Senate report – major achievements and awards
25 Feb 2025
Congratulations to our colleagues for the recent major achievements and major funding, reported in the latest Senate report (February 2025)
Major achievements and awards secured by the University since the last Senate report include:
Dr Riza Batista-Navarro (School of Engineering) part of the ESRC funded OSR4Rights project which has won the ESRC Outstanding International Impact Prize.
Funding
Awards listed here exceed an income threshold nominated by Faculties: £500,000+ for Science and Engineering and Biology, Medicine and Health and £100,000+ for Humanities. The lower threshold for Humanities reflects the smaller scale of funding usually made for Humanities research by AHRC, ESRC and other funders.
UKRI – BBSRC
PI Professor Jian Lu (School of Natural Sciences), BBSRC Prosperity Partnership with Arch UK Biocides Ltd., Interactions of Biocides with Microbial Membranes: Kinetics, Dose Responses and Other Factors, £1.5m.
UKRI – EPSRC
PI Professor Timothy Burnett (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-I Professor Philip Withers (School of Natural Sciences), INColourXF: International Colour X-ray Imaging for Future Technologies, £1.1m.
PI Dr Ying Chen (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Philip Withers and Professor Ping Xiao (both (School of Natural Sciences), Core-shell thermal barrier coatings for mitigating molten silicate attack, £720,001.
PI Professor Richard Curry (School of Engineering) and Co-Is Dr Hongpeng Zhou, Dr Jayadev Vijayan Dr Joel Loh, Dr Christopher Muryn (all School of Engineering), Dr Thomas Day Goodacre, Dr Rebecca Tyne, Dr Kara Lynch (all School of Natural Sciences), Core Equipment Award, £900,000.
PI Professor Richard Curry (School of Engineering) and Co-Is Maddison Coke (Photon Science Institute) and Dr Katie Moore (School of Natural Sciences), Advanced Materials Enrichment & Synthesis, £2.5m.
PI Professor Matthew Gibson (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-I Professor Michael Shaver (School of Natural Sciences), Sustainable Bio-Sourced Macromolecular Cryoprotectants, £569,372.
PI Professor Michael Shaver (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Helen Holmes (School of Social Sciences), Dr Rosa Cuellar-Franca (School of Engineering), Dr Ciaran Lahive, Professor Matthew Gibson, Dr Tom McDonald (all School of Natural Sciences), EPSRC Prosperity Partnership with BUPA Group, CHaMP: Circularity in Healthcare Materials Provision, £1.6m.
PI Professor Robert-Jan Slager (School of Natural Sciences), Multi-gap topological physics: from a new geometric perspective to materials, £1.2m.
PI Professor Mathias Nilsson (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Gareth Morris and Dr Ralph Adams (both School of Natural Sciences), Flow-tolerant NMR experiments, £717,389.
UKRI – ESRC
PI Dr Mercedes Bleda (Alliance Manchester Business School), T-AP call on Democracy, Governance and Trust, £336,092
PI Dr Antoine Burgard (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), New Investigator Award - Who is a child? Determining age in 20-21 centuries British and French border policing, £224,764.
PI Professor Kieron Flanagan (Alliance Manchester Business School) and Co-I Professor Cornelia Lawson (Alliance Manchester Business School), Investigating The Relationship Between Science Diplomacy And Global DGT: The Role Of Inclusive MetaScience Observatories, £330,537.
PI Dr Vanessa Higgins (School of Social Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Jennifer Buckley and Dr Julia Kasmire (both School of Social Sciences), Building computational capacity among global data service staff, £409,397.
PI Professor Sherilyn MacGregor (School of Social Sciences) and Co-Is Professor James Evans and Professor Stefan Bouzarovski (both School of Environment, Education and Development), Professor Matthew Paterson and Dr Helen Holmes (both School of Social Sciences) and Dr Claire Hoolohan (School of Engineering), ESRC Centre for Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations (JUST), £4.1m.
PI Professor Jill Rubery (Alliance Manchester Business School) and Co-Is Professor Emma Banister, Dr Cassandra Bowkett, Dr Isabel Tavora (all Alliance Manchester Business School), ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work (led by University of Sussex), £308,002.
PI Professor Seth Schindler and Debolina Majumder (School of Environment, Education and Development), Postdoctoral Fellowship - The Hidden Abodes of the Urban: social reproduction, labour informality, and urban transformation in the Delhi National Capital Region, £112,602.
UKRI – MRC
PI Professor David Bechtold (School of Medical Sciences) and Co-I Dr Louise Hunter (School of Medical Sciences), Mapping sleep and circadian rhythm disruption impacts on cardiometabolic disease, £791,851.
UKRI – NERC
PI Dr Polyanna Da Conceicao Bispo (School of Environment, Education and Development), Ecological Dynamics of Eastern Amazon Forest Fragments, £781,510.
UKRI – Research England
PI Professor Alan Dickson (School of Engineering), Centre for Advanced Diagnostics Development and Application (led by the University of Kent, £562,321.
