Over half of global gross domestic product is dependent on nature, yet the past decades have seen unprecedented damage to ecosystems and declines in biodiversity due to adverse human activities. Financial institutions (FIs) can play an important role in securing a nature-positive future. Decisions by FIs over capital allocation and risk pricing influence structural shifts in the real economy that have profound impacts on nature. Today, opportunities to align nature and capital in ways that benefit people, nature and FIs are missed because these impacts are not accounted for. Our aim is to contribute the foundational networks, upskilling of researchers and robust, standardised methods and tools needed to integrate biodiversity and nature into financial decision making. Our focus is the scenarios used by FIs to influence risk pricing and investment decisions, alongside the relevant and suitable data and tools needed for scenario analysis, such as asset-level data and tools to assess nature-related financial risks. A further novel aspect of our proposal is the on integrated nature-climate scenarios. Scenarios and analytics for use by FIs must consider biodiversity and climate in an integrated way. Biodiversity and climate are often treated in siloes, driving potential systemic risks. Important interactions and feedbacks are not accounted for, leading to underestimation of risks and critical tipping points. An important innovation in our proposal is to bring together the IPBES, IPCC and FI scenarios communities, leaders of whom are partners to this project, to address this gap. Integrating nature and climate requires new science; our proposal is to develop the networks and co-design and pilot the frameworks to achieve this - i.e. the foundational common framework and language needed to close the gap. This will create the foundation to Phase 2 that will generate the new datasets and toolkits needed. Here we particularly target scenarios and analytics for use by Central Banks and Supervisors (CB&Ss). This is because CB&Ss are important catalysts of wider action by FIs. Supervisory expectations and regulations, e.g. disclosure, capital requirements and stress-testing, set the rules by which FIs operate, while monetary policies shape the playing field, together having a major influence on global capital flows and so nature. In developing this proposal, we have consulted with the leading CB&Ss and policy makers (e.g. Defra, HMT) that are shaping this agenda and leading work on scenarios, all of whom have agreed to join the project as project partners. This includes the European Central Bank, the Banque de France, De Nederlandsche Bank, the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors (CB&Ss) for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), and the Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Phase 1 of the project will deliver several important building blocks. Firstly, it will establish and operationalise the multi-disciplinary nature-climate-finance network. Secondly, it will co-develop the framework and guidance to generate the nature-climate scenarios and analytics, alongside syntheses of evidence and gap analyses. Finally, it will deliver a demonstrator application to a CB&S use case in stress testing nature-related risks. We will capture lessons learnt through this project to inform Phase 2, as well as share them to inform the development of the wider NERC Nature Positive Futures (NPF) programme. Our goal is that the network and the analytical framework developed will ultimately catalyse shifts in financial flows that reduce systemic risks and are aligned with a nature-positive future. Through consultations, we have understood the key milestones and actors to achieve this and shaped the project accordingly. We will work closely with our project partners, and link to UKCGFI, to ensure our outputs feed into the key processes, as well as collaborate with and support the wider NPF programme goals.

One of the most serious global challenges over the next 30 years will be to address the profound implications of ageing for global economies and society. A recent UN report predicted that by 2050, 22% of the world's population will be over age 60. Maintaining physical and mental health requires increasing intervention with age, with most people requiring at least three forms of routine treatment in their 80s. There is therefore a pressing need to understand the mechanisms for ageing-related diseases, such as stroke and coronary heart disease. Premature ageing syndromes such as Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) can help us to understand the causes of normal ageing. Children with HGPS manifest many of the features observed in physiologic ageing, including balding, thinning skin and artherosclerosis. They usually die in their teens from a stroke or heart disease. HGPS is caused by a defect in one the components of the structural scaffolding for the cell nucleus, which acts as an anchor point for nuclear proteins and DNA. When this scaffold is disrupted, the cell nucleus is misshapen; chromosomes are disorganised; and cells are unable to divide effectively. These features have been observed in cells from normal 80-year-olds, particularly in the vascular wall, where artherosclerosis takes place. This problem occurs because one of the proteins that forms part of the scaffold, prelamin A, is not correctly processed. In particular, the mutant prelamin A is not processed correctly by an enzyme called ZMPSTE24. We recently succeeded in producing active ZMPSTE24 enzyme and went on to solve its three-dimensional structure using X-ray crystallography (Quigley et al., Science, 2013). This exciting development gives us, for the first time, a framework to understand some of the biochemical mechanisms leading to premature ageing. The structure looked like nothing ever seen before. ZMPSTE24 forms a barrel surrounding a huge water-filled chamber inside the nuclear membrane, with its enzymatic domain at one end. There are a series of side portals in the chamber wall that permit access to inside the barrel. We now plan to define how ZMPSTE24 cleaves its substrates and why mutations in ZMPSTE24 cause disease. By understanding these underlying biochemical mechanisms, we better understand diseases of ageingageing, and possibly even develop treatments for the children who suffer from premature ageing.

