The Centre for Doctoral Training in "Molecular Modelling and Materials Science" (M3S CDT) at University College London (UCL) will deliver to its students a comprehensive and integrated training programme in computational and experimental materials science to produce skilled researchers with experience and appreciation of industrially important applications. As structural and physico-chemical processes at the molecular level largely determine the macroscopic properties of any material, quantitative research into this nano-scale behaviour is crucially important to the design and engineering of complex functional materials. The M3S CDT offers a highly multi-disciplinary 4-year doctoral programme, which works in partnership with a large base of industrial and external sponsors on a variety of projects. The four main research themes within the Centre are 1) Energy Materials; 2) Catalysis; 3) Healthcare Materials; and 4) 'Smart' Nano-Materials, which will be underpinned by an extensive training and research programme in (i) Software Development together with the Hartree Centre, Daresbury, and (ii) Materials Characterisation techniques, employing Central Facilities in partnership with ISIS and Diamond. Students at the M3S CDT follow a tailor-made taught programme of specialist technical courses, professionally accredited project management courses and generic skills training, which ensures that whatever their first degree, on completion all students will have obtained thorough technical schooling, training in innovation and entrepreneurship and managerial and transferable skills, as well as a challenging doctoral research degree. Spending >50% of their time on site with external sponsors, the students gain first-hand experience of the demanding research environment of a competitive industry or (inter)national lab. The global and national importance of an integrated computational and experimental approach to the Materials Sciences, as promoted by our Centre, has been highlighted in a number of policy documents, including the US Materials Genome Initiative and European Science Foundation's Materials Science and Engineering Expert Committee position paper on Computational Techniques, Methods and Materials Design. Materials Science research in the UK plays a key role within all of the 8 Future Technologies, identified by Science Minister David Willetts to help the UK acquire long-term sustainable economic growth. Materials research in UCL is particularly well developed, with a thriving Centre for Materials Research, a Materials Chemistry Centre and a new Centre for Materials Discovery (2013) with a remit to build close research links with the Catalysis Technology Hub at the Harwell Research Complex and the prestigious Francis Crick Institute for biomedical research (opening in 2015). The M3S will work closely with these centres and its academic and industrial supervisors are already heavily involved with and/or located at the Harwell Research Complex, whereas a number of recent joint appointments with the Francis Crick Institute will boost the M3S's already strong link with biomedicine. Moreover, UCL has perhaps the largest concentration of computational materials scientists in the UK, if not the world, who interact through the London-wide Thomas Young Centre for the Theory and Simulation of Materials. As such, UCL has a large team of well over 100 research-active academic staff available to supervise research projects, ensuring that all external partners can team up with an academic in a relevant research field to form a supervisory team to work with the Centre students. The success of the existing M3S CDT and the obvious potential to widen its research remit and industrial partnerships into topical new materials science areas, which lie at the heart of EPSRC's strategic funding priorities and address national skills gaps, has led to this proposal for the funding of 5 annual student cohorts in the new phase of the Centre.

