Friday, 13 September 2024
Three Nottingham academics have been awarded Research Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Engineering for projects looking at satellite communications, processes to speed up drug design and failure of cancer treatments.
The Research Fellowships programme supports outstanding early-career researchers to become future research leaders in engineering. The fellowships are designed to advance excellence in engineering by providing funding for five years to allow awardees the freedom to concentrate on basic research in any field of engineering. Amounts awarded are up to £625,000 over five years.
The Academy is committed to improving diversity in the talent pipeline and takes positive action to widen the diversity of applicants and awardees within its research grant schemes. The latest cohort of Research Fellowships includes seven women and six individuals who have been through the Academy’s Access Mentoring programme that offers pre-application support to applicants from underrepresented groups in engineering.
On the subject of the diversity and breadth of the successful candidates Professor Jonathan Cooper FREng FRSE, Chair of the Academy’s Research Fellowships steering group, said: “The wide range of successful individuals this year bodes well for the future of Engineering in the UK. We need diversity across our profession and we hope that positive actions, such as the Academy’s Access Mentoring programme, are now making a substantial difference both to the quality and breadth of our Research Fellowship candidates, year-on-year.
Across the whole Academy we have now committed to keeping our grant application and selection processes under review so that we can attract excellent applicants, drawn from across from all diverse groups, to all of our research programmes. We are especially keen to attract applicants from those that are persistently underrepresented within UK engineering.”
The academics, from the University of Nottingham's Faculty of Engineering have secured £625,000 for each of their projects:
- Peter Christopher, Assistant Professor at Nottingham’s Geospatial Institute
- Salvatore La Cavera, Nottingham Research Fellow in the Optics and Photonics Research Group
- Connor Taylor, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Satellite lasers for operation in remote environments
Peter Christopher will focus on developing technologies for satellite-ground laser communications (SGLCs) to enable ultra-fast internet connections in locations including disaster zones, remote installations, ships, aircraft and future deep-space missions to the moon and beyond.
Autonomous evolution of molecular fragments to drug candidates
Drug molecules are designed on a computer, made and purified in the lab and tested against a target protein to achieve higher potency drug-like molecules. These experiments then influence the next iteration of drug design using machine learning models, where the molecules are further refined. This enables a fully automated DMTA cycle for drug discovery, significantly decreasing the time and cost to identify drugs. Connor Taylor aims to make further advancements on automating this process, enabling new disease targets to be studied that are currently economically unfeasible such as neglected rare and tropical diseases.
Listening for the sound of cancer with a hair-thin probe
Salvatore La Cavera will research technologies that measure the stiffness of a material's fundamental building blocks on microscopic and nanoscopic length scales. Stiffness at these extremely small scales plays a major role in the health and failure of a wide range of materials. This research aims to solve this challenge using hair-thin fibre optic probes to help clinicians detect the micro-stiffness signatures of early cancer at the point of care, in a way that is non-invasive to the patient.
More information on the fellowships is available here.
Story credits
More information is available from Faith Pring in the Press Office on faith.pring@nottingham.ac.uk
Faith Pring - Media Relations Manager
Email: faith.pring@nottingham.ac.uk
Phone: 0115 748 4411
Location: University of Nottingham, University Park
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 32 in Europe and 16th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings: Europe 2024, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
Nottingham was crowned Sports University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024 – the third time it has been given the honour since 2018 – and by the Daily Mail University Guide 2024.
The university is among the best universities in the UK for the strength of our research, positioned seventh for research power in the UK according to REF 2021. The birthplace of discoveries such as MRI and ibuprofen, our innovations transform lives and tackle global problems such as sustainable food supplies, ending modern slavery, developing greener transport, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The university is a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally - and our graduates are the second most targeted by the UK's top employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2022 report by High Fliers Research.
We lead the Universities for Nottingham initiative, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, a pioneering collaboration between the city’s two world-class institutions to improve levels of prosperity, opportunity, sustainability, health and wellbeing for residents in the city and region we are proud to call home.
More news…