This proposal seeks funding for a four-year research programme to develop an autonomous, intelligent system to obtain a revolutionary solution for condition/structural health intelligent monitoring, with specific applications in condition monitoring of railways and in-service Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) for nuclear applications. This project addresses important goals: low cost and low power consumption sensor networks, sensor exploration, software architectures, autonomous data fusion and intelligent system management, spectrally efficient and reliable communications with novel approaches of radio frequency identification (RFID) based passive sensing networks, non-linear feature extraction and model based fusion, compressed sensing, cloud-based computing and decision making. The research will extend our knowledge in several complementary areas: low cost sensor technologies, wireless sensor network (WSN) for NDE and structural health monitoring (SHM), feature extraction and fusion, robust communication, and software architectures. The work will be undertaken jointly by cross-disciplinary research teams from Newcastle, Sheffield and York Universities, in collaboration with industrial strategic partners.

Research in neurophysiology includes both analysis of data from neuronal systems (networks of brain cells; both live and cultured), and development of models to explain both the processes that form the character of data, and the high level function that these express; i.e. behaviour and thought. Capturing and analysing data from neuronal systems is time-consuming, difficult and expensive: many techniques exist, some using multichannel electrical recording, and some using ion-sensitive fluorescent dyes. Different techniques have different advantages: some have high time resolution, whereas others have high space resolution. The models that derive from this data also exist at many levels, from the detailed modelling of membrane-embedded ion channels and neurotransmitters to compartmental neural models, through models of small neural networks, to larger models of many thousands of neurons. All models and algorithms are hungry for data to determine their many parameters and characteristics. Currently this activity is largely a one-lab science: datasets are shared within a lab, and with some computational modellers. The research is also not organised to ensure that data and models produced by small communities of specialist researchs can easily be integrated to contribute to the bigger picture. Datasets are discarded after the experimentor has completed their experimental report, or are archived in a format that is not widely accessible. This project aims to use the GRID to change that: it will enable experimenters to archive their datasets in a structure, making them widely accessible for modellers and algorithm developers to exploit. Experimental datasets are useless without accurate descriptions of the experimental conditions, and hence an appropriate set of metadata will developed to augment the data, allowing the project researchers to collaborate more widely and persistently by sharing data in a sensible, referenced form. Further, the project will provide integrated and co-ordinated services for the neuroscience data, enabling neuronal signal detection, sorting and analysis, as well as visualisation and modelling. Data security is critically important to experimentors: they do not wish to be simply anonymous contributors of data, but to be directly involved in further analysis of their datasets, and this will be supported. Further we will enable direct near real-time analysis of streamed experimental data, providing information to distributed teams of specialists that will allow difficult experiments to be optimised. These interventions will catalyse a step change in research practice in this area of neuroscience, which will allow best value to be derived from the significant research investment that is made in order to understand the brain.

Recent advances in surgery have made a significant impact on the management of major acute diseases, prolonging life and continuously pushing the boundaries of survival. Despite increasing sophistication of surgical intervention, complications remain common and poorly understood, contributing significantly to mortality and morbidity. Surgical site infections, catheter related sepsis, wound dehiscence and gastrointestinal anastomotic leakage are recognised complications following surgical interventions or invasive monitoring of critically ill surgical patients. Current methods for detecting these complications rely on episodic clinical examination with 'snap shot' laboratory testing. There is therefore a pressing need to develop new sensing technologies that can be seamlessly integrated with existing surgical appliances to provide continuous sensing and early detection of these adverse events, thus minimising post-operative infection, complication, and readmission. All these will also have a direct impact on healthcare economics, and more importantly the prognosis and quality-of-life of patients after surgery. The proposed project is organised into three research themes: 1) Multimodal Sensing and Miniaturised Embodiment; 2) Active Sensing with Low Power Microelectronics; and 3) Data Inferencing and Stratified Patient Management. These research themes address key technical issues related to sensor design, miniaturisation, and self-calibration, as well as low-power on-node processing, inferencing, and clinical decision support. These research themes are connected by three clinical exemplars in surgical sensing with increasing levels of technical complexity. The vision is to develop smart sensors integrated with surgical appliances and to be inserted in close proximity to the surgical site, encased within surgical drains/catheters, or placed in locations to more seamlessly monitor the systemic inflammatory response. The devices will be implanted during elective surgery or at biopsy, interrogated wirelessly, and eliminated by natural processes, or routine removal of 'hosts' such as the drains or catheters. The research programme is underpinned by extensive experience of the team in body sensor networks and bio-photonics in healthcare. Through an integrated programme of engineering research and development of a novel real-time active sensing paradigm, the project aims to transform the care pathways for surgery with greater consideration on personalised treatment, system level impact, real-time response to complications, patient concordance and quality of life. We expect that the outcome of the research will help improve surgical workflows, support safe discharge and home/community-based recovery, reduce unplanned readmissions, and influence the future of healthcare policy.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.