We will launch a new CDT, focused on composite materials and manufacturing, to deliver the next generation of composites research and technology leaders equipped with the skills to make an impact on society. In recent times, composites have been replacing traditional materials, e.g. metals, at an unprecedented rate. Global growth in their use is expected to be rapid (5-10% annually). This growth is being driven by the need to lightweight structures for which 'lighter is better', e.g. aircraft, automotive car bodywork and wind blades; and by the benefits that composites offer to functionalise both materials and structures. The drivers for lightweighting are mainly material cost, fuel efficiency, reducing emissions contributing to climate change, but also for more purely engineering reasons such as improved operational performance and functionality. For example, the UK composites sector has contributed significantly to the Airbus A400M and A350 airframes, which exhibit markedly better performance over their metallic counterparts. Similarly, in the wind energy field, typically, over 90% of a wind turbine blade comprises composites. However, given the trend towards larger rotors, weight and stiffness have become limiting factors, necessitating a greater use of carbon fibre. Advanced composites, and the possibility that they offer to add extra functionality such as shape adaptation, are enablers for lighter, smarter blades, and cheaper more abundant energy. In the automotive sector, given the push for greener cars, the need for high speed, production line-scale, manufacturing approaches will necessitate more understanding of how different materials perform. Given these developments, the UK has invested heavily in supporting the science and technology of composite materials, for instance, through the establishment of the National Composites Centre at the University of Bristol. Further investments are now required to support the skills element of the UK provision towards the composites industry and the challenges it presents. Currently, there is a recognised skills shortage in the UK's technical workforce for composites; the shortage being particularly acute for doctoral skills (30-150/year are needed). New developments within industry, such as robotic manufacture, additive manufacture, sustainability and recycling, and digital manufacturing require training that encompasses engineering as well as the physical sciences. Our CDT will supply a highly skilled workforce and technical leadership to support the industry; specifically, the leadership to bring forth new radical thinking and the innovative mind-set required to future-proof the UK's global competitiveness. The development of future composites, competing with the present resins, fibres and functional properties, as well as alternative materials, will require doctoral students to acquire underpinning knowledge of advanced materials science and engineering, and practical experience of the ensuing composites and structures. These highly skilled doctoral students will not only need to understand technical subjects but should also be able to place acquired knowledge within the context of the modern world. Our CDT will deliver this training, providing core engineering competencies, including the experimental and theoretical elements of composites engineering and science. Core engineering modules will seek to develop the students' understanding of the performance of composite materials, and how that performance might be improved. Alongside core materials, manufacturing and computational analysis training, the CDT will deliver a transferable skills training programme, e.g. communication, leadership, and translational research skills. Collaborating with industrial partners (e.g. Rolls Royce) and world-leading international expertise (e.g. University of Limerick), we will produce an exciting integrated programme enabling our students to become future leaders.

Monsoon systems influence the water supply and livelihoods of over half of the world. Observations are too short to provide estimates of monsoon variability on the multi-year timescale relevant to the future or to identify the causes of change on this timescale. The credibility of future projections of monsoon behavior is limited by the large spread in the simulated magnitude of precipitation changes. Past climates provide an opportunity to overcome these problems. This project will use annually-resolved palaeoenvironmental records of climate variability over the past 6000 years from corals, molluscs, speleothems and tree rings, together with global climate-model simulations and high-resolution simulations of the Indian, African, East Asia and South American monsoons, to provide a better understanding of monsoon dynamics and interannual to multidecadal variability (IM). We will use the millennium before the pre-industrial era (850-1850 CE) as the reference climate and compare this with simulations of the mid- Holocene (MH, 6000 years ago) and transient simulations from 6000 year ago to ca 850 CE. We will provide a quantitative and comprehensive assessment of what aspects of monsoon variability are adequately represented by current models, using environmental modelling to simulate the observations. By linking modelling of past climates and future projections, we will assess the credibility of these projections and the likelihood of extreme events at decadal time scales. The project is organized around four themes: (1) the impact of external forcing and extratropical climates on intertropical convergence and the hydrological cycle in the tropics; (2) characterization of IM variability to determine the extent to which the stochastic component is modulated by external forcing or changes in mean climate; (3) the influence of local (vegetation, dust) and remote factors on the duration, intensity and pattern of the Indian, African and South American monsoons; and (4) the identification of palaeo-constraints that can be used to assess the reliability of future monsoon evolution.

