Pioneer edition 12 - Issued June 2014

Transcription

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
EPSRC
12
the
first 10
years
20th anniversary special
CONTENTS
EPSRC: the
first 10 years
20th anniversary special
4
4-9 1994: EPSRC comes into being;
Peter Denyer starts a camera phone
revolution; Stephen Salter trailblazes
modern wave energy research
10-13 1995: From microwave ovens to
biomedical engineering, Professor Lionel
Tarassenko’s remarkable career; Professor
Peter Bruce – batteries for tomorrow
14-19 1996: Professor Alf Adams,
godfather of the internet; Professor Dame
Wendy Hall – web science pioneer
20-23 1997: The crucial science behind
the world’s first supersonic car; Professor
Malcolm Greaves – oil magnate
24-27 1998: Professor Kevin Shakesheff
– regeneration man; Professor Ed Hinds –
order from quantum chaos
14
28-31 1999: Professor Sir Mike Brady –
medical imaging innovator; Unlocking the
Basic Technologies programme
32-35 2000: Plastic electronics: Professor
Sir Richard Friend and colleagues invent
a new research discipline; Strategic
Partnerships: forging ever-stronger links
with industry and key collaborators
36-41 2001: Makers in momentum – the
Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre
programme; Professor Eric Yeatman,
microelectronics maestro
42-45 2002: Professor Dave Hawkes
– 3D medical imaging for safer surgery;
Professor Sam Kingman – using
microwaves to crush rocks
46-49 2003: The future is fusion: a step
closer to limitless, clean and safe energy;
The SUPERGEN sustainable power
generation and supply programme
20
50-53 All RISE: Introducing the
Recognising Inspirational Scientists
and Engineers (RISE) Leaders and their
nominated rising stars
54-59 Linking thinking: Building a UK
network for computational science
60-66 High and mighty: 20 years
of EPSRC investment in high
performance computing
40
PIONEER 12 Summer 2014
48
67 Sticky science: Inspired by geckos,
André Geim and Konstantin Novoselov
invent a new kind of super sticky adhesive
2
Big numbers
Chief Executive Professor Philip Nelson on EPSRC’s 20th
anniversary – and two decades of research excellence
Twenty years
isn’t very long
in the world of
research, when
a discovery or
breakthrough can
take decades to
reach its destiny.
But in the 20
years since EPSRC was formed, the rollcall of inspirational leaders, world-leading
research and ground-breaking initiatives has
been such that we are devoting two editions
of Pioneer to tell the story – and then only
scratching its surface.
Since 1994, EPSRC has invested around
£11 billion in research and doctoral
training. By any measure, this is £11 billion
well spent.
As an engineer, I am wary of superlatives,
but it’s hard not to be impressed by the fact
that in 20 years we have awarded research
grants to 28,555 applicants.
From Peter Denyer’s development of the
CMOS technology integral to most modern
camera phones (pages 6-7) to Alf Adams’
pioneering innovations in quantum well
lasers – which are fundamental to sustaining
the internet as we know it (pages 18-19)
– the underpinning support provided by
EPSRC and its predecessors has helped
shape the modern world. And, as we move
further into the 21st century, we’re investing
in the future, too, such as through Professor
Ed Hinds’ research into cold atom physics,
which could lead to a completely new
technology, as significant as electronics or
optics (page 32).
Add to this the number of grants on which
more than one researcher is named as a
co-investigator; factor in the research teams
and doctoral students taking part in the
project – and then add the myriad industrial
and other partners who collaborated – and
you get a picture of the sheer numbers of
people who have benefited from EPSRC
support, and who have used it to further
research in engineering and the physical
sciences, often spectacularly so.
Now here’s something that may surprise
you. In addition to the £11 billion invested
by EPSRC, a further £1.7 billion has been
contributed by research partners from
business, the charitable sector and other
investors. This is a powerful endorsement
of EPSRC’s founding commitments to both
research excellence and to strengthening
the pathways between fundamental
research and its translation into products
and services for the good of the UK
economy and society, and for a healthier
and more sustainable world.
Returning to those 28,555 research
proposals, every one of these will have
undergone a rigorous process of peer
review, facilitated by dedicated EPSRC staff.
This would not have been possible were it
not for major initiatives begun in 1994 to
develop a robust yet flexible process driven
by research excellence and developed
through close engagement with the
research community.
As EPSRC enters its third decade, we
will continue to work with the research
community to develop processes and
initiatives that stay true to our Royal Charter
of 1994, and ensure that the resources
we invest keep the UK at the cutting
edge of international research excellence
while developing the research leaders
of tomorrow.
Such is the breadth and scale of our
research and training portfolio, this
magazine can but provide a snapshot of
the people, projects and achievements from
the past 20 years, and the influence many
of them are now having on the world. If the
past two decades are anything to go by,
however, the 40th anniversary edition of
Pioneer will be very special indeed.
3
1994
GENESIS
On April 1 1994, the
Engineering and
Physical Sciences
Research Council came
into existence.
At first glance, the
main difference from
EPSRC’s previous incarnation, the Science
and Engineering Research Council (SERC),
was its remit – which no longer included
astronomy; biotechnology and biological
sciences; space research and particle
physics. In fact, from its inception, EPSRC
was a very different beast from SERC
(1981-1994) and its predecessor, the
Science Research Council (1965-81).
In addition to a more focused remit, from
Day One EPSRC set about streamlining its
core activities, and its staff adopted a more
focused approach to everything they did.
An example is the early transition to solely
electronic research grant applications.
With an average of 5,000 submissions per
year, at a stroke efficiency was dramatically
improved, costs came down and staff had
more time to support and engage with the
research community.
“Our task is to judge the work we
support not only on the excellence of its
research, but also on its relevance to
the requirements of users in industry,
commerce and elsewhere.
Interviewed in1994, Chairman, Dr Alan
Rudge (pictured), explained EPSRC’s
founding priorities:
“The most important form of technology
transfer from the science base is the
flow of people out of the universities into
industry, commerce and government.
“EPSRC has an exciting and challenging
mission to support high-quality research
in the UK, and to make significant
contributions to national competitiveness
and to the quality of life.
“There are three main objectives:
•
•
•
Developing and sustaining a national
core competence in engineering and
the physical sciences
Maintaining a world-class teaching
capability in terms of both technical
content and techniques
Advancing scientific knowledge
March 29: Serbs and Croats sign a cease-fire to end the war in Croatia
“If we only supported long-term curiositydriven research, we would have a badly
balanced portfolio. On the other hand, if we
only supported short-term research, driven
by immediate and obvious relevance, there
would be something seriously amiss.
“The object is to maintain a well-balanced
portfolio – and this is what EPSRC will
seek to achieve.”
Over two decades, EPSRC has stayed true
to these principles, which are enshrined in
its Royal Charter of 1994.
4
Olympiadane is a
chain of rings and
was something of
a record in the field
of supramolecular
chemistry.
To get the rings
together, the
Birmingham team, led
by Dr Fraser Stoddart,
used supramolecular
chemistry – where
simple pieces are
joined to make more
complex supermolecules.
Ring cycle
In the summer of 1994, capping a decade
of intense research, a team of British
chemists from the University of Birmingham
and Imperial College London worked out
the exact structure of a billionth-scale
molecular version of the Olympic emblem,
called olympiadane, consisting of five tiny
interlocking rings of atoms.
Independent
advice
In 1994, in a move that set the
blueprint for EPSRC’s commitment
to wider engagement with the
academic, business and stakeholder
communities, EPSRC set up two
independent advisory panels to advise
the chief executive on future research
areas and their value.
The Technical Opportunities Panel
(TOP), which mainly comprised
academics, and the User Panel
(UP), whose main component was
industrialists, advised on how
EPSRC’s budget could be divided in
order to get maximum benefit, and
also suggested priorities for many of
EPSRC’s research programme areas.
The new panel system was so
successful it remained largely
unchanged for nearly two decades,
and was complemented in 2007
by a Societal Issues Panel (SIP)
before evolving into a Strategic
Advisory Network in 2011, which
offered a more flexible advisory
model combining multiple
stakeholder perspectives.
The techniques devised to create the
molecule may shed light on the process
by which life arose from relatively
simple chemicals.
Research such as this could also lead to
new smart polymers that respond to their
environment, and superfast, nanoscale
devices for the computers of the future.
First funding
In 1994, EPSRC was allocated
£364 million by the government for
its first year in existence. It went on
to invest £212 million in academic
research grants; £72 million in the
training of postgraduate students and
£52 million in support of the Daresbury
and Rutherford Appleton Laboratories.
The responsibility for these facilities
was later passed on to the Science &
Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
In 2014, EPSRC is responsible for an
annual research and training budget
of around £800 million. Around 25 per
cent of this is allocated to doctoral
level training.
Making it
In April 1994, EPSRC launched
its Innovative Manufacturing
(IM) programme, which aimed
to bring industry and academia
together for the benefit of British
manufacturing industry.
Joint sponsors of the programme
included the Economic and
Magnetic attraction
In 1994, Professor
Lynn Gladden, from
the University of
Cambridge, was
awarded £360,000 by
EPSRC to establish
a centre of expertise
in the application
of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
spectroscopy for use by the UK academic
process engineering community.
NMR spectroscopy is a quality control
technique used in analytical chemistry to
determine a sample’s content, purity and
molecular structure.
The grant consolidated Professor Gladden’s
reputation as a pioneer in the development
of NMR techniques, including translating
them from the laboratory into industrial
practice. She has since received over
30 research grants from EPSRC.
In 2001, Professor Gladden (pictured)
was awarded the OBE for her services to
chemistry and elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society in 2004.
In 2006, she was appointed to EPSRC’s
Council, its senior decision-making body.
In 2009, she was awarded the CBE for her
services to science.
In 2013, Professor Gladden was named as
a co-leader of the new UK Catalysis Hub, a
£12.9 million EPSRC investment in catalytic
science. The Hub is an academic/industrial
collaboration focused on supporting UK
economic growth while helping reduce
CO2 emissions, produce cleaner water and
generate more sustainable energy.
In 2014, Professor Gladden leads the
University of Cambridge’s Magnetic
Resonance Research Centre and is also
the university’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor
for Research.
Social Research Council (ESRC), the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council (BBSRC) and the
Department of the Environment.
The programme marked an important
step up towards a ‘joined-up’
approach to fostering multidisciplinary
partnerships between the science base
and industry that continues to this day.
April 6: The Rwandan Genocide begins. In 100 days some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred
5
1994
Going mobile
In the mid1990s, work
by VSLI Vision
Limited (VVL), a
small Scottish
electronics
company formed
to commercialise
the work of
Professor Peter
Denyer and
Professor David Renshaw at Edinburgh
University, led to the development of
electronic chips that can ‘see’ – paving
the way for a revolution in mobile cellular
technology – the camera phone.
Previously funded by EPSRC’s predecessor,
the Science and Engineering Research
Council (SERC), and then by EPSRC in
1994, Professor Denyer (pictured) and
his team pioneered the development and
manufacture of CMOS (complementary
metal-oxide semiconductor) sensor
technology now used in almost all mobile
phones and also employed in digital
cameras, webcams, video-conferencing
cameras and the optical computer mouse.
Conventional video cameras of the day
had separate light sensors that took
images and created electronic signals,
which then went on to another piece of
electronic hardware.
Professor Denyer went on to become a
prolific entrepreneur, adviser and mentor
to university start-up companies and a
serial investor.
In 1998, Peter Denyer was awarded the
Royal Academy of Engineering’s
Silver Medal, and, in the same
year, together with colleagues
David Renshaw, Lu Mingying,
and Wang Guoyo, he was
awarded the Rank Prize in
Optoelectronics for their
pioneering research.
Accepting the Rank Prize,
Professor Denyer said: “Our
work was not always so
well regarded, certainly in
its earliest days when the
doubters were many and
the believers were... well,
just ourselves.”
The Royal Society has
described Professor Denyer,
who died in 2010, as ‘a unique
combination of electronics
engineer, distinguished
academic, inventor, company
CEO and multiple entrepreneur’.
VSLI evolved into Vision Group plc and
became an early manufacturer of CMOS
image sensors, at its peak selling one
million cameras a year.
“To say that Denyer ‘invented’
the mobile phone camera,” wrote one
obituarist, “would be unfair to the rest of
his research team at Edinburgh University
and to parallel researchers worldwide...
“But, although the camera phone
phenomenon was but a twinkle in Denyer’s
eye when he started out, he became
internationally-recognised as a driving
force in the technology known as CMOS
which still features in hundreds of millions
of mobile phones around the globe.”
By 2006, half of all mobile phones had
digital cameras. It is estimated that in 2014
the number of mobile phones globally will
exceed the number of people on the planet.
In 2012, Facebook paid a billion dollars for
Instagram, a small business that develops
novelty software to make your phone
pictures look like old Polaroids.
VSLI’s breakthrough combined image
capture and processing on a single chip,
and set the stage for Professor Denyer and
his team to step into history.
April 18: Cricketer Brian Lara hits a world record 375 runs in one day
6
May 10: Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president
7
1994
Going underground
In 1994, EPSRC awarded a grant of £390,000 to an engineering
research team at Imperial College London to examine subsidence
caused by extension tunnelling.
The team was led by soil mechanics expert Professor John
Burland, who went on to play a leading role as a member
of an international team commissioned by the Italian
Government to stabilise the Leaning Tower of Pisa – a feat
they achieved in 2001.
The team, which was also funded by the Department of
the Environment and London Underground, conducted
important work that informed the safe construction of
London’s new Jubilee extension line.
Interviewed in 1994, Professor Burland said:
“Research in subsidence has been almost
impossible, because it has always
happened by the time you get on the
scene. The Jubilee extension gives us
an ideal opportunity to observe how
buildings respond to subsidence.”
In addition to the Pisa project,
Professor Burland advised on a
project to ensure the stability of
the Big Ben Clock Tower.
In May 2008, engineers
announced that the Leaning
Tower of Pisa had been
stabilised and that they had
stopped the building from
moving for the first time in
its history. In April 2011, the
scaffolding was removed.
In 2014, Professor Burland
is working with London
Underground and Crossrail
on an EPSRC-sponsored
project to assess potential
damage to existing
tunnels before and after
excavation works as part
of the multi-million pound
London Crossrail project.
May 6: The Channel Tunnel linking England and France officially opens
8
Fluid power
In 1994, marine energy pioneer Artemis
Intelligent Power was formed to
commercialise EPSRC-supported research
into hydraulic wave energy technology
developed by Professor Stephen Salter
(pictured) and Dr Win Rampen at the
University of Edinburgh in the 1970s and 80s.
Artemis Intelligent Power performs
research, development, and technology
licensing associated with Salter and
Rampen’s Digital Displacement® (DD)
technology, as well as other innovations in
the control and transmission of fluid power.
Artemis has won numerous industry awards
for its energy-saving applications, and
continues to work with global companies
to develop DD systems and power
transmissions for a range of energy-saving
applications, including highway and off-road
vehicles. A specially adapted BMW saloon
has achieved fuel savings of 30 per cent.
In 2010, Artemis Intelligent Power was
acquired by Mitsubishi Power Systems
Europe (MPSE); it is currently developing a
unique gearless power transmission for very
large offshore wind turbines.
In 2014, Artemis’ parent company, Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI), established a
new joint venture company with Vestas Wind
Systems dedicated to business in offshore
wind turbines.
Plans for the new company include an early
market launch of a turbine incorporating
the world’s first Digital Displacement®
Transmission.
Artemis has also designed and
manufactured valves, electronics and control
software for two new wind turbines for
Mitsubishi for deployment in the west of
Scotland and offshore of Fukushima, Japan.
In 2014, Professor Stephen Salter, who
received the Sustained Achievement Award
from the Royal Academy of Engineering
in 2012, remains a director of Artemis
Intelligent Power. The device he designed
in the 1970s, the Salter Duck, was one of
the world’s first wave energy devices and
remains one of the most efficient.
Professor Salter is Emeritus Professor at
the UK Centre for Marine Energy Research
at Edinburgh University, supported by the
SUPERGEN Marine Energy Consortium, led
by EPSRC (see page 48).
August 31: The Provisional Irish Republican Army announces a “complete cessation of military operations”
9
1995
Master of logic
In 1995, Lionel
Tarassenko
(pictured in 1995),
an EPSRC-funded
researcher from
the University
of Oxford’s
Department of
Engineering
Science,
developed the core technology behind the
Sharp Logicook, the world’s first ‘smart’
microwave oven. It is an early highlight in a
remarkable career – particularly in the field
of biomedical engineering.
Professor Tarassenko’s pioneering
work, originally in neural networks and
subsequently in machine learning, led
to a host of different applications based
on pattern recognition – from jet engine
diagnostics to patient monitoring.
Professor Tarassenko’s research has
brought him international recognition
for his work in signal processing and
biomedical engineering, and he has held
the Chair in Electrical Engineering at the
University of Oxford since 1997.
In 2000, he was awarded a Fellowship from
the Royal Academy of Engineering. Six
years later he was awarded the Academy’s
Silver Medal for his contribution to British
engineering. Today, he chairs the Royal
Academy of Engineering’s Biomedical
Engineering Panel.
In 2008, Professor Tarassenko was
awarded the Rolls-Royce Chairman’s
Award for Technical Innovation for his work
on jet engines. This award followed the
Sir Henry Royce High Value Patent Award
seven years earlier, in 2001.
Also in 2008, Professor Tarassenko became
the first Director of the Oxford Institute of
Biomedical Engineering (IBME). The IBME
hosts a Centre for Doctoral Training in
Healthcare Innovation, under the EPSRCled RCUK Digital Economy programme.
It also hosts a Centre of Excellence in
Medical Engineering funded jointly by the
Wellcome Trust and EPSRC and led by
Professor Tarassenko.
Commercial success
A successful entrepreneur, Professor
Tarassenko has founded several spin out
companies, including t+ Medical, Oxford
BioSignals Ltd and Oxehealth. Awardwinning products include t+Diabetes, a
mobile phone-based tool for diabetes selfmanagement; and a system for gestational
diabetes management, which have been
taken up by hospitals throughout the Oxford
region, from Reading to Milton Keynes.
In 2006, Professor Tarassenko won the
Institute of Engineering & Technology
IT Award for Visensia, a data fusion
system providing early warning of patient
deterioration in critical care. It was the first
data fusion system to be approved by the
US Food and Drug Administration. Over
137 licences for the product have been sold
in the UK and the US in the last two years.
In 2013, Professor Tarassenko launched
a new iPad-based early warning patient
monitoring system for ward-based
monitoring in hospital. The system,
January 12: A major earthquake kills 5,092 people in Kobe, Japan
developed under the EPSRC-led RCUK
Digital Economy Programme, uses the
latest computer tablet technology to record
and evaluate patients’ vital signs. The
system is being rolled-out across all adult
wards in the Oxford University Hospitals
NHS Trust’s acute hospitals, with funding
from the NHS Technology Fund and the
Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards programme.
Origins
Lionel Tarassenko’s career-long passion
for digital signal processing began in the
early 1980s at Racal, before it evolved into
Vodafone, which he joined as a graduate, at
a time when mobile telephony was still just
an idea. His time at Racal included work
on the company’s first speech coder, which
enabled the spoken word to be captured
and transmitted digitally.
After three years at Racal, Professor
Tarassenko returned to academia to study
for a doctorate in biomedical electronics in
paediatrics. He has remained in academia
ever since, and recently returned to
paediatrics-related research to work on
the non-contact monitoring of babies’ vital
signs using webcams.
