The Tactile Universe is an award-winning public engagement project based at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmolgy and Gravitation that is empowering and raising the aspirations of students with vision impairments (VI) by making current astrophysics research topics accessible to them. To date, the project has developed and used its tactile resources to help VI children experience the size and scale of our solar system and understand what gives every galaxy in the Universe its own unique colour and shape. With the support of the STFC, the project now has the chance to expand to cover even more exciting topics, and ensure its legacy in the coming years. Predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916, as part of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves were not detected until 2015, when the merging of two black holes in a distant galaxy (one of the most cataclysmic and energetic events that can occur in the Universe) caused ripples in space-time that were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) instrument. Working with LIGO scientists at the University of Portsmouth and around the UK, the Tactile Universe team will develop resources and activities suitable for VI students aged 14-16, covering the detection of, and science behind, gravitational-waves. To make sure that the project's resources, old and new, reach everybody that they can, the Tactile Universe is working to train and grow a network of presenters who will deliver activities to VI students wherever they are based. The resources that the Tactile Universe will develop during this STFC Legacy Award will also be made available online through www.tactileuniverse.org, alongside our existing tactile resources, lesson plans and guides currently shared on the website. With access to a 3D printer, anybody will be able to download and make their own set of tactile resources to feel the awe inspiring shapes and structures of galaxies and understand gravitational-waves, one of the most exciting areas in astrophysics today.

SEPnet (South East Physics network) partners seek support for a 1.0FTE IPS Fellowship to extend over 4 years from 1st August 2014 to 31 July 2018 (SEPnet funding from HEFCE extends to July 2018) to work across the 9 SEPnet Physics departments at the universities of Portsmouth, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Southampton, Surrey, Queen Mary University of London and Royal Holloway University of London and The Open University. The Fellow will be co-located in STFC funded research groups in the Universities of Portsmouth and Sussex with direct line management undertaken by Portsmouth but will spend half their time working with STFC funded researchers in the other 7 SEPnet partner departments. The IPS Fellow will use their significant experience of the commercial world as well as an in-depth understanding of STFC areas of emphasis to focus on moving ideas and technology from research into economic impact outside academia, namely: developing commercial opportunities for exploitation of technologies derived from STFC funded research; capitalising upon existing IP and developing new IP; identifying opportunities for collaboration between funding and non-funding partners and identifying opportunities to transfer colleagues' knowledge and capability to academic disciplines outside traditional STFC areas. It is not a research post so, other than providing up to 4 hours per week of teaching within the SEPnet Graduate School on Leadership, Employability and Entrepreneurship and developing bespoke on-line resources on these topics, the Fellow will focus entirely on developing SEPnet departments' capacity for technology and knowledge transfer. The IPS Fellow will benefit from the experience of the current IPS Fellow located at SEPnet's recently joined partner, The Open University, and from the IPS Fellow located in SUPA (Scottish Universities' Physics Alliance) - Avril Manners, Director of SUPA, is a member of SEPnet Independent Advisory Committee. The Fellow will also benefit from engagement with SEPnet's Employer Liaison Director and her team of 9 Officers (located in each department) to enable links with relevant businesses. Furthermore the Fellow will be expected to integrate into STFC's Innovations Club and participate in TSB's on-line innovation fora and to identify useful meetings and workshops to enable networking and to keep abreast of developments in innovation and KT. The Fellow will make significant and regular use of SEPnet's infrastructure for virtual meetings and engagement with STFC researchers across the consortium as well as visiting for face-to-face meetings as required, prioritising those with pending or active collaborations in the first instance. The Fellow will submit biannual reports and present at half yearly meetings as required.

Glass has been a key material for many important advances in civilization; it was glass lenses which allowed microscopes to see bacteria for the first time and telescopes which revealed the planets and the moons of Jupiter. Glassware itself has contributed to the development of chemical, biological and cultural progress for thousands of years. The transformation of society with glass continues in modern times; as strands of glass optical fibres transform the internet and how we communicate. Today, glasses have moved beyond transparent materials, and through ongoing research have become active advanced and functional materials. Unlike conventional glasses made from silica or sand, research is now producing glasses from materials such as sulphur, which yields an unusual, yellow orange glass with incredibly varied properties. This next generation of speciality glasses are noted for their functionality and their ability to respond to optical, electrical and thermal stimuli. These glasses have the ability to switch, bend, self-organize and darken when exposed to light, they can even conduct electricity. They transmit light in the infra-red, which ordinary glass blocks and the properties of these glasses can even change, when strong light is incident upon them. The demand for speciality glass is growing and these advanced materials are of national importance for the UK. Our businesses that produce and process materials have a turnover of around £170 billion per annum; represent 15% of the country's GDP and have exports valued at £50 billion. With our proposed research programme we will produce extremely pure, highly functional glasses, unique to the world. The aims of our proposed research are as follows: - To establish the UK as a world-leading speciality glass research and manufacturing facility - To discovery new and optimize existing glass compositions, particularly in glasses made with sulphur - To develop links with UK industry and help them to exploit these new glass materials - To demonstrate important new electronic, telecommunication, switching devices from these glasses - To partner other UK Universities to explore new and emerging applications of speciality glass To achieve these goals we bring together a world-class, UK team of physicists, chemists, engineers and computer scientists from Southampton, Exeter, Oxford, Cambridge and Heriot-Watt Universities. We are partners with over 15 UK companies who will use these materials in their products or contribute to new ways of manufacturing them. This proposal therefore provides a unique opportunity to underpin a substantial national programme in speciality-glass manufacture, research and development.