In order to maintain food security for a growing population under climate change, there is a pressing need to develop crops that use less water and that are more tolerant to environmental stresses, particularly drought. Our recent research at the Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield using the laboratory model Arabidopsis thaliana (the plant equivalent of a lab-rat) has identified plants that are extremely tolerant to drought stress. The drought tolerant plants lack the ability to recognise particular proteins inside their cells and send them for destruction by a biochemical process called the N-end rule pathway. From our analysis so far, we already have an important clue as to the identity of the 'drought tolerance protein' that is not destroyed and is therefore stabilised in our drought-tolerant plants. We know that this protein has the amino acid residues methionine and cysteine at one end. In this project we shall identify which specific protein(s) are stabilised in our plants providing us with important information on how we could, in the future, make plants more drought-tolerant. We will also find out if the same N-end rule drought tolerance system works in an important UK crop, barley. Many parts of the UK have experienced unusual and extended periods of drought over the past year which has included the driest 12 months since records began in 1910. This has led to a high level of crop failure with 2011 grain yields being particularly affected. Farmers have reported failure of 10% to 50% of their barley crop, and the surviving barley grain has often been of poor quality, only suitable for low value animal feed rather than for beer-making. As this is a problem for both farmers and brewers, SABMiller a major UK brewing company have agreed to fund part of our research project. SABMiller are committed to reducing the amount of water that they use, and believe that a better understanding of how barley responds to drought may help them to achieve this aim. Our research falls directly within the remit of Global Food Security and Living with Environment Change cross-council priorities identified by the UK Research Councils. The project will help to address the BBSRC strategic research priority Food Security (Crop Science) and our collaboration with SABMiller addresses the Building Partnerships (Collaborative Research with Users) agenda.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Industrial Functional Coatings: COATED2 will extend and enhance doctoral training provision provided by the current EPSRC CDT COATED. This new CDT will provide 40 EngD research engineers (REs) over 4 cohorts beginning in 2015 to provide critical support to the EPSRC/TSB funded SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) hosted by Swansea University. The main aim of SPECIFIC is to rapidly develop and up-scale functional coated materials on steel and glass that generate, store and release energy creating buildings as power stations. In the UK more than 4billion m2 of roofs and facades could be used to harvest solar energy. SPECIFIC's vision is to use such surfaces to generate up to one 1/3 of the UK's target renewable energy by the 2020s. This is based on using 20million m2 by 2020, less than 0.5% of the available area. Development of such coatings will lead to an enhancement of value in current manufacturers and the evolution of new industries generating wealth and jobs in the UK. This CDT will furnish these evolving industries with highly skilled graduates whilst providing leaders of industry to existing manufacturers and substrate producers. SPECIFIC supported by COATED REs has made rapid progress and a pilot production line has been established at the IKC opened by Vince Cable MP and Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones in 2012. The input of current REs into the IKC has led to 2 potential commercial products and 8 patents during the first 2 years of operation. The pilot line provides dedicated up-scaling capabilities to take technologies from lab to production in a matter of days or weeks rather than years. As such, these world-class facilities provide a dynamic environment for the development, up scaling and production of innovative functional coated products and the CDT therefore fulfills the EPSRC priority area of complex manufactured products. Not only this but the technical focus of products researched and up-scaled in the CDT will support other priority themes including solar, energy storage, functional materials and sustainable use of materials and thus provides a rapid route through Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 1-6 for a number of critical future technologies. The COATED2 programme will continue to provide research and training in the area of functional coatings that will underpin the research and scale-up activities occurring at SPECIFIC. The brief of the CDT will be enhanced to support the new EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing (CIM) in Large Area Electronics of which the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating (WCPC) at Swansea University is a key partner. The WCPC activities are critical to both SPECIFIC and the CIM as the development of large scale printing process are key for the production of the functional coatings technologies developed at SPECIFIC. Thus, REs will directly support activities that will influence both large-scale EPSRC projects. Further enhancement will come in the form of research aligned with Imperial College London (ICL) as a number of collaborative projects are active with ICL linked to Plastic Electronics and their CDT in this field through SPECIFIC and the WCPC. The strategic working partnership between Swansea and partner universities will be strengthened in 2013 by a £6.6million Welsh Government investment in a Solar Energy Futures Lab bringing leading ICL and Oxford University scientists to the IKC to support the science behind innovation for the full period of the COATED2 CDT. This will provide COATED2 REs with access to these scientists and benefit from the synergy of complementary projects supported through each University/CDT with cross fertilisation through the IKC. This activity of RE support for the IKC and CIM with cluster projects involving partner institutions provides a flourishing and vibrant research environment with world class facilities on hand to facilitate research and success.

This project will define the function of key candidate genes in barley germination and malting quality by transferring information from genetic studies in Arabidopsis. Using the multidisciplinary team assembled here, for the first time we will be able to answer specific questions about the comparative biology of germination, the function of key regulatory pathways, and the influence of these components on malting characteristics and brewing functionality. The project will provide new genetic resources for germination studies and present a framework for the successful transfer of information from Arabidopsis to cereals.

This project will investigate the role of the N-end rule pathway of targeted proteolysis in the plant response against pathogens. Through advanced proteomics and transcriptomics approaches we aim to identify protein substrates regulated by a specific branch of the N-end rule pathway and investigate their role in the defense response. We will analyse new N-end rule associated genetic resources in barley that should increase resistance to pathogens. This work will provide evidence for a novel post-translational mechanism within the plant immune response, and resources to develop crops with increased resistance to pathogens.