He describes his move back into universitybased research as the best decision he
ever made.
Professor Tarassenko says: “I have been
very fortunate that my research has
made a positive difference to the care of
tens of thousands of patients, and has
been translated into products which have
monitored the efficiency of thousands of
jet engines”
10
26 February: Barings Bank, the UK’s oldest merchant bank, collapses following £840 million of losses incurred by rogue trader, Nick Leeson
11
1995
Full charge
batteries, particularly enhancing their
ability to store and retain charge.
In 1995, an EPSRC-supported team led by
Professor Peter Bruce, from St Andrews
University, developed a rechargeable
Lithium battery material enabling lighter,
more reliable, more efficient and greener
batteries than the prevailing Nickel
Cadmium (NiCad) type.
Over the next two decades, Professor
Bruce (pictured) attracted substantial and
continuous funding from EPSRC, The Royal
Society and internationally. He and his
colleagues made important advances in the
science underpinning rechargeable Lithium
He is part of a team of four innovative
scientists behind research into developing
Lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Together, Professors John Goodenough,
Mike Thackeray, Bill David and Peter
Bruce were able to discover electrode
materials resulting in a lower cost and
safer alternative to the more expensive
Lithium cobalt oxide electrodes, which are
unsafe when used in large batteries. As a
result, the Lithium manganese oxide spinel
became the material of choice for the
first generation of modern electric vehicle
batteries, used in cars such as the Nissan
Leaf and Vauxhall Ampera.
In 2007, Professor Bruce was elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is one
of the pioneers of the Li-air (O2) battery,
which can exceed the energy density of
rechargeable Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries
and could hold the key for next-generation
energy storage devices, including for
electric vehicles.
April 19: A truck bomb at Federal Building in Oklahoma City kills 168 and injures 500
In 2012, Professor Bruce received the
AkzoNobel Science Award from the Royal
Society of Chemistry in recognition of his
outstanding scientific contribution in the
fields of chemistry and materials science.
In 2014, Professor Bruce FRS, now at the
University of Oxford, is working on three
EPSRC-funded projects on the materials
chemistry and electrochemistry of Lithiumair, Lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries.
The project is funded under the Sustainable
Power Generation and Supply (SUPERGEN)
initiative, part of the RCUK Energy
Programme, led by EPSRC.
Professor Bruce says: “Lithium batteries
are one of the most important technological
developments of the past 20 years. The UK
has played a central role in this technology.
New materials and new electrochemistry
will continue to drive the field, leading to new
generations of Lithium batteries for use in
transport and electricity grid storage.”
In May 2014, EPSRC invested £4 million in a
new SUPERGEN Energy Storage Hub, led by
Professor Bruce (see page 48).
12
Intelligent Energy
In 1995, EPSRCsupported
research into
renewable energy,
co-led by Dr Paul
Adcock and Dr
Phil Mitchell, from
Loughborough
University, resulted in a hybrid battery/fuel
cell power source for road vehicles. The
fuel cell was used at cruising speeds while
a set of batteries provided acceleration.
The objective was to create an entirely new
sustainable power source that would slot
into the same space as existing engines.
Interviewed in 1995, Dr Adcock (pictured
in 1995) said: “The great thing is that from
the driver’s perspective the experience will
be just the same as a conventional vehicle.”
His optimism was well-founded.
In June 1995, together with Dr Jon Moore
and Anthony Newbold, Adcock and Mitchell
formed university spin out company
Advanced Power Sources (APS) Ltd to
commercialise their work.
In 2001, their work led to the formation
of another spin out company, Intelligent
Energy, which absorbed APS as part
of its strategy. A core team of EPSRCfunded researchers from Loughborough
University joined the company at its
inception and to this day continues to lead
its R&D, providing stability and insight into
product development.
Today, Intelligent Energy is one of the
fastest-growing companies in Europe and
is the world’s largest independent fuel
cell company.
With 350 staff across operating sites and
offices globally; it has established major
global partnerships including with the
Suzuki Motor Corporation with whom it has
formed a joint venture company in Japan.
The company retains close links with
Loughborough and other major UK
universities, and over half its employees
hold PhDs. In the last decade it has
achieved a host of notable achievements.
In 2005, the company unveiled the world’s
first purpose-built fuel cell motorbike,
which emits only water vapour, is nearsilent and non-polluting.
In 2008, the company’s fuel cell technology
was used in the first manned flight of a fuel
cell-powered aircraft by Boeing.
In 2012, a fleet of zero carbon London
taxis was used to transport passengers at
the London Olympics. The taxi’s hydrogen
fuel cell system, hydridised with Lithium
polymer batteries, allows the vehicles to
operate for a full day without refuelling, and
gives them a top speed of 80 mph.
In January 2014, in partnership with US
retailer and product development company,
Brookstone, Intelligent Energy launched
the Upp™ personal energy device to
power USB compatible portable electronic
devices. The device provides at least one
week of charge even to the most powerhungry smartphones.
In March 2014, Intelligent Energy received
£38 million from GIC, the Singapore
Government’s sovereign wealth fund, for
10 per cent of its share capital, to build
its consumer electronics and distributed
power and generation divisions.
Peer review progress
In 1995, EPSRC started its new
system for the peer review of
grant applications by independent
experts. The new peer review college
comprised 1,650 individuals from
academia and industry grouped into
16 colleges of varying size based on
EPSRC research programmes.
Every research proposal was assessed
by at least two college members
together with one person from a list
put forward by the proposer.
After an initial sift based on referees’
reports, small panels drawn from
college members put the remaining
proposals into peer-ranked order,
which went towards the decision about
which proposals should be funded.
For 20 years the peer review system
has evolved and matured, but retains
true to its founding values.
Mondex
Over a decade before
the advent of chip
and pin technology
and smartphone
banking, the
cashless society
took a step closer in
1995 with the trial launch of Mondex, an
electronic purse introduced by NatWest
Bank, Midland Bank and BT.
The Mondex smart card, which resembled
a pocket calculator, was launched in
Swindon, where residents had the chance
to experience e-purchasing for themselves.
Mondex allowed users to transfer cash
from bank accounts to the card and back
again using card-readers.
Behind Mondex was a research team led by
Professor Haroon Ahmed at the University
of Cambridge’s Microelectronics Centre,
who spent three decades of EPSRC/SERCfunded research on the reverse engineering
of silicon chips and the inspection of
integrated circuits, which they used to test
Mondex’s integrity. The team also made
important inroads into the integration of
sensors and electronics on the same chip.
Mondex didn’t catch on, but Professor
Ahmed’s research demonstrated the
possibility of safe and secure e-banking.
British mountain climber Alison Hargreaves becomes the first woman to climb Mount Everest without oxygen or assistance.
13
1996
Legacy of light
In 1996, the first DVD
players went on sale.
But what if they
never existed?
Imagine a world without
the internet, DVDs or
barcodes. If it weren’t
for one man, Professor
Alf Adams (pictured), from the University
of Surrey, the technology that made these
inventions so widely available, or indeed
possible, might never have been invented.
Supported by funding from EPSRC’s
predecessor, the Science and Engineering
Research Council (SERC), Professor
Adams’ ground-breaking research into
infrared lasers at the University of Surrey
in the 1980s paved the way for a host of
low-cost and low-power commercial and
industrial products without which the
modern world could not function.
Research underpinned by this technology
continues to this day. The internet in
particular, which relies on Alf Adams’
strained layer laser technology, has made
it possible to send information around
the planet much more quickly than was
hitherto possible.
The internet is physically connected by
hugely complex fibre-optic technology
underneath the world’s oceans, which it
uses to send light from one continent
to another. The data carried by these fibreoptic networks is not stored in ‘clouds’ as
we might think, but in huge data centres in
strategic sites across the globe, the largest
of which require the power it takes to
light a small city to keep their hard drives
spinning and, crucially, keep them cool.
According to a 2010 Greenpeace report,
two per cent of the world’s electricity usage
can now be traced to these data centres.
It’s estimated that the internet accounts
for around three per cent of the world’s
total energy consumption, a figure that is
growing exponentially.
In 2014, a team at the University of Surrey
led by Professor Stephen Sweeney, a
October 3: OJ Simpson is found not guilty in the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman
former PhD student under Alf Adams,
are carrying forward Alf’s legacy, and are
applying new advances in infrared laser
technology to tackle emerging challenges
such as the internet’s insatiable need
for power.
Professor Sweeney, who holds an EPSRC
Leadership Fellowship, and who leads
the Surrey Photonics Group, says: “A key
element of my Fellowship is to re-engineer
the basic crystalline materials from which
the lasers are made.
“If our research proves to be correct,
then most of the temperature control
electronics required by internet lasers
could be removed – leading to a substantial
reduction in their energy demand.”
In 2014, Alf Adams, now Emeritus Professor
at Surrey, was awarded the prestigious Rank
Prize in optoelectronics for his research
into the structure of semiconductor lasers.
Although he did not file a patent for his
invention, and so has not made a penny from
it, he has no regrets.
14
November 22: Toy Story is released. It is the first feature-length film created entirely using computer-generated imagery
15
1996
Man of steel
In 1996, University of Cambridge
metallurgist Professor Harry Bhadeshia
developed a new, carbide-rich and siliconfree steel alloy for railway tracks, which
promised to be tougher and more resistant
to fatigue than traditional materials.
The alloy had remarkable properties: as
well as being enormously resistant to wear
itself, it also reduced wear on the train
wheels, which was almost unheard of.
Professor Bhadeshia received support for
his basic research into steel from EPSRC.
Every year, 17 million people pass along rails
made from Harry Bhadeshia’s steel, which
form the backbone of the 31-mile Channel
Tunnel rail link, Europe’s busiest railway.
In 2009, the SKF University Technology
Centre on Steels was set up in Cambridge,
with Professor Bhadeshia as its head. The
Centre continues to pioneer research in
advanced bearing technology for aircraft
engines, with major support from industry,
supplemented by EPSRC.
In 2011, the UK Ministry of Defence
unveiled a new type of vehicle armour,
using another of Professor Bhadeshia’s
inventions. The armour is made from super
bainite, the strongest low-alloy steel that
has ever been produced, more than six
times stronger than conventional steel.
It is also the world’s ﬁrst nanostructured
material to be manufactured in bulk.
Now, with sponsorship from the Ministry of
Defence, and with EPSRC input, Professor
Bhadeshia is attempting to design a kind of
steel that has what he calls an “impossible
combination of properties”.
realising that a good way of carrying
out long-term work is to put it out to
universities. But academics benefit too –
industry gives us an awareness of critical
issues which we couldn’t get just from
reading academic papers.”
Computer modelling has also come on
enormously, and is integral to Professor
Bhadeshia’s research. He says: “I think of
computer modelling as being like electron
microscopes, which we also use a lot of. It
helps to cut out the variables, and identify
where new knowledge is needed.”
The new steel will be strong enough to
be ballistic and blast-resistant, but also
capable of being welded, meaning it will be
possible to make large things out of it, such
as military vehicles.
Since 1990, the Material Algorithms Project
(MAP), funded by SERC/EPSRC and led by
Professor Bhadeshia, has been particularly
important in this field, freely distributing
algorithms useful in generating computer
models of materials.
Over the last 20 years, Harry Bhadeshia
has seen significant changes in his field.
He says: “The intensity of research has
increased enormously; with industry
Professor Bhadeshia says: “MAP is now
the largest free source of these algorithms
in the world. Without EPSRC’s support, it
would not have been possible.”
March 16: Mike Tyson knocks out Frank Bruno in the third round to win the world heavyweight boxing title
16
The Hall story
In 1996, Professor Wendy
Hall, from the University
of Southampton,
was awarded a fiveyear EPSRC Senior
Fellowship to develop the
multimedia assistants
of the future.
One of the first computer scientists to
undertake serious research in multimedia
and hypermedia, Professor Hall has been at
the forefront of this multifaceted discipline
ever since.
The influence of her work has been
significant in many areas including digital
libraries, the development of the Semantic
Web, and the emerging research discipline
of Web Science – the science of the World
Wide Web.
In 2006, Professor Hall was a founding
director, along with Professor Sir Tim
Berners-Lee, Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt
and Daniel J Weitzner, of the Web Science
Research Initiative, a global forum for
scientists and scholars to collaborate on
the first multidisciplinary scientific research
effort specifically designed to study the Web
at all scales of size and complexity.
In 2008, Professor Hall was elected
President of the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), the world’s leading
community of computer scientists.
In 2007, among over 20 EPSRC research
grants she has received, Professor Hall
established with Professors Leslie Carr and
Nigel Shadbolt a Web Science Network for
researchers from different technical and
social science research disciplines to develop
a research agenda. Among the network’s
activities are exchange schemes for doctoral
students and collaborative workshops.
In 2009, Professor Hall became a Dame
Commander of the British Empire. In the
same year she was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society.
Also in 2009, Professor Dame Wendy Hall
became principal investigator of the new
EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in
Web Science, based at the University of
Southampton and led by Professor Leslie
Carr. The centre has evolved into the EPSRC
Centre for Doctoral Training in Web Science
Innovation, which Dame Wendy will lead from
its inauguration in October 2014.
Throughout her career, in addition to playing
a prominent role in the development of her
subject, Professor Hall has helped shape
science and engineering policy and education
and has also championed the role of women
in science, engineering and technology.
form of transport cause sickness.
In seasickness, for example,
the up and down motion is to
blame; in road vehicles the
horizontal motions – braking,
accelerating and cornering – tend
to cause discomfort.
Good vibrations
In 1996, Professor Mike Griffin, from the
University of Southampton’s Institute of
Sound and Vibration Research, developed
procedures for predicting seasickness.
These were subsequently incorporated
into international standards used by ship
designers and shipping operators.
Professor Griffin’s team’s earlier study
of ships, coaches and small passenger
aircraft identified which motions in each
A second tranche of EPSRC
funding enabled Professor Griffin
and his colleagues to research
the design of vehicle seating
arrangements and also the
prediction of motion sickness.
In 1999, after surveying over 3,000 coach
passengers, the team concluded that
people are more likely to feel sick during
road travel when a vehicle is cornering or
making a similar manoeuvre.
Running on auto
In 1996, a collaboration between a
University of Portsmouth research team and
manufacturer Cetrek led to the development
of a ‘smarter’ autopilot for motor boats,
trawlers and small ships.
The device used a ‘fuzzy logic’ controller,
designed by Dr Martyn Polkinghorne from
the University’s School of Manufacturing,
Materials and Mechanical Engineering, to
learn about its own performance and make
allowances for heavy cargo, the weather and
changing tides.
The device used self-organising techniques
to ensure the vessel arrived at its pre-set
destination efficiently.
During sea trials the system was 50 per cent
faster than a standard autopilot when taking
a 90 degree turn.
Dr Polkinghorne and his new autopilot were
subsequently featured on BBC science
programme Tomorrow’s World.
Quiz masters
In 1996, two members of a team that
triumphed in the final of BBC Television’s
University Challenge, Nick Bradshaw and
Jim Totty, were PhD students supported
by EPSRC.
The key to their success was simple,
according to Nick Bradshaw, and was all
down to the nature of the scientific mind.
Interviewed in 1996, he said: “I think there
are more science students who can answer
arts questions than there are arts students
who can answer science questions.”
In 2014, Nick Bradshaw (below middle
left) is Vice President of Equity Derivative
Development at Barclays Capital.
However, when passengers are provided
with a good view of the road ahead
feelings of motion sickness are reduced –
suggesting that travel sickness could be
significantly reduced by improved forward
external vision.
December 10: The General Motors EV1, the first production electric car of the modern era, is launched and becomes available for lease
17
1996
Flake’s progress
In 1996, Professor Brian Wilshire from the
University of Wales, Swansea, developed
‘magnetic flake’ powders that would
allow scene-of-crime officers to study
fingerprints without having to brush
them with fine powder, which could lead
to smudging.
The powder consisted of tiny iron flakes
with an organic coating that helped it stick
to the greasy residue in a fingerprint. A
key element of the process was the use
of magnetism to remove excess powder,
preserving the delicate ridge lines that
make each print unique.
The technology was successfully trialled
by the UK Forensic Science Service and
led to the launch of a spin out company
to commercialise Professor Wilshire’s
research, K9 Scene of Crime Equipment
Ltd, (later Crime Scene Investigation
Equipment Ltd).
In 2014, staffed by ex-members of the
police and security services, the company
has developed a wide product portfolio,
June 23: The Nintendo 64 goes on sale in Japan
ranging from inking systems and
casting materials to fire and explosive
detection systems.
The company’s Magneta Flake™,
manufactured specifically for the recovery
of latent fingerprints, is fast becoming
the first choice preference with many law
enforcement agencies. A ‘dark’ form of the
flake, for use on lighter surfaces, has been
developed in conjunction with the University
of Central Lancashire with additional
funding from EPSRC.
18
Going electronic
In 1996, EPSRC began successful
trials that resulted in the introduction
of full electronic submission of
research proposal forms.
With an average of 5,000 grant
applications from researchers
received each year since 1994, the
initiative dramatically improved
efficiency, drove down costs, and
enabled EPSRC staff to spend more
time on supporting the research
community and devote less time on
paper-led administration.
Car control
In 1996, Professor Cliff Burrows, Director
of the Fluid Power Centre at the University
of Bath, was awarded £445,000 by EPSRC
to study driveline controls in cars;
focusing on maximising efficiency and
reducing emissions.
The research built on a project funded by
the Department for Trade and Industry,
Ford, Lucas and Johnson Matthey.
A key element of the project was a
constantly variable transmission, which
effectively made gear changing stepless,
so the engine could work at peak
efficiency across a wide range of operating
conditions, improving fuel economy.
In 2001, Professor Burrows was made
Director of the newly established EPSRC
Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre
at the University of Bath (see page 36). In
2001, Professor Burrows received the OBE.
Man on fire
In 1996, a team led by Dr Dougal Drysdale
at the University of Edinburgh’s Fire Safety
Research Group used an EPSRC-funded
research grant to develop mathematical
models to predict the way fires develop in
buildings and in tunnels.
The team also used EPSRC funding to build
test apparatus to measure the upward
spread of flames on walls.
Dr Drysdale went on to write the
seminal reference text on fire protection
engineering, An Introduction to Fire
Dynamics, in 1999.
In 2014, Dr Drysdale is acknowledged as a
leading international authority in his field.
He said it
In the long term there will be all-electric
cars which will have a tiny internal
combustion engine driving a generator
to provide power to electric motors in
the wheels.
Interviewed in 1996, this prediction was made by
David Davies, Director of the Human Sciences
and Advanced Technology Research Institute at
the EPSRC-supported Loughborough University
of Technology,
In 2012, nearly two decades after
making this statement, David Davies
is bang on the money, when UK car
manufacturer, Lotus, unveiled its
Evora 414E hybrid vehicle. The fully
working concept vehicle was developed
in collaboration with a consortium of
EPSRC-supported engineers.
The Evora (pictured) uses a hybrid
electric drivetrain. Electrical energy
July 4: Hotmail, a free internet e-mail service, is launched
is provided to the battery by a compact,
lightweight, low-cost, 1.2 litre petrol
engine and generator. Each drive
wheel is connected to an electric
motor which allows for independent
rear-wheel control.
The Evora’s battery can be charged
overnight using a conventional domestic
mains supply. Further innovations
include regenerative braking control and
adaptable suspension designed to both
increase fuel economy and enhance the
driving experience.
