The potential areas for applications of polymer nanocomposites (a plastic containing a nanometre scale filler material) extend from aerospace and automotive industries to medical and consumer products. Such nanocomposites offer exciting step changes in both structural and functional material performance because the interfacial area between the nanofiller and polymer is greater by orders of magnitude when compared to traditional composites containing glass or carbon fibre filler. Graphene promises to be the ultimate nanofiller having outstanding and often unsurpassed electronic, mechanical and thermal properties. However, to date true commercial applications have yet to be realised or implemented due to lack of understanding in how the material and dispersions behave under melt conditions. This project will tackle these issues head-on to develop a high-volume, low-cost graphene engineering technology that will enable commercialisation of the unique structural properties of graphene nanocomposites in consumer products. Consumer product applications are the focus of this project as they are early adopters of new technology and offer an ideal market for testing new developments. Melt processing is crucial in determining the performance of the final consumer product. The comparable length-scales between graphene nanofillers and the polymer chains provide a new challenge for composite formulation and processing: strong flows impact the stretching of polymer chains and the ordering, orientation and dispersion of the nanofiller. Control of these nanoscale phenomena by combining process-engineering technologies with new knowledge and methodologies from the chemical and physical sciences provides a platform for realising the commercial potential of graphene nanocomposites: enhanced mechanical, anti-static and barrier properties would deliver consumer benefits through better product performance and extended product life and business and environmental benefits through less raw material being consumed and transported. The industrial partners Procter and Gamble (P&G), a global consumer goods company; Dyson, a domestic appliance technology company; and Durham Graphene Science (DGS), a large-scale producer of graphene will work directly alongside the academic partners in the formulation, processing and prototyping of the graphene composites to deliver maximum impact in potential new consumer products.

The achievements of modern research and their rapid progress from theory to application are increasingly underpinned by computation. Computational approaches are often hailed as a new third pillar of science - in addition to empirical and theoretical work. While its breadth makes computation almost as ubiquitous as mathematics as a key tool in science and engineering, it is a much younger discipline and stands to benefit enormously from building increased capacity and increased efforts towards integration, standardization, and professionalism. The development of new ideas and techniques in computing is extremely rapid, the progress enabled by these breakthroughs is enormous, and their impact on society is substantial: modern technologies ranging from the Airbus 380, MRI scans and smartphone CPUs could not have been developed without computer simulation; progress on major scientific questions from climate change to astronomy are driven by the results from computational models; major investment decisions are underwritten by computational modelling. Furthermore, simulation modelling is emerging as a key tool within domains experiencing a data revolution such as biomedicine and finance. This progress has been enabled through the rapid increase of computational power, and was based in the past on an increased rate at which computing instructions in the processor can be carried out. However, this clock rate cannot be increased much further and in recent computational architectures (such as GPU, Intel Phi) additional computational power is now provided through having (of the order of) hundreds of computational cores in the same unit. This opens up potential for new order of magnitude performance improvements but requires additional specialist training in parallel programming and computational methods to be able to tap into and exploit this opportunity. Computational advances are enabled by new hardware, and innovations in algorithms, numerical methods and simulation techniques, and application of best practice in scientific computational modelling. The most effective progress and highest impact can be obtained by combining, linking and simultaneously exploiting step changes in hardware, software, methods and skills. However, good computational science training is scarce, especially at post-graduate level. The Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling will develop 55+ graduate students to address this skills gap. Trained as future leaders in Computational Modelling, they will form the core of a community of computational modellers crossing disciplinary boundaries, constantly working to transfer the latest computational advances to related fields. By tackling cutting-edge research from fields such as Computational Engineering, Advanced Materials, Autonomous Systems and Health, whilst communicating their advances and working together with a world-leading group of academic and industrial computational modellers, the students will be perfectly equipped to drive advanced computing over the coming decades.

The proposal seeks funds to renew and refresh the Centre for Doctoral Training in Formulation Engineering based in Chemical Engineering at Birmingham. The Centre was first funded by EPSRC in 2001, and was renewed in 2008. In 2011, on its 10th anniversary, the Centre received one of the Diamond Jubilee Queen's Anniversary Prizes, for 'new technologies and leadership in formulation engineering in support of UK manufacturing'. The scheme is an Engineeering Doctoral Centre; students are embedded in their sponsoring company and carry out industry-focused research. Formulation Engineering is the study of the manufacture of products that are structured at the micro-scale, and whose properties depend on this structure. In this it differs from conventional chemical engineering. Examples include foods, home and personal care products, catalysts, ceramics and agrichemicals. In all of these material formulation and microstructure control the physical and chemical properties that are essential to its function. The structure determines how molecules are delivered or perceived - for example, in foods delivery is of flavour molecules to the mouth and nose, and of nutritional benefit to the GI tract, whilst in home and personal care delivery is to skin or to clothes to be cleaned, and in catalysis it is delivery of molecules to and from the active site. Different industry sectors are thus underpinned by the same engineering science. We have built partnerships with a series of companies each of whom is world-class in its own field, such as P&G, Kraft/Mondelez, Unilever, Johnson Matthey, Imerys, Pepsico and Rolls Royce, each of which has written letters of support that confirm the value of the programme and that they will continue to support the EngD. Research Engineers work within their sponsoring companies and return to the University for training courses that develop the concepts of formulation engineering as well as teaching personal and management skills; a three day conference is held every year at which staff from the different companies interact and hear presentations on all of the projects. Outputs from the Centre have been published in high-impact journals and conferences, IP agreements are in place with each sponsoring company to ensure both commercial confidentiality and that key aspects of the work are published. Currently there are 50 ongoing projects, and of the Centre's graduates, all are employed and more than 85% have found employment in formulation companies. EPSRC funds are requested to support 8 projects/year for 5 years, together with the salary of the Deputy Director who works to link the University, the sponsors and the researchers and is critical to ensure that the projects run efficiently and the cohorts interact well. Two projects/year will be funded by the University (which will also support a lecturer, total >£1 million over the life of the programme) and through other sources such as the 1851 Exhibition fund, which is currently funding 3 projects. EPSRC funding will leverage at least £3 million of direct industry contributions and £8 million of in-kind support, as noted in the supporting letters. EPSRC funding of £4,155,480 will enable a programme with total costs of more than £17 million to operate, an EPSRC contribution of 24% to the whole programme.

