Cancer is a major cause of death with an estimated economic impact of £7.6bn per year in the UK alone. The earlier cancers are diagnosed the more successful therapies tend to be. We are developing diagnostic solutions for cancer based on programmable DNA nanodevices that are able to detect, amplify and report cancer markers in patient blood. This project will develop DNA nanodevices that detect raised concentrations of metal ions - a possible indicator for cancer onset and progression. This will be achieved through a combination of experimental and computational methods.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

I aim to investigate the EU and NATO's environmental impact targets through the concept of reversibility by critically analysing how the environmental consequences of the defence sector challenge their green defence agenda. Reversibility, expressed in the works of Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas and conceptualised by Hartmut Behr, advocates that it is necessary to rearticulate political agency in terms of pursuing non-irreversible policies. Using reversibility as a critical, deconstructive and reconstructive norm, I seek to investigate the ethical potential of a concept of reversibility in military environmental policy by investigating the EU and NATO's green defence agendas. This research will therefore focus on: (a) the development and evolution of the green defence agenda of the EU Climate Change and Defence Roadmap (2022/EEAS 2020) and NATO's Climate Change and Security Action Plan (2021); (b) the question of whether the avoidance of irreversible consequences has been considered by the EU and NATO; and (c) the added potential that a concept of reversibility and its political ethics could have. I will use a three-stage methodological approach. Firstly, theoretical engagement with the conceptual literature on reversibility. Secondly, process tracing through a genealogical investigation of policy documents relating to the Action Plan and Roadmap. Finally, triangulating the results of stages (1) and (2) with information through elite semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the policymaking process. This will help uncover whether the reversibility of policy consequences was considered and how these agendas could be enriched ethically through an academically developed concept of reversibility.

Hydrogen is considered one of the most promising substitutes for fossil fuels, being a source of green energy that could potentially lead to decarbonization. Its combustion only delivers water and heat energy as reaction products, making it a pollution free alternative. Dark fermentation (DF) is a biological hydrogen production method in which under anaerobic conditions and absence of light, microorganisms break down complex organic matter into simpler compounds producing biohydrogen and volatile fatty acids (VFAs). Given the high cost of using pure carbohydrates as a substrate on a commercial scale, there has been a lot of interest in biohydrogen production using renewable and less expensive feedstocks. Over 220 billion tonnes of agricultural waste are generated yearly, making it an accessible renewable resource to use as feedstock for dark fermentation. Therefore, using agricultural waste for biohydrogen production is a circular economy approach in which organic waste is treated to produce renewable energy, making the dark fermentation of these substrates both environmentally and economically compelling. Theoretically, a maximum of 12 mol of H2 can be obtained from the complete oxidation of one mole of glucose. However, only 4 mol of H2 can be obtained per mole of glucose through dark fermentation, with acetate and CO2 as the other fermentation end products, and this yield is obtained when the particle pressure of H2 is kept adequately low. Theoretically, during the acidogenesis for fermentative hydrogen generation, one-third of carbon from glucose is broken down into hydrogen (H2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), while the remaining two-thirds remain soluble as VFAs in the and less than 20% of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) is removed. Nowadays, the yield of biohydrogen production by dark fermentation is between 1.2 and 2.3 mol H2/mol hexose, which is only 30-50% of the maximum theoretical production of 4 mol H2/mol glucose. The low yield of H2 by biohydrogen production methods is one of the major challenges that needs to be addressed before it can be used for industrial purpose. In this project, we will look into which strains, feedstocks and conditions are the most promising for hydrogen production. However, due to the great potential of dark fermentation but low efficiency, the conventional approach is not enough. The accessibility of huge sequenced genomes, functional genomic studies, the development of in silico models at the genome scale, metabolic pathway reconstruction, and synthetic biology approaches, has risen during the last years. This bioinformatic and biotechnological approaches hold the key for augmentation of biohydrogen production. The aim of this project is to enhance biohydrogen production from agricultural waste through metabolic engineering of the metabolic pathways involved in dark fermentation. The following questions will be investigated during this project: (1) Which strain and biomass feedstocks are more promising for biohydrogen production? For this, we will test bacterial strains reported in the literature (Shewanella oneidensis MR-1) and novel strains isolated from extreme environments. Different lignocellulosic materials from agricultural waste (willow, hay, wheat and barley) will be tested as feedstock. (2) Which are the key points in the metabolic pathways that lead to biohydrogen production during dark fermentation? A multi-omics approach, considering genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, will be taken to unravel these key points. Bioinformatics and experimental data will be used. (3) How can this process be optimized? To redirect the carbons from the agricultural waste into biohydrogen production, synthetic biology techniques will be used to perform metabolic engineering in the selected strain to favour the metabolic pathway leading to increased hydrogen production. Bioprocessing studies will be done using Design of Experiments (DoE) to explore the most optimal conditio

There is increasing concern about the resilience of England's water supplies, because of the effects of population growth, climate change and the need to ensure enough water for natural ecosystems. Due to these pressures, the 2014 Water Act introduced a duty "to secure the long-term resilience of water supply systems". In 2020, the Environment Agency's "Meeting our Future Water Needs: A National Framework for Water Resources" presented new evidence of the increasing pressures on water supplies, and made the case for a new framework for management of water resources, taking a large-scale systems perspective. This reflected a major step for the water industry in England, which since privatization has focussed at the level of individual water companies. However, given the challenges facing future water resources it is no longer tenable to just manage water resources at a company scale. Responding to these challenges will require large-scale infrastructure and policy interventions. With this in mind, the University of Oxford, the Environment Agency and Ofwat initiated the National System Simulation Modelling (NSSM) project to examine, at a national scale, the resilience and benefits of potential water supply solutions and other policy decisions under different futures of climate change and demand. In the NSSM project, we developed the first national scale Water Resource model for England and Wales (WREW). This new water resource system simulation model integrates public water supplies with use of water in agriculture, power generation and other industries. Our water resource model has been used to explore different future scenarios of drought and assess the frequency, duration and severity of water shortages now and in the future. We have also explored trade-offs between different aspects of risk and the cost of alternative water supply solutions presently being considered by water companies in England and Wales. Our evidence on the increasing pressures on water supplies has helped to make the case for a new national framework for management of water resources, taking a large-scale systems perspective rather than a company-scale approach. The WREW model is an invaluable tool for evaluating national-scale infrastructure and policy interventions, and is currently being used by the EA and Ofwat to assess strategic water resource infrastructure in England and Wales. However, WREW uses commercially licensed software and so cannot be easily and openly shared within the EA, or beyond to stakeholders in the water industry or academia. We propose to use funding from Stream One of the Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis on DAFNI to re-build the national Water Resources model for England and Wales using the open-source generic dynamic python library Pywr. This will enable the model to be widely used by researchers and practitioners. The new model will be termed Pywr-WREW. Development of Pywr-WREW will build on recent and ongoing research by the University of Oxford as part of the NSSM project. Hosting the Pywr-WREW simulation model on the DAFNI Platform would allow us to collaborate with our partners (e.g., the EA and water industry stakeholders) much more easily to conduct model runs and explore results together. In addition, DAFNI's state of the art computational infrastructure would improve the efficiency of our model and analysis considerably.