The work is part of the FUTURE
vehicles consortium comprising seven
universities and 10 industry advisers
and is funded under the £10 million
Low Carbon Vehicle Integrated Delivery
Programme, funded by EPSRC and the
Technology Strategy Board.
The team estimate that cars featuring
this technology will be on sale by the end
of this decade.
19
1997
Hot wheels
On October 15 1997 Thrust SSC set a new World Land Speed
Record of 763 mph and, in doing so, broke the sound barrier.
An EPSRC-supported team of scientists played a vital role in
the project.
Words: Phil Davies
February 23: Scientists in Scotland succeed in cloning an adult mammal, dubbed Dolly the Sheep
20
Behind this feat was a team led by World
Land Speed Record-holder Richard Noble,
with RAF jet fighter pilot, Andy Green,
behind the wheel.
Playing a crucial part in Thrust’s
supersonic success were Professors Nigel
Weatherill, Ken Morgan and Dr Oubay
Hassan, a team of EPSRC-supported
researchers from the University of
Wales, Swansea.
The team, having previously worked with
the likes of NASA, Rolls-Royce and British
Aerospace, were approached by Richard
Noble who asked them to use their
computational modelling techniques to
help design Thrust SSC.
Through the use of two Cray Research
supercomputers, one at Edinburgh
University, supported by EPSRC (see
page 44), and the other at the Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory, the Swansea team
used their aviation design software to refine
the concept of rear-wheel steering. This
involved the use of computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) – numerical methods and
algorithms to analyse the flow of fluids.
Following computer simulations of the run,
the team discovered a potential issue: the
shockwaves generated when breaking the
sound barrier.
the Thrust SSC design team develop
and construct a viable design for the
16.5 metre, 10.5 tonne car.
There was still a world record to beat.
Team Thrust then travelled to Black Rock
Desert in Nevada, where they successfully
smashed the 1983 World Land Speed
Record held by Richard Noble himself with
the 663 mph Thrust 2, and zoomed into the
record books.
Not only would the shockwaves ricocheting
off the ground and back at Thrust make
the supersonic vehicle slow down, they
could prove disastrous, causing it to flip
and crash.
In 2008, EPSRC became a founding
sponsor of the BLOODHOUND SSC project,
Richard Noble’s latest land speed record
attempt. The plan is hugely ambitious
– to design and build a car capable of
exceeding 1,000 mph (see page 65).
After two years of testing and exhaustive
computer modelling, the Swansea
researchers succeeded in helping
Professors Hassan and Morgan are
providing their expertise in computational
fluid dynamics to the project.
May 2: Labour wins the UK General Election
21
1997
Black gold
In 1997, an EPSRC-supported team from
the University of Bath, led by Professor
Malcolm Greaves, collaborated with
Petroleum Recovery Institute, Calgary,
Canada, on an innovative project to
release ‘heavy’ oil and bitumen trapped in
underground reservoirs. These crude oils
are very difficult to recover because of their
high viscosity.
second, horizontal well from where it rises
to the surface. With EPSRC’s support,
the research led to an ‘add-on’ catalytic
process, known as CAPRI.
“We’ve seen this project go from something
that many people said would not work into
something we can have confidence in, all in
the space of the last 18 months.”
In 2006, Petrobank Energy and Resources,
Calgary, started the first THAI field pilot at
Conklin in the Athabasca Oil Sands region
of Alberta, Canada, the largest single
petroleum resource on the planet.
Over the next decade-and-a-half,
Professor Greaves, who began research
into the technology in 1990, continued to
refine the revolutionary Toe-to-Heel Air
Injection (THAI™) system.
Interviewed in 2007, Professor Greaves
said: “It’s been a struggle to get the
invention from an idea to a prototype and
into use. For most of the time people
weren’t very interested because heavy oil
was so much more difficult and expensive
to produce than conventional light oil.
In 2014, THAI is undergoing commercial
development at Kerrobert in Saskatchewan,
Canada. Meanwhile, a team led by
Professor Joe Wood, from the University of
Birmingham, including colleagues at the
universities of Nottingham and Manchester,
are using high pressure experiments and
specialised computer modelling software
to simulate the detailed behaviour of the
THAI-CAPRI process for in-situ catalytic
upgrading of heavy crude and bitumen.
The THAI process injects air into the
oil deposit down a vertical well and
then ignites it. The heat generated in
the reservoir reduces the viscosity of
the heavy oil, allowing it to drain into a
“But with light oil now hitting around
$100 a barrel, it’s economic to think of
using heavy oil, especially since THAI can
produce oil for less than $10 a barrel.
In addition to heavy oil reservoir research,
the team are investigating light oil
applications, where air can be used as an
injectant gas for medium and high pressure
reservoirs. Emeritus Professor Malcolm
Greaves, who is an adviser on the project,
says: ”In-situ upgrading of heavy crude,
which is one of the main objectives of THAI/
CAPRI, is a massive advance for the oil
industry. If it can be done effectively, it could
save billions of dollars on refinery upgrades
in the UK alone.”
At the University of Bath, Emeritus
Professor Greaves is conducting studies of
downhole gasification in light oil reservoirs
for improved oil recovery and hydrogen
production/storage – generating a largescale source of hydrogen for the future
hydrogen economy.
August 31: Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in a road tunnel in Paris
22
Material gains
With EPSRC funding, in 1997 Dr Jon
Binner, from the University of Nottingham,
developed a way to dramatically speed
up production of advanced ceramic
components for use in high-tech
applications such as military jet engines.
By reducing production time to hours
rather than months, and hence reducing
costs, the microwave treatment process
opened up exciting possibilities for ceramic
matrix component (CMC) processes in a
much wider range of industries such as car
manufacturing and mining.
The far-reaching project is one of over
20 EPSRC research grants related to
ceramics and advanced materials awarded
to Professor Binner, who in 2013 assumed
the presidency of the Institute of Materials,
Minerals and Mining, a major engineering
institution with 18,000 members.
Also in 2013, Professor Binner, now based
at Loughborough University, received a
five-year EPSRC grant to lead a project to
develop materials for extreme environments,
a collaborative programme between
Loughborough, Imperial College London and
Queen Mary, University of London.
Taking the heat
In 1997, an EPSRC-supported research
team at the University of Nottingham,
led by Professor Saffa Riffat, developed a
novel heat pump for heating and cooling
buildings. Heat pumps collect heat from
the environment instead of producing
energy from burning fuel.
of Nottingham, in partnership with
Roger Bullivant Ltd, to pioneer a process
that turns the foundation piles of new
buildings into heat exchangers for ground
source heat pumps. The process has the
potential to significantly reduce carbon
dioxide emissions.
In the 2000s, Professor Riffat, now
President for the World Society of
Sustainable Energy Technologies, led an
EPSRC-sponsored team at the University
In 2010, the research project won the
Manufacturing & Process category at
The Engineer magazine’s Technology &
Innovation Awards.
Friendly fire
Faradays fire up
In 1997, Dr Jim Lesurf, from St Andrews
University, working with consumer and
defence conglomerate General Electric
Company and the Defence Research
Agency, developed a low-cost system to
help NATO forces avoid shooting their own
side during a war.
In 1997, EPSRC introduced its pilot
Faraday Partnerships – a forerunner
of the Technology Strategy Board’s
Knowledge Transfer Accounts. Aimed at
improving the interaction between UK
research and industry, the programme
provided funding for academic research
teams to forge partnerships with
industry, particularly SMEs.
Dr Lesurf’s project saw the development of
a target identification device that would give
allied vehicles the same radio signature
as a warm rock or a tree. It built on his
basic research in the fields of millimetrewave and terahertz technology, supported
by EPSRC. Dr Lesurf led the mm-wave
group at St Andrews before his retirement
in 2004.
In total, 24 partnerships were funded
under the initiative, which was run by
the Department of Trade & Industry with
funding from the UK Research Councils,
with some partnerships evolving and
flourishing to this day.
September 15: Two US students register a domain for a new kind of website. They call it Google
The Faraday Packaging Partnership, for
example, brokers packaging technology
and expertise for the academic and
commercial spheres. The organisation
sums up its winning formula with the
following maxim: Nail the problem. Find
the brains. Present the facts. Exploit
the outcomes.
Another successful partnership,
3D-MATIC, which reconstructs 3D
objects and scenes from photographic
data, led to the foundation of the
Computer Vision & Graphics Group
at the University of Glasgow, led
throughout by Dr J Paul Siebert.
23
1998
Making people better
In 1998, EPSRC
awarded an
Advanced
Fellowship to
Professor Kevin
Shakesheff, from
the University of
Nottingham, to
continue his work
in the emerging
field of regenerative medicine – creating
new advanced materials and technologies
that help stem cells form human tissues.
Building on this research, Professor
Shakesheff (pictured) co-developed 3D
scaffolds that can be injected into the body
without the need for surgery, and which
leave no solvents or toxic by-products.
The scaffolds are made from biodegradable
polymers which, once inside the body,
transform into an open-pored structure
like a sponge, creating an environment
for cells as well as for naturally occurring
substances capable of stimulating cellular
growth known as growth structures.
Century; an award followed in 2001 by
inclusion in the MIT Technology Review List
of the World’s 100 Top Young Innovators.
In 2001, Professor Shakesheff formed
spin out company Regentec Ltd to
commercialise his research, developing a
family of injectable scaffolds that solidify
within the body.
In May 2014, Regentec rebranded as Locate
Therapeutics, after securing investment
from precious metal and technology group
Heraeus Holding, which will help take the
company to its next stage of development.
In 2002, Kevin Shakesheff and Steve
Howdle formed Critical Pharmaceuticals
to bring their research to market. The
company, which won the 2002 UK Research
Councils Business Plan Competition,
is thriving to this day, and is developing
unique biological drug products including
controlled-release scaffolds.
Transforming the treatment of disease
Among Professor Shakesheff’s
commercial achievements, he has designed
new materials which have since been
licensed by three companies and which are
being developed as products in Europe and
the United States.
Professor Shakesheff says: “Regenerative
medicine will transform the treatment of
many of today’s ‘incurable’ diseases. But
it’s going to take a long time and if we try
to go too fast we will set the field back by
many years. The reason for this is that
regenerative medicines are very complex.
“My hope is that, within a decade,
regenerative medicine will be able to create
many products and treatments that have
both commercial and clinical benefits.
“The final product will be a living entity
that is probably personalised for just
one patient.
In 2006, Professor Shakesheff became
Director of the Centre for Biomolecular
Sciences at Nottingham. Under his
leadership, the centre has expanded into
a multidisciplinary £25 million institute.
Much of the centre’s research falls within
EPSRC’s remit.
“We know how to reprogram cells to
become stem cells; we have technologies
such as 3D printing and advanced
materials that can build those cells into
organ structures, and we understand a lot
of the cell and tissue biology that allows
tissues to form and repair.
Professor Shakesheff, together with
Professor Steve Howdle, also from the
University of Nottingham, found a way to
process scaffolds outside of the body using
carbon dioxide. Using this process enables
scaffolds to form at low temperature and
so preserves the growth factor and cells
attached to them.
Since 2009, Professor Shakesheff has
been co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for
Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative
Medicine. He is also Director of the UK
Regenerative Medicine Platform Hub
in Accellular Technologies, both at the
University of Nottingham.
“I can’t see any fundamental barrier that
will stop future generations being able to
grow a personalised organ. Specifically,
I hope to see, and help, stem cells being
used to reverse the damage that occurs
to the heart after a heart attack, restore
patient health after a stroke and repair
ageing joints.
Continuous achievement
as one of the UK’s 10 most inspirational
scientists and engineers in the EPSRC RISE
awards (see page 52).
The work was stimulated by an EPSRC
Adventure Fund, which allowed the
researchers to apply for funding at a
much earlier, speculative stage.
In 2000, Professor Shakesheff was named
Royal Institution Scientist for the New
In 2014, Kevin Shakesheff was named
“I would very much like these technologies
to be the foundation of commercial and
clinical success in the UK.”
May 23: The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with 75 per cent voting yes
24
PIONEER 09 Winter 2013
25
1998
Mighty atom
In 1998, for a few seconds, a corner of a
lab in Brighton became the coldest place
in the universe. Dr Malcolm Boshier and
colleagues at the University of Sussex’s
Centre for Optical and Atomic Physics
used lasers and magnets to trap and
cool 100,000 rubidium atoms to just a
few hundred-billionths of a degree above
absolute zero (273 degrees Celsius).
Even the coldest parts of outer space
are millions of times warmer than the
temperature reached at Sussex.
When atoms are cooled to such low
temperatures, strange things happen. The
temperatures created what is known as a
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first
time it had been achieved in Britain. It has
been described as a new state of matter.
A BEC occurs when super-cooled atoms
slow down, lose almost all of their energy,
and are effectively frozen in space. The
atoms then all behave identically to form
what can be likened to a giant ‘superatom’
visible to the naked eye and big enough to
photograph, yet which still follows the laws
of quantum mechanics.
The BEC has become an important tool
for investigating quantum behaviour, and
could lead to new and exotic kinds of
instruments such as fantastically sensitive
microwave antennas, super-accurate
GPS navigation technology and quantum
information processors.
Professor Ed Hinds, the centre’s director,
and the project’s principal investigator,
played a pivotal role in supporting
Professor Boshier’s activities, and
then in taking the research forward.
In 1999, Professor Hinds was
awarded an EPSRC Senior
Fellowship to further his research
into cold atom physics. He has since
received over 20 EPSRC research grants,
including a 2002 Basic Technology grant
(see page 30) to develop ‘atomic chips’.
This was followed by a Basic Technology
Translation grant.
Interviewed in 2005, Professor Hinds
said: “By manipulating cold atoms, either
individually or as a cloud or as a BEC,
we hope to develop a completely new
technology which will be as powerful as
electronics or optics, but based on the flow
of cold atoms instead of the flow of charged
particles or photons.”
Among notable achievements since
then, Professor Hinds pioneered on-chip
integration of cold atom physics, most
prominently demonstrated by creating a
Bose-Einstein condensate on a permanentmagnet chip.
In 2006, Ed Hinds became a Royal Society
Research Professor, under a scheme that
allows senior researchers to devote their
full time to research. The award, he says,
“made all the difference in letting me drive
this technology forward”.
In 2008, he won both the Institute of
Physics Thomson medal and prize and the
Royal Society Rumford Medal.
In 2013, Professor Hinds FRS, now Director
of the Centre for Cold Matter at Imperial
College London, received the Faraday
Medal from the Institute of Physics.
In 2013, the UK Government committed
£270 million over five years towards the
development of quantum technologies.
Approximately £234 million was allocated
to EPSRC.
In 2014, Malcolm Boshier is Scientific
Director of the Quantum Institute, Los
Alamos National Laboratory, USA, and part
of a team attempting to harness atoms
provided by a Bose-Einstein condensate to
build new devices such as ultra-sensitive
miniature sensors.
February 15: Comic Relief is born, beginning with the first Red Nose Day
26
Stardust
Meanwhile, in another part
of the galaxy, in 1998 an
EPSRC-funded research
team led by chemist David
E. Williams from University
College London designed
an experiment that looked
at the energy of chemical
reactions where hydrogen
and other atoms join
together to form simple,
small molecules.
Laser vision
In 1998, Dr Steve Rothberg and colleagues
Alan Hockwell and Jeremy Coupland,
EPSRC-supported researchers from
Loughborough University, won a major
prize at the Metrology for World Class
Manufacturing Awards.
The research helped to show
that reactions which take
place in cosmic dust could
help explain why there is so
much water in deep space.
Technology, said: “There are so many
applications for this technology, from
displays on mobile phones or video
recorders to sophisticated, full-colour flatpanel displays.
“I believe this will eventually result
in a quantum leap in opportunities
for this technology. It is going to
change the way we do things.”
In 2000, the partnership with
Seiko-Epson led to the world’s
first full colour active matrix inkjet printed polymer LED display.
It measured around five square
centimetres and was just two
millimetres thick.
In 2007, CDT was acquired by
long-term collaborator Sumitomo
Chemical Company and in 2011 it
was valued at £21 million.
Thin thinking
In 1998, Cambridge Display Technology
(CDT), a company formed to commercialise
organic light emitting diode (OLED)
technology, announced it was planning
to develop a full-size flat-plastic colour
display in collaboration with Seiko-Epson.
The company’s portfolio and vision
attracted investments from the rock band
Genesis, technology venture capitalist
Herman Hauser and Lord Young.
Interviewed in 1998, Dr Andrew Holmes,
a co-founder of Cambridge Display
In 2010, Cambridge Display
Technology, whose co-founders
include Professor Sir Richard Friend (see
page 32) and Professor Donal Bradley,
won a prestigious Technology & Innovation
Award from The Engineer magazine for a
project to create high quality white light
using polymer organic LEDs (P-OLEDs).
In 2014, CDT is a world leader in
the research, development and
commercialisation of P-OLED technologies.
Among many potential applications these
technologies could result in cheaper,
brighter, clearer displays with wide viewing
angles and ultra-fast response times.
Metrology, loosely described as the science
of measurement and application, is crucial
to everything we do – from determining
the amount of fuel in a tank to measuring
the length of a piece of wood. It is crucial
to manufacturing.
The Loughborough team won their award
for the development of a new kind of
laser measurement system that took the
technology into new realms.
In the same year...
A team led by Professor Julian Jones
at Heriot-Watt University developed an
award-winning technique to control focus
for laser welding. Laser welding, used
across the manufacturing sector, requires
highly precise tolerances, typically within an
accuracy of plus or minus 1mm.
Heriot-Watt’s Dr Duncan Hand and Dr
Frank Haran played a key role in the
project. Together they realised it was
possible to use the light emitted by the
welding process itself as a basis for
gauging if the laser is in focus.
The research team’s breakthrough, in
collaboration with industrial partner
Lumonics UK, was largely made possible
by the EPSRC-funded Laser Engineering
Manufacturing Applications initiative
involving research groups at Heriot-Watt
and Liverpool University.
In 2014, Professor Julian Jones is VicePrincipal of Heriot-Watt University;
Duncan Hand is Director of the EPSRC
Centre for Innovative Manufacturing
in Laser-based Production Processes
at Heriot-Watt; and Frank Haran is
Senior Engineering Manager, Honeywell
Process Solutions, Canada.
December 10, Sir John Pople, who spent his career in the United States, wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
27
1999
Imaging innovator
In 1999, Professor
Mike Brady, from the
University of Oxford,
launched start-up
company, Mirada, to
commercialise his
EPSRC-supported
research into
medical imaging.
In 2001, further
spin-out activity involving two of Professor
Brady’s companies led to the launch of
Mirada Solutions, which became a leading
developer of software solutions and
analytical tools for medical imaging.
In 2003, Mirada Solutions was acquired
by CTI Molecular Imaging for $22
million, and in 2005 was purchased by
Siemens Healthcare.
In 2008, following a management
buyout, which included acquisition of the
technologies and customer base at the
core of Mirada’s earlier developments, the
company relocated to Oxford. Now Mirada
Medical, it is a prominent global brand in
medical imaging software. Professor Brady
is a non-executive director.
The success of Mirada is just one chapter
in a remarkable story of innovation and
evolution for Professor Brady, who has
had a hugely successful research career
ranging from developing automated
sensor-guided vehicles to the detection of
breast cancer.
which provides navigation and positioning
products and services, received a Queen’s
Award for export achievement.
In 1995, Professor Brady’s career took
a sharp turn, when he moved into
medical imaging.
