Skip to navigation | Skip to main content | Skip to footer
Menu
Search the Staffnet siteSearch StaffNet

Research and Business Engagement

Senate report – major achievements and awards 

10 Jul 2024

Congratulations to our colleagues for the recent major achievements and major funding, reported in the latest Senate report (June 2024) 

Major achievements and awards secured by the University since the last Senate report include:  

Funding

The University has been awarded seven highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) advanced grants:   

  • Professor Thomas Anthopoulos (School of Engineering) to investigate scalable nanomanufacturing paradigms for emerging electronics.   
  • Professor Michael Brockhurst (School of Biological Sciences) to investigate how genomic complexity shapes long-term bacterial evolution and adaptation.  
  • Professor Kieran Flanagan (School of Natural Sciences) to develop a table-top nuclear facility to produce cold actinide molecules that will enable novel searches for new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics.  
  • Professor Sir Andre Geim (School of Natural Sciences) to explore 2D materials and their van der Waals assemblies.  
  • Professor David Leigh (School of Natural Sciences) to lead work into chemically fueled molecular ratchets.   
  • Professor Jason Micklefield (School of Natural Sciences) to develop enzymatic methods for peptide synthesis.   
  • Professor Yvonne Peters (School of Natural Sciences) to explore Top and Higgs Couplings and extended Higgs Sectors with rare multi-Top multi-Higgs Events. 

The University has also received funding for:  

  • Professor Perdita Barran (School of Natural Sciences) and Dr Rosalind Le Feuvre (Manchester Institute of Biotechnology) are part of a consortium which was awarded £49.35m from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund to establish C-MASS UK – a national hub-and-spoke infrastructure that will integrate and advance the UK’s capability in mass spectrometry.  
  • Professor Matt Sutton and Professor Roger Webb (both School of Health Sciences) are part of a new national research network, Populations Health Improvement UK (PHI-UK), which has received £7m from UKRI.  
  • Professor Olutayo Adesina and Dr Steven Pierce (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) have been awarded £879,117 from The British Academy Global Professorships Programme for ‘The Town and Gown Interface: Ibadan and the Decolonisation of Social Knowledge in the 20th Century.’   
  • Professor Mark Elliot (School of Social Sciences) and Professor Richard Allmendinger (Alliance Manchester Business School) have been awarded £154,686 from the ESRC for a research grant on ‘Enhancing Data Accessibility and Security through Innovative Data Synthesis (EDASIDA)’. 

UKRI – BBSRC  

  • PI Professor Jonathan Lloyd (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Jennifer Cavet (School of Biological Sciences), Dr Victoria Coker, Prof Sarah Haigh, Prof Sam Hay, Prof Katherine Morris, Dr Louise Natrajan (all School of Natural Sciences), Engineering Biology Hub for environmental processing of metals; from contaminated land to industrial biotechnology in a circular economy, £2,877,233.  
  • PI Professor Clair Baldock (School of Biological Sciences) and Co-I Professor Martin Humphries (School of Biological Sciences) Structure of integrin-fibrillin complexes that underpin tissue mechanosensing, £638,703.

UKRI – EPSRC   

  • PI Professor Caroline Jay (School of Engineering), SSI Phase4: The UK Software Sustainability Institute, £1,834,808.  
  • PI Professor Anthony Green (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Nick Turner and Dr Sarah Lovelock (both School of Natural Sciences), International Centre for Enzyme Design with Nick Turner and Sarah Lovelock, £1,275,533.  
  • PI Professor Tony Horner (School of Natural Sciences), National Technical Platform for Materials Innovation, £1,114,373.  
  • PI Dr Derren Heyes (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Matthew Cliff, Dr Mark Dunstan, Dr Katherine Hollywood, Dr Linus Johannissen, Dr Colin Levy (all School of Natural Sciences), Development of a national facility and technical training hub for Biomolecule Engineering, £1,330,537.  
  • PI Professor Roman Gorbachev (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Vladimir Falko, Professor Sir Andre Geim, Professors Sarah Haigh, Robert Howard, Kunal Lulla Ramrakhiyani (all School of Natural Sciences), Precision Dry Etching of 2D Materials, £885,518.  

