Cardiff PATT Travel Grant: Case for support

In our current PATT Linked Grant we were awarded a total of £42,757 for the period 01/04/2018-31/03/2020. We have currently spent 52% of this allocation and expect to be at a level of 65% by the time the current grant period ends. The reasons for underspending our current PATT grant are twofold: (i) an involvement of Cardiff staff in co-I JCMT legacy projects lower than expected; (ii) a major JCMT observing policy change starting on the 1st of November 2019. As a result of the latter, we here request a much reduced allocation of £15,300 to support Cardiff's observing programmes in the next period. This request is justified by: (i) a continued effort in leading both guaranteed time programmes and PI projects on a number of different telescopes; (ii) an increased number of project requiring off-site data reduction; (iii) continued research opportunities for Cardiff to use new instrumentation on the LMT; (iv) a sustained number of Cardiff observational astronomy staff.