From 2001 to 2003, Professor Brady
was Director of the EPSRC/MRC
Interdisciplinary Research Centre in
medical imaging and signals at the
University of Oxford (see page 35), and in
2002 he helped create the programme
for the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral
Training Centre at Oxford, a new initiative
to train the interdisciplinary researchers
of tomorrow.
In 2004, Professor Brady was knighted for
his services to engineering. He continues
to play a key role in breakthroughs
in image analysis, working with new
technologies and techniques such as
positron emission tomography, MRI
and computer tomography (3D X-rays),
which have revolutionised the way we
look inside our bodies.
In one EPSRC-supported project, he
developed a mathematical physical model
of the passage of X-rays through tissue to
explain the creation of a mammogram. This
enabled the matching of one mammogram
against another – a major step forward in
the early detection of breast cancer.
In the 1980s Professor Brady founded
MIT’s world-famous robots laboratory
before going on to lead the Robotics
Research Laboratory at Oxford, developing
innovations such as collision-avoidance
in robots.
Professor Brady’s entrepreneurial flair
includes both the creation of spin out
companies, and activities devoted to the
commercialisation of science. For many
years he served on the board of Isis
Innovation, which manages technology
transfer and academic consulting for the
University of Oxford.
He formed his first spin out company,
Guidance Control Systems (GCS), in 1991
to commercialise EPSRC-supported
research at the robotics lab. In 2006, GCS,
In 2014, Professor Brady, who has received
over 30 EPSRC grants during his career,
leads the Department of Oncological
Imaging at the University of Oxford.
January 1: The Euro currency is introduced
28
January 23: Nikon launches its D1 three megapixel digital SLR camera, costing US$6,000
29
1999
Basic functions
In 1999, the foundations were laid for the
cross-Research Council Basic Technology
Programme, led by EPSRC. The aim of
the programme was to give technology
research the same status as scientific
research, and to develop new technologies
with the potential to be adapted across all
areas of science, ultimately leading to new
industries of the future.
The 10-year programme resulted in over
50 funded projects with a total investment
of over £165 million. From April 2005, the
programme was solely funded by EPSRC.
Because science is essentially convergent,
bringing many methods together to answer
a single question, while technology is
more divergent (in that it can be applied
in many fields), the Basic Technology
Programme focused on supporting risky
new technologies of wide application.
The programme’s many highlights included
a four-year 2006 project led by physicist
Professor Kishan Dholakia at the University
of St Andrews, working alongside biologist
Dr Frank Gunn-Moore, also from the
University of St Andrews, which resulted
in breakthroughs in the use of ultrasound
and laser sciences for generic non-invasive
healthcare therapies.
out company, Cortexica Vision Systems,
in 1999.
In 2010, Professor Dholakia’s team
developed a new method to create minute
self-healing holes in cell membranes to
enable targeted drug delivery to cells and
tissue at will.
Launched with the help of Imperial
Innovations, Cortexica pioneered visual
imaging technology that mimics the way
the human brain identifies images –
resulting in an app-based product range
that goes from strength to strength,
including fashion, shoe and accessory
search apps.
Interviewed in 2010, Dr Gunn-Moore said:
“As a biologist I never thought I would end up
working in the physics world. This work came
from a chance conversation with Kishan.
It truly is amazing that the light syringe we
created has come so far so fast, and we
are able to perform experiments we never
thought would be possible four years ago.”
In 2012, Professor Dholakia was awarded
a £4.5 million EPSRC Programme Grant
to ‘Challenge the Limits of Photonics’. The
investment is one of many EPSRC grants
he has received since 1999, as he helps
pioneer a new scientific field.
Another project, led by the late Professor
Maria Petrou, from Imperial College
London, demonstrated the true ethos
of Basic Technology; with fundamental
science progressing to technology
development and on to formation of a spin
February 12: President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial
Another project funded under the initiative
saw £7 million invested in far-reaching
research led by Professor Tom McLeish
at Durham University to unlock the full
potential of plastics. The project was part
of what became a successful 20-year
collaboration between academics and
industry experts to explore how better
to build ‘macromolecules’ – the basic
components of plastics.
In 2011, Professor McLeish and his
team made a breakthrough that should
ultimately allow experts to create the
‘perfect’ plastic with specific uses and
properties by using a high-tech recipe
book. It will also increase our ability to
recycle plastics (see page 64).
30
Clear thinking
He said it
Industry needs doctoral-level recruits
who are adaptable and active right
from day one so that they can fit in
with team objectives. They must be
able to talk about what they can do and
communicate their skills to people who
come from different disciplines.
Professor Tony Ledwith, EPSRC’s second
chairman, interviewed in 1999. With a background
in industry, Professor Ledwith, a former member
of EPSRC’s governing body, emphasised the
importance of building closer academic/industrial
ties – which EPSRC champions to this day.
In 2011, in keeping with its
commitment to ensure doctoral level
recruits are given the opportunities
they need to flourish in industry, EPSRC
commissioned a major independent
survey of leading research-intensive
companies on the economic and
social impact of PhD-holders they
had recruited.
The survey, the first of its kind, involved
86 of the UK’s largest researchintensive companies, including Airbus,
Augusta Westland, Jaguar Land Rover,
Rolls-Royce, Unilever and Vodafone.
Among its many findings, the study
showed that:
•
83% of employers said PhD holders
had improved the company’s
position relative to competitors
•
60% said PhD recruits are integral
to commercial success
•
63% actively target PhDs
when recruiting
•
74% said PhD recruits achieve high
impact results within two years
of joining
•
66% targeted PhD recruits with
industry experience
•
92% of PhD recruits get up to speed
more quickly after joining compared
to graduates
•
73% highly rate PhD recruits’
influence on standards and
good practice
In 1999, Professor
Mohammed Sarwar,
from the University
of Northumbria
at Newcastle, led
new research
that culminated
in significant
improvements in
the production of
glass containers.
Around 33 per cent of all doctorate
holders whose PhDs and related
doctoral qualifications were supported
by EPSRC continue into academia, while
nearly half find employment in business
and public services.
Working with
industrial
container
manufacturer
PLM Redfearn,
the research
team found a
way to reduce the
weight of some
glass containers
by 33 per
cent without
compromising
quality or
strength.
Manufacturers, finance and IT
companies are the biggest employers of
doctoral graduates in engineering and
physical sciences, representing around
75 per cent of those going into industry
and public services. In addition, these
sectors contribute nearly one third of
Gross Value Added to the UK.
A further benefit
was that the
process had
a consequent
effect on energy
consumed during
manufacture and
transportation.
Stiff records
Many new technological innovations stand
or fall on the precision of their engineering.
For example, mirrors and lenses used
in space programmes must have nearperfect lenses; and for the next generation
of car engines improved fuel efficiency
and reduced emissions will depend on
components that have been engineered to
minute tolerances.
To achieve precise nanoscale surface
specifications, in 1999 an EPSRCsupported team at Cranfield University, led
by Professor John Corbett, developed a new
breed of machine tool, dubbed Tetraform C,
based on a tetrahedral frame.
Interviewed in 1999, Professor Corbett
said: “We need tools capable of producing
ever-higher tolerances – repeatedly. And
for ultra-precision engineering we need
ultra-stiff structures. The tetrahedron
is one of the stiffest geometries known,
because of its high symmetry and ‘closed
loop’ form.”
The Cranfield team’s tool achieved worldrecord stiffness, enabling it to grind brittle
materials such as glass and ceramics in a
‘ductile’ fashion.
The benefits of ultra-precision machines
such as these are already feeding directly
into many important areas of technology,
from the manufacture of more reliable
car engines to making silicon integrated
circuits with nanometric accuracy
and repeatability.
December 31: Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President
31
2000
Flexible friends
In 2000, Professor
Richard Friend
(pictured), Professor
Henning Sirringhaus
and Stuart Evans
formed Plastic Logic
Ltd to commercialise
their EPSRCsupported research
at the University of Cambridge’s
Cavendish Laboratory.
The company’s formation built on the
team’s 1989 invention of polymer organic
light-emitting diodes (P-OLEDs), developed
with colleagues at the university’s
chemistry department and with EPSRC
funding. Their genius spawned an entirely
new industry – plastic electronics – and the
subsequent creation of a new research field
where plastics are made to emit light.
Plastic Logic was the first to fully
industrialise the mass production of plastic
electronics in the world’s first factory
dedicated to the technology, achieving
production yields of plastic electronic
displays comparable to the LCD industry.
With a host of potential applications – from
flexible electronic displays and paper-thin
tablet computers, to ultra-efficient lighting
and low-cost, long-life solar cells – it is
estimated the global market for plastic
electronics will grow to over £80 billion
by 2020. The research also created
manufacturing processes that combine the
power of electronics with the pervasiveness
of printing.
The story since has been one of constant
achievement, supported by EPSRC
through research grants and dedicated
manufacturing and innovation centres
focused on plastic electronics, large area
electronics and related research.
Since 2009, the Technology Strategy Board
has invested some £40 million, unlocking
more than £100 million of R&D activity,
including academic research into new
plastic electronics technologies.
In 2007, the EPSRC-funded Cambridge
Innovation and Knowledge Centre (CIKC)
in Advance Manufacturing Technologies
for Photonics and Electronics was
launched, providing additional support
for Professor Friend’s research team and
other innovators in the field. This was
complemented in 2013 by the EPSRC
Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in
Large-Area Electronics, also at Cambridge.
In 2009, Plastic Logic and electronic display
spin out company Liquavista collaborated
on a project to develop flexible electronic
displays that support full colour and video
– allowing products such as electronic
newspapers that can show moving images.
In 2010, Professor Sir Richard Friend,
who was knighted in 2003, Professor
Neil Greenham and Professor Henning
Sirringhaus co-founded Eight-19 Ltd to
develop organic solar cell technology
for manufacture. The company’s unique
proposition includes off-grid pay-as-yougo-style mobile phone technology for the
developing world – powered by solar cells
based on printed plastic.
Eight-19 was formed to commercialise
technology developed at the CIKC in
Advance Manufacturing Technologies
for Photonics and Electronics, one of
seven EPSRC-supported Innovation and
Knowledge Centres focused on facilitating
the commercial exploitation of academic
science and technology in partnership
with industry.
In 2011, Plastic Logic announced a major
US$700 million investment from Russia’s
January 6: US students Jerry Yang and David Filo launch Yahoo
RUSNANO, focusing on building a massproduction factory for thin, light and flexible
plastic-based e-paper displays.
In 2012, Professor Sir Richard Friend joined
EPSRC’s Council, the senior decisionmaking body responsible for determining
EPSRC policy, priorities and strategy.
In 2012, Eight-19 was crowned Small
Business of the Year and won the
Renewable Energy Project of the Year
award at the BusinessGreen Leaders
Awards for its work on the Indigo pay-asyou-go solar system.
In 2013, The University of Cambridge’s
EPSRC-supported Graphene Centre signed
a research collaboration agreement with
Plastic Logic on graphene in flexible
plastic electronics. A major element of the
agreement is to develop ‘wonder material’
graphene as a transparent, conductive layer
for plastic backplanes for unbreakable LCD
and flexible OLED displays.
In 2013, Plastic Logic joined forces with
Intel® and Queen’s University Belfast to
develop Papertab, a flexible, 10.7” plastic
touchscreen tablet resembling a sheet of
paper. Stuff magazine named Papertab
its Innovation of the Year at its 2013
Gadget Awards.
In 2013, the Plastic Electronics Leadership
Group revealed that the UK sector involved
33 universities and 134 companies; had
generated annual revenues of £234 million;
and employed 1,950 people in industry and
575 in academia.
Professor Friend says: “EPSRC was quick
to provide critical support at the start of
our research and has since been effective
in funding the UK community across
chemistry, physics and engineering, so that
the UK community has been consistently
world-leading.”
32
May 4: Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London
33
2000
Perfect partners
In 2000, a ground-breaking strategic
partnership in combinatorial chemistry
with UK pharmaceutical giant Glaxo
Wellcome (now GSK) resulted in joint
funding for 10 state-of-the-art mass
spectrometers in UK universities – and
marked the beginning of an enduring,
highly productive relationship with GSK.
It was the first of EPSRC’s flagship
Strategic Partnerships with major
companies and other research funders and
users; providing access to world-leading
knowledge, highly-trained people and high
specification equipment that is directly
utilised by industry.
The new partnership accelerated the UK
pharmaceutical sector’s understanding
of combinatorial technologies, helped
advance analytical processes used in drug
development, and provided the UK with an
internationally-leading capability hitherto
unavailable either in UK universities or
in industry.
Subsequent EPSRC/GSK investments
included installation of new analytical
equipment at the universities of
Southampton and Swansea, open to
industry and academics alike.
In 2008, EPSRC and GSK co-invested in a
five-year, £10 million drug discovery and
development project.
In 2012, the two organisations announced
they would jointly support a department
(chair) in sustainable chemistry at the
University of Nottingham.
GSK’s Director of Academic Liaison, Dr
Malcolm Skingle, says: “Working with
EPSRC changed the cultural mind-set
within GSK such that our chemists now
June 19: Tiger Woods wins golf’s US Open by 15 shots, a record for all majors
think more broadly about the scientific
challenges they are attempting to address.
“Our strategic partnership has stimulated
areas of research within academia and,
conversely, has introduced new ideas to
the industrial chemists through two-way
exchange of information.”
In 2014, EPSRC’s portfolio of Strategic
Partnerships includes a range of
international blue chip industries
including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce,
Procter & Gamble, Jaguar Land Rover, and,
more recently, Tata Steel in 2014.
Over 40 per cent of the research supported
by EPSRC is collaborative with industry.
You can find out more about EPSRC’s
Strategic Partnerships in Pioneer 13,
published later this year.
34
Famous five
Life model
In 2000, EPSRC co-invested £50 million
in five new Interdisciplinary Research
Collaborations (IRCs) focused on new
applications for information technology,
computer science and communications in
businesses, homes and hospitals.
In 2000, University of
Surrey-based EPSRC
Advanced Research
Fellow, Professor Adrian
Hilton, developed new
computer imaging
technology that allowed
internet users to create much more
‘lifelike’ models of themselves.
The investment saw the creation of five
university-based centres and marked a step
change in how interdisciplinary research is
facilitated and fostered, through long-term
academic/industry collaborations.
Four of the new IRCs, funded in full by
EPSRC, tackled issues such as developing
ultra-fast communications using optical
technology; embedding computers into
everyday objects and environments;
improving knowledge management
to prevent information overload; and
improving the dependability of computerbased systems.
The fifth IRC, funded by EPSRC and the
Medical Research Council, examined how
to transform medical images and data into
useable clinical information.
Twenty universities and over 40 companies
were involved in the new IRCs, which also
brought to the fore the leadership talents
and innovative research capabilities of
the centres’ directors: Professor Sir Nigel
Shadbolt (knowledge management);
Professor Tom Rodden (embedded
computing); Professor Wilson Sibbett
(optics); Professor Cliff Jones (computer
system dependability); and Professor
Mike Brady and Professor Dave Hawkes
(medical imaging), all of whom have
made pioneering contributions in their
respective fields.
Interdisciplinary Research
Collaborations (IRCs)
EPSRC Interdisciplinary Research
Collaborations (IRCs) are centres of
internationally-acknowledged scientific and
technological excellence, with sufficient
critical mass to make a significant impact
in areas of key future industrial relevance
to the UK.
Able to walk, run and jump, these avatars,
which could be imported into computergenerated scenes using standard 3D
modelling packages, gave users a clearer
impression of whom they are dealing with
online, and thus enhanced internet safety.
In 2003, Professor Hilton (pictured) was
awarded a five-year EPSRC Platform Grant
to develop his research into Visual Media,
and to build a team to pursue long-term
research in visual content production,
interaction and information retrieval.
In 2009, the research, which included a
project to develop 3D representations of
real faces for realistic animation, was
followed by a second five-year EPSRC
Platform Grant.
In 2013, Professor Hilton, now Director
of the Centre for Vision, Speech & Signal
The software they developed takes detailed
measurements of the shopper’s body via a
personal web-cam. Whether shoppers are
pear, apple or hourglass-shaped the new
software makes it easier for them to order
the correct size.
The software, co-developed with London
College of Fashion, Bodymetrics and
digital creative agency Guided, works like
a virtual tape measure, taking accurate
measurements and advising the user
on which size garment to buy on a
participating retailer’s website. A launch of
the system is anticipated within two years.
Also in 2013, Professor Hilton received
a five-year EPSRC Programme Grant
to pioneer a new-generation 3D sound
system which creates the live concert or
sports experience from the comfort of the
listener’s living room.
The programme is in collaboration with the
universities of Southampton and Salford,
the BBC and UK industry.
Cool news
Between 2000 and 2003, EPSRC-funded
research at the University of Sussex led to
major improvements in the longevity and
safety of the Advanced Gas-cooled
Reactors (AGRs) which currently
provide about 75 per cent of
the UK’s nuclear energy
generating capability.
IRCs generally involve several universities
together with industrial partners, and are
funded through large, long-term grants,
typically around £10 million over six years.
Estimates at the time
suggested that if the
14 UK operating AGRs
closed unnecessarily
early, it could lead to
losses running into
billions of pounds,
threaten the UK’s carbon
dioxide emission targets
and widen the nation’s
energy deficit.
Recent investments include IRCs in
Early-Warning Sensing Systems for
Infectious Diseases; Bionanotechnology;
Tissue Engineering; Quantum Information
Processing and Ultrafast Photonics.
The research also
informed the scale of the
decommissioning process
required for the first generation
Magnox reactors.
Processing (CVSSP) at the University of
Surrey, together with members of his team,
co-developed a web-based system that
could revolutionise the way we shop for
clothes online.
July 25: An Air France Concorde supersonic passenger jet crashes just after take-off from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and four on the ground
35
2001
Makers in
momentum
In 2001, British manufacturing received
a boost with the launch of 12 EPSRC
Innovative Manufacturing Research Centres
(IMRCs). The centres were the first in a
series of investments focused on getting
more science and technology out of the lab
and into the factory.
Each IMRC built on work already being
done in areas such as rapid prototyping;
e-business; recyclable materials and
modular construction methods.
During the programme’s 10-year lifespan,
15 separate IMRCs were launched,
each addressing a series of
manufacturing challenges.
EPSRC invested a total of £192 million
in the centres, supplemented by
£207 million in industrial support from
over 700 collaborators.
PIONEER 09
2013
12 Winter
Summer
2014
By 2011, the programme had created
over 1,300 doctoral level manufacturing
engineers. It had also created 160 new jobs;
safeguarded a further 230 jobs and brought
20 new technologies to market.
Another project, at the University of Bath’s
Innovative Design and Manufacturing
Research Centre, led to the development
of greener, faster and more efficient food
packaging processes.
Laser focus
In collaboration with an independent food
and drinks research centre and industrial
partners, the team developed an improved
‘form-fill and seal’ food packaging process
for foods such as rice, confectionery, pasta
and crisps.
One of the centres, based at Heriot-Watt
University, pioneered the development of
revolutionary planar waveguide CO2 lasers,
in collaboration with research groups at
the University of Hull and industrial partner
Rofin-Sinar UK.
Now manufactured by major international
companies for applications in industry
and medicine, including glass patterning,
fabric decoration, and inscribing date codes
on consumer products, global sales of
these advanced laser products now exceed
US$1 billion.
Project leader, Dr Ben Hicks, says: “The
project has shown that reducing costs and
saving the planet can go hand-in-hand.
“Using the lessons learned from this
research, 39,000 tonnes of waste could be
diverted from landfill per year. Based on the
current level of landfill tax, this would save
£1.9 million in taxation alone.”
