The Circular Economy (CE) is a revolutionary alternative to a traditional linear, make-use-dispose economy. It is based on the central principle of maintaining continuous flows of resources at their highest value for the longest period and then recovering, cascading and regenerating products and materials at the end of each life cycle. Metals are ideal flows for a circular economy. With careful stewardship and good technology, metals mined from the Earth can be reused indefinitely. Technology metals (techmetals) are an essential, distinct, subset of specialist metals. Although they are used in much smaller quantities than industrial metals such as iron and aluminium, each techmetal has its own specific and special properties that give it essential functions in devices ranging from smart phones, batteries, wind turbines and solar cells to electric vehicles. Techmetals are thus essential enablers of a future circular, low carbon economy and demand for many is increasing rapidly. E.g., to meet the UK's 2050 ambition for offshore wind turbines will require 10 years' worth of global neodymium production. To replace all UK-based vehicles with electric vehicles would require 200% of cobalt and 75% of lithium currently produced globally each year. The UK is 100% reliant on imports of techmetals including from countries that represent geopolitical risks. Some techmetals are therefore called Critical Raw Materials (high economic importance and high risk of supply disruption). Only four of the 27 raw materials considered critical by the EU have an end-of-life recycling input rate higher than 10%. Our UKRI TechMet CE Centre brings together for the first time world-leading researchers to maximise opportunities around the provision of techmetals from primary and secondary sources, and lead materials stewardship, creating a National Techmetals Circular Economy Roadmap to accelerate us towards a circular economy. This will help the UK meet its Industrial Strategy Clean Growth agenda and its ambitious UK 2050 climate change targets with secure and environmentally-acceptable supplies of techmetals. There are many challenges to a future techmetal circular economy. With growing demand, new mining is needed and we must keep the environmental footprint of this primary production as low as possible. Materials stewardship of techmetals is difficult because their fate is often difficult to track. Most arrive in the UK 'hidden' in complex products from which they are difficult to recover. Collection is inefficient, consumers may not feel incentivised to recycle, and policy and legislative initiatives such as Extended Producer Responsibility focus on large volume metals rather than small quantity techmetals. There is a lack of end-to-end visibility and connection between different parts of techmetal value chains. The TechMet consortium brings together the Universities of Exeter, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester and the British Geological Survey who are already working on how to improve the raw materials cycle, manufacture goods to be re-used and recycled, recycle complex goods such as batteries and use and re-use equipment for as long as possible before it needs recycling. One of our first tasks is to track the current flows of techmetals through the UK economy, which although fundamental, is poorly known. The Centre will conduct new interdisciplinary research on interventions to improve each stage in the cycle and join up the value chain - raw materials can be newly mined and recycled, and manufacturing technology can be linked directly to re-use and recycling. The environmental footprint of our techmetals will be evaluated. Business, regulatory and social experts will recommend how the UK can best put all these stages together to make a new techmetals circular economy and produce a strategy for its implementation.

Environmental factors, including air and noise pollution, and the built environment, are typically associated with cardiovascular and metabolic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), e.g. obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart diseases and atherosclerosis. The extent to which these exposures may cause their attributed health effects (via molecular mediation) directly or indirectly as a result of associations to an individual’s psychosocial context is largely unknown. NCDs arise from a lifelong process influencing anthropometric, glycaemic, cardiac and lipid-related health trajectories. Risks may start as early as during the fetal period and are modified during sensitive periods in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Despite this, research has not focused enough on the life-course characterisation of the exposome and the application of this to health and disease. In 5 years, LONGITOOLS, a partnership of 15 academic groups and 3 small companies will harness a catalogue of birth cohorts, longitudinal data, registers and biobanks. We will characterise coincident longitudinal trajectories of exposure and cardiometabolic health combining the study of longitudinal effects and internal responses. The latter will include measures of DNA methylation, RNA expression and read outs of metabolic pathways. LONGITOOLS will implement this longitudinal approach in 11 work packages designed to generate a catalogue of FAIR data and a novel analytical toolbox. Evidence-based life-course causal models will estimate how clinical and policy interventions may sustainably affect the health and economic burden of NCDs. A key objective will be to generate evidence-based predictions which can ultimately translate into innovative healthcare applications (apps) and policy options. LONGITOOLS will also allow researchers and policy makers to generate new knowledge - identifying the likely causal (direct and indirect) mechanisms through which exposures to man-made environmental factors affect the risk of NCDs. LONGITOOLS is one of the nine projects composing the European Human Exposome Network.

