Grant winners – 5 January 2017

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Research Grants

• Award winner: Roger Colbeck
• Institution: University of York
• Value: £101,080

Towards practical quantum technologies

• Award winner: John Walls
• Institution: Loughborough University
• Value: £856,808

SuperSolar hub extension

• Award winner: Salvador Eslava
• Institution: University of Bath
• Value: £100,740

Nanostructured metal oxides for solar fuels

• Award winner: Steven Rose
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £345,836

Inertial confinement fusion – exploring the options for ignition

• Award winner: John Graves
• Institution: Coventry University
• Value: £121,726

Novel production process for renewable hydrogen from animal and human waste

Wellcome Trust

Investigator Awards in Humanities and Social Sciences

• Award winner: Evelyn Welch
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £878,939

Renaissance skin

• Award winner: James Mills
• Institution: University of Strathclyde
• Value: £997,937

The Asian cocaine crisis: pharmaceuticals, consumers and control in South and East Asia, c.1900-1945

Investigator Awards in Science

• Award winner: Martin Tobin
• Institution: University of Leicester
• Value: £1,318,502

Large-scale genomic epidemiology approaches to study the natural history of lung function and COPD

Royal Society

University Research Fellowships

• Award winner: Janet Deane
• Institution: University of Cambridge
• Value: £301,253

Mechanisms of aberrant intracellular trafficking in human disease

• Award winner: Edward Morrow
• Institution: University of Sussex
• Value: £318,135

Sexually antagonistic genes: from candidate to cause

• Award winner: James Owen
• Institution: Imperial College London
• Value: £420,744

Formation and evolution of extra-solar planets

• Award winner: Charles Melnyk
• Institution: John Innes Centre
• Value: £569,377

Generating and regenerating vasculature in plants

In detail

Medical Research Council

Award winner: Kate Watkins
Institution: University of Oxford
Value: £738,919

Enhancing speech fluency in people who stutter

Stuttering is a developmental condition that continues to exist in one in 100 adults, often causing anxiety and restricting their ability to engage in some careers and hobbies. Fluency can be acquired through various methods – including temporarily by speaking with a different accent – but also by altering auditory feedback (such as by changing its pitch). The latter’s effectiveness suggests that stammering could be related to problems in combining motor and auditory information. Watkins’ study will use standard therapeutic techniques while testing whether a weak current passed through the brain can improve the acquisition of fluency. They will also use MRI scans to observe communication between motor and auditory regions of the brain, develop new MRI techniques to scan the muscles associated with speech production and use magnetoencephalography to measure rapid brainwaves while people listen to and produce speech.