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Research and Business Engagement

Senate report – major awards and achievements

11 Mar 2026

Congratulations to our colleagues for the recent major achievements and major funding, reported in the latest Senate report (February 2026).

Research Applications and Awards

A comparison of the first two quarters of 2025/26 activity against prior year shows application volume and value continuing to grow.

Award volume for the first two quarters of 2025/26 is below the prior year but the award values have improved on prior year.

As reported in an open letter from the UKRI CEO, the re-alignment of UKRI budgets has led to a delay in some funding announcements, and this combined with the reported savings required by STFC are likely to impact award values for the remainder of the year.​

Major Achievements and Awards

Colleagues who received Research Funding Awards included: 

  • Dr Pauline Whelan (School of Health Sciences) has been awarded £4.5m from the Mental Health Goals programme for a project to develop digital innovation in mental health.
  • Professor Yasser Mahmoudi Larimi (School of Engineering) is leading a research collaboration which has been awarded a £3m EPSRC Critical Mass programme grant to transform long-duration energy storage.
  • Dr John Grainger (School of Biological Sciences) is leading a £5m Wellcome Trust Discovery Award for a research programme on macrophage function in type 2 immune responses.
  • Professor Todd Hartman (School of Social Sciences) is part of an interdisciplinary team led by King’s College London who have been awarded a £2.5m Wellcome Trust Discovery Award for a research programme on mental health and administrative justice.
  • Two new ERC awards have been secured: Professor Radha Boya (School of Natural Sciences) has secured an ERC Consolidator Grant for ‘Ångström-Scale channels for Sensing, Ionic devices, and Chemistry in confinement and Dr Phil Bull (School of Natural Sciences) has secured an ERC Consolidator Grant for ‘New physics from a precision concordance model of the radio sky’.
  • Professor Guyda Armstrong (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures) and Professor Caroline Jay (School of Engineering), in partnership with a team at the University of Oxford, have been awarded funding from Schmidt Sciences to explore Envisioning Print with AI & Computer Vision.

Elected Fellows

Fellowships

  • Dr Liangping Ding (Alliance Manchester Business School) and Dr Chelsea Sawyer (School of Health Sciences) have each secured a UKRI/DSIT UK Metascience Unit fellowship to explore the impact of AI on science.
  • In addition to the three colleagues who secured a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, which was reported in the last Senate update, four more colleagues have secured Royal Society early career fellowships: Dr Yu-dai Tsai (School of Natural Sciences) has been awarded a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship and Dr Peng-Bo Jin, Dr. Wenhai Lei and Dr. Nikolai Prochorov (all School of Natural Sciences) have each been awarded a Newton International Fellowship.

Recognition, Awards and Prizes

Ten colleagues have been recognised in the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers rankings. Congratulations to Professor Thomas Anthopoulos (School of Engineering); Professor Adisa Azapagic (School of Engineering); Professor Zhiguo Ding (School of Engineering); Professor Frank W. Geels (Alliance Manchester Business School); Professor Andre Geim (School of Natural Sciences); Professor Irina Grigorieva (School of Natural Sciences); Professor Evangelos Kontopantelis (School of Health Sciences); Professor Pamela Qualter (School of Environment, Education and Development); Professor Dave Singh (School of Biological Sciences) and Professor Juan W. Valle (School of Medical Sciences).