UKRI – MRC  

  • PI Dr Neil Roberts (School of Biological Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Adrian Woolf (School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Ruth Williams (School of Medical Sciences), Treating the autonomic neural pathobiology of a devastating early onset genetic urinary bladder disease, £1,000,530. 

UKRI – NERC  

  • PI Professor Richard Bardgett (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-I Professor David Johnson (School of Natural Sciences), Shrub-driven transformation of the alpine soil carbon cycle, £728,569. 

UKRI – STFC  

  • PI Professor Gary Fuller (School of Natural Sciences) UK ALMA Regional Centre Node Support renewal 2024-2027, £1,403,369.  

Horizon Europe  

  • PI Professor Ken Muir (School of Health Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Artitaya Lophatananon and Dr Brian McMillan (both School of Health Sciences), COMFORTAGE – Prediction, Monitoring and Personalized Recommendations for Prevention and Relief of Dementia and Frailty, £1,530,513.

Charities  

  • PI Professor Alexander Heazell (School of Medical Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Paul Brownbill, Dr Kate Duhig, Dr Lucy Higgins, Professor Edward Johnstone (all School of Medical Sciences), Dr Igor Chernyavsky, Professor Simon Cotter, Professor Oliver Jensen (all School of Natural Sciences), Dr Carl Whitfield (School of Biological Studies), Multi-modal studies to understand pregnancy and prevent stillbirth, Wellcome Leap Inc, £1,336,419.   
  • PI Dr Matthew Sinton (School of Medical Sciences), Fat on the frontline: Immune control of energy stores during infection, Wellcome Early Career Award, £758,878.  
  • PI Professor Kimme Hyrich (School of Biological Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Rebecca Lee, Prof John Mcbeth (both School of Biological Sciences), Professor Sarah Peters (School of Health Sciences), The STAR study: Specifying and Transforming our Approaches to managing recurrent chronic musculoskeletal pain in children and young people, Versus Arthritis Career Development Fellowship, £565,270.   
  • PI Dr Charles Insley (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), Making the March: Contesting Lands in the Early Medieval Frontier, Leverhulme Trust/Cardiff University, £105,837. 

Industry  

  • PI Professor Phil Withers (School of Natural Sciences), Centre for Innovation in Advanced Materials, Tata Steel, £1,132,146 (operational budget).  
  • PI Professor Tariq Aslam (School of Health Sciences), A multi-centre, randomised, active controlled clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy & safety of OTL-203 in subjects with MPS-IH compared to standard of care with allo-HSCT, Orchard Therapeutics (Europe) Limited, £593,208.  
  • PI Arthur Garforth (School of Engineering) and Co-I Professor Chris Hardacre (School of Engineering), Polymer Recycling LyondellBasell, Basell Poliolefine Italia S.r.l, £548,288.  

Fellowships and Elected Fellows

  • Dr Bruno Vilhena Adorno (School of Engineering) has been awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship.  
  • Dr Joanne Laycock (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) and Dr Lorenzo Ferrarini Joanne Laycock (School of Social Sciences) have each been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.  
  • Professor Michael Garrett (School of Natural Sciences) has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.  
  • Professor Andrew Miles (School of Social Sciences) will host Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Professor Michele Lamont, Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University.  
  • Professor Bill Newman (School of Biological Sciences) is one of 58 exceptional biomedical and health scientists to be elected as a Fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences.  
  • Professor Dame Robina Shah (School of Medical Sciences) is among six new honorary fellows announced recently by the Royal Society of Medicine. 

Awards and Recognition

  • Professor Michael Shaver (School of Natural Sciences) has been awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Sustainable Automotive Polymers.