This study explores ways of evaluating and enhancing the legacy of Connected Communities projects though a detailed investigation of the methodological approaches, cultural outputs and partnerships established in four specific projects funded under this programme. The study will evaluate and reflect on the impacts these projects have had both in relation to the communities engaged in the projects and the degree to which they have come to stimulate research and cultural activities in new community settings. The projects involved in this legacy project are: Exploring Personal Communities: A Review of Volunteering Processes (AH/J012238/1); Bridging the gap between academic rigour and community relevance (AH/K006185/1); and Untold Stories of Volunteering: A Cultural Animation Project (AH/K006576/1), all led by Mihaela Kelemen and conducted in collaboration with New Vic Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme, and 'Revisiting the Midpoint of British Community Studies' (AH/J006920/1) led by Martin Phillips and conducted in collaboration with Glossop Heritage Trust and High Peaks Community Arts. The first three projects are based on animative (theatre-based) methodologies and have resulted in the creation of documentary/interactive dramas on volunteering, mini-performances about community, and an audio-visual installation that aims to bridge the gap between academic theory and community relevance. The final project embraces an iterative methodology and has led to the development of Glossopoly, a game that acts as a means of illustrating the outcome of the research, as a method for conducting community research and as a mechanism for stimulating wider debates about community amongst community members, practitioners and policy makers/planners. This legacy project will evaluate the impact of three cultural outputs associated with its constituent projects, namely: The untold story of volunteering drama performance, The Boat audio-visual installation, and Glossopoly. Evaluations will focus on individuals and organisations who took part in the original research, as well as policy makers, community practitioners, academics and community members who were not part of the original research but have expressed interest in this research. Evidence will be gathered through narratives, testimonies, and experiential reflections before and after exposure to these outputs. We will use animative and iterative methodologies for collecting the data and this will be supplemented by formal evaluative techniques brought to the project by National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) who has been a partner on one of the original projects. The project will also map out the trajectory and growth of partnerships that have been formed in association with the four original research projects. These include interactions between academics, between academics and community partners/institutional stakeholders, between community partners, and between community partners and community members. The resulting partnership map will encapsulate reflections, stories and artefacts co-produced with all the parties involved in this research. Finally, the project aims to up scale the uptake of animative and iterative methodologies across a range of individuals, groups and organisations via a showcase event held in Leicester, a workshop held at the Locality Annual Summer Camp for Community Organisers and a workshop held at the Department of Communities and Local Government, London. The project will also benefit from international expertise on sustainability and community research through the involvement of Professor Tima Bansal, from Western Ontario University, Canada, her research and practitioner networks and City of Markham's (Toronto) community outreach team.

Mathematics is a profound intellectual achievement with impact on all aspects of business and society. For centuries, the highest level of mathematics has been seen as an isolated creative activity, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. "Crowdsourcing" pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs that are just too long and complicated for any human to comprehend, using programs designed to verify hardware. Yet these techniques are currently used in stand-alone fashion, lacking integration with each other or with human creativity or fallibility. Social machines are new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity. Our long-term vision is to change mathematics, transforming the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research, through creating a mathematics social machine: a combination of people, computers, and archives to create and apply mathematics. Thus, for example, an industry researcher wanting to design a network with specific properties could quickly access diverse research skills and research; explore hypotheses; discuss possible solutions; obtain surety of correctness to a desired level; and create new mathematics that individual effort might never imagine or verify. Seamlessly integrated "under the hood" might be a mixture of diverse people and machines, formal and informal approaches, old and new mathematics, experiment and proof. The obstacles to realising the vision are that (i) We do not have a high level understanding of the production of mathematics by people and machines, integrating the current diverse research approaches (ii) There is no shared view among the diverse re- search and user communities of what is and might be possible or desirable The outcome of the fellowship will be a new vision of a mathematics social machine, transforming the reach, pace and impact of mathematics. It will deliver: analysis and experiment to understand current and future production of mathematics as a social machine; designs and prototypes; ownership among academic and industry stakeholders; a roadmap for delivery of the next generation of social machines; and an international team ready to make it a reality.