September 11: Two passenger planes hijacked by terrorists crash into New York’s World Trade Center causing the death of 2,752 people
36
PIONEER 09
2013
12 Winter
Summer
2014
October 7: The US invasion of Afghanistan starts with an air assault and covert ground operations
37
2001
MEM’s the world
In 2001, Dr Eric
Yeatman, Professor
Richard Syms and
Dr Andrew Holmes,
from Imperial
College London, cofounded Microsaic
Systems plc to
take their EPSRCsupported research
to market.
The company’s core product was a desksized mass spectrometer instrument that
can measure the masses and relative
concentrations of atoms and molecules
in substances.
The device was based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology
developed at Imperial.
MEMS is a technology that uses integrated
circuit methods to produce tiny mechanical
devices such as sensors, valves, gears,
mirrors, and actuators in the form of
semiconductor chips.
MEMS devices generally range in size
from 20 micrometres (20 millionths of a
metre) to a millimetre, and usually consist
of a central unit that processes data, and
components such as micro-sensors that
interact with the surroundings.
In the 1990s, Dr (later Professor) Yeatman
(pictured) co-founded one of the UK’s
first research groups into micro-electromechanical systems at Imperial, helping
position the university as a world leader in
the field.
In the 2000s, Microsaic went on to develop
and market a range of next-generation
mass spectrometry (MS) instruments
for the analysis of gaseous, liquid and
solid samples.
A key feature of Microsaic’s MS systems is
that they are much smaller, consume less
energy, and have lower running costs than
conventional instruments.
EPSRC support for Professor Yeatman’s
work has included successive Platform
Grants, enabling him to co-invent a number
of new research methods and help position
Imperial College London as a world leader in
the field of MEMS and related technologies.
In 2011, Microsaic was admitted to the
London Stock Exchange. In the same year,
Professor Yeatman, who was the company’s
chairman throughout the 2000s, was
awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering
Silver Medal. He was made a Fellow of
the Academy in 2012, and through the
Academy acts as mentor to several young
academic entrepreneurs.
October 23: Apple releases the iPod
Also in 2011, Professor Yeatman became
co-director of the Digital Economy Lab
at Imperial College London. He is also
principal investigator of the Lab’s flagship
project Digital City Exchange.
The Digital City Exchange is a five-year
multidisciplinary research programme
where researchers are exploring ways to
digitally link utilities and services within a
city, enabling new technical and business
opportunities. The programme is funded by
the RCUK Digital Economy Programme, led
by EPSRC.
Professor Yeatman has acted as a design
consultant for several international
companies, and as technical advisory board
member to two venture capital funds.
In 2014, Professor Yeatman’s research
interests are in energy sources for wireless
devices, radio frequency and photonic
MEMS, and sensor networks.
Professor Yeatman says: “High valueadded tech products such as scientific
instruments are an area where the UK
can and does have a strong competitive
position internationally.
“EPSRC support is a vital enabler of
the developments underpinning this
strategically important research field.”
38
Straight talking
In the fast-changing world of smart
consumer electronics, in 2001 a team of
computer experts from Imperial College
London, Jeff Kramer, Jeff Magee and
Naranker Dulay, developed a new computer
language that enables manufacturers
to keep reusing software components in
products at no extra development cost.
Working with software architects at
Phillips, the team customised the system
for electronic products. Interviewed in 2001,
Professor Magee said: “The previous way
that TV sets were built gave much less
flexibility and involved much more rewriting
of software.”
Phillips deployed 300 of its software
engineers to work on the system,
leading to commercial success.
Keeping mum
In 2001, Dr Serpil Acar, a Loughborough
University-based specialist in engineering
design for women, and in mathematical
modelling of the spine, began a three-year
EPSRC-supported project to develop a new
seatbelt for pregnant women.
Working with car makers Jaguar, Ford and
Nissan, over the next decade Dr Acar’s
SeatbeltPlus project evolved into an awardwinning patented design. A prototype was
Called to account
In 2001, after extensive consultation
with the research community, EPSRC
introduced a new initiative, Doctoral
Training Accounts (DTAs), which
offered a more flexible approach in
the way it funds doctoral training by
passing the funds to universities to
allocate rather than issuing them
direct to students.
The new DTAs opened up a wide
range of options in the way funds
were used to achieve the high quality
of student training demanded in an
increasingly competitive doctoral
training market.
EPSRC required universities to make
commitments relating to the quality
of supervision offered to doctoral
students. It also expected students to
receive broadening skills.
In 2014, the Doctoral Training
Account was renamed across all
seven UK Research Councils as
Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP)
but still retains its flexible approach
in return for high quality doctoral
training from universities.
developed at Loughborough and tested in
specialist crash test laboratories.
In 2014, Dr Acar is founder of the
Biomechanics and Injury Prevention
research group at Loughborough and also
leads the Interdisciplinary Computing
Research Division. The Loughborough team
are now in discussion with commercial
partners to bring SeatbeltPlus to market. It
could retail for as little as £10.
Hear today
In 2001, Cardiff University researcher Dr John
Culling developed a low-cost hearing test that can be
done in the home to help people detect hearing
loss earlier. The test worked by measuring
a person’s ability to pick out conversation
from background noise and on standard
audio equipment.
In 2010, Dr Colling developed innovative
sound-mapping software based on human
hearing to help architects design out
unwanted noise. The maps showed
hotspots where conversations would
not be intelligible if the room
were busy. Architects can then
adjust their designs to reduce
reverberation until the hotspots
are eliminated and audibility
is maximised.
The new software is intended
to be used in conjunction
with standard architectural
computer programs widely
employed in room design. The
research could also help in
the future development
of hearing aids
and cochlear
implants.
October 25: Windows XP is released
39
2001
Natural marvels
In 2001, Alex Parfitt, an EPSRC-supported
PhD student at the University of Bath,
working with a team led by Professor
Julian Vincent, used mechanisms found
in nature to devise an adaptive deployable
camouflage system for the Ministry of
Defence, which co-funded the project.
The team developed a gel that mimics
the ability of cuttlefish to blend into
their surroundings.
Interviewed in 2001, Parfitt, a postgraduate
biologist in the university’s department of
mechanical engineering, said: “The beauty
of the cuttlefish system is that it uses the
light surrounding the fish to camouflage it.
“Because the idea has come from biology,
it is a reliable, low-energy system. We have
developed a gel-based system that mimics
this behaviour and are applying it as a cover
for camouflaging large military vehicles.”
In 2003, Alex Parfitt joined BAE Systems
where he continued his work in bioinspired technology. A recent project saw
the development of night sight technology
inspired by the Xenos peckii fly, a tiny
parasite that has 50 separate lenses in
each of its raspberry-like eyes.
Each of the lenses produces a different
image, which when meshed together forms
a single panoramic view in the fly’s brain.
BAE Systems scientists have recreated this
effect with bug-eye – a camera with nine
lenses – and about the size of a mobile
phone camera lens.
This digital device has 60 degrees of
peripheral vision and is small and light
enough to fit onto a helmet, which could
help soldiers spot an enemy out of the
corner of their eye and doubles their level
of vision from previous equipment.
It has been suggested that the technology
could be adapted for use in CCTV cameras
able to survey a wide panorama of crowded
spaces, or perhaps developed as a tool to
help with keyhole surgery.
December 15: The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and over £20,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean
40
Meet the new boss
Interviewed in
2001, John O’Reilly,
EPSRC’s recently
appointed chief
executive, addressed
an area of perennial
concern that remains
equally true in 2014,
commenting: “One of
our challenges is that
the demand for research funding massively
exceeds our ability to fund, and in many
areas there are more good applications
than we can fund…
“What we must do is ensure that our money
goes into supporting the best research.
But this does not mean the resources will
be spread thin, with equal shares around –
that is not the mode of operation of EPSRC,
nor should it be.”
Plasma makes perfect
In 2001, Professor Christopher Whitehead
and Dr David Glover, from the University
of Manchester, co-founded Plasma Clean
Ltd to commercialise core technology
Professor Whitehead invented during his
EPSRC-funded research into plasmas.
Plasmas are sometimes described as the
fourth state of matter after solids, liquids
and gases. For example, the core of the sun
is in a plasma state.
Professor Whitehead’s research led to
plasma technology that can blast apart
£140 million for
e-Science
In 2001, EPSRC joined forces with the
six other UK Research Councils in the
three-phase £140 million e-Science
Programme, which it went on to lead.
The funding supported a range of
projects designed to position British
science at the forefront of research into
computing technologies (see page 57).
In 2005, the e-Science Core
Programme leader Professor Tony Hey
became Microsoft’s Corporate VicePresident of Technical Computing and,
in 2011, Corporate Vice President of
Microsoft Research Connections.
the chemicals responsible for the smell of
decomposing waste.
In 2014, Plasma Clean is one of the
country’s leading developers of air
purification solutions.
With a nationwide network of approved
specialists, the company provides costeffective grease, odour and smoke control
for a wide range of environments, including
commercial kitchens, washrooms, food
storage, public waiting areas, and food and
commercial waste sites.
Order from chaos
In 2001, EPSRC Senior Fellow Laurence
Eaves won the prestigious Guthrie Medal
and prize of the Institute of Physics.
In parallel with his work into quantum
chaos, Eaves and his team studied how
electrons can ‘tunnel’ through materials
when a magnetic field is present. This led
to the development of a new technique,
magneto-tunnelling spectroscopy.
The technique provides physicists with
a new way to measure the structure of
low-dimensional semiconductor materials,
such as quantum wells, which are at the
heart of the modern semiconductor laser
diodes used in telecommunications and
DVD players. It could also help in the
development of the next generation of
transistors and lasers (see page 27).
January 26: An earthquake hits Gujarat, India, causing more than 20,000 deaths
Mobile monitor
In 2001, Professor Bryan Woodward and
Dr Fadlee Rasid, from Loughborough
University, began development of a unique
system which uses a mobile phone to
transmit a person’s vital signs, including
the complex ECG heart signal, to a hospital
or clinic anywhere in the world.
The system enabled a doctor to observe
remotely up to four different medical
signals from a freely moving patient.
Signals that could be transmitted included
ECG, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and
body temperature. The technology marked
an important advance in telemedicine and
is thought to be a world first.
41
2002
3D vision
In 2002, Professor Dave Hawkes and
colleagues at King’s College London (KCL)
developed 3D medical imaging technology
that enabled surgeons to steer clear of vital
regions and yet still work close to them.
During an operation it is essential that the
surgeon is aware of critical structures,
blood vessels or nerve fibres that need to be
avoided. By taking MRI and X-ray computed
tomography scans of the patient pre-surgery,
the team developed a 3D representation of
the area that the surgeon could follow on a
computer screen during surgery.
To avoid surgeons needing to glance between
patient and screen, Professor Hawkes later
co-devised with Dr Philip Edwards a way to
insert 3D images into the surgical operating
microscope’s field of view. The microscope
displays the image just where the surgeon is
looking, helping them ‘see through’ overlying
tissue and visualise the exact area they plan
to operate on. If the surgeon is searching for
a tumour, for example, the image indicates
how far away it is. The system became highly
useful to neurosurgeons.
The team have since made major advances
in 3D modelling of soft tissues, developing
novel treatments of the liver, breast, lung
and prostate. A 1992 SERC grant enabled
Professor Hawkes, with PhD student
Derek Hill and postdoctoral student Daniel
Rueckert, to develop the widely used and
highly cited image registration technology
that underpins much of this work.
In 2003, Professor Hawkes became Director
of the EPSRC/MRC-funded Interdisciplinary
Research Collaboration on Medical Images
and Signals, a joint initiative between
University College London, Imperial College
London, the University of Oxford and KCL.
In 2004, Professor Hawkes co-founded IXICO
to bring aspects of his research to market.
The CEO of this London Stock Exchangelisted company, which provides imaging
solutions to the pharmaceutical industry, is
Derek Hill, his former PhD student.
In 2005, Professor Hawkes moved his team
to UCL, forming the UCL Centre for Medical
Image Computing. He was awarded a fiveyear EPSRC Programme Grant in 2009.
In 2014, Professor Hawkes, who has led or
co-investigated 39 EPSRC research grants
since 1992, co-leads the EPSRC Centre for
Doctoral Training in Medical Imaging at UCL
and also heads the university’s Centre for
Medical Image Computing. He is co-Director
January 9: Michael Jackson receives the Artist of the Century award at the American Music Awards
of the UCL/KCL Centre for Cancer Imaging
funded by EPSRC and Cancer Research UK,
and co-leader of an EPSRC/Wellcome Trust
smart surgery project in liver surgery.
In June 2014, he was named as coinvestigator of a £10 million EPSRC/
Wellcome Trust project to develop
instruments and visualisations to assist
surgeons operating on the fetus for spinabifida and other congenital problems while
still in the womb.
Professor Hawkes says: “EPSRC’s support
over more than two decades has enabled me
to build a significant research programme.
Most importantly, it led to other support
that pushed several innovations through
to clinical trial and commercialisation.
“This work has achieved wide-ranging
impact in areas such as neurosurgery,
the study of disease progression in
dementia, image-guided biopsy and focal
ablation – which is poised to significantly
change the management of patients with
prostate cancer.
“There is now a significant body of worldleading medical image computing research
at UCL, KCL, Imperial and Oxford that can
trace its roots back to the initial investment
42
Shrewd thinking
In 2002, an EPSRC-supported team from
the universities of Sheffield and the West of
England began work on a whiskered robot
inspired by rodents. Interviewed in 2002,
Sheffield’s Professor Tony Prescott said:
“For most rodents, whiskers are at least as
significant as eyes are to sighted humans.”
The robot was designed for use in
environments hazardous to humans – such
as natural disaster zones and fire sites –
which are often cramped, full of dust and
smoke, and offer limited visibility.
The team went on to develop SCRATCHbot,
which ‘feels’ its way using rat-like
whiskers, and subsequently won the 2009
Best of What’s New Award from Popular
Science magazine.
In 2012, the team’s next creation, Shrewbot,
was inspired by the four-centimetre long
Etruscan shrew, one of the world’s tiniest
mammals, and used ‘active touch’ rather
than vision to navigate its environment.
In 2013, inspired by their rodent research,
Professor Prescott’s team developed
a ‘tactile’ helmet, which could provide
firefighters operating in challenging
And the Emmy goes to ...
conditions with vital clues about their
surroundings. The helmet was fitted
with ultrasound sensors that detect the
distances between the helmet and nearby
walls or other obstacles; and was exhibited
at the 2013 Gadget Show Live event.
Advancing doctoral training
In 2002, EPSRC launched its first
Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs).
What began as a pilot programme to
support doctoral training in the life
sciences evolved into a major initiative
for training the interdisciplinary
researchers of tomorrow in strategically
important areas.
In 2002, Professor Andrew
Zisserman and Professor Andrew
Fitzgibbon received an Emmy Award, the
US TV industry’s equivalent of an Oscar,
for their work on Boujou, a 3D camera
tracker used in special effects movies
such as the Harry Potter and Lord of the
Rings franchises. Boujou was borne out
of an EPSRC-funded research project at
the University of Oxford’s Department of
Engineering in the 1990s.
In 2014, Andrew Fitzgibbon is a member
of the Microsoft Research Group in
Cambridge. A recipient of a Silver Medal
from the Royal Academy of Engineering,
in 2013, he was a core contributor in the
development of Kinect for Xbox 360.
In 2014, Professor Andrew Zisserman is
Principal Investigator at the University
of Oxford’s Visual Geometry Group and a
world-renowned computer scientist. He
began his academic career as a member
of Professor Mike Brady’s Oxford Robotics
Group in the 1980s (see page 28) and was
made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.
March 30: Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother dies aged 101
Such was the success of the early CDTs,
which evolved from EPSRC’s pioneering
Engineering Doctorate initiative in
the 1990s, there are now 115 centres
spanning EPSRC’s portfolio.
CDTs bring together diverse areas
of expertise to train engineers and
scientists with the skills, knowledge and
confidence to tackle today’s evolving
issues. They also create new working
cultures, build relationships between
teams in universities and forge lasting
links with industry.
Students receive a programme of
taught coursework to develop and
enhance their technical interdisciplinary
knowledge, and broaden their set of
skills. Alongside this they undertake
a challenging and original research
project at doctoral level.
Combined governmental and partner
funding for CDTs is now £962 million,
including £31 million in capital
investment. It is the UK’s largest
investment in postgraduate training,
involving over 5,500 students in areas
of key importance to the UK economy
and society.
You can find out more about CDTs in
Pioneer 13, published this autumn.
43
2002
New wave
crushes
rock
In 2002, Dr
Sam Kingman
(pictured), from
the University of
Nottingham, made
a breakthrough in
his EPSRC-funded
research into using microwave radiation
to break up mineral-bearing rocks.
Traditional crushing and grinding of rocks
to extract minerals is massively energy
inefficient. Typically, only one per cent
of the energy input into rock grinding
actually causes size reduction.
Dr Kingman’s process uses bursts of
microwave radiation to crumble the rock,
prior to grinding.
Most rocks need just a fraction of a
second to weaken them sufficiently
before grinding, when they will fall apart
easily. Rio Tinto, one of the world’s
largest mining companies, supported the
research from its outset.
In 2006, Professor Sam Kingman was
awarded a personal chair at Nottingham,
making him one of the youngest
professors in the UK. He later became
Director of the National Centre for
Industrial Microwave Processing (NCIMP).
In December 2013, the University of
Nottingham and Rio Tinto agreed a
£6 million, five-year partnership to
develop the next generation of innovative
technologies for the mining industry.
The programme is centred around a
new facility at Nottingham, the Rio Tinto
Centre for Emergent Technologies. Its
Research Director is Professor Kingman.
October 30: Freeview television service begins transmitting in parts of the UK
Engineers at the centre are researching
new ways of separating ores based
on the properties of individual rocks,
meaning that waste material with no
valuable minerals contained within it
can be rejected prior to energy-intensive
further processing.
Professor Kingman says: “Over 20
granted patents, 28 PhD students
graduated, more than 80 journal papers
published, and many tens of millions of
pounds of industry investment across
numerous sectors all across the world
can all trace their roots to my EPSRC first
grant project.
“Without the support of EPSRC, none of
this would have happened, I am still to
this day extremely appreciative of the
support I have been given.”
44
Mussels mastered
In 2002, EPSRC-supported researchers
at the University of Cambridge, led by
Dr David Aldridge, developed an elegant
solution to the problems caused by
freshwater zebra mussels, which are a
major pest, clogging pipelines in water
treatment works and power stations,
and costing millions of pounds each
year to remove.
The conventional solution is to poison
the mussels with chlorine, but the team
developed a greener, more targeted
approach that neatly overcame one of
chlorine’s major drawbacks – zebra
mussels can taste it in the water and close
their shells, surviving for three weeks
before opening up again, meaning chlorine
must persist over this time to be effective.
Working with Dr Geoff Moggridge from the
Department of Chemical Engineering at
Cambridge, the team developed a way to
poison the mussels, 4cm-long creatures
which lay up to 30,000 eggs per year, by
tricking them into swallowing a dose of
toxin packaged to resemble a pellet of food.
The research led to the formation of a spin
out company, BioBullet, which developed
potassium chlorine as the lethal ingredient.
Medallion man
In 2002,
Professor
Chris
Hull, a
theoretical
physicist
from Imperial College London, was
awarded the prestigious Dirac medal
and prize by the Institute of Physics
for his decade-long research into
superstring and M-theory.