The Wallacea region, lying between the Borneo to the west and Papau New Guinea to the east, is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, hosting incredibly high levels of biodiversity, much of which is unique to the region. This exceptional level of biodiversity and endemism reflects evolutionary diversification and radiation over millions of years in one of the world's most geologically complex and active regions. The region's exceptional biodiversity, however, is threatened by climate change, direct exploitation and habitat destruction and fragmentation from land use change. Continued habitat loss and fragmentation is expected to precipitate population declines, increase extinction rates, and could also lead to 'reverse speciation' where disturbance pushes recently diverged species together, leading to increased hybridisation, genetic homogenisation, and species' collapse. Already, approximately 1,300 Indonesian species have been listed as at risk of extinction, but the vast majority of the region's biodiversity has not been assessed and we lack basic information on the distribution and diversification of many groups, let alone understanding of what processes drove their diversification, how they will respond to future environmental change, and how to minimize species' extinctions and losses of genetic diversity while balancing future sustainable development needs. In response to the need for conservation and management strategies to minimize the loss of Wallacea's unique biodiversity under future environmental change and future development scenarios, we will develop ForeWall, a genetically explicit individual-based model of the origin and future of the region's biodiversity. ForeWall will integrate state-of-the-art eco-evolutionary modelling with new and existing ecological and evolutionary data for terrestrial and aquatic taxa including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, snails, damselflies and soil microbes, to deliver fresh understanding of the processes responsible for the generation, diversification, and persistence of Wallacea's endemic biodiversity. After testing and calibrating ForeWall against empirical data, we will forecast biodiversity dynamics across a suite of taxa under multiple environmental change and economic development scenarios. We will develop a set of alternative plausible biodiversity management/mitigation options to assess the effectiveness of these for preserving ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes across the region, allowing for policy-makers to minimise biodiversity losses during sustainable development. Our project will thus not only provide novel understanding of how geological and evolutionary processes have interacted to generate this biodiversity hotspot, but also provide policy- and decision-makers with tools and evidence to help preserve it.

Superconductivity is a decrease of the electrical resistivity to zero, in certain materials and at sufficiently low temperature. It is widely employed for high-power applications and extreme magnetic fields - for example, in MRI/NMR machines in healthcare, in high-output wind turbines, and in magnetically-levitated high-speed trains. The global superconductor market is currently estimated at over £5.5B, and is expected to double by the next decade. Superconductivity is a remarkable manifestation of quantum mechanics on large length scales, and underpins some of the most exciting technological possibilities. One of them is the emerging field of quantum computation, in which the most promising prototypes are based on solid-state superconducting chips. However, superconductivity is a delicate state: it requires low temperatures, and limits on the ambient magnetic field. Many known materials with robust superconductivity have difficult mechanical properties. There is therefore enormous scope for optimisation of superconducting materials, with huge technological and economic benefits. The most promising candidates for a more practical high-temperature superconductor are the so-called "unconventional" superconductors, in which strong and complex correlations between many electrons induce particularly robust superconductivity. They may ultimately provide a route to room-temperature superconductivity. However, our ability to control high-temperature superconductivity has remained severely limited. One of the main challenges is complexity: the strong interactions among electrons often cause them to order in other ways, such as into ribbons of charge known as charge density waves. Of the many structures that strongly-interacting electrons can form, it is unclear which are related to the superconductivity. In this project, we take on this problem through a combination of experiments on materials that isolate key aspects of unconventional superconductivity, and calculations designed to predict properties of complex, correlated systems with guaranteed accuracy. We take advantage of the dramatic recent progress of precision numerical methods for correlated electron systems, in order to formulate specific conditions for achieving desired properties. These calculations will be validated by results from the experimental portion of this proposal, and in turn will generate hypotheses that are testable experimentally. The experimental method to be employed here is to apply extremely large pressures to samples, in order to distort their lattices. This method has proved to be very powerful: under high pressure, the electronic properties of many materials differ so much from the unpressurised material that they can be considered, in effect, as new materials. Our results will provide insight into the key conditions that favour robust superconductivity, and allow development of improved materials for applications such as in renewable energy and quantum computation.

