Grant winners - 27 November 2014

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council/Royal Society

Royal Society-EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Fellows

This scheme supports outstanding scientists and engineers at an early stage of their career and is designed to help them progress to permanent academic positions. These are funded by the EPSRC

• Award winner: Cristina Manolache
• Institution: Imperial College London
• Value: £429,970

Virtual calculus

• Award winner: Beatriz Olmos Sanchez
• Institution: University of Nottingham
• Value: £420,550

Long-range interactions and collective dissipation in ultracold atomic lattices

National Institute for Health Research

Public Health Research Programme

• Award winner: Michael Daly
• Institution: University of Stirling
• Value: £147,020

Fuelling health equity? The impact of the winter fuel payment on the health of UK households

• Award winner: Suzanne Audrey
• Institution: University of Bristol
• Value: £972,682

The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an employer-led intervention to increase walking during the daily commute: cluster randomised controlled trial

• Award winner: Anna B. Gilmore
• Institution: University of Bath
• Value: £354,246

Understanding the impact of tobacco tax increases and tobacco industry pricing on smoking behaviours and inequalities

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme

• Award winner: Keith Willett
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £823,488

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in Achilles tendon rupture (ATR) healing

• Award winner: Robert John Moots
• Institution: University of Liverpool
• Value: £569,721

Optimal utilisation of biologic drugs in Behçet’s disease: a randomised controlled trial of infliximab vs alpha interferon, with genotyping and metabolomic profiling, towards a stratified medicines approach to treatment

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

Research Grants

• Award winner: Michael Roberts
• Institution: Lancaster University
• Value: £558,249

Transgenerational immune priming in plants

Training Grants

• Award winner: Leonie Taams
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £102,126

Identifying the molecular basis for regulatory T cell-induced anti-inflammatory function of monocytes and macrophages

In detail

Wellcome Trust/Department for International Development

Award winner: Sterghios Moschos
Institution: University of Westminster
Value: £620,000

EbolaCheck

Researchers aim to develop a portable device that can test bodily fluids such as saliva for the presence of the Ebola virus and give results within 40 minutes, more than eight times faster than some lab techniques. Leading the project is the University of Westminster’s Sterghios Moschos, director of its Genomic Services Unit, working with Edward Wright, an Ebola expert and senior lecturer in medical microbiology. The team hope to have an inexpensive, battery-powered portable EbolaCheck device ready for use in the field by next May. “We will use robust technologies to develop a simple but effective tool to diagnose this deadly virus [that is] similar to a blood glucose meter and as reliable as hospital tests,” Dr Moschos said. EbolaCheck will use a technology provided by a Cambridge-based biotech firm on humanitarian grounds.