The prize followed an EPSRC
Senior Research Fellowship,
awarded in 1996.
In 2012, Professor Hull was made
a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 2013, Professor Hull (pictured
in 2002) was awarded an EPSRC
Programme Grant to lead
research into new geometric
structures from string theory,
alongside co-investigators Jerome
Gauntlett, Amihay Hanany and
Daniel Waldram.
Together with Bristol firm, TasteTech,
BioBullet developed a pellet that is both
mussel-palatable and waterproof.
The research has been of great interest to
the UK water industry, with at least four
companies funding the research to date.
Interviewed in 2002, Dr Aldridge said: “The
beauty is that we engineer the coating
materials so that the pellet dissolves and
degrades, and the entire product degrades
within hours of going in the water.
In 2010, following approval by the Drinking
Water Inspectorate, trials began with
Anglian Water Services Ltd to use the
pellets in the UK for potable water systems.
“There’s also no impact on the wider
biodiversity living in rivers and streams that
might receive the outflow water.”
In the same year, the company secured
funding of £500,000 from the Technology
Strategy Board, match-funded by Anglian,
Thames Water and TasteTech.
British steel
In 2002, Dr Mary Ryan from Imperial
College London and Professor David
Williams from University College London
solved the mystery of why stainless steel
can unexpectedly fail. The metal is not
meant to corrode, but it can, and when it
does the results can be disastrous, whether
it’s a hole in your dishwasher or a failed
industrial plant.
‘Stainlessness’ is created by alloying iron
with chromium. As the steel ingot cools
after it has been made, tiny sulphur-rich
impurity particles, about 10 millionths of
a metre in diameter, solidify at a lower
temperature than the steel, remaining
molten for a time after the metal
has solidified.
Using an advanced new microscope the
team found a region around the impurity
particles with significantly less chromium
than the rest of the steel.
During cooling of the steel the impurity
particles ‘suck’ chromium out of the steel
December 22: Joe Strummer, lead singer of the seminal British punk band The Clash, dies at age 50
around them, creating a tiny nutshell of
steel that is not stainless. Corrosion of this
layer, just one 10 millionth of a metre thick,
is enough to trigger the main attack.
In 2011, Professor Mary Ryan was awarded
the Institute of Minerals, Materials and
Mining’s Rosenhain Medal and Prize in
recognition of distinguished achievement
in materials science for her outstanding
contribution to applied electrochemistry
and corrosion.
45
2003
Fusion for the
future
In 2003, EPSRC assumed responsibility for
the UK fusion programme, with £48 million
in funding allocated via the Office of Science
and Technology.
Fusion, the process by which the
sun produces heat and light, has the
potential to provide an almost limitless
clean, safe, renewable energy source for
future generations.
The EPSRC grant was awarded to the UK
Atomic Energy Authority at its Culham site in
Oxfordshire. The grant underpinned the UK’s
involvement in the EURATOM Joint European
Torus (JET) project, also at Culham; the
development of the UK’s own fusion device,
MAST; and research on the materials
needed for a fusion power station.
Today the UK fusion programme is centred
on the innovative MAST experiment and
employs around 150 people. While the MAST
remains the UK’s flagship programme,
the UK continues to run JET and is also
developing materials and technology
facilities. The fusion programme as a whole
employs around 1,000 people.
The fusion reactions that turn hydrogen into
helium in the core of the sun produce a lot
of energy and could be used as the basis for
a power station on Earth. However, making
this process efficient is difficult as additional
energy is required to get the nuclei close
enough to fuse together. Formidable
engineering and scientific challenges need
to be addressed.
One way of achieving fusion is to trap a
plasma with a magnetic field and heat it
up in a doughnut-shaped device called a
tokamak. The JET programme at Culham is
the world’s largest tokamak experiment.
The plasma in the centre of JET reaches
temperatures of 100 million degrees, about
10 times hotter than the centre of the sun.
These high temperatures are not a safety
concern because the amount of fuel inside
the tokamak is extremely low, weighing
about as much as a postage stamp.
In 1997, JET produced 16 mega watts of
fusion power, a world record that still stands
today, but 24 mega watts of heating power
were needed to do this. Calculations predict
a bigger tokamak is required to break even.
A new international tokamak experiment,
called ITER, is under construction in
Cadarache, France. Three times bigger
than JET, it is expected to produce 10 times
more fusion power than heating power –
considered proof that it is possible to build a
viable fusion power station.
To match ITER’s designs, JET’s vessel walls
have been changed from graphite to a
combination of tungsten and beryllium. New
results with these materials in place are
helping scientists and engineers to prepare
for ITER’s first operation in 2019.
In 2014, the Culham centre announced it
will try to set a new world record in nuclear
fusion by the end of the decade – when it
plans to run JET at maximum power, and
reach the coveted breakeven goal where
fusion yields as much energy as it consumes.
Words: Jack Snape
Jack is an operational research analyst at
the Department for Business, Innovation
and Skills. He is a former EPSRC-sponsored
PhD student in Plasma Physics and Fusion
Energy at the University of York, and a
Postgraduate Fellow at the Parliamentary
Office of Science and Technology Education.
August 2003: Ground-breaking social networking website MySpace is launched – one year before Facebook
46
47
2003
Power rangers
In 2003, SUPERGEN, the UK’s flagship
initiative in sustainable power generation
and supply, was launched. The ambitious
multidisciplinary research initiative, led
by EPSRC, covers a vast green energy
landscape, taking in areas such as climate
change, fossil fuel extraction rates,
emissions control, and increasing public
awareness of environmental concerns.
SUPERGEN aims to contribute to the UK’s
environmental emissions targets through a
radical improvement in the sustainability of
the UK’s power generation and supply.
Focusing on collaborative research projects
between industry and academia, the
initiative began with an investment of
£25 million in four consortia: Marine
Energy, Networks & Power Control,
Hydrogen Energy & Storage and Biomass
& Biofuels.
Over the
next decade,
SUPERGEN,
which stands
for Sustainable
Power Generation
and Supply, built
into a network of eight
consortia and six hubs,
supported by over £100
million of investment, offering a
major route for industry involvement
in academic research.
the several dozen university departments
involved, along with their numerous
industrial partners, the consortia have
broken new ground in the way they have
approached their subjects. Rather than
working on specific, discrete projects in
isolation, the SUPERGEN projects look at
entire topics; an approach which has led to
expansion into areas such as extending the
life of power plants, advanced photovoltaic
materials and asset management.
An example of the benefits of this approach
is research overseen by the Excitonic Solar
Cells Consortium. Tasked with developing
a new class of solar cell based on organic
materials, the consortium’s research
inspired complementary technologies using
the same low temperature processing
techniques used to prepare flexible organic
light emitting diodes.
Tim Jones and Ross Hatton, working
with Molecular Solar Ltd, a company
they formed to commercialise their work,
pioneered the development of a new type of
flexible, organic solar cell.
Molecular Solar achieved a record voltage
for the cell, which could soon be used in a
wide range of consumer electronics – from
e-readers to mobile phone chargers.
Centres flourishing under the SUPERGEN
initiative include the UK Centre for Marine
Energy Research at Edinburgh University
(see page 9).
At the University of Warwick, a
SUPERGEN-sponsored
research team led
by Professors
As well as developing an array of
technology now being furthered by
February 17: London introduces congestion charging
48
He said it
So far I have been lucky only twice –
with our gecko experiment and the
one using diamagnetic levitation. So
that’s once every five years. According
to these poor statistics I do not expect
anything before 2008. Fortunately, one
cannot predict or plan even
minor discoveries.
Nobel for MRI pioneer
In 2003, Professor Peter Mansfield, from
the University of Nottingham, and Paul
Lauterbur were awarded jointly the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their
discoveries concerning magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI)”.
He went on to secure a place at Queen
Mary, University of London – and never
looked back, going on to develop rapid
imaging techniques, thus facilitating
images that can distinguish between
healthy and cancerous tissue.
Since their launch in the 1980s, MRI
scanners, which create detailed images
of the body to assist in the diagnosis of
medical conditions, have transformed
diagnostic medicine and saved the lives of
many thousands of people.
Now Emeritus Professor at the University of
Nottingham, Peter Mansfield has received
UK Research Council support throughout
his career, including from EPSRC and its
predecessor the Science and Engineering
Research Council (SERC).
Despite being told at 15 he would
never become a scientist as he had no
qualifications, on leaving school Peter
Mansfield enrolled in evening classes to get
the qualifications he needed.
Today, there are more than 20,000 MRI
scanners globally, and over 70 million scans
are performed each year.
The annual market value for the technology
is estimated to exceed £5 billion by 2015.
Professor André Geim, from the
University of Manchester, interviewed
in 2003, on science that hits the
media spotlight.
One year later, together with Dr
Konstantin Novoselov, André Geim
made history by isolating ‘wonder
material’ graphene.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov received
the Nobel Prize for their graphene
research – and were made Knights of
the Realm in 2011.
You can find out more about this
remarkable story in Pioneer 13,
in autumn 2014. In the meantime,
turn to page 66 for more on the
gecko experiment.
Piston power
In 2003, a team of researchers at the
University of Birmingham’s School of
Manufacturing and Engineering designed
and built a fully working single piston micro
engine that could be balanced on the tip of
your finger.
longer than a mobile phone battery. So you
might only need to charge the phone twice
a year, not twice a week.”
He was, of course, speaking in the heady
days before the advent of energy-sapping,
daily-charging smartphones.
The project hit the mainstream news
headlines – and saw team member Mike
Ward gracing Richard and Judy’s sofa at ITV
to describe the team’s innovative research.
The idea behind the project was bold: that
a micro engine powered by hydrocarbon
fuel would have over 200 times the energy
capacity of a typical battery.
Interviewed in 2003, Dr Kyle Jiang, who led
the EPSRC-supported project, said: “If you
ask a group of mobile phone users which
part of the phone they dislike the most, 10
out of 10 will say the battery.
“What we realised was that a micro engine
powered by a cartridge of fuel such as
methane or propane could last 30 times
April 14: The Human Genome Project is completed with 99 per cent of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99 per cent
49
ALL RISE
The results are in. The Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers
(RISE) Awards, which mark EPSRC’s 20th anniversary, in partnership with
the Royal Academy of Engineering, celebrate the incredible innovation
that has taken place over recent decades by honouring some of the
exceptional individuals who made these achievements possible.
The selection process drew nominations from
universities, industrial partners, professional
bodies and learned societies, and resulted
in a distinguished assembly of established
leaders and future leaders in the making.
The calibre of the nominees was
exceptionally high, with a number already
recognised as Fellows of the Royal Society,
Royal Academy of Engineering and Academy
of Medical Sciences, whom the RISE judging
panel have recognised in the awards as
RISE Fellows.
In this special 20th anniversary edition of
Pioneer we turn the spotlight on the 10 RISE
Leaders, whom the judges believe will be
standard-bearers for engineering and the
physical sciences over the coming decades.
The 10 RISE leaders have been paired with
distinguished individuals from the world of
public affairs, science and business. Their
role will be to communicate the importance
and impact of their research, helping their
partners become champions for science.
The RISE leaders have also nominated their
Rising Stars, tipped to lead internationally
excellent research in the future, and who
will attend the final RISE awards ceremony,
together with the RISE Leaders and RISE
Fellows, at the House of Commons in
June 2014.
50
over 75 staff and students, the centre has
an active grant portfolio of over £20 million,
and is regarded as one of the university’s
most strategically important assets.
Professor Jim
Al-Khalili OBE
Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Physics and
Professor of Public Engagement at the
University of Surrey.
In 1994 he was awarded a five-year EPSRC
Advanced Fellowship, during which he
became established as a leading expert on
nuclear reaction theory involving exotic (halo)
nuclei. His publications on the subject have
now amassed over 1,000 citations.
Professor Al-Khalili is an active science
communicator, writer and broadcaster.
He was an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow
between 2006 and 2011 and is an awardwinning presenter of scientific programmes
on TV and radio. For the past three
years he has presented BBC Radio 4’s
The Life Scientific.
Professor Al-Khalili says: “I am proud to
have achieved what I have and to have
been able to establish myself both as an
academic researcher and teacher as well
as a respected author and broadcaster. A
generation ago, this double life would simply
not have been possible.”
Professor Al-Khalili, whose RISE Champion
is the Shadow Science Minister, Liam Byrne
MP, has nominated Dr Radu Sporea, from
the University of Surrey, as his Rising Star.
Professor O’Brien holds a 10-year Royal
Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging
Technologies, one of only two to be
awarded. He has received over 18 major
prizes for his work and holds three patents
for quantum technologies.
He says: “Quantum technologies are
destined to fundamentally change our
lives, affecting health, quality and security.
Potential applications include the ability
to design and create new materials and
pharmaceuticals at a fraction of today’s
costs; ultra-secure communications;
sensors of unprecedented precision; and
computers that are exponentially more
powerful than any current supercomputer for
some tasks. The first commercially available
quantum devices are only now beginning
to emerge.”
Professor O’Brien, whose RISE Champion
is Danny Finkelstein, Executive Editor
and Chief Leader writer of The Times,
has nominated Peter Shadbolt, from the
University of Bristol, as his Rising Star.
Jeremy O’Brien is Professor of Physics and
Electrical Engineering at the University of
Bristol and is internationally recognised
for his pioneering research and
leadership in quantum information science
and technology.
He is founding director of the University of
Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics. With
Professor Haas, whose career in
communications engineering started with
Siemens AG in Munich, set up a company
to exploit Li-Fi technology, which promises
to be cheaper and more energy-efficient
than existing wireless radio systems. TIME
magazine named Professor Haas’s work as
one of its 50 Best Inventions in 2011.
Professor Haas, who established the Li-Fi
R&D Centre at the University of Edinburgh,
has presented his work on visible light
communications internationally. His
TEDGlobal presentation on Li-Fi has been
watched on YouTube over 1.5 million times.
Professor Haas says: “The time I spent
in industry helped me greatly in gaining
a thorough understanding of the needs
and the vision of the communications
industry and has enabled me to ensure
that my research remains relevant
beyond academia.”
Professor Haas, whose RISE Champion is
Jonathan Leigh-Smith, Head of Partnerships
and Strategic Research at BT, has
nominated Dr Lev Sarkisov, from Edinburgh
University, as his Rising Star.
Professor Harald Haas
Professor Haas, Chair of Mobile
Communications at Edinburgh University,
pioneered research into using light sources
to transmit data – a technology he named
Li-Fi. In contrast to wi-fi, which uses radio
waves to exchange data, Li-Fi uses LEDs for
Professor Jeremy
O’Brien
high speed data communication.
Professor Jenny Nelson
Jenny Nelson, Professor of Physics at
Imperial College London, became Imperial’s
first Greenpeace Fellow, in 1989, when
she joined the university to work on the
application of quantum semiconductor
structures to solar photovoltaics (PV).
In an Imperial career spanning 24 years, she
has gone on to lead her own PV research
group, who have advanced solar energy
research across disciplines and countries
through productive collaborations.
Many of the team have progressed to
independent careers in the science of solar
energy and energy materials.
(Continued on next page)
51
has been recognised by
international awards from the
Pharmaceutical Sciences
World Congress, the Royal
Society and the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society.
Among his achievements, he
has designed new materials which
have since been licensed by three
companies and which are being
developed as products in Europe and
the United States.
(Continued from previous page)
Professor Nelson says: “We need to
understand and improve the performance
of materials, devices and systems to make
solar power more accessible and affordable,
and so help accelerate the transition to a
low carbon energy supply.
“For scientists, this means working across
disciplines to connect with those working
on energy storage, distribution, policy and
economics, and it means finding ways
to identify the most critical problems to
address. The overall challenge is making it
all happen quickly enough.”
Professor Shakesheff says: “My hope
is that, within a decade, regenerative
medicine will be able to create many
simpler technologies and treatments
that have both commercial and clinical
benefits. Using injected cells to repair parts
of organs, such as heart tissue after a heart
attack, or using stem cells to find new
classes of drugs are realistic breakthroughs
by 2020.”
His work, part of a worldwide effort to
cure major diseases by growing tissues,
Professor Williams, a Royal Academy
of Engineering Leverhulme Trust Senior
Research Fellow, says: “A key challenge
is how to progress the excellent science
being done in labs into clinical practice, so
I am grateful for having the opportunity to
collaborate with clinicians, which has led
me to develop new approaches to treat
clinical problems.”
Professor Williams, whose RISE Champion
is Professor Sir Mark Walport, Government
Chief Scientific Adviser, has nominated
Dr Paolo Paoletti, from the University of
Liverpool, as her Rising Star.
Professor Rodrigo
Quian Quiroga
Professor Rachel
Williams
Kevin Shakesheff is Professor of Advanced
Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering,
and Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for
Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative
Medicine at the University of Nottingham.
He has played a major role in shaping
pharmaceutical science, regenerative
medicine and interdisciplinary research
at Nottingham.
Professor Williams’ development of a
silicone oil tamponade for the treatment
of retinal detachment has led to a patent
and a clinical product which is now used
clinically worldwide.
Professor Shakesheff, whose RISE
Champion is Jeremy Farrar, Director of the
Wellcome Trust, has nominated Dr Marianne
Ellis, from the University of Bath, as his
Rising Star.
Professor Nelson, whose RISE Champion is
Zac Goldsmith MP, has nominated Dr Piers
Barnes, from Imperial College London, as
her Rising Star.
Professor Kevin
Shakesheff
successful, their work could form the basis
of a new treatment strategy for patients
suffering from severe loss of vision.
Rachel Williams has over 20 years’
experience in the design and
development of advanced materials for
medical applications.
As head of ophthalmic bioengineering within
the department of Eye and Vision Science
at the University of Liverpool, she and her
team are working with ophthalmic surgeons
and industry partners to treat sightthreatening conditions such as age-related
macular degeneration (AMD), cataracts and
retinal detachment.
Among their research, the team are
developing a synthetic membrane on which
to grow retinal pigment epithelial cells, or
their equivalent, that can be transplanted
under the retina in the eye of a patient
with age-related macular degeneration. If
Professor Quian Quiroga is Director of the
Centre for Systems Neuroscience at the
University of Leicester.
The centre is the hub of a network of
collaborations within the UK and worldwide.
He is also head of the Bioengineering
Group in the university’s Department
of Engineering.
His main research interest is in the study
of the principles of visual perception
and memory, and in the development of
advanced methods to study neural data and
clinical applications.
His most renowned scientific achievement is
the discovery of concept cells in the human
brain, which play a key role in memory
formation. These findings have led to new
lines of research into how perception and
memories are represented in the brain.
Professor Quian Quiroga, whose discovery
of concept cells was selected as one of
52
the Top 100 Scientific Stories by Discover
magazine in 2005, says: “In the long
term we hope our research will help our
understanding of, and eventually find new
treatments for, pathologies like Alzheimer’s
disease. There is also the opportunity to
contribute to the understanding of epilepsy
and its treatments.”
Professor Lee Cronin
Professor Quian Quiroga, whose RISE
Champion, Professor John Perkins, is
Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills, has
nominated Dr Hernan Rey, from the
University of Leicester, as his Rising Star.
Professor Cronin is Regius Professor of
Chemistry at the University of Glasgow.
Between 2006 and 2011 he held an EPSRC
Advanced Research Fellowship, and in 2009
he received a Wolfson-Royal Society Merit
Award. In the same year he was elected to
the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Professor Stephen
Haake
Professor Sadie Creese
Sadie Creese is Professor of Cybersecurity
in the Department of Computer Science at
the University of Oxford. With an extremely
broad portfolio of cybersecurity research,
her experience spans time in academia,
industry and government and embraces
mathematical and computer sciences,
psychology, management studies and the
school of government.