The quest for improved energy storage is currently one of the most important scientific challenges. The UK is investing heavily in energy storage and renewable energy technologies and is committed to reducing its CO2 emissions by replacing the majority of its electricity generating capacity over the next few decades. Building better batteries is key to the use of electricity in a low-carbon future and for the exploitation of current and next-generation technologies. Current Li-ion batteries based on liquid electrolytes cannot meet the requirements of future applications. The creation of safer, cheaper, recyclable and higher energy density batteries is therefore essential for the electrification of transport and grid-scale storage of energy from renewable resources. This EPSRC New Investigator Award will develop transformative methods that will deliver solutions to these societally and industrially critical problems. Solid-state Li-ion batteries are a rapidly emerging technology with the potential to revolutionise energy storage. This technology utilises solid electrolytes instead of the flammable liquid electrolytes found in current Li-ion batteries. The solid-state architecture has the potential to significantly increase both the safety and energy density of next-generation batteries. Their performance is, however, currently limited by a number of underlying challenges, including the presence of highly resistive interfaces and difficulties in controlling the microstructures of the solid electrolytes that these batteries are built around. These challenges greatly hinder Li-ion transport and are therefore highly detrimental to the operation of the battery. To address these pertinent issues, the team will develop and apply state-of-the-art computational and experimental techniques to provide a fundamental understanding of ion transport at the microscale of solid electrolytes for solid-state batteries. Such an understanding will allow for the design of solid electrolyte microstructures that promote Li-ion transport instead of restricting it. The insights obtained for solid-state batteries in this project will also have direct implications for other battery and energy technologies where the microstructure and solid-solid interfaces again play crucial roles in determining their performance.

Throughout Earth's geological history, hydrothermal systems have provided habitats for the most ancient forms of life known on Earth. The warm water in these systems reacts with the local rocks and accelerates chemical reactions. As a result, different chemical compounds are released and can be exploited by microorganisms that utilize chemicals from the bedrock for metabolic energy to form a viable habitat. The geological record of Mars suggests that sulphur-rich hydrothermal systems were widespread during the Hesperian Period, around 3.8 billion years ago and possibly could have supported life as we know it on Earth. This happened shortly after the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), when Mars was exposed to extensive impact events. The study of the habitability of these environments is done by researching Mars analogues on Earth. The predominant heat supply of these environments on Earth comes from a magmatic source, either from a volcanic eruption or through a magmatic intrusion into the local rock. On extraterrestrial bodies such as Mars, impacts are the main heat source. The chemical difference between these hydrothermal systems are dependent on the original bedrock and the newly introduced magmatic material. The chemical potential to support microbial life and form a viable habitat between the two different environments will be studied. This will be done by studying relic hydrothermal environments, through analysing rock samples from the sulphur-rich Haughton impact crater in the high Arctic, Canada, and comparing them to magmatic intrusions from the San Raphael Swell, USA. The samples will be collected along a reaction path of unaltered rock to altered rock and analysed for their different mineralogy and chemistry. This will then be used to make a thermodynamic chemical model to understand the reaction path forming the altered rock and the past fluid composition. From the modelled data, the free energy released from the reduction-oxidation reactions will be used to evaluate the different potential of each environment to support microbial life through time and space.

In order to meet the UK's carbon reduction targets, and achieve an energy mix that produces less CO2, we must continue to investigate ways in which to make nuclear power cleaner, cheaper and safer. At the same time, as new reactors such as Hinkley Point C are built, the UK needs to develop the work force who will operate, regulate and solve technical problems in civil nuclear power, in order to capitalise on our investment in nuclear energy. Important in this respect is that the UK currently operates mainly old advanced gas-cooled reactors, fundamentally different from the next fleet of UK nuclear power stations, which will be light-water reactors. Key to this change, in terms of this research project, is that Zirconium is a preferred fuel cladding material in LWRs. A major part of a nuclear reactor is the fuel assembly - the structure that encapsulates the highly radioactive nuclear fuel. Understanding the performance of the materials used to make these assemblies is critical for safe, efficient operation, and they must be able to maintain their structure during normal operation, handling and storage, as well as survive in the unlikely event of an accident, when they become crucial in preventing the escape of radioactive materials. Because of the need to operate nuclear reactors as safely as possible, fuel is often removed well before it is spent, as we currently do not know enough about fuel assembly materials, so must adopt a highly cautious, safety-first approach. This does mean, however, that it is more costly to run a reactor, as assemblies must be replaced well before all the fuel is consumed, and this also means the assembly then - prematurely - becomes additional nuclear waste, which must be safely handed and stored, at further high cost. By gaining greater understanding of how assembly materials perform when irradiated, we will be able to make more accurate safety cases, which will mean that fuel assemblies can be used for longer periods without additional risk. Such knowledge will enable the UK to operate the next generation of reactors far more efficiently, significantly reducing the cost of nuclear power. This is particularly important now, given that the UK is going to have light-water, instead of advanced gas-cooled, reactors, and with it the fuel assembly and its material will change very fundamentally. This research effort will also significantly benefit other countries using nuclear energy, which will establish the UK as a centre of expertise in the area. This will further attract inward investment in research and development in the UK, creating future wealth and employment alongside cleaner energy. A second key theme of the project will be to explore the use of zirconium alloys in critical components for future fusion reactors. The UK has a leading position in defining the materials that will be chosen for the ITER and DEMO international fusion projects, and this theme will contribute to maintaining the UK's reputation as a centre of excellence in fusion research.