Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Health-care resources are limited and there is a need to ensure these are used efficiently. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issues guidance to the NHS on the prevention of ill health and the promotion of good health. Part of its work includes an assessment of whether improvements to health as a result of new health technologies (such as drugs) or programmes (such as to reduce the prevalence of smoking) are worth the additional resources they require. NICE?s preferred measure for improvements in health is the quality adjusted life year or ?QALY?. This is a measure of length of life weighted by a value representing the quality of that life. Assessments of the impact of treatments on quality of life are usually based on generic measures of health-related quality of life in the evidence provided to NICE. These generic measures show the impact of treatments on a broad range of dimensions of health which allows the same measure to be used for all health conditions. They also incorporate values from the general population about what different levels or severities of health would mean to them. However, these measures of health-related quality of life are not always included in clinical trials and they have also been criticised for not reflecting changes in health in some conditions. This project will draw upon existing research to use measures of health-related quality of life that have been developed for specific health conditions within the analyses recommended by NICE. It will establish whether the generic measures of health related quality of life are inappropriate for some conditions (such as cancer). It will also look at establishing the relationship between quality of life measures that are generic with those that are specific to conditions. The project will establish methods for extending the existing generic measures to better reflect specific health conditions or diseases.

The UK is a key player in the development of the CCD camera for the Raman/LIBS imaging spectrometer instrument, which is currently one of the ESA recommended instruments on the Pasteur Rover Exobiology Payload. This proposal will lead to the development of the camera system for the flight model instrument and the provision of scientific support to the programme. The proposal draws on major UK strengths in CCD technology, custom flight electronics design and also world leadership in the detection of life signatures using Raman spectroscopy.

Supply chain optimisation has become an integral part of any global company with complex manufacturing and distribution network. For many companies, inefficient distribution plan can make a significant difference on the bottom line. Regulation changes, volatile energy prices, political events, such as Brexit, are just few of the factors that needs to be considered in the ever-changing global trade. Faster company can adopt their distribution plan to the new changes, less impact it has on their profit margins as they can make the necessary changes before their competitors. For instance, sudden shipping port closure can cause delays and decrease the customer satisfaction levels and hence create a loss or distrust in the company overall. Modelling a complete distribution network from the initial materials to the delivery to the customer is very computationally intensive and can take several days. If this process can be accelerated, it has the potential to create significant savings. During my placement, Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) has proven to be well suited for the distribution network optimisation. However, current implementations of ACO focuses only on CPUs. This project would research various hardware ACO implementations and their performance for various accelerators - Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) or coprocessor solutions, such as Intel Xeon Phi family. Furthermore, this project would also explore various ACO implementations in FPGAs in order to find the best performing distribution network in the shortest time. Once the core hardware implementation has proven to be faster than the CPU while producing the same quality of solution, it would be useful to have a simple framework that can be adopted for any company's specific network structure and objectives. This framework would allow users without in-depth programming or hardware knowledge to create simple scripts in order to specify their company's restrictions and objectives. Scripts would then be compiled into the corresponding hardware automatically and create the corresponding assembly files. Such framework would have the potential to become a standalone product that could benefit many global companies