Biological soft solids are remarkable active systems, sustaining complex functions such as motion, digestion, and even consciousness itself. Conversely, engineered soft solids, like rubbers and gels, typically serve lifeless functions such as dampers, cushions, and seals. A grand challenge for engineering and material science is to bridge this gap. How do we bring our engineered soft solids to life? Accordingly, this project develops engineering soft solids that can move and morph. Our working is enabled by a new class of materials called liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs). These are soft rubber-band like solids, but at a molecular level they are built out of tiny rigid rods, and all these rods point in the same direction. If the LCE is heated or illuminated, it contracts along this alignment direction, just like a muscle contracts along its fiber direction. The contraction is dramatically large, reversible, and can be used to exert a substantial pulling force. The core of this project is thus to take this exciting new material, and put it to use in shape-shifting devices. To do so, we have formed a dedicated mechanical engineering group to design, simulate, fabricate and test LCE machines. An area of particular excitement is that LCEs can be fabricated with the molecular alignment following almost any desired spatial pattern, which, on heating produces a corresponding pattern of contraction and hence a complex shape change. For example, we can programme an LCE disk to form into a conical shell or a dome. Such patterned shape changes recall how patterns of muscular contraction produce locomotion, and patterns of growth sculpt developing organs. The resulting programmed LCE samples can also conduct sophisticated mechanical tasks - e.g. the cone can lift - blurring the distinction between a material and a machine. During the initial stage, we have used this approach to study LCE lifters, pumps, irises and grabbers. Our work involved fundamental questions about designing alignment patterns for particular functions, and mechanical analysis of how the resultant machines. This has required the development of new software for predicting how LCEs morph, and new techniques for making samples via 3D printing. A key feature of the renewal is the adoption of a new mechanical programming technique for making patterned LCEs. This technique enables us to create much more complex shape changes, such as a disk forming into a face. We will deploy it to fabricate and test smart LCE layers, that will gain dramatic patterns of topography when they are heated/cooled. This device architecture will enable us to create a range of smart morphing surfaces, including one with switchable braille pixels for a haptic display, one with switchable golf-ball like dimples for switchable aerodynamic lift, and one with switchable roughness for lotus-like water repellence. These new LCEs also have remarkably complicated behavior when they are deformed. The alignment direction can rotate within the LCE, often spontaneously forming a complex microstructural pattern, and leading to an unexpectedly soft mechanical response. Our second focus will be to combine experiment and theory to understand these patterns, and develop software that can predict how such LCEs will deform when they are used in machines. Finally, we will develop a next generation of LCE machines. Currently, our machines lift or grab in response to a global temperature change; in practice, in an oven. However, we will establish strategies for applying the heat or light locally within the LCE structures, allowing different parts to move in different ways. We will also monitor how these machines move in real time, allowing feedback between stimulus and result. Combining better control and feedback will be a step change in sophistication, enabling complex manipulation of objects/fluids and guided locomotion, and bringing us ever closer to soft machines that look alive.