Professor Creese, who featured in the 2014
Sunday Times/Debrett 500 Most Influential
people in the UK list, is a member of the
World Economic Forum Global Agenda
Council on the Future of the Internet and
has also engaged widely with government
including giving evidence on cybersecurity to
select committees.
Prior to joining Oxford, Professor Creese
was Director of e-Security within The
University of Warwick’s International
Digital Laboratory. She has also worked
for Qinetiq, the defence, aerospace and
security company, where she developed,
established and directed the UK Cyber
Security Knowledge Transfer Network.
Professor Creese says: “Cybersecurity
research is both intellectually rewarding and
offers the potential to bring new solutions to
meet incredibly important challenges.”
Professor Creese, whose RISE Champion
is James Quinault, from the Government
Cabinet Office, has nominated Jason
Nurse, from the University of Oxford, as her
Rising Star.
In 1996, Professor Haake founded the
Centre for Sports Engineering Research
at the University of Sheffield, laying the
foundations for the development of sports
engineering as a field of academic study.
The Centre, which Professor Haake
continues to lead, and which relocated
to Sheffield Hallam University in 2006, is
now the largest of its kind in the world
with around 40 staff and PhD students.
His research group was made a UK Sport
Innovation Partner in 2008 and worked with
teams that secured 24 Olympic medals in
London 2012.
Professor Haake, who holds an EPSRC
Senior Media Fellowship, is founding
Chairman of the International Sports
Engineering Association and organiser of
seven of the International Conferences on
the Engineering of Sport.
He is also Director of Research for the
National Centre for Sport and Exercise
Medicine which works to improve the public
health and wellbeing.
Professor Haake says: “One of our biggest
challenges is that of sedentary behaviour,
which contributes to chronic illnesses
such as cardio-vascular disease, diabetes
and others. Sports engineering in the next
decade needs to help find solutions to this
global problem.”
Professor Haake, whose RISE Champion is
Sir John Armitt, former Chairman of EPSRC,
who also chaired the Olympic Delivery
Authority, has nominated Dr Jon Wheat,
from Sheffield Hallam University, as his
Rising Star.
Professor Cronin heads a world-leading
interdisciplinary research group of over 50
members, with a unique range of expertise,
bringing together inorganic chemists,
chemical engineers, complex system
modelling, evolutionary theory, robotics and
artificial intelligence.
The Cronin Group’s work includes highly
speculative ‘blue-skies’ projects as well as
research focused on real-world applications
such as the development of inorganic
fuels for water splitting, and the use of
configurable robotics for the programming
of drug discovery and novel materials.
The group also has an ambitious aim of
creating life from self-replicating, evolving
inorganic chemical cells known as iCHELLs.
Professor Cronin says: “One of the
biggest questions left, the origin of life,
and the possibility of new life/alien life, is a
wonderfully inspiring and thought-provoking
question well within the remit of the chemist/
chemical engineer.
“As a research group, our aim is to
engineer/discover routes to artificial life.
These routes may also be relevant to
determining the origin of life.”
Professor Cronin, whose RISE Champion
is Dave Allen, Senior Vice President of
Respiratory Research at GlaxoSmithKline,
has nominated Dr Oren
Scherman, from the
University of Cambridge, as
his Rising Star.
Linking thinking
Since its inception in 1994, EPSRC has been at the frontline of support for
computational science, investing in major research programmes across the
research spectrum – from designing supersonic cars to modelling DNA.
In this special report, BBC journalist Roland Pease describes the
breadth of EPSRC’s support for computer hardware and software systems
– a journey that takes us from supercomputers capable of billions of
calculations a second to the development of a national computational
science infrastructure for the benefit of researchers and industry alike.
June 28 2012 was a wet day in Newcastle.
Very wet. Storm clouds loomed over the
city, and in just two hours nearly two inches
of rain poured onto its streets. It was the
kind of event that only happens once every
120 years. But a team of engineers in
Newcastle had already seen what was going
to result.
Only months earlier Professor Chris
Kilsby, Dr Vedrana Kutija and Vassilis
Glenis of Newcastle University had ground
through gigabytes of data to simulate just
those conditions.
“Actually, we’d wondered if we’d got
something wrong in the computer
calculations,” Chris Kilsby admits. “Two
metres of flooding seemed an extreme
prediction, but it turned out we were right.”
green spaces and other details, the mindblowing calculations needed to produce
accurate predictions would require a top-ofthe-range computer.
The accuracy of the predictions wasn’t just
a vindication of this pioneering EPSRCsponsored research into flood risk, it was
also a testament to the power of high
performance computing (HPC), and its
potential to help mitigate the effects of
some of the most pressing problems facing
humanity, such as climate change and the
spread of infectious disease.
Professor Kilsby says: “We wanted to test
the flexibility of doing cloud computing.
The great thing is you just pay for what
you need. If you want to run the model
a hundred times, it’s easy to scale it up.
For academics, we found this makes
an excellent alternative to the heavily
subscribed central facilities. And for
commercial partners, this might be the most
effective way to run the processor-heavy
simulations we develop.”
With the whole of Newcastle divided up on
a two-metre grid, recording roads, buildings,
But instead of booking time at a state-ofthe-art HPC facility such as the EPSRCfunded HECToR supercomputer in
Edinburgh (see page 60), Chris Kilsby got
out the departmental credit card and paid
to run the simulations on the Elastic Cloud
EC2 network run commercially by Amazon.
It was an experiment in another way of
doing academic computing, which EPSRC
supports together with the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) as part of a
suite of initiatives to provide academic
and business users with the right kind of
computing power as and when they need it.
Chris Kilsby’s was one of 11 projects
supported through an EPSRC initiative to
test how cloud computing could supplement
the more conventional provision, and
illustrates EPSRC’s forward-looking attitude
to academic and commercial access to
computing research and facilities in the
21st century.
“The job of EPSRC is straightforward – it’s
to take tax payers’ money and convert it
into the very best ideas that have impact
for the long-term future of the UK,” explains
Lesley Thompson, Director of Science and
Engineering at EPSRC. “It’s impossible to
do that without thinking about the role that
computing plays in making all that happen.”
Gesturing to an iPad on the desk in front
of her, she continues: “Twenty years ago
it would have been inconceivable that I’d
have this sort of device in the research lab
to write my notes in. Nor would I have had
a PC in the lab powerful and flexible enough
with which to conduct my research – from
modelling, imaging and number-crunching
to speaking with co-researchers in other
parts of the country via Skype; sharing data
over broadband or reading research papers
via the internet.
(Continued on page 56)
54
Computational science
The Difference Engine
In 1823, the brilliant mathematician, Charles Babbage, secured £1,500 from the British
Government to build his Difference Engine, one of the earliest automatic calculators and a
landmark in the pre-history of the computer. Babbage’s design came over 100 years before
Alan Turing, the father of theoretical computer science, devised his hypothetical ‘automatic
machine’, in 1936, which contained the DNA for the world’s first digital computer.
Building costs for Babbage’s visionary machine spiralled to £17,000 (the price of two 19th
century battleships), tempers frayed and the Difference Engine was never completed; neither
was another Babbage design, for a programmable Analytical Engine, which featured all the
conceptual elements of the modern electronic computer.
In 1991 the London Science Museum unveiled the fruits of its six-year project to build a Babbage
Engine to original designs (pictured) to explore the viability of Babbage’s schemes. It worked.
In 2014, the UK Government announced it is investing £42 million in a world-class data science
research institute dedicated to Alan Turing – famous for his wartime code-breaking work but
also a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence.
The Turing Institute will collaborate with e-infrastructure and Big Data investments across the
UK research spectrum including the Open Data Institute, the Catapult Network and ARCHER,
the EPSRC-funded National High Performance Computing Facility (see page 61).
55
medical research without looking at the
relationship between genomic data and
population data.”
(Continued from page 54)
“Today, collectively, the e-infrastructure –
the computers, the networks, the wi-fi,
the software, the hardware and the
people – is an absolutely integral part of
the research methodology.”
Proving that it can keep up with the rapidly
changing face of digital electronics, the
myGrid consortium is now developing a
version of the interface and its associated
products to run on smartphones and
tablets, so researchers can access vital
data while on the road, or at conferences.
As well as supporting a series of worldclass supercomputers to tackle specific
challenges such as predicting weather
patterns or designing new materials,
EPSRC has driven forward a number
of major investments in long-term
computational research programmes on
behalf of all the UK Research Councils,
including, notably, the £140 million
e-Science Programme at the
beginning of the century (see
opposite page).
EPSRC also has a firm eye
on the future, publishing in
2014 a roadmap which aims
to understand and maximise
opportunities across the UK
e-infrastructure landscape – for
all researchers in engineering
and physical sciences, including
the commercial sector.
Among the success stories,
Lesley Thompson points to
myGrid, an initiative which,
she says, “underpins most
bioinformatics research in
the UK, and also illustrates
the value of the physical and
engineering sciences to all of
the health and life sciences.”
MyGrid’s widespread use across the
country clearly justifies its description as
part of the UK’s scientific e-infrastructure –
a resource hundreds of teams resort to – to
support their research.
Lesley
Thompson,
Director of
Science and
Engineering,
EPSRC
MyGrid was a product of the
e-Science initiative in the early
2000s to seize on the advantages of
grid computing and translate them into
the biological sciences (see page 57).
The myGrid interface supports a suite
of bioinformatic programmes which use
computer science, mathematics and
information theory to model and analyse
biological systems. MyGrid enabled
researchers to perform virtual experiments,
collaborate on and share workflows, and
access a wide range of databases.
The success of myGrid, according to
Lesley Thompson, underlines how far
approaches that were once the preserve
of physical sciences have diffused
throughout the community. She says: “It is
inconceivable now to think of doing social
science research without access to big
databases, and the comparative studies
that birth cohorts and so on give you; and
it’s also inconceivable that you would do
“Today, collectively,
the e-infrastructure
– the computers,
the networks, the
wi-fi, the software,
the hardware and
the people – is an
absolutely integral
part of the research
methodology.”
But Lesley Thompson explains that
software in general should also be seen
in a similarly holistic light. She says:
“Historically, we’d worry about buying the
biggest computer and not worry about the
software. Now that’s changed, and we’re
putting a lot of effort into software.”
That shift of focus has been encouraged by
successes like DAME, software developed
under the e-Science initiative in partnership
with Rolls-Royce to support the enginemaintenance programme it sells to airlines
(see page 58).
DAME searches in-flight engineperformance data, such as pressure and
temperature, for signatures of unusual
behaviour. The DAME system is trained
for long periods to learn combinations
of readouts that are normal, so that
atypical patterns readily stand out, alerting
engineers that a service may be needed.
As Lesley Thompson explains, the data
sets don’t have to be engine metrics: “You
can apply the same software technology
to looking at medical conditions, or to
analysing road traffic flows.”
Under the DAME project, which was
funded under the EPSRC-led e-Science
Core Programme, the team successfully
developed AURA, a breakthrough
technology that mimics the brain’s ability to
make sense of massive amounts of data.
Lesley Thompson says EPSRC has long
made a conscious effort to support this
side of computing, with specific
investments in software funding
that might otherwise be overlooked
during routine peer review.
Software sustainability is another
area EPSRC continues to invest
in – ensuring that what software
researchers write today remains
usable for years to come, despite
changes in computer architecture
or suppliers.
Susan Morrell, EPSRC’s Head
of Research Infrastructure, says:
“The support of people in the
e-infrastructure eco-system is as
important, if not more so, than
the capital investments we make.
People with transferable skills
make the computers productive
and useful, and so support for staff
and training will need to be central
to future investments.”
Computer scientist Professor
Simon McIntosh-Smith at the
University of Bristol describes EPSRC’s
focus on sustainability as “absolutely right,
it’s a brilliant programme”, adding that the
UK is a world leader “envied in the US” for
its forward-looking approach.
As Pioneer went to press, EPSRC
announced it is investing a further
£4 million in research to support the
development of software for computational
science and engineering.
Lesley Thompson insists support for
e-infrastructure will continue to be a core
part of EPSRC’s research and training
provision for the coming decades, as it has
for the past 20 years. The future, however,
is never certain in the fast-moving world of
computational research.
Lesley says: “There may come a time when
there’s a tipping point in technologies.
For example, when cloud computing
56
The UK Research Councils e-Science Programme
In 2002, EPSRC joined forces with the
six other UK Research Councils in the
three-phase £140 million e-Science
Programme, designed to position
British science at the forefront of
research and doctoral training into
computing technologies.
Loosely described, the programme
aimed to make new scientific discoveries
by analysing extraordinarily large
takes over, or when quantum computing
becomes a practical reality and
displaces all high-performance
computing infrastructure.
“Quantum would be a completely
disruptive technology – and none of the
software we have would work. That’s an
interesting problem.
“In the coming years we will be investing
£240 million in research into quantum
technologies, in line with the Government’s
Industrial Strategy, so while we will
continue to invest in and develop current
state-of-the-art new technology; there will
quantities of data accessed over the internet
using large-scale computational resources.
Programme, and also coordinated
related activities.
A key aim for the multidisciplinary
programme was to develop nextgeneration infrastructure in information and
communications technology (ICT). Among
key initiatives, the e-Science Programme
built a network of e-science centres
linked to regional Grid centres. EPSRC
was responsible for the e-Science Core
The programme resulted in over 140
stakeholder collaborations, 30 licenses
or patents, and 14 spin out companies.
Industry took up over 103 key results.
In addition, the programme attracted
£20 million in industrial collaboration
and £7.1 million in cash and in in-kind
industry transfers.
come a time when it, too, goes the way
of the dinosaurs. Perhaps earlier than we
might think.”
Professor Kilsby is upbeat about taking on
the challenge, despite its complexity. He
says: “The Somerset Levels cover a huge
area of land, and predicting where flooding
may occur is made more difficult by the
complicated network of drains and the
additional problem of coastal flooding from
the seaward side.
Meanwhile, UK researchers are kept busy
using today’s machines to process the
floods of data churned out by the latest
science. And the data of floods.
Having proven the value of their detailed
inundation models in Newcastle, London
and Melbourne, Professor Chris Kilsby’s
team at Newcastle are keen to turn
their attention to the flood plain that has
been most in the news this year, the
Somerset Levels.
“But we know our models can handle
it. Putting them to work on the
Somerset Levels would be a great way
to test the potential of expensive new
flood management measures before
they’re built.”
57
Nothing like a DAME
An example of how research into new
e-technology can have a direct impact
on industry is the Distributed Aircraft
Maintenance Environment (DAME) project
at the University of York.
Under project leader Professor Jim Austin,
DAME brought together four partner
universities with Rolls-Royce and Data
Systems and Solutions to develop cuttingedge e-technology to reduce engine
maintenance times and improve the interoperation of the maintenance team. The
technologies developed are now used on
Rolls-Royce Trent engines.
Under the DAME project, which was
funded under the EPSRC-led e-Science
Core Programme, the team successfully
developed AURA, a breakthrough
technology that mimics the brain’s ability to
make sense of massive amounts of data.
The team set up spin out company, Cybula
Ltd, to market its pattern recognition
software, and to further develop the
application of its work in areas such as
power generation, wind energy systems
and medicine. The company has an annual
turnover of £500,000, 13 staff (growing to
17 this year) and a pipeline of two years’
contracts with customers including
EDF Energy and Asda.
The project was co-funded by the
Department for Transport, which wanted
to see how the company’s FREEFLOW
technology could be used to improve
management of the UK road network.
FREEFLOW uses clever pattern
recognition to spot traffic jams without
requiring expensive teams of staff to
monitor feeds from roadside cameras.
One team member, Professor Lionel
Tarassenko, a pioneer of neural network
technologies, formed a spin out company,
Oxford BioSignals, to develop generic
technology for intelligent data acquisition
and advanced signal interpretation.
Applications of the technology include
innovative sleep diagnostics systems
and patient health monitoring software.
Industrial applications, which have been
adopted by companies such as RollsRoyce, span aero engines, railways,
pipelines and energy.
In 2001, Professor Tarassenko’s research
into jet engine health monitoring was
awarded the Rolls-Royce Chairman’s
Award for Technical Innovation. In 2008
he received the Sir Henry Royce High
Value Patent Award (see page 10).
In 2011, Professor Austin’s
Advanced Computer Architectures
(ACA) group at York University,
which developed AURA, won
Outstanding Engineering
Research Team of the Year in
the prestigious Times Higher
Education Awards.
Professor Austin says:
“We have benefited from a
consistent and talented team
over 10 years, supported
through EPSRC and Technology
Strategy Board grants.
“This support has allowed
us to build the deep expertise
needed to solve the hard problems
industry faces.”
58
Fighting the scourge of sleeping sickness –
with software
A multidisciplinary international research
team, including EPSRC-sponsored
University of Manchester scientists, have
found two genes that may prove of vital
importance to the lives and livelihoods of
millions of farmers in a tsetse fly-plagued
swathe of Africa the size of the USA.
The team’s research is aimed at finding the
biological keys to protection from a singlecelled trypanosome parasite that causes
both African sleeping sickness in people and
a wasting disease in cattle.
Sleeping sickness affects an estimated
300,000 Africans each year, eventually killing
more than half of them. Another devastating
blow comes in animal form, with sick cattle
costing farmers and herders huge losses
and opportunities. The annual economic
impact of ‘Nagana’, a common name in
Africa for the form of the disease that affects
cattle, has been estimated at over £3 billion.
The research brought together a range of
high-tech tools and field observations.
Professor Andy Brass and his team in
the School of Computer Science at the
University of Manchester needed to screen
a multitude of genes to identify variants
that give resistance to the deadly parasitic
disease. They managed to capture,
integrate and analyse the highly complex
set of biological data by using software
called Taverna, developed by Manchester
computer scientist Professor Carole Goble
CBE and her team working on the myGrid
project, which was funded under the
EPSRC-led UK e-Science Programme (see
page 57).
The automated data analysis enabled by
Taverna was essential. Professor Brass
says: “The Taverna workflows we developed
are capable of analysing huge amounts of
biological data quickly and accurately.
“Taverna’s infrastructure enabled us to
develop the systematic analysis pipelines we
required and to rapidly evolve the analysis
as new data came into the project. We’re
sharing these workflows so they can be
re-used by other researchers looking at
different disease models.
“Without Taverna, we would have been
looking where others had already looked.
But because we had the tools to look more
widely, we spotted things that had been
missed. That’s pretty exciting.”
As a result, the team identified two key
genes, and breeding trials have started with
one of these to see if new lines of resistant
cattle can be raised.
Professor Brass says: “This breakthrough
demonstrates the real-life benefits of
computer science and how a problem
costing many lives can be tackled using
pioneering systems.”
59
PIONEER 12 Summer
Spring 2014
2014
60
High and mighty
From predicting global weather patterns to developing new drug therapies
to modelling aircraft aerodynamics, supercomputers are the thoroughbreds
of computational science, used to crack some of the most challenging
research problems. Roland Pease explains EPSRC’s role at the heart of
UK high performance computing since 1994.
On June 20 1994, Ian Lang,
the then Secretary of State
for Scotland, turned on the
most powerful supercomputer
in Europe. The brand new
Cray T3D, housed at the
Edinburgh Parallel Computer
Centre (EPCC) boasted
256 processors and could
do 40 billion calculations a
second, placing it 16th in the top
500 global rankings.