Human populations are impregnated by various types of chemical pollutants reported as “hazardous waste” present in the environment. Certain pollutants have adverse effects on brain, but the underlying mechanisms and time-window exposures are still unknown, as well as their contribution on dementia, the 7th leading cause of death. EXPOSIGNALZ project aims to delineate the impact of a selection of environmental pollutants on brain health throughout life and their role in dementia especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD) representing about 70% of dementia cases. Through interdisciplinary approaches, integrating experimental and epidemiological studies, our objectives are to: 1) Identify environmental pollutants likely to have neurotoxic effects and pro-amyloidogenic properties predictive of a neurodegenerative trajectory related to AD using in vitro screening models; 2) Characterize pollutant signatures associated with brain aging and AD in biological matrices of 4 European population-based cohorts of various age groups; 3) Understand the mechanisms of action of pollutants identified in the in vitro screenings and those found in biological signatures, using AD-iPSC and AD preclinical models; 4) Explore the impact of pollutants on early neurodevelopment as a factor of susceptibility for later neurodegenerative diseases using brain organoids and gestational contamination models and 5) Disseminate knowledge to policy makers, to the relevant stakeholders and general public in order to define guidelines for disease prevention and take actions for population’s health. The project, which aims to identify chemical pollutants as new risk factors for dementia as well as new pollutant-associated biomarkers, could contribute to: (i) reduce or delay the incidence of AD, and thus reduce the economic and social burden; and (ii) allow an earlier diagnosis of AD combined with new disease modifying treatments to delay the entrance of patients in the more severe stages of the pathology.

The Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre (IMCRC) will undertake a wide variety of work in the Manufacturing, Construction and product design areas. The work will be contained within 5 programmes:1. Transforming Organisations / Providing individuals, organisations, sectors and regions with the dynamic and innovative capability to thrive in a complex and uncertain future2. High Value Assets / Delivering tools, techniques and designs to maximise the through-life value of high capital cost, long life physical assets3. Healthy & Secure Future / Meeting the growing need for products & environments that promote health, safety and security4. Next Generation Technologies / The future materials, processes, production and information systems to deliver products to the customer5. Customised Products / The design and optimisation techniques to deliver customer specific products.Academics within the Loughborough IMCRC have an internationally leading track record in these areas and a history of strong collaborations to gear IMCRC capabilities with the complementary strengths of external groups.Innovative activities are increasingly distributed across the value chain. The impressive scope of the IMCRC helps us mirror this industrial reality, and enhances knowledge transfer. This advantage of the size and diversity of activities within the IMCRC compared with other smaller UK centres gives the Loughborough IMCRC a leading role in this technology and value chain integration area. Loughborough IMCRC as by far the biggest IMRC (in terms of number of academics, researchers and in funding) can take a more holistic approach and has the skills to generate, identify and integrate expertise from elsewhere as required. Therefore, a large proportion of the Centre funding (approximately 50%) will be allocated to Integration projects or Grand Challenges that cover a spectrum of expertise.The Centre covers a wide range of activities from Concept to Creation.The activities of the Centre will take place in collaboration with the world's best researchers in the UK and abroad. The academics within the Centre will be organised into 3 Research Units so that they can be co-ordinated effectively and can cooperate on Programmes.