Chemical Biology is a strategically important area of research for the UK that looks at the development and application of novel tools and techniques for the study of molecular interactions in biological systems. Graduate training in Chemical Biology will play a crucial role in driving innovation and transforming the design process in the biotech and medical technology, agri-science and personal care sectors, as well as stimulating the creation of new start-up enterprises in the UK. In order to meet these skills a new generation of PhD graduates in Chemical Biology must be trained who are able to connect the scientific and commercial/industrial sectors whilst still being supremely well equipped to work across the Physical and Life Sciences interface, allowing for multiple forms of translational activity. This crucial skills gap will be addressed by the new CDT in "Physical Sciences Innovation in Chemical Biology for Bioindustry and Healthcare" which will train > 90 PhD students over the next 5 years, supported by the multi-disciplinary environment of the world leading Institute of Chemical Biology (ICB) at Imperial College. The multidisciplinary nature of Chemical Biology and the translational challenges that it poses to students working at the interface between the physical and life sciences and between the academic and commercial worlds makes a CDT structure highly appropriate for supporting student development. Such multi-disciplinary training at this interface is vital to enabling the UK to adapt to the pace of technological change in the life, personal care and agri-sciences sectors. Furthermore, the particular societal, ethical, industrial and entrepreneurial aspects associated with research that will underpin these new technologies requires a bespoke approach that is most effectively delivered in a CDT context. The ICB and its strategic partners have together crafted a 4-year training and research programme (MRes + 3 Year PhD), which will provide first-hand experience of multi-disciplinary translational research, research leadership, science communication, entrepreneurialism and business skills. This includes technology development in Fab lab type environments, science communication training in collaboration with the BBC, industry led innovation workshops, entrepreneurship training and a "Dragons Den"-type competitions for student-led IP. In addition, we will implement the EVOLVE programme, a journey tailored to the individual designed to give experience of entrepreneurial activities, policy making, media/outreach, industrial research, or research within international academic institutions in the context of achieving a particular goal selected by the CDT student. This closely knit cohort of students will be supported by an integrated community of over 120 research groups from all three faculties across Imperial College. These activities will be further enhanced by the new dedicated Laboratory for Translational Molecular Research (LTMR). The tools and technologies that will emerge from the research programme of the CDT will support drug, agrichemical and personal care product discovery through the development of new functional screens, target validation assays, predictive artificial biomimetic models and by providing insights into potential novel targets. They will also assist and advance basic biology, diagnostic technologies, optical finger printing technologies for label free tracking of biomolecules, smart biodelivery systems with tailored release kinetics, small molecule-membrane protein screening assays, in-vitro screens for the non-specific binding of drug molecules, the discovery of biomarkers and offer access to a new suite of quantitative dynamic molecular information.

Particles of differing size or density often segregate in industrial flows such as chutes, silos, conveyor belts and rotating drums. This is the single biggest cause of material non-uniformity, which poses significant problems in handling and processing the grains, leading to plant downtime and product wastage. The most common form of segregation occurs in surface avalanches, which develop whenever a static granular material is tipped above its angle of repose. For example, pouring one's muesli into a bowl at breakfast! These avalanches are very efficient at sorting particles by size, with the large ones rising to the surface and the small ones percolating down to the base. The density of the grains may enhance or counteract this effect. When these flows come to rest a rich variety of particle size and density distributions develop in the deposit, sometimes with large regions of just one particle type. This naturally presents a major problem in processes that are supposed to be well-mixed. Understanding the segregation process and being able to model it effectively is the first step in being able to develop strategies to mitigate its effects. This proposal aims to use a powerful combination of small scale experiments, theory, continuum simulation and discrete element simulations (where the interactions of every single particle are modeled) to determine the functional dependence of the segregation rates on particle properties, as well as the applied shear-rate and pressure. The resulting mathematical model will then be applied to more complex flows, where there is mass transport between the the surface avalanche and the static, or slowly moving, grains beneath. This presents the project with its biggest challenge, because the rheology of granular materials is still very poorly understood, compared to fluids, which makes simulating the flow in a silo problematical. Over the past decade there has however been significant progress in the development of the so called mu(I)-rheology, which works over a large range of parameter space. Our aim is to regularize the model, by including additional physics, so that it can be applied in all regions of the flow and hence solve for the bulk velocity field. This will then allow the evolving particle-size and density distribution to be computed, so that we can understand in detail how pockets of just one particle type form. With our industrial partners we develop mitigation strategies, that use our knowledge of segregation to design clever chutes and silos that greatly reduce its effects.