Small Items of Research Equipment at Newcastle University: Developing the Research Base in Healthcare Technologies, Sustainability and Digital Economy

For the UK to remain at the forefront of research excellence, it is essential that it has a well-funded and state-of-the-art research equipment pool that our researchers can use in their investigations. This award will enable us to purchase a suite of small items of research equipment at Newcastle University, in three research Themes that are of considerable importance to society: Healthcare Technologies; Sustainability; and the Digital Economy (HT-S-DE).

Our particular aim is to use this research equipment to support those in the early stages of their research careers. Thus, the items of equipment included in this proposal have been requested by our early career researchers (ECRs) to enhance their research capabilities in the HT-S-DE research themes. The equipment will enable them to carry out their research more effectively and efficiently and will also allow them to expand their interests to new research areas. It will also give them the opportunity to work more closely together with one another and with other researchers in the UK and overseas.

We believe that it is important to maximise the use and therefore the benefits of this equipment. We will therefore manage it in a coordinated way. Responsibility for this management will lie with an ECR Development Steering Group consisting of our most promising ECRs, guided by a small team of very experienced and successful senior academic staff. In this way we will maximise the benefits of this portfolio of equipment and at the same time give our ECR team valuable research management experience, an important career development opportunity.

Our key project objectives are to improve and upgrade our equipment base to the benefit of our early career researchers (ECRs) and to strategically manage this equipment.

In addition to the direct benefits for the ECRs (with respect to career development and training) that are described in the academic beneficiaries section of this proposal, the purchase of this equipment will lead to a wide range of socioeconomic impacts in the short-, medium-and long-term.

Items of equipment will support research in the themes of Healthcare Technologies, Sustainability and Digital Economy which, by their very nature, are of huge social and economic importance. Below are some examples of impacts that our enhanced research capability could have.

1. In Healthcare Technologies, we will purchase an automatic hydraulic press, which will allow two of our new lecturers working in our biomaterials group to fabricate pellets for a range of applications requiring compact powders. In particular, this press will be used to manufacture glass-ceramic discs which will be used in the development and optimisation of scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications.
Biomaterials for bone substitution (for example in joint replacement surgery or military medicine) require particular mechanical properties to support the body's structure in the long-term without fracture or disintegration, which is currently a risk. Materials engineering is key in developing structures that meet these requirements. Our work in developing high quality materials could have immeasurable impact on patient quality of life and a range of other impacts such as efficiency savings for the NHS and economic prosperity from increased specialist design and manufacturing capability.

2. A range of sensing equipment will support activity within the energy theme and more specifically biofuel combustion analysis and the development of efficient combined heat and power and trigeneration systems. This will provide new data which is essential in our understanding of these systems under a range of operating conditions. The equipment will compliment the experimental facilities which are being assembled for an EPSRC Case studentship with designer and manufacturer of power generation systems Cummins. Optimal use of a wide range of 2nd or 3rd generation biofuels will make a significant contribution towards meeting the UK's 2050 CO2 targets and have a positive impact on environmental, health, energy efficiency and security of supply challenges.

3. Research in machine learning will be supported by investment in new high-end computing facilities and local parrallelization. New lecturer, Dr Thomas Ploetz, working with three EPSRC-funded research associates and three EPSRC PhD students will benefit from this investment. This new equipment will avoid the infrastructure investments and privacy concerns often associated with existing cloud-based approaches. In addition to the many uses and benefits of machine learning research (for example increased efficiency of internet searching), this particular approach will have potential impacts in sectors where severe privacy constraints are in place. This could include the health sector, where efficient yet safe storage and computation of patient data could have significant efficiency savings for the NHS and consequent patient and economic benefits.