow batteries, conducting protons between electrodes, whilst minimizing the transport of reactant molecules and electrolytic anions. Despite over half a century of development in this area, perfluorinated sulfonic acid (PFSA) membranes remain the industry standard. Composite PFSA PEMs with complementary components exhibit enhanced performance and alleviate the major issues of water management, low-temperature operation and fuel crossover, currently hindering the success of these devices. This placement focusses on the two main concepts of my PhD, through novel fabrication techniques and complementary characterisation tools to provide a complete structural understanding. Crystalline polytriazine imide (PTI), is a novel 2D material, being studied at UCL. It exhibits 3.88 Å pores with protruding piperidine -NH groups and favourable crystallographic stacking that results in 'aquaporin-like' water transport. We are pioneering the use of ultrasonic spray printing (USP) to produce composite polymer films with homogenously distributed PTI and graphene oxide (GO) throughout the PFSA framework. PTI's properties provide composite PEMs that outperform conventional polymers, as well as GO composite PEMs. The mechanism by which PTI and GO additives impart their beneficial properties, in composite PEMS, will be revealed by fundamental study of water uptake, swelling ratio, phase separation, free volume, and elastic modulus in thin film (<500 nm) samples at U. Calgary. Single-, double- and tri-layer 2D materials, such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride, have been speculated as 'perfect' fuel cell membranes, with the highest theoretical proton conductivity, due to the selective permeation of protons through the dense electron clouds of regularly arranged atomic lattices. In addition to the specific properties addressed previously, this suggests that PTI has significant potential as a thin ion-sieving layer providing unimpeded proton transport. However, difficulty in obtaining a large-scale layer of PTI restricts the use of its remarkable through-plane transport properties for application in FCs. U. Waterloo has expertise in nanomaterial processing and have used this to develop films of densely tiled 2D material monolayers at low cost and complexity using innovative approaches. Thus, the role these materials were hailed to provide for FC application can be realised by integrating nano-thick films of PTI into PEMs by use of a simple, scaleable approach. In addition to the interfacial layering procedure, Prof. Pope's group have also established a route to effectively incorporate ionic liquids (IL) into graphene oxide (GO) lamellae for electrode applications. This surfactant driven assembly provides a comprehensive route to incorporate IL, which can adopt the proton mediator role of water, into a mechanically robust framework of graphene lamellae. This presents a system that has potential to provide anhydrous and high-temperature proton conduction, overcoming the issues of low-humidity and high-temperature performance that currently hinder the success of PFSA PEMs. The material and device advances, proposed here, that tap into the 'wonder' properties of 2D materials have the potential to provide high power density FCs with greater efficiency and durability. In conjunction with a structural and mechanistic understanding of these novel materials, the barrier to commercially viable systems will be circumvented, resulting in new materials infiltrating the green energy market and surpassing the established technologies.

This proposal, via a combination of international and cross-disciplinary collaboration, will expand the research of the applicant, and indeed that of the University of Manchester Laser Processing Research Centre (LPRC), into laser treatment of biomedical materials. The programme establishes collaborative projects between the LPRC, the University of Waterloo (Canada) and The University of Manchester School of Dentistry based mainly on improving the biocompatibility of titanium surfaces. Other collaborative work between the LPRC and the University of Waterloo with a non-biomedical theme is also planned.The programme is divided into 3 phases:Phase 1: A researcher from The University of Waterloo will be hosted at The University of Manchester to perform investigative work into silica machining to improve fiber optic efficiency. Dr Pinkerton will observe that work and spend 20% of his time working in collaboration with the School of Dentistry. Phase 2: Dr Pinkerton will be hosted by The University of Waterloo and work partly on a surface engineering method for coating of both the graded porosity blanks produced in Manchester and simulated (full density) Ti implants with CPP or HAp. The emphasis will be on increasing all round skills in laser processing of biomedical materials through 'hand on' experience and exploratory research to identify possible future projects.Phase 3: Dr Pinkerton will return to Manchester and work for 1 month in collaboration with the School of Dentistry applying learned skills and using LPRC continuous wave and short pulse laser equipment to produce the surface coatings and surface modify them.The main contacts will be Dr E Toyserkani in The School of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo and Professor D Watts, Head of the Adhesive Biomaterials & Biomechanics Research Theme in the School of Dentistry at The University of Manchester. Dr Toyserkani will visit the LPRC for 1-2 weeks during phase 1 of the project and will provide collaborative advice on installing a control system for the laser direct metal deposition equipment at the Centre.

The proposed research contributes to fundamental topics in Combinatorial Optimisation, aiming to devise strongly polynomial algorithms for new classes of linear and nonlinear optimisation problems. The notion of polynomial-time complexity, introduced in the 1970s, is a standard way to capture computational efficiency of a wide variety of algorithms. Strongly polynomial-time algorithms give a natural strengthening of this notion: the number of arithmetic operations should not depend on numerical parameters such as costs or capacities in the problem description, but only on the number of such parameters. Strongly polynomial algorithms are known for many important optimisation problems. However, it remains an outstanding open problem to devise such an algorithm for a very fundamental optimisation problem: Linear Programming. The most important goal of the proposal is to develop a strongly polynomial algorithm for linear programs with at most two nonzero entries per column. The problem is equivalent to minimum-cost generalised flows, a classical model in the theory of network flows. Finding a strongly polynomial algorithm was a longstanding open question even for the special case of flow maximisation, resolved by the applicant in a recent paper. Further goals of the proposal include strongly polynomial algorithms for related nonlinear optimisation problems. Nonlinear convex network flow models have important applications for market equilibrium computation in mathematical economics. Very few nonlinear problems are known to admit strongly polynomial algorithms. The proposal aims for a systematic study of such problems, and will also contribute to the understanding of computational aspects of market equilibrium models.