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PIONEER Summer 2009 www.epsrc.ac.uk

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Could virtual humans revolutionise healthcare?

ROBERT WINSTON / L’AQUILA EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH / ILLUMINATING DNA EVIDENCE

EPSRC: funding the future The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences – from mathematics to materials science and from information technology to structural engineering.

Working with UK universities, it invests around £740m a year in world class research and training to promote future economic development and improved quality of life.

Get involved: EPSRC’s portfolio of research projects includes more than 2,000 partnerships with organisations from the industrial, business and charitable sectors.

More than 35 per cent of our research funding includes collaborative partners.

EPSRC’s knowledge transfer goals include: •

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Ensuring postgraduate skills meet the needs of business through increased demand-led and collaborative training.

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Strengthening partnerships with business to improve knowledge transfer – including the development of strategic partnerships with research-intensive companies.

PIONEER is EPSRC’s quarterly magazine.

It highlights how EPSRC-funded research and training is helping to tackle global challenges and the major issues facing individuals, business and the UK economy.

Enhancing opportunities for business/university research collaborations to accelerate knowledge transfer.

You can find out more about EPSRC and how you can work with us by visiting our website www.epsrc.ac.uk

Contact us: We have dedicated sector teams working to understand the research and skills needs of their sectors and to help connect businesses with university expertise.

Aerospace, Defence and Marine Contact: Simon Crook, Tel: 01793 444425 Creative Industries Contact: Pamela Mason, Tel: 01793 444268 Electronics, Communications and IT Contact: Matthew Ball, Tel: 01793 444351 Energy Contact: Stephen Elsby, Tel: 01793 444458 Infrastructure and Environment Contact: Claire Tansley, Tel: 01793 444237 Manufacturing Contact: Pilar Sepulveda, Tel: 01793 444068 Medicines and Healthcare Contact: Nicolas Guernion (Medicines) Tel: 01793 444343 Contact: Claire Wagstaffe (Healthcare) Tel: 01793 444586 Transport Systems and Vehicles Contact: Richard Bailey, Tel: 01793 444423 If you can’t find a sector relevant to you, please email: sectors@epsrc.ac.uk EPSRC Polaris House North Star Avenue Swindon SN2 1ET E-mail: pioneer@epsrc.ac.uk Switchboard: 01793 444000 Helpline: 01793 444100 Website: www.epsrc.ac.uk

The views and statements expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of EPSRC unless explicitly stated. Some of the research highlighted may not yet have been peer-reviewed. © Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Reproduction permitted only if source is acknowledged.

ISSN 1758-7727

PIONEER Editor: Christopher Buratta E-mail: christopher.buratta@epsrc.ac.uk Tel: 01793 444305 Editorial Assistance: Rachel Blackford E-mail: rachel.blackford@epsrc.ac.uk Tel: 01793 444459 Mailing changes: pioneer@epsrc.ac.uk Contributors David Bradley, Maria Burke, Barry Hague, Kate Ravilious

CONTENTS

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PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

FEATURES 12 Cover story Creating the virtual human that could lead to a new era in personalised healthcare

16 Power to the people Professor Robert Winston on the democratisation of science

18 Earthquake engineering Vital evidence from the recent Italian earthquake will help improve buildings and infrastructure

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22 Crime scene investigation The new techniques illuminating vital DNA evidence and extracting ‘lifestyle intelligence’ from fingerprints

24 Heartbeat monitor Technology developed for foundry workers is helping to save lives in the delivery room

26 Carbon countdown How the Energy Technologies Institute and EPSRC are tackling looming carbon reduction targets

28 Material gains The world’s thinnest material is set to make a big impact

30 Industrial revolution redux

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“You get hit by the fact there are people there and this is their home”

Could the humble canal barge be the future of transport, again

REGULARS 4 Leader 5 Briefings

Diamond transistors, lip reading computers, carbon capture research and a sustainable racing car

11 Interview EPSRC’s Emma Feltham on building strong bonds with business

32 Viewpoint Professor David Gann discusses how advances in innovation management will play a vital role in protecting the future health of the UK economy

34 Profile Leading mathematician Marcus du Sautoy talks about his heroes, Sunday league football and running away to the theatre

here has been increased focus in recent months on science and engineering’s contribution to a modern economy – and in part its role in economic recovery.

It is clear – and has been clear to those of us within the science community for sometime – that British research can stimulate the great ideas, develop the innovative new technologies and produce the fantastic minds to drive new business.

We must however retain our focus on the long term challenges we face, and cannot let the current economic situation detract from these. We must view the immediate term problems as a stimulus to deliver economic growth through the generation

in demonstrating technologies that will help reduce carbon emissions. The projects it funds will draw on the expertise and research created by EPSRC-funded projects, and will lead to commercial development of world-leading technologies.

Certain low carbon technologies, such as wind and marine will have a visual impact on our landscape and, echoing Professor Winston’s sentiments on page 16, it will be vital that the public help shape their future development and deployment if they are to stand any chance of success.

Leading the world in innovation itself, as discussed by Professor David Gann on page 32, will allow us to export our knowledge around the globe and will

and integration of skills and technologies that will enable us to make real progress on these long term challenges.

Perhaps the issues that best demonstrate this approach are those of the environment and energy supply, generation and demand.

These issues have risen in public and political importance over a prolonged period of relative economic stability.

Now, faced with more pressing economic challenges, we must not let our resolve to tackle environmental issues waver. We have the opportunity to stimulate economic growth based on new technologies in areas such as low carbon transport and