In this research programme, planetary scientists and engineers from the University of Glasgow and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre have joined forces to answer important questions concerning the origin and evolution of asteroids, the Moon and Mars. The emphasis of our work is on understanding the thermal histories of these planetary bodies over a range of time and distance scales, and how water and carbon-rich molecules have been transported within and between them. One part of the consortium will explore the formation and subsequent history of asteroids. Our focus is on primitive asteroids, which have changed little since they formed 4500 million years ago within a cloud of dust and gas called the solar nebula. These bodies are far smaller than the planets, but are scientifically very important because they contain water and carbon-rich molecules, both of which are essential to life. We want to understand the full range of materials that went to form these asteroids, and where in the solar nebular they came from. Although they are very primitive, most of these asteroids have been changed by chemical reactions that were driven by liquid water, itself generated by the melting of ice. We will ask whether the heat needed to melt this ice was produced by the decay of radioactive elements, or by collisions with other asteroids. The answer to this question has important implications for understanding how asteroids of all types evolved, and what we may find when samples of primitive asteroids are collected and returned to Earth. Pieces of primitive asteroids also fall to Earth as meteorites, and bring with them some of their primordial water, along with molecules that are rich in carbon. Many scientists think that much of the water on Earth today was obtained from outer space, and consortium researchers would like to test this idea. In order to understand the nature and volume of water and carbon that would have been delivered by meteorites, we first need to develop reliable ways to distinguish extraterrestrial carbon and water from the carbon and water that has been added to the meteorite after it fell to Earth. We plan to do this by identifying 'fingerprints' of terrestrial water and carbon so that they can be subtracted from the extraterrestrial components. One of the main ways in which this carbon was delivered to Earth during its earliest times was by large meteorites colliding with the surface of our planet at high velocities. Thus we also wish to understand the extent to which the extraterrestrial carbon was preserved or transformed during these energetic impact events. The formation and early thermal history of the moon is another area of interest for the consortium. In particular, we will ask when its rocky crust was formed, and use its impact history to determine meteorite flux throughout the inner solar system. To answer these questions we will analyse meteorites and samples collected by the Apollo and Luna missions to determine the amounts of chemical elements including argon and lead that these rocks contain. Information on the temperature of surface and sub-surface regions of Mars can help us to understand processes including the interaction of the planet's crust with liquid water. In order to be able to explore these processes using information on the thermal properties of martian rocks that will soon to be obtained by the NASA InSight lander, we will undertake a laboratory study of the effects of heating and cooling on a simulated martian surface. Hot water reaching the surface of Mars from its interior may once have created environments that were suitable for life to develop, and minerals formed by this water could have preserved the traces of any microorganisms that were present. We will assess the possibility that such springs could have preserved traces of past martian life by examining a unique high-altitude hot spring system on Earth.

Genomic and proteomic programmes increasingly drive our understanding of complex biological systems; advances in protein science allow us to understand protein form and function in ever increasing detail whilst nanotechnology research programmes are developing tools to study and manipulate systems on the length scale of 1-100nm. The current 'blind spot' is our inability to combine genomic and proteomic data with understandings of molecular mechanism and biochemical pathways in living systems. For instance, we may know the atomic structure of a protein, understand its protein or ligand interactions, how and where it assembles into multi-component structures within the cell. However, we are unable to image any of these processes directly in living cells with the necessary resolution to give a complete and satisfactory understanding of how things work. Recent forums of leading microscopists both in Europe and the UK have highlighted this issue and also the pressing needs to achieve higher resolution multicolour live cell microscopy. While new optical techniques are constantly evolving there still remains a critical gap between what is possible using electron sources and optically based methods. To meet this challenge we propose the development of our novel probes that will eventually result in a live cell, multicolour/component imaging within an Electron Microscope, making an apparent Fluorescence electron microscope (FEM). By combining recent technological advances in both optical and electron imaging with the development of our novel luminescent probes, we believe that this approach will create a technology that will far surpass any other known technique currently being developed and provide the step change required in microscopy to start true multicolour sub-light resolution imaging with few constraints and address this major limitation in biology. This would be a ground-breaking advance in biological imaging. We recognised that any new technology trying to enable sub-light/diffraction limited nanometre resolution imaging is limited by currently available fluorescent/luminescent probes that have all been designed for photoluminescent imaging. Our approach is to encapsulate, or chemically passivate, specially engineered nano-sized (in the region of 10nm) cathodoluminescent materials such as the material used for P43 (in colour TV screen phosphors) for cell labelling. These probes will have the added advantage that they will also be suitable for standard photon excitation and exhibit far better properties compared to most other fluorochromes due to their high electron beam and photo-stability, very narrow emission peaks and inert nature. Taking the advantage of conventional optical microscopy and the use of different luminescent probes to study multiple cellular components in a live environment and the resolution that can be achieved using a scanning electron beam, we will remove the current 'blind spot' in studying living systems. This will have a far-reaching impact on biological and medical research with the elucidation of fine detailed particle maps and the ability to study receptor organisation and interactions. Such interactions are known to play key roles in cell signalling, recognition and other vital cellular functions that are critical for healthy cell function and disease, yet little is understood due to our current inability to visualise live samples. As well as the biological applications, we believe our new luminescent probe technology will impact widely on many other fields, such as polymer research, surface science, micro and nanotechnology. Our probes and FEM will therefore have the widest possible application across many academic and industrial disciplines.

