Funding awards for five new research projects

The Research Endowment Trust Fund (RETF) supports the strategic development of promising and ambitious research ideas and emerging initiatives in the University. In a recent competitive process, the University Committee for Research & Innovation awarded £185,108 from its RETF Open Fund to five new projects.

The RETF Open Fund supports projects of up to two years’ duration that align with the strategic priorities of the University or their respective Research Themes. The aim is to support proposals that:

• demonstrate ambition to achieve growth in research income, scale, methodologies, partnerships, reputation, or audiences
• enable high-risk research – for example providing proof of concept to inform external grant applications, or
• support innovation and the translation of research into products and processes, for example, by supporting pilot projects

Congratulations to those receiving funding in this round:

Nicholas Branch (GES): PERUPEAT: ecohydrology and ecosystems services of peatlands in the Peruvian Andes (£46,260)

The project will focus on wetlands (especially peatlands) in the central Peruvian Andes, which make an important contribution to a range of ecosystems services, including carbon sequestration, water availability, grazing land for livestock, biodiversity and cultural heritage. However, their ecological and hydrological characteristics remain poorly understood, which make them vulnerable to projected changes in climate and poor management by farming communities.

We will examine the relationships between the present day hydrological, ecological (plant species) and sedimentological (peat) characteristics of the wetlands, and establish how these characteristics vary over time and space, especially since the onset of the Anthropocene (the last 200 years, approximately).

Finally, we will explore the implications of any changes in these characteristics for ecosystems services in the study areas. The project is in collaboration with colleagues from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and three NGOs (Asociación Andina Cusichaca, DIACONIA, ECLOSIO).

Manuela Gonzalez-Suarez (Ecology): Evolution, taxonomy, and conservation of an endemic New World sea snake (£50,000)

Sea snakes are specialised marine reptiles known almost entirely from the Eastern Hemisphere. In fact, only one species reached the Americas: the black-and-yellow pelagic sea snake, Hydrophis platurus. Intriguingly, an all-yellow subpopulation was discovered in 2010 inhabiting Costa Rica’s tropical fiord, Golfo Dulce. It was later named a subspecies H. p. xanthos (Hpx) that we have been studying for over a decade and suspect may be a separate species.

With an international team of collaborators, our RETF-funded research will look for changes in body design and DNA to help unravel the evolutionary history of Hpx and determine its proper rank. Moreover, because this rare banana-coloured serpent is worryingly at risk of extinction due to growing environmental threats, we will engage governments, communities, and NGOs to inform marine policy for its protection.

Valerio Lucarini (Mathematics & Statistics): Constructing Response Operators using Data-driven Methods: Prediction and Tipping Points – CROPS (£38,913)

Understanding and predicting how complex systems like the climate, social networks, ecosystems, or power grids respond to perturbation is of key importance both at a theoretical level and in terms of specific real-life applications. Perturbations can push the system towards an undesired state, and internal processes can ameliorate the situation, by providing some form of adaptation, or, in some other cases, further reinforce the effect of the acting perturbations.

In the latter case, the resilience of the system is modest, and one can face sudden changeovers in the behaviour of the system. The occurrence of climatic tipping points is one of the most relevant manifestations of criticality in the natural world.

The CROPS project provides a proof of concept for constructing response operators – mathematical tools for computing how a complex system reacts to the external forcing and for understanding the role of feedbacks – using a novel combination of theory-informed and data-driven methods. The project foresees scientific collaboration with the Weizmann institute (Israel), the Oak Ridge Natural Laboratory (USA), and the Beijing Normal University (P.R. China).

Shovonlal Roy (GES): Tracking food quality at the bottom of marine food webs using machine learning and satellite remote-sensing (£37,435)

The availability of oceanic primary producers, in good quality and abundant quantity, is essential for the sustainability of marine ecosystems. Climatic or environmental changes may impact the nutritional quality of primary producers, thereby affecting the balance of marine food chains and influencing essential ecosystem services, for example, production of fish.

To monitor these potential changes, a prototype machine learning-based computational tool will be developed and implemented on images of the ocean taken from Earth Observation satellites. It will help track food quality at the bottom of marine food webs and contribute to the delivery of sustainable developmental goals such as life below water.

Liz Stephens (Meteorology): WCAR: Strengthening the reputation and success of our Weather and Climate Applications Research (£12,500)

The Centre for Applied Weather and Climate (CAWC) is a new initiative led by the Department of Meteorology which aims to strengthen the quality, reach and impact of University of Reading research to enable the maximum value to be derived from weather and climate information across a wide range of sectors.

CAWC is designed as an umbrella network to bring together and project University of Reading expertise to support the integration of weather and climate information (models, satellite and in-situ data) into onward modelling and decision-support tools in multi-sector applications.

Through the RETF funding we aim to undertake activities to: 1) develop and strengthen an internal network to nurture and grow research to improve the quality and impact of our research outputs, 2) enhance the visibility and recognition of University of Reading research in this area, and 3) develop and strengthen an internal network to nurture and grow research to improve the quality and impact of our research outputs.