Surfactants and emulsifiers constitute an important class of chemical agents that are widely used in almost every sector of modern industry. The huge market demand is currently met almost exclusively by synthetic, mainly petroleum-based, chemical products, which are usually non-biodegradable and mostly toxic or GM plant based products (used in foods), which are undesirable by some end-users. Their biologically produced counterparts (i.e. bio-surfactants and bio-emulsifiers) offer more green sustainable alternatives. This has led to a number of manufactures, looking for ways to increase competitiveness through searching for underexploited sources such as the marine environment. Our objectives are to develop (1) innovative approaches in discovering, characterizing and producing novel marine-derived bio-surfactants from a large bacterial collection (greater than 500 strains) housed at Heriot Watt University, originally isolated from various coastal and open ocean waters around the world, (2) novel, economic, and eco-friendly end-products with commercial applications in order to replace synthetic counterparts, and (3) to demonstrate the functionality of new product development for commercial exploitation. Our collection consists of novel bacterial species, originally isolated for their ability to degrade oils, with proven promise in this respect. For this reason, our consortium (consisting of academic institutions, industrial companies and end-users) offering a wide range of expertise, will address the technical bottlenecks for meeting our objectives, namely those of marine resource identification, sustainable supply, discovery pipeline and efficient production in biological systems. The relevance of our proposal to the work programme is underlined by its expected impact in increasing efficiency of discovery pipelines, the development of more economic and eco-friendly end-products and finally in contributing to the implementation of the objectives of the EU Blue Growth.

This Centre for Doctoral Training in Embedded Intelligence, the first in the UK, addresses high priority areas for economic growth such as autonomous complex manufactured products and systems, functional materials with high performance systems, data-to-knowledge solutions (e.g. digital healthcare and digitally connected citizens), and engineering for industry, life and health, which are also key priorities for Horizon 2020, the new EU framework programme for research and innovation. Horizon 2020 explicitly spells out ICT and Manufacturing as key industrial technologies. Its remit fits the EPSRC priority areas of ICT for Manufacturing and Data to Knowledge, and has an impact on industrial sectors as diverse as logistics, metrology, food, automotive, oil & gas, chemistry, or robotics. In addition, our world (homes, transport, workplaces, supplies of food, utilities, leisure or healthcare) is constantly seeking for interactive technologies and enhanced functionalities, and we will rely on these graduates who can translate technologies for the end-user. The uniqueness of this Centre resides on the capability to innovatively address a myriad of Embedded Intelligence challenges posed by technical needs ranging from the EI supply chain: the design stage, through manufacturing of embedded or on-bedded devices, to the software behind data collection, as well as integrative technologies, to finally the requirements from end-users. The thematic areas, discussed conjointly with industry during the preparation of this proposal, allow us also to recruit students from a vast range of educational backgrounds. A strong user pull defines the nature of the challenges that this CDT will tackle. The graduates who shall come to alleviate the shortage of skilled engineers and technologists in the field will be exposed to the following thematic areas: > Device design, specification of sensors and measurement devices (power scavenging, processing, wire & wireless communications, design for low power, condition monitoring); > Packaging & integration technologies (reliability and robustness, physical and soft integration of devices, sub-components and wider system environment); > Intelligent software (low level, embedded, system level, database integration, ontology interrogation, service oriented architectures, services design); > Manufacturing solutions (design for manufacture of embedded systems, advanced and hybrid manufacturing processes for embedding, process consolidation technologies, biomimetics and cradle-to-cradle for sustainability production, etc.); > Applications engineering (design and implementation of embedded technologies for in-time, in-line products, processes and supply chains; product and process design for embedded intelligence); > System Services: (i) Service Foundations (e.g., dynamically reconfigurable architectures, data and process integration and semantic enhanced service discovery); (ii) Service Composition (e.g. composability analyses, dynamic and adaptive processes, quality of service compositions, business driven compositions); (iii) Service Management and Monitoring (e.g. self: -configuring, -adapting, -healing, -optimising and -protecting) and (iv) Service Design and Development (e.g. engineering of business services, versioning and adaptivity, governance across supply chains). Our flagship, the 'Transition Zone' training, will facilitate the transition into doctoral studies in the first year of studies, and, closer to the end of the programme, out to industry or self-employment. As employable high calibre individuals with a good understanding of enterprising, commercialisation of research, social responsibility, gender equality and diversity, innovation management, workplaces, leadership and management, our doctorates will grow prosperity bottom up, enjoying a wealthy network of academic and industrial contacts from their years at the CDT, as well as their peers at the Centre.