Chemistry and Mathematics in Phase Space (CHAMPS)

The 6 year CHAMPS Programme Grant (PG) addresses the urgent need to provide a framework for understanding and exploiting the explosion in dynamical information coming out of modern experiments and simulations in chemistry and chemical biology. By developing methods in nonlinear dynamics to replace the ubiquitous configuration-space projections of these inherently multidimensional datasets with phase-space representations, it will be possible to provide comprehensible models that capture the key dynamics of complex systems. These new models will revolutionise our understanding of chemical transformation, with impacts on all industries that rely on understanding chemical change, from the pharmaceutical industries to those in the rapidly developing energy sector. By its very nature, the research will have impact on a wide variety of EPSRC research themes, including health care, energy, and environmental change. And because the work requires an unprecedented partnership between mathematicians and chemists, it will bridge several themes that EPSRC has highlighted as critical to its strategy. The young scientists trained in this programme will have unmatched interdisciplinary skills, and provide UK research leadership for decades to come. In particular, we expect that they will be creating their own new fields of study, and will thereby carry on attracting the best young scientists from around the world to come to the UK. A PG is vital to provide the critical mass, flexibility and scope needed to tackle the major scientific cross-disciplinary challenges set out in this proposal. The alternative funding model of individual grants to the PI and CoIs would leave the PDRAs localised in particular research groups and thereby maintain the traditional disciplinary separation, which we are seeking to break down.

We are seeking to correct deficiencies in the very foundation of the science of chemistry. Success in this enterprise will have impact across all of chemistry and allied disciplines. Some practical consequences of this work may be forthcoming quickly - and we have highlighted one that has already emerged - but we anticipate that the full effects of this work are likely to be felt only once we have made the results known and comprehensible to the vast array of scientists for whom they are relevant. Certainly high-impact publications in journals such as Science and Nature would go some way to achieving that goal, but any time one requires people to "unlearn" things that they think they already know, there is resistance and inertia to change. For that reason, we anticipate hosting a number of conferences and workshops to discuss our work, and to receive feedback from potential stakeholders on how we might address their specific needs. These gatherings will involve key individuals from both academia and private industry. Complementing this effort will be the placement of the PDRAs coming out of our research programme into academic and industrial positions where they can influence how chemistry is understood and conducted from the inside.