UK Government – Innovate UK
PI Professor Alejandro Frangi (School of Health Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Siddharth Banka (School of Biological Sciences) Ali Sarrami Foroushani, Dr Alan Davies, Professor Caroline Sanders, Professor Amin Rostami-Hochaghan, Dr Daniel Scotcher (all School of Health Sciences), Professor Sarah Devaney (School of Social Sciences), Prof Alistair Revell (school of Engineering) Professor Philip Withers (School of Natural Sciences), The UK's Centre of Excellence on In-silico Regulatory Science and Innovation Pilot Phase, £687,931.
PI Professor Ian Kinloch (School of Natural Sciences), Henry Royce Institute ICP Direct Award, £1m.
UK Government – DSTL
PI Professor Timothy Burnett (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Philip Prangnell and Professor Joseph Robson (both School of Natural Sciences), Aerospace materials with optimised properties and performance –De-risking the use of Advanced Al-Alloys in Naval Aviation, £533,749.
PI Dr Thomas Flint (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-I Dr Matthew Roy (School of Engineering), Professor Joseph Robson, Dr Maria Yankova (both School of Natural Sciences), High Fidelity Modelling and Verification of L-DEW, £516,775.
UK Government – NIHR
PI Dr Katie Benson (School of Social Sciences) and Co-I Professor Nick Lord (School of Social Sciences) Northumbria. Health and Social Care Delivery Programme £236,759.
PI Professor Pete Bower (School of Health Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Rachel Meacock, Professor Jo Dumville, Professor Paul Wison and Professor Matt Sutton (all School of Health Sciences), Rose-NET: Manchester-Leeds Collaborative National Evaluation Team, £2.04m.
PI Professor Caroline Sanders (School of Health Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Gabriel Rogers and Dr Thomas Allen (both School of Health Sciences), Understanding the Missing Links: Integrated Health and Social Care for People Experiencing Homelessness, £603,316.
Charities
Professor Francesca Billiani (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), New Muralism: Urban Futures Through the Arts in Italy, Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, £291,470.
PI Professor Rob Bristow (School of Medical Sciences) and Co-Is Dr Emma Woodward (School of Biological Sciences), Dr Samuel Merriel (School of Health Sciences), International Early Detection of Cancer Alliance, Cancer Research UK, £1m.
PI Professor Partick Cai (School of Natural Sciences) Wellcome Renewal, £992,654.
PI Dr Andrew Gilmore (School of Health Sciences) and Co-Is Professor Susan Astley, Dr Martin Fergie (both School of Health Sciences), Dr Niki Flaum, Dr Sacha Howell, Professor Keith Brennan, Professor Robert Clark, Dr Hannah Harrison (all School of Medical Sciences), Professor Dafydd Evans, Dr Sankari Nagrajan, Professor Michael Sherratt, Dr Joe Swift (all School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Hongpeng Zhou (School of Engineering, Developing targeted strategies for precision breast cancer prevention, Cancer Research UK, £544,411.
PI Professor Rebecca Herissone (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), Inventing Purcell: Musical Reception and the Agency of the Edition, Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, £175,306.
PI Dr Johan Oldekop (School of Environment, Education and Development) and Co-Is Dr Charis Enns, Dr Tomas Frederikse, Dr Rose Pritchard (all School of Environment, Education and Development), Natural Resources and Climate Change, Ford Foundation Centre for Social Justice, £1.4m.
PI Dr Juan Quintana (School of Biological Sciences), Unravelling how pathogen-B cell interactions shape brain function and behaviour during chronic infections, Wellcome, £2.5m.
PI Professor Mike Shaver (School of Natural Sciences) and Co-I Dr Niamh Fox (School of Natural Sciences), Supporting Early Career Research roles in Sustainable Materials, Dinswade Trust, £600,000.
Europe
PI Professor Cornelia Lawson (Alliance Manchester Business School) and Co-I Dr Xin Deng (Alliance Manchester Business School) Academic Research Programme Project DOC-TRACK Extension to UK, European Patent Office, £85,018.
PI Dr Stian Soiland-Reyes (School of Engineering) and Co-I Professor Carole Goble (School of Engineering), CLIMATE-ADAPT4EOSC: Fair Data and Innovative Services for Magnifying the Climate Adaptation Potential of European Communities, European Commission, £692,077.
Industry
PI Professor Tony Chen (School of Engineering) and Co-Is Professor Ian Kinloch and Dr Mark Bissett (both School of Natural Sciences), Inter-compatible CAble REpair Part 2 (iCARE2), National Grid Electricity Transmission Plc, £1.4m.
PI Nikolay Mehandjiev (Alliance Manchester Business School) VR Training and Digitalisation, Asahi Group Holdings Ltd., £121,752.
PI Professor Clint Sharrad (School of Engineering) and Co-Is Dr Bernard Treves Brown, Professor Philip Martin (both School of Engineering) and Professor Francis Livens and Dr Louise Natrajan (both School of Natural Sciences), Development of microfluidic systems for actinide material recovery and analysis, AWE, £587,400.