In 2013 we successfully applied to enhance electron microscopy at St Andrews through the Capital for Great Technologies scheme. The purpose of this new facility is to provide state of the art capability to analyse and control functional materials at the nanoscale to underpin and drive forward critical Materials research in Energy Materials, Catalysis, Photonics, Metamaterials and Electronics. All elements of the facility are well used and usage is expanding now that the new facilities have come on stream. Going forward, however, we are severely constrained by lack of facility operators. It is easy to project doubling or more of usage with a second skilled operator on the Scios and Titan in particular. Not only would this involve more operator time on the instruments, it would increase training time and afford more time for detailed studies. Thus the purpose of this application is to secure the appointment of a second skilled operator for two years to increase productivity and indeed capability through more rounded coverage. This will minimise down time due to holidays, allow more than one of the key facilities to be operated by our specialists for research and/or training at a single time and most importantly will provide the space to train more users to a higher standard. We also propose to increase the outreach of our facility in the region, holding two focused workshops and linking more strongly to Universities in our region. We also hope to link with the other major Materials Electron Microscopy Centre in Scotland to coordinate capabilities. An improved web-based booking system will be implemented.

Our vision is to create a distributed CDT that unites the strands of magnetic resonance (MR) technology funded under the EPSRC Basic Technology (BT) Programme that accounted for more than 10% of the funding in this programme. We will create a world-leading combination of expertise, infrastructure resource and training. Furthermore this vision seeks to capitalise on the BT investment by developing MR technology to have real and lasting impact on UK science and industry. The UK has an outstanding and continuing record of contributions and advances to many aspects of MR research and technology. UK-based companies (e.g. Oxford Instruments, Magnex (now part of Agilent), Cryogenics, Bruker UK, Thomas Keating) using highly trained staff with higher degrees (e.g. MSc, PhD) have pioneered world-leading MR technology, much of it emerging from UK universities. The letters from our industrial partners are absolutely clear about the need for an increased supply of MR researchers trained to PhD level with a broad perspective of the field to maintain the UK's position at the forefront of the development of MR technology. MR methods are firmly established as a primary analytical tool in chemistry, are increasingly influential for characterisation in materials science and have revolutionised medical imaging. Despite the great success of MR there is huge demand to push the boundaries through increasing the sensitivity, resolution (spectral and spatial) and speed of the technique. The technologies involved include fast, high power and versatile electronics, signal detection and processing, high frequency/power sources, cryogenics, micromechanics, sample environments and pulse sequences. These drivers, the range of technologies involved and strong, integrated industrial involvement make the field an ideal research training ground for our PhDs and ensure wider BT impact. The CDT will provide impetus for further cross-collaboration in the UK MR community, with the projects jointly supervised across partners. Our vision centrally fits this CDT call by exposing students to multiple, but synergistic BT concepts around MR. Although the physical principles of the different branches of MR, i.e. nuclear (NMR), electron (EPR) and imaging (MRI), are fundamentally related, conventional 'isolated' PhDs associated with one specific MR topic often miss the connection and broader picture of the field. This CDT will bring new dimensions to the training of a cohort of UK PhD students in MR including acquiring the background skills for creative exploitation of their research. PhD projects centred on developing MR technology will have multidisciplinary impacts Page 3 of 9 Date printed: 20/01/2011 11:21:23 EP/J00121X/1 Date saved: 20/01/2011 10:45:13 through extending the range of application of MR techniques. The MR instrument market (certainly worth many hundreds of millions of pounds globally) continues to show strong growth as evidenced by the annual reports of the leading companies and by their projected forecasts of rapid expansion. Hence the already identified need along with the potential growth amply demonstrate the demand for trained people in this area. There is a strong fit to national needs in priorities aligned to RCUK, industry and more broadly. Increasingly there are national concerns about critical mass and improved sustainability through shared services/infrastructure. The demand for very expensive state of the art equipment in MR to compete internationally will require more coordination and joint planning between the leading groups and this CDT can play a central role in this. Specific areas of MR technology where training will be provided and also further developed through the research projects of the students are: (i) MR Pulse Sequence Technology (ii) Cryogenic Magnetic Resonance (iii) Advancing pulsed Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (iv) Beyond conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (v) Dynamic Nuclear Polarisation enhanced NMR

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is capable of providing extremely detailed insights into the structure and dynamics of a wide range of materials - from organic systems, such as pharmaceutical compounds and supramolecular arrays, to inorganic materials for next-generation batteries and safe storage of nuclear waste. Such information is crucial for harnessing the properties of increasingly complex new materials, and to address major challenges across the physical sciences. However, the true potential of this experimental technique is only realized through combination with advanced computational methods. In particular, first-principles electronic structure predictions of key NMR interactions, such as chemical shifts, allow experimental measurements to be directly linked to structure. In tackling challenging problems, the developing field of NMR crystallography benefits from close interaction with other experimental techniques, typically powder X-ray diffraction, and computational approaches, particularly crystal structure prediction. The Collaborative Computational Project for NMR Crystallography supports this multidisciplinary community of NMR spectroscopists, crystallographers, materials modellers and application scientists, who work both within academia and industry. We develop overarching software tools enabling a largely experimentally focused community to exploit advanced computational techniques.