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Dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide blood gas levels in the body are key indicators of respiratory health status and thus represent an important diagnostic test for illness severity. This information is essential to enabling correct diagnosis and treatment of the patients' needs. However, if only infrequent monitoring of the respiratory gases is possible then life threatening changes go unnoticed which can lead to the patient suffering severe complications such as organ impairment and brain damage. The ability to continuously monitor thus provides considerable clinical advantages to the patient in both the efficacy of their treatment and long term prognosis for recovery. Continuous monitoring is even more important for the health-outcomes of the 300,000 patients treated each year in critical care, including the 70,000 critical care babies. The Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in patients with severe respiratory distress has also further highlighted the need for continuous respiratory gas monitoring. The current standard approach on hospital wards is to use the blood gas analyser. This is an stand-alone instrument which requires blood removal from the patient and placement of the blood in the instrument. The number of blood gas analysers per hospital is limited (due to cost), use requires trained staff and patient infection is possible when removing blood samples as a result of breaking the skin barrier. The number available and its mode of operation precludes real time measurement of patient ventilation status. This method whilst being non-ideal is particularly problematic in critical care or neonatal settings where the rapidly changing physiology of the patient, difficult to access blood vessels, small accessible blood volumes, and heightened distress caused by pain and blood loss complicate measurements. The infrequent nature of the measurement also precludes fast reactive treatment. The aim of this work is to move away from periodic sampling and move towards on-skin transcutaneous sensors, to provide real time and continuous blood gas monitoring of the respiratory gases, without the need to withdraw blood from the patient. The sensors aim to offer responsive and continuous measurement of patient ventilation status, importantly with minimal input required from clinical staff for long term operation, non-invasively. Whilst transcutaneous sensors for carbon dioxide and oxygen exist their uptake into hospitals has been limited due to the below-expectation performance properties of the sensors. Current sensors use two different electrode materials which sense the two different respiratory gases by different measurements methods. The sensor responses, in practise, drift with time, this necessitates frequent removal of the sensors from the body, taking apart and reconstructing the sensor, recalibrating by flowing gas over the sensor, and then replacing on the patient. This results in many periods of no measurement, it is time consuming for clinical staff and requires the staff to have undergone the appropriate training. We aim to address these issues by using a sensor material and measurement protocols which allow us to tackle the problems which currently hamper current transcutaneous sensors. The project builds upon the world leading achievements of the research team in the field of electrochemical sensing and associated measurement methodologies. The electrode material is essential to sensor stability, reproducibility and robustness. For this reason we will use functionalised boron doped diamond, which can be produced at a competitive cost and can detect both respiratory gases in one measurement. The measurement method adopted, also provides a solution to the sensor drift problem. Using only one measurement electrode we also aim to reduce the spatial footprint of the sensor. Beyond hospital care, the sensors offer benefits in, for example, sport and sleep science, and condition management and diagnostics in the community.

This fellowship programme will take a circular economy (CE) approach and unlock the huge potential of renewable biomass, which can be easily sourced from agriculture/aquaculture/food industry as byproducts or wastes. The biomass contains biopolymers cellulose, chitin/chitosan, starch, protein, alginate and lignin, which are valuable resources for making environmentally friendly materials. Moreover, these biopolymers have unique properties and functions, which make them highly potential in important, rapidly growing applications such as therapeutic agent delivery, tissue engineering scaffolds, biological devices, green electronics, sensing, dye and heavy metal removal, oil/water separation, and optics. However, enormous challenges exist to process biopolymers and achieve desired properties/functions cost-effectively; these valuable biomass resources have long been underutilised. This proposed ambitious and adventurous research will focus on the smart design of materials formulation and engineering process from an interdisciplinary perspective to realise the assembly of biopolymer composite materials under a single flow process. This will eventually lead to a reinvented, cost-effective engineering technology based on 3D printing to produce a diverse range of robust, biopolymer composite materials with tailored structure, properties and functionality. Due to the versatile chemistry of biopolymers for modification, the bespoke 'green' materials are expected to outperform many synthetic polymers and composites for specific applications such as tissue engineering and controlled release. The outcomes of this transformative project will not only provide fundamental knowledge leading to a completely new line of research, but also deliver ground-breaking technologies that will impact the UK's plastic industry by providing truly sustainable and high-performance options for high-end technological areas (e.g. healthcare and agriculture).

This fellowship programme will take a circular economy (CE) approach and unlock the huge potential of renewable biomass, which can be easily sourced from agriculture/aquaculture/food industry as byproducts or wastes. The biomass contains biopolymers cellulose, chitin/chitosan, starch, protein, alginate and lignin, which are valuable resources for making environmentally friendly materials. Moreover, these biopolymers have unique properties and functions, which make them highly potential in important, rapidly growing applications such as therapeutic agent delivery, tissue engineering scaffolds, biological devices, green electronics, sensing, dye and heavy metal removal, oil/water separation, and optics. However, enormous challenges exist to process biopolymers and achieve desired properties/functions cost-effectively; these valuable biomass resources have long been underutilised. This proposed ambitious and adventurous research will focus on the smart design of materials formulation and engineering process from an interdisciplinary perspective to realise the assembly of biopolymer composite materials under a single flow process. This will eventually lead to a reinvented, cost-effective engineering technology based on 3D printing to produce a diverse range of robust, biopolymer composite materials with tailored structure, properties and functionality. Due to the versatile chemistry of biopolymers for modification, the bespoke 'green' materials are expected to outperform many synthetic polymers and composites for specific applications such as tissue engineering and controlled release. The outcomes of this transformative project will not only provide fundamental knowledge leading to a completely new line of research, but also deliver ground-breaking technologies that will impact the UK's plastic industry by providing truly sustainable and high-performance options for high-end technological areas (e.g. healthcare and agriculture).

This fellowship programme will take a circular economy (CE) approach and unlock the huge potential of renewable biomass, which can be easily sourced from agriculture/aquaculture/food industry as byproducts or wastes. The biomass contains biopolymers cellulose, chitin/chitosan, starch, protein, alginate and lignin, which are valuable resources for making environmentally friendly materials. Moreover, these biopolymers have unique properties and functions, which make them highly potential in important, rapidly growing applications such as therapeutic agent delivery, tissue engineering scaffolds, biological devices, green electronics, sensing, dye and heavy metal removal, oil/water separation, and optics. However, enormous challenges exist to process biopolymers and achieve desired properties/functions cost-effectively; these valuable biomass resources have long been underutilised. This proposed ambitious and adventurous research will focus on the smart design of materials formulation and engineering process from an interdisciplinary perspective to realise the assembly of biopolymer composite materials under a single flow process. This will eventually lead to a reinvented, cost-effective engineering technology based on 3D printing to produce a diverse range of robust, biopolymer composite materials with tailored structure, properties and functionality. Due to the versatile chemistry of biopolymers for modification, the bespoke 'green' materials are expected to outperform many synthetic polymers and composites for specific applications such as tissue engineering and controlled release. The outcomes of this transformative project will not only provide fundamental knowledge leading to a completely new line of research, but also deliver ground-breaking technologies that will impact the UK's plastic industry by providing truly sustainable and high-performance options for high-end technological areas (e.g. healthcare and agriculture).