Grant winners – 30 April 2015

Royal Society/British Academy

Newton International Fellowships

These fellowships are given to non-UK early career postdoctoral researchers in the humanities, engineering and natural and social sciences to allow them to carry out research at UK institutions. The awards offer financial support in the region of £100,000 for a two-year placement

• Award winner: Michele Ducceschi (Italy)
• Institution: University of Edinburgh

Real-time sound synthesis of impacted string instruments with sophisticated non-linear contact laws

• Award winner: Nian Jiang (China)
• Institution: University of Cambridge

Contact-free electronic probes for GaN semiconductor nanowires and hybrids

• Award winner: Kristine Richter (US)
• Institution: University of York

Molecular ancient fish remains identification

• Award winner: Jakub Radoszewski (Poland)
• Institution: King’s College London

Software and algorithms for manipulating “next generation sequencing” data

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Standard Research

• Award winner: Gin Jose
• Institution: University of Leeds
• Value: £2,484,937

Ultrafast laser plasma implantation – seamless integration of functional materials for advanced photonics

• Award winner: Michael Lancaster
• Institution: University of Birmingham
• Value: £1,067,139

Micromachined circuits for terahertz communications

Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grants
Sciences

• Award winner: Michael Doube
• Institution: Royal Veterinary College
• Value: £192,009

Act big, get big: bone cell activity scaling among species as a skeletal adaptation mechanism

• Award winner: Dominic Dwyer
• Institution: Cardiff University
• Value: £300,233

Generality and specificity in food learning: questioning the received wisdom

• Award winner: Nicholas Roberts
• Institution: University of Bristol
• Value: £154,879

Seeing the invisible: the optics of vertebrate polarisation vision

In detail

International Network

Award winner: Diane Watt
Institution: University of Surrey
Value: £64,401

Women’s literary culture and the medieval English canon

“This project is investigating the extent to which medieval women’s literary culture represents a tradition distinct from that of men,” Diane Watt, professor of English literature and head of the School of English and Languages at the University of Surrey, told Times Higher Education. The project team will also consider “how research into women’s literary culture enhances our understanding of late medieval English literature as a whole”. Professor Watt said that the medieval English canon has “remained fundamentally unchallenged by the emergence of scholarship on medieval women’s writing. My motivation was to bring together international scholars who work on women’s literary culture and on Chaucerian literature to see what happens” when they interact. She adds that the scholars “hope to discover that consideration of women’s engagement with literature is crucial to understanding the established canon. Or, to put this another way, we hope to discover that Chaucer and other male authors have more in common with women’s literary culture than has previously been assumed.”