Nothing like it had been seen in
the UK before. The newspapers
had a field day, predicting the new
£8 million computer offered scientists
the chance to unlock some of the
universe’s most intractable problems.
Today the Cray T3D would be outclassed
by an average notebook computer – that
is what exponential improvement brings
over two decades.
But at the time the T3D, managed on
behalf of the UK Research Councils by
EPSRC, marked a step change in scientific
computing in the UK, and in the use of
supercomputers, which are considered
vital to solve research challenges involving
huge amounts of data. For example, they
are used to predict the behaviour of each of
the billions of atoms present in a potential
cancer drug, to determine its effectiveness.
Other uses include carrying out complex
calculations in diverse areas such as
simulating the Earth’s climate, calculating
the airflow around aircraft, and designing
novel materials.
Professor Arthur Trew, head of the EPCC,
says: “Traditionally, progress in science has
been made through theory and experiment,
but an increasing range of problems now
require to be simulated computationally.
“The thrill in 1994 was introducing a
radically different technology to hundreds of
researchers. T3D brought high performance
parallel computing to the masses.”
Setting the standard
T3D set a standard for national high-end
computing which has been sustained
largely by EPSRC, with contributions
from the Natural Environment Research
Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research Council
(BBSRC) on behalf of all UK research
councils, by a series of increasingly powerful
machines. The latest of which, ARCHER,
was inaugurated, also in Edinburgh, in
March 2014.
With 76,000 high-speed processor cores
(compared to the two cores of a standard
desktop PC), and 300 times T3D’s capacity,
ARCHER, which is owned and managed by
EPSRC, can crunch through a million billion
calculations a second, 40,000 times faster
than its venerable predecessor.
With the extra power, researchers can be
more ambitious than ever.
Simon McIntosh-Smith of Bristol University,
one of the team that helped procure
ARCHER, got an early chance to put the
mammoth machine through its paces,
simulating the structure of a monstrous
molecular nanocage that chemists at the
university recently synthesised and hope
to use in drug delivery as well as to mimic
cellular chemistry.
Professor McIntosh-Smith says: “The cage
contains 40 million atoms, yet using just a
part of ARCHER’s capacity we were able
to show how all those atoms moved and
interacted. It’s mind blowing stuff. Now
that ARCHER is fully operational, we’re
planning to see how pores in the cage flex,
and how other molecules can move in and
out, which is what you’d need in a drug
delivery system.”
Theoretical chemists have long depended
on the fastest computers to unravel the
complexities of molecular behaviour, and
have been hungry for each step forwards
in performance. In the 1990s, quantum
calculations could handle hundreds of
atoms, now with new approaches they
can do tens of thousands, says Professor
Mike Payne of the University of Cambridge,
whose CASTEP programme is a mainstay of
the field.
Used to discover improvements in catalysts,
batteries, metallurgy, semiconductors
and many other commercially
significant materials, CASTEP illustrates
supercomputing’s role as a ‘third pillar of
science’ alongside theory and experiment,
a phrase coined by Nobel laureate
Kenneth Wilson.
“Programmes like CASTEP complement
experiment,” says Mike Payne. “Whenever
an experiment is ambiguous about, say, the
structure of a pharmaceutical compound,
you do the calculations to sort out
the alternatives.”
Since its launch, CASTEP has achieved
worldwide cumulative sales of US$30 million.
(Continued on page 62)
61
Supercomputers, like Formula One cars, require specialised expertise to use, and were
created to solve specialised challenges involving huge amounts of data. You wouldn’t drive a
McLaren F1 car to the shops
(Continued from page 61)
Not that every calculation requires the best
machine in the land. The improvement in
computer performance, tracked by the wellknown Moore’s law, means that calculations
that were unimaginable 20 years ago,
possible on a top-10 machine a decade
ago, can now be achieved on the kind of
computer a large university can invest in.
Simon McIntosh-Smith says: “Access to
high performance computing for research
is pyramid-shaped, which EPSRC has
helped to form. It begins with the research
team’s departmental provision within its
university. The next tier is access to the
EPSRC-supported network of regional high
performance computers, such as the N8
facility in the north of England. Next comes
the national facility, ARCHER, and finally
you can request use of the best machines in
Europe through PRACE, the Partnership for
Advanced Computing in Europe. Everything
is interconnected.”
Dr Lesley Thompson, EPSRC’s Director
for Science and Engineering, says: “The
really important thing about connected
e-infrastructure is that the right computers
can talk to the right people; that they can
access the right software, and they’re also
connected with the right class of computer.
“It’s worth bearing in mind that
supercomputers, like Formula One cars,
require specialised expertise to use, and
were created to solve specialised challenges
involving huge amounts of data. You
wouldn’t drive an F1 car to the shops.”
The provision isn’t just for academics. Even
with T3D in 1994, industry contributed
£1 million towards expanding and improving
the hardware and to supporting partnerships
with university teams.
Today, while many large industrial sponsors
benefit from the UK’s national computing
facilities through joint research projects,
Lesley Thompson wants to see more SMEs
and start-ups making use of them too –
something she is working on as a member
of the UK E-infrastructure Leadership
Council (ELC), jointly chaired by Science
Minister David Willetts.
Comprising leading academics, industrialists
and representatives of bodies such as the
Met Office, the ELC advises government
on all aspects of e-infrastructure including
networks, data stores, computers, software
and skills.
In 2012, the ELC published its Strategic
Vision for UK e-infrastructure. Among
‘next steps’ arising from the report, the
ELC committed to developing a detailed
plan for private sector engagement in
the e-infrastructure, working with the
Technology Strategy Board. This will include
detailed talks with large corporations, SMEs
and trading partners.
Lesley says: “If you’ve never used high
performance computing or have never
accessed academics who can help you with
your software problems, how do you find
out who’s got the door you can open? So
the idea behind the report, which EPSRC is
supporting, is to establish a kind of dating
agency to connect people to the right
resource as well as to the right people, who
can help connect them to the infrastructure.”
62
20 years of high performance computing
Some of the most challenging research
problems can only be tackled using the
most powerful computer systems available.
For example:
•
Designing life-saving drugs
•
Predicting weather patterns
•
Simulating global ocean currents
•
Predicting the spread of epidemics
•
Modelling how air flows off aircraft and
other vehicles
•
Studying how the smallest
particles interact
•
Design of materials and processes for
use across industry
•
Exploring fundamental questions about
the forces of nature, such as through
creating large-scale simulations of
galaxy formation and evolution
Because problems such as these span
the spectrum of research, in the 1990s a
coordinated National High Performance
Computing Programme was set up on
behalf of all the UK Research Councils
and managed by EPSRC, which has since
played a pivotal role in the nation-wide
provision of high performance computing.
Highlights include:
1994
In 1994, EPSRC selected the University
of Edinburgh to host Europe’s fastest
supercomputer, the Cray T3D, capable of 40
billion arithmetical operations per second,
and harnessing 256 processors. The system
was accessed across the UK`s high-speed
academic network. This was followed by a
Cray T3E system, which ran until 2001.
2002
The UK National Supercomputing Service
for academic research was established. The
service was supported by the UK Research
Councils and run by the HPCx consortium,
comprising the Universities of Edinburgh
and Manchester and the Research
Councils’ Daresbury Laboratory. HPCx was
the flagship UK academic supercomputer
from 2002 to 2007.
2008
A second national supercomputing service,
HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale
Resource), was installed at the University of
Edinburgh. Managed by EPSRC on behalf
of contributing UK Research Councils, the
£113 million machine was one of the most
advanced supercomputers in the UK.
Capable of performing over 114,000
calculations a second for every man,
woman and child on Earth, HECToR
occupied an area of two tennis courts and
had a memory of 90 Terabytes, equivalent
to over 180,000 iPhones. To match
HECToR’s one Petabyte of disk space for
storing data, an iPhone would have to hold
200 million tracks, and it would take until the
year 3155 to listen to each track just once.
HECToR was made available to UK
academics across Britain who remotely
accessed the system.
Among notable achievements made
possible by HECToR, scientists
developed new gels which can be tuned
for applications such as personal care,
foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals; helicopter
rotor wake simulations essential for
designing new aircraft; and one of the
largest-ever models of the North Western
European Continental Shelf.
2014
In 2014, HECToR was replaced by ARCHER
(Academic Research Computing High End
Resource) – over three times more powerful
than HECToR but also one of the greenest
supercomputers ever built, using a stateof-the-art water-cooled housing enabling
ground-breaking performance and scalability
while maximising energy efficiency.
Combined with the newly-installed UK
Research Data Facility on the Edinburgh
campus, ARCHER provides a service unique
in the UK.
Harnessing the might of some of the world’s
most powerful supercomputers with one
of the UK’s largest data-store and analysis
centres, the facility will provide important
support for Big Data applications.
In addition, the UK Research Data Facility,
although associated with ARCHER, will
serve both ARCHER users and any users of
high performance computers, regardless of
Research Council remit.
Support for ARCHER (and previously
HECToR) users is also provided by a
dedicated team. Training courses are
available for all levels of user – from
basic introductions to high performance
computing, to advanced techniques and
application tuning. Training courses are
free to UK academics whose work is
covered by the remit of the participating
Research Councils, EPSRC, and the Natural
Environment Research Council (NERC).
Others may attend on payment of a
course fee.
“The thrill in 1994 was introducing a radically different technology to
hundreds of researchers. The Cray T3D brought high performance
parallel computing to the masses.”
Professor Arthur Trew (pictured), head of the Edinburgh Parallel Computer Centre at Edinburgh University,
which has hosted EPSRC-supported supercomputers for over 20 years. In 1994, the Cray T3D
supercomputer boasted 256 processors and could perform 40 billion calculations a second, placing it 16th
in the top 500 global rankings. Today it would be outgunned by an average notebook computer.
63
Numbers game
From predicting the effects of new drug types to unravelling the secrets of
plastic, high performance computers are vital across the research spectrum
– as demonstrated in three very different R&D projects.
The relationship between the chemistry
of large polymer molecules and the
properties of the plastics they make has
been hard to untangle because of the sheer
complexity of their molecular structure and
their interactions.
The software, developed by Professor
Tom McLeish of Durham University and
colleagues, had “cut the Gordian knot”
according to one expert commentator
when key results were published in Science
in 2011, meaning the team had solved a
seemingly impossible problem.
Virtual plastics
Designer plastics that can be conceived,
synthesised and tested entirely on a
computer have been made possible thanks
to 20 years of EPSRC support.
“Polymers are nature’s chosen technology,”
Professor McLeish said in an interview in
Pioneer in 2010. “All biomolecules consist
of long chains. Our work will help mankind
match that approach.”
has generated a series of scientific and
computational tools which, an impact
study showed, have allowed the plastics
industries in the UK and Europe to design
new materials based on an understanding
of their fundamental molecular structure,
rather than through extensive observation
and experimentation.
One industrial partner reported: “These tools
give us a competitive edge that is essential
in today’s environment.”
The long-term aim, says Professor McLeish,
is to “develop new plastics for almost every
conceivable manufacturing application.”
The £8 million EPSRC-funded Microscale
Polymer Processing (MuPP) project
Improved chemical-resistant films and
coatings, revolutionary nano-composites
whose lightness makes them ideal for use
in aircraft engines, and harder-wearing solar
panels, are just some of the possibilities the
MuPP team foresees.
Professor Mulholland says: “An important
aim in developing a safe, effective drug is
understanding how it will be broken down in
the body.
The research was conducted under the
Collaborative Computational Project for
Biomolecular Simulation (CCPBioSim),
funded by EPSRC.
“This process would be made cheaper,
quicker and safer if we could predict reliably
how a candidate drug reacts in the body –
for example, by using computers.
CCPBioSim is developing a software suite
and scripts for performing multi-scale
simulations using commonly available third
party software and programs from the
CCPBioSim community.
Pharma on a chip
A virtual test tube developed by
computational chemists at the University
of Bristol, working with pharmaceutical
company Pfizer and the biomedical
discovery firm Vernalis, could help reduce
the risk of side effects with future drugs.
Professor Adrian Mulholland, who holds
an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, and
colleagues have developed a computational
model to show in atomic detail how the antiinflammatory drugs ibuprofen, diclofenac
and the blood-thinning agent warfarin are
broken down by a group of enzymes called
cytochrome P450s, which play an important
part in the metabolism of drugs.
Cytochrome P450 comes in many forms,
and each can potentially interact with any
particular biomolecule in many ways, so
understanding in detail whether potentially
harmful metabolites will be formed is an
important aspect of understanding a drug’s
toxicity profile.
“This study uses molecular modelling
methods which are able to describe
chemical reactions in large and complex
enzymes such as cytochrome P450s.
Our results agree well with experiments,
and point to how modelling of this sort
can help in developing predictions of
drug metabolism.”
Their hope is the approach will speed future
drug development by screening out poor
candidates at an early stage.
The research was co-funded by EPSRC and
the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council (BBSRC).
64
Blood and Thrust
Supercomputer calculations performed
by researchers at Swansea University’s
Department of Aerodynamics were vital to
the design of BLOODHOUND SSC – the
supersonic car at the heart of an EPSRCsupported World Land Speed Record
attempt led by Richard Noble.
Professors Hassan and Morgan are
also providing their expertise to the
BLOODHOUND SSC project, to help
ensure a successful aerodynamic
design (see inset). Wing Commander
Andy Green will pilot the vehicle.
The supersonic car is due to make its first
attempt to break the sound barrier next year
in South Africa, and to reach 1,000 mph
in 2016.
To reach those speeds safely, every detail
of the machine’s surfaces has had to be
examined. That is where the computational
simulations of Dr Ben Evans, Dr Chris Rose
and colleagues have proved so important.
Ben Evans says: “Wind tunnels have
massive limitations. BLOODHOUND SSC
is a car, so it’s rolling on the ground and
there are no wind tunnels where you can
simulate a rolling ground with a car travelling
faster than Mach 1, faster than the speed of
sound. Our job is to make sure the vehicle
stays on the ground, and that the drag is as
low as possible.”
With EPSRC funding, the team ran
aerodynamic simulations over five years
which resulted in significant changes to
the vehicle’s front wheel configuration, the
shape of the nose, the jet engine intake
shaping, rear wheel fairings and wing shape
and size. Controlling the rear of the car
turned out to be more of a problem than
keeping the nose down.
The current World Land Speed Record is
held by RAF pilot Andy
Green, driving Thrust SSC,
which broke the sound
barrier in 1997. The Thrust SSC project
was led by Richard Noble, and EPSRCsupported academics, Professors Nigel
Weatherill, Ken Morgan and Dr Oubay
Hassan, at Swansea
University played a pivotal
role in the vehicle’s
computational modelling
(see page 20).
Picture courtesy Siemens NX
The design is now frozen, and construction
close to completion, but the researchers
say their work is not finished. They are
continuing to explore the effects, for
example, of the supersonic shock wave
from the car on the sandy surface it will be
driving over.
65
Sticky science
Words: Gemma Hulkes
Whether scooting up walls, darting
across ceilings, or just hanging around
in a perpendicular kind of way, geckos
have superhero qualities Spiderman can
only dream of. In 2003, the lithesome
lizards were the inspiration behind a
super sticky ‘gecko tape’, a synthetic
material created by EPSRC-sponsored
researchers at the University of
Manchester, Professor André Geim and
Dr Konstantin Novoselov.
Professor Geim, a noted innovator, had
a long-standing practice of gathering
his research team for what he labelled
‘Friday night experiments’ – where they
would try unusual things. On one of
these evenings the team looked at how
to replicate the adhesion found on a
gecko’s foot.
Geckos have millions of tiny keratin
hairs on the surface of their feet which
they use to climb with; the hairs act
together to create formidable adhesion.
Geim’s group mimicked this by creating
a synthetic hair-covered film. Their gecko
tape clung so well to a surface, the team
postulated that a human so-equipped
could hang by one hand from a ceiling,
just like a gecko.
Typical of their restless spirits, however,
Geim and Novoselov moved on to
new research. Another Friday night
experiment one year later led to the
isolation of wonder material graphene,
in 2004.
The secret to ‘discovering’ this natural
marvel? Adhesive tape, once again,
which they used to peel away layers of
graphite until they arrived at a single
layer of carbon, one atom thick. What
was left, graphene, has astonishing
properties and seemingly unlimited
potential applications – from superfast computer chips and broadband
to flexible touch screens and a new
generation of water purification devices.
Six years later, Geim and Novoselov
received the Nobel Prize in
Physics for their work on graphene,
which you can read more about in
Pioneer 13, published this autumn.
This new adhesive material generated
excitement in a variety of science
and engineering fields, and led to
considerable exposure in the popular
media, which speculated on the gecko
tape’s potential applications – from
new types of car tyre to robots that can
climb walls.
PIONEER
0912
Winter
20132014
PIONEER
Summer
66
About EPSRC
Total value of EPSRC’s
research portfolio:
£2,400,000,000
Total number of doctoral students
supported since 1994:
60,000
Total research projects
invested in since 1994:
28,550
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK’s
main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences.
EPSRC invests around £800 million a year in research and postgraduate
training to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change.
The areas covered range from information technology to structural
engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms
the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for
everyone’s health, lifestyle and culture.
EPSRC is committed to excellence and impact, supporting a research base
and skills portfolio that meets key challenges of the 21st century, such as
supporting an ageing population and meeting the need for sustainable energy.
To this end, EPSRC has pioneered ways to stimulate research and encourage
multidisciplinary collaboration.
Research supported by EPSRC is judged by peer review to be of the highest
quality and straddles the boundaries of scientific disciplines – ensuring there is
a balance between discovery-led research and challenge-led research across
its portfolio.
EPSRC works with around 2,000 companies and partner organisations.
Around 40 per cent of supported research is collaborative with industry. By
ensuring the early engagement between industry and the research base, the
fruits of EPSRC’s investments can be maximised, helping to keep the UK at
the forefront of global research and innovation.
www.epsrc.ac.uk
Follow us on: www.twitter.co.uk/EPSRC
You can find out more about EPSRC and how you can work with us by visiting our website:
Pioneer is made by: as well as keeping up to date byEPSRC
works alongside
other Research
Councils
www.epsrc.ac.uk
following
us on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/
which have responsibility in other research areas.
epsrc
Editor: Mark Mallett (mark.mallett@epsrc.ac.uk)
The Research Councils work collectively on issues of
Design: Rachael Brown (rachael.brown@epsrc.ac.uk)
common concern via Research Councils UK.
Contributors: Phil Davies; Gemma Hulkes; Grace
To provide feedback on this magazine, and to
subscribe to print and/or electronic versions of
Pioneer, please e-mail pioneer@epsrc.ac.uk
Palmer; Roland Pease; Matt Shinn; Jack Snape
Pioneer@epsrc.ac.uk
Contact: 01793 444305/442804
Pictures courtesy of thinkstock.com unless
otherwise stated.
Printed by RCUK’s in-house service provider
67
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Leading
edge
09
10
UK infrastructure
Engineering
Engineering and
and Physical
Physical Sciences
Sciences Research
Research Council
Council
the next 50 years
Spotlight on the
research leaders
of tomorrow
The pulling power of the PhD
Bug magnets
Alf Adams, godfather of the internet
Smartphones in space
The lensless microscope
Peer review – why it works
Science minister on engineering the future
The train that runs on hydrogen
For back issues or to subscribe to Pioneer for free, email: pioneer@epsrc.ac.uk
www.epsrc.ac.uk

Pioneer edition 12 - Issued June 2014

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