The Tactile Universe is an award-winning public engagement project at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth. The project aims to make astrophysics research accessible to people with vision impairments (VI), with a particular focus on children aged 9 - 14. The Tactile Universe is different from other VI-accessible astronomy outreach projects in that 1) we are engaging the VI community with current research, rather than the more basic astronomy concepts like constellations, and 2) we are showing that astrophysics can be a possible route of study and future career, not just a hobby. The Project Lead is Dr Nic Bonne, who is a blind astrophysicist himself. Over 16,500 school pupils in the UK are recorded as having a vision impairment as their primary or secondary special education need. Research by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) shows that the attainment levels of these school pupils with VI are consistently lower than that for all pupils. University physics students with VI are almost non-existent. Through this project, we aim to inspire and engage with this underserved audience in physics public engagement, and open up astrophysics to a community that is under-represented in the field. The project uses 3D printers to create tactile 3D models of galaxies, where the image is raised above the base depending on the brightness of each pixel. We have already successfully completed a pilot project, and are now working with local schools during Phase One. This Nucleus Award proposal is for Phase Two of the project, where we will greatly expand the reach of the project, making our resources accessible to any child with VI in the UK, and ensuring that the project becomes self-sustainable beyond the current timeline. We will do this by working with our project partners RNIB, the South East Physics Network (SEPnet), the Ogden Trust, and the Royal Astronomical Society, through four interlinked strands. We will: 1. Create files and documentation needed to make and use our resources freely available online under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone with access to a 3D printer can recreate our models and deliver our activities. 2. Make kits containing our 3D models, activity guides, and any other resources required to run our activities. These kits will be distributed to public engagement and education organisations that cannot 3D print their own set of resources. 3. Train other public engagement practitioners and educators across the UK to use our resources, and connect attendees with their local VI-supporting schools and wider community. 4. Tour the Tactile Universe visiting remote communities to deliver sessions in schools that are not within our usual reach or that of the people who attend our training sessions (e.g. remote Wales, Scotland, Cornwall).

SEPnet (South East Physics network) partners seek support for a 1.0FTE IPS Fellowship to extend over 4 years from 1st August 2014 to 31 July 2018 (SEPnet funding from HEFCE extends to July 2018) to work across the 9 SEPnet Physics departments at the universities of Portsmouth, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Southampton, Surrey, Queen Mary University of London and Royal Holloway University of London and The Open University. The Fellow will be co-located in STFC funded research groups in the Universities of Portsmouth and Sussex with direct line management undertaken by Portsmouth but will spend half their time working with STFC funded researchers in the other 7 SEPnet partner departments. The IPS Fellow will use their significant experience of the commercial world as well as an in-depth understanding of STFC areas of emphasis to focus on moving ideas and technology from research into economic impact outside academia, namely: developing commercial opportunities for exploitation of technologies derived from STFC funded research; capitalising upon existing IP and developing new IP; identifying opportunities for collaboration between funding and non-funding partners and identifying opportunities to transfer colleagues' knowledge and capability to academic disciplines outside traditional STFC areas. It is not a research post so, other than providing up to 4 hours per week of teaching within the SEPnet Graduate School on Leadership, Employability and Entrepreneurship and developing bespoke on-line resources on these topics, the Fellow will focus entirely on developing SEPnet departments' capacity for technology and knowledge transfer. The IPS Fellow will benefit from the experience of the current IPS Fellow located at SEPnet's recently joined partner, The Open University, and from the IPS Fellow located in SUPA (Scottish Universities' Physics Alliance) - Avril Manners, Director of SUPA, is a member of SEPnet Independent Advisory Committee. The Fellow will also benefit from engagement with SEPnet's Employer Liaison Director and her team of 9 Officers (located in each department) to enable links with relevant businesses. Furthermore the Fellow will be expected to integrate into STFC's Innovations Club and participate in TSB's on-line innovation fora and to identify useful meetings and workshops to enable networking and to keep abreast of developments in innovation and KT. The Fellow will make significant and regular use of SEPnet's infrastructure for virtual meetings and engagement with STFC researchers across the consortium as well as visiting for face-to-face meetings as required, prioritising those with pending or active collaborations in the first instance. The Fellow will submit biannual reports and present at half yearly meetings as required.