Cardiff Linked Grant

In our current PATT Linked Grant we were awarded a total of £39,495 for the period 2013-2015 (including an extension to the previous PATT grant). We have currently spent 30% of this allocation and expect to have spent at least up to 50% before the current grant period ends. As we have underspent in the past 2 years (due to losing a staff member and less time allocated on the JCMT than expected in 2014), here we request a slightly reduced allocation of £32,200 to support Cardiff's substantial observing programmes in the next round. We note that this request is above the level of spend of the current award (expected to be ~£20K for 2013-2016) due to (i) a substantial increase in guaranteed time on IRAM (400 hours) for Cardiff-led legacy surveys (ii) Cardiff's role in the next generation of JCMT legacy surveys (>4800hrs submitted) and (iii) a large increase in our observational astronomy group (from Sept/Oct 2015), which has grown by an additional 6 members and enables us to branch out into three new scientific areas (interstellar medium, black hole dynamics, debris disks).