The process of designing molecules in order to optimise their properties (whether at the functional group level, the molecular level, supramolecular or macroscopic level) has achieved considerable levels of sophistication. In this context, selective fluorination of organic compounds has been one of the chemist's favourite tools to prevent undesirable properties/events (eg degradation), or to fine-tune desired ones (eg acid/basicity, conformation). This is because of the high electronegativity and non-polarisability of the fluorine atom and of the resulting highly polarised and strong carbon-fluorine bond. This very active research area has resulted in an ever-increasing understanding of how to profit from these special characteristics. Our past research has led to novel instruments and novel insights, which inspired us to novel exciting and innovative research. The main properties we will investigate are hydrogen bonding and lipophilicity (which is a measure of cell membrane permeability). Hydrogen bonding is the most important specific non-covalent (non-fixed, temporary) interaction between a molecule and its local environment, and so it is of utmost relevance in ligand-protein binding (potency of a compound), supramolecular chemistry and catalysis. The potency of a compound describes how effective a molecule is once it reaches its target. But, the lipophilicity of a compound is a main factor that determines how effective a it is at reaching its target. Hence, potency and lipophilicity are the most important properties of bioactive compounds (probes, diagnostics and drugs). Previous EPSRC-funded research by our group led to a novel way to measure lipophilicity of fluorinated compounds (which is defined as the partition coefficient of a compound in an octanol/water biphasic mixture). Not only is our new technique more accurate and straightforward than existing methods; an additional major benefit is that no UV-activity is required. This now gives us an exciting opportunity to study aliphatic organic compounds (which do not have aromatic rings, which are UV active). These aliphatic compounds are being increasingly used in drug development, but it is not easily possible to measure their lipophilicity using standard industry methods. Furthermore, while the partition coefficient is the de facto standard for membrane permeability assessment, data regarding the actual partitioning of compounds into lipid bilayers is more scarce. Using a novel form of 19F solid state NMR we will be able to assess how the partition coefficient relates to partitioning into the native bilayer, including the influence of fluorination. We also want to expand our research from fluorohydrins to the vitally important aliphatic amines (these are found in most drugs), in order to study the pH-dependent influence of fluorination on their lipophilicity, and of amides, where our technique allows us to investigate completely novel aspects, such as lipophilicity of conformers (which are different orientations of a molecule in space). This will be extended to sugar anomers (which are different sugar forms). We will also extend the methodology scope, both widening the lipophilicity range, and using it to test non-fluorinated compounds. Previously, we have also investigated the hydrogen bond donating capacity of aliphatic alcohols. Given this success, we intend to expand our research to amines and amides. We also want to investigate the effect intramolecular hydrogen bonding involving fluorine has on lipophilicity. Our technique means we are uniquely placed to do this. Our proposed research will significantly increase our understanding of the impact that fluorination has on two very important properties in a class of compounds that have increasing importance in the life sciences, in chemistry, and in materials chemistry. It will further cement the importance of our lipophilicity methodology through expanding its scope and number of applications.

This project will develop a new international collaboration between a UK-based research team, with expertise in both volcanic processes and Earth Observation Science, the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland (UoI) and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). The main goal is to establish the potential of thermal wavelength hyperspectral emissivity data to map volcanic surfaces and lava types, and advance our knowledge of the processes that influence the location, nature and severity of volcanic activity. Thermal wavelength hyperspectral data offers the potential to overcome the limitations of both traditional field-based mapping and current (spectral reflectance based) remote-sensing methods and provide a step-change in the range and quality of mineralogical, lithological and morphological datasets retrieved over volcanic terrains. Thermal hyperspectral data also has the potential to resolve key physical parameters and processes detectable at the surface, such as temperature and the type and concentration of gas emissions. The principal scientific aim of this project is to resolve the capability of thermal wavelength hyperspectral emissivity data to map volcanic surfaces and lava types. We also seek to place robust constraints on the movement of lava flows and how this can help with hazard mitigation. This project would enable the skills and experience of the UK and UoI research teams to be integrated and assist the development of spectral emissivity and thermal inertia mapping into robust, operational observational methodologies. The specific objectives of this project are to: 1. Create a database of spectral emissivity and reflectance measurements from a representative range of volcanic samples and sites using laboratory and field-based measurements. 2. Quantify the capability of an integrated spectral emissivity and reflectance dataset to resolve the diagnostic mineralogical information required to classify the key lithologies in volcanic terrains. 3. Quantify the spatial variability in the effect of (i) surface roughness, (ii) compositional heterogeneity, (iii) grain size, (iv) topography, (v) downwelling longwave radiation and (vi) viewing angle on emissivity spectra received at-sensor from the sample-to-site-to-landscape scales at a variety of volcanic terrains. 4. Resolve the optimum sampling, spectral and temporal resolutions and capabilities of thermal inertia mapping at a representative range of volcanic terrains. 5. Integrate field and UAV hyperspectral thermal datasets with (i) the airborne hyperspectral datasets acquired over the field sites in Iceland by the NERC ARF and (ii) the recent acquisition of NERC ARF thermal wave range data over a number of volcanic study sites in Iceland. 6. Determine the optimum spatial and spectral resolutions for ground, airborne and satellite-based thermal hyperspectral instruments by retrieving the greatest amount of mineralogical and lithological analysis at the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio. This proposal provides an outstanding opportunity to integrate the research outputs from recent NERC funded research by the research team with significant investment by NERC in airborne and ground Earth Observation Instrumentation and data processing (Field Spectroscopy Facility; Airborne Research Facility & ARF-Data Analysis Node). This will develop a robust, operational methodology that will enable the remote mapping of lithological, mineralogical and petrological information of igneous rocks, at site-to-landscapes scales, that is not currently possible using remote sensing based approaches. The capabilities of the Imaging FTIR developed by Ferrier to acquire ultra-high spatial, spectral and temporal hyperspectral thermal waverange datasets from both the ground and a UAV will provide a means of accurately quantifying the capabilities of the OWL instrument to identify volcanic rocks compositions and structures.

France