Grant winners – 23 February 2017

National Institutes for Health Research

Health Services and Delivery Research grants

• Award winner: Alicia O’Cathain
• Institution: University of Sheffield
• Value: £708,287

Drivers of Demand for Emergency and Urgent CarE (DEUCE)

• Award winner: Matthew Maddocks
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £128,612

An evidence synthesis of holistic services for refractory breathlessness in advanced malignant and non-malignant disease

• Award winner: Karen Spilsbury
• Institution: University of Leeds
• Value: £922,217

Relationship between care home staffing and quality of care: a mixed methods approach

Public Health Research grant

• Award winner: Niamh Fitzgerald
• Institution: University of Stirling
• Value: £837,440

EXILENS: Exploring the Impact of alcohol Licensing in England and Scotland: a mixed-method, natural experiment evaluation of public health engagement in alcohol premises licensing and impact on alcohol-related harms

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Research grants 

• Award winner: Gareth Wyn Jones
• Institution: University of Manchester
• Value: £95,564

Deformed shape optimisation for elastic bodies

• Award winner: Matthew Philip Jones
• Institution: Durham University
• Value: £804,634

 Solid state superatoms

• Award winner: Eric Keaveny
• Institution: Imperial College London
• Value: £694,462

 Modelling sperm-mucus interactions across scales

• Award winner: Christopher MacMinn
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £101,050

Controlling viscous fingering with fluid-structure interactions

Science and Technology Facilities Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Bjoern Seitz
• Institution: University of Glasgow
• Value: £28,403

Directional assessment of radiation sources

• Award winner: Helen Mason
• Institution: University of Cambridge
• Value: £248,560

Understanding the dynamical solar atmosphere

• Award winner: Eugene Lim
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £56,605

Testing the foundations of cosmology

In detail

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

Research grant

Award winner: Michael Bok

Institution: University of Bristol

Value: £304,823

Looking with gills: the evolution and function of distributed visual systems in fan worms with a view to future resilient sensor arrays

Marine fan worms are among Earth’s oddest known creatures: they live on the sea floor in tubes of hardened mucus and have protruding fans of tentacles (radioles). Among other functions, the radioles are used for vision. Some species of marine fan worm have just two eyes on the end of each tentacle, while others have hundreds on each tentacle. As these may be unique evolutionary developments, marine fan worms are valuable in explorations of the origin of visual sensory systems. Michael Bok will study radiolar eyes using computational, molecular and neurobiological approaches, including using new sequencing techniques to identify the genes involved with detecting light. He will use his findings to create a simple model for distributed optical sensory arrays, which will contribute to biomimetic robotics.