Grant winners - 23 May 2013

Action Medical Research

Research Project Grants

• Award winner: Peter Taylor
• Institution: University College London
• Value: £114,845

Bacterial meningitis in newborn babies: harnessing the body’s natural defences

Leverhulme Trust

Research Leadership Awards
Sciences

• Award winner: Feliciano Giustino
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £899,876

Multiphysics modelling of solar energy harvesting in biomimetic photovoltaics

• Award winner: Martin Hairer
• Institution: University of Warwick
• Value: £943,664

Singular stochastic partial differential equations

• Award winner: Stuart Humphries
• Institution: University of Hull
• Value: £941,132

Form and function in a microbial world

• Award winner: Jurriaan Ton
• Institution: University of Sheffield
• Value: £902,625

Priming plant defence: from its onset to transgenerational maintenance

Major Research Fellowships

• Award winner: James Raven
• Institution: University of Essex
• Value: £146,799

Chance and containment: state lotteries in Britain and Europe c.1600- 1850

• Award winner: Jennifer Richards
• Institution: Newcastle University
• Value: £90,957

Useful books: reading and talking in the English Renaissance

• Award winner: Robert Swanson
• Institution: University of Birmingham
• Value: £157,128

The English parish, c.1290-c.1535

• Award winner: Peter Wade
• Institution: University of Manchester
• Value: £94,838

Race, nation and genomics: biology and society

Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Awards
Awards are worth £10,000-£30,000 a year, which is a salary enhancement

• Award winner: Gert Aarts
• Institution: Swansea University

An exploration of the strong interaction under extreme conditions

• Award winner: Marin Alexe
• Institution: University of Warwick

Nanoscale multiferroic materials and heterostructures for oxide electronics

In detail

National Institute for Health Research

Award winner: Tim Maughan
Institution: University of Oxford
Value: £3,525,623

Molecular selection of therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer: a molecularly stratified randomised controlled trial programme (FOCUS 4)

Tests that can be done on tumour samples from patients with advanced bowel cancer may help to select the best treatment options for an individual patient. There are a number of new cancer drugs that are more likely to be helpful in one subtype of bowel cancer than in another. The FOCUS 4 trial aims to recruit more than 1,500 patients across the UK to evaluate how well these new drugs work. Patients diagnosed with bowel cancer that is inoperable or has spread into other areas of the body will be invited to join this trial. Those who join will start on a course of chemotherapy for up to 16 weeks. In this time, a piece of the patient’s tumour will be analysed using two sorts of tests to find out more about its molecular make-up. The results will place the individual into subtypes of colorectal cancer. Patients will be assessed during and after the 16 weeks of chemotherapy to see how the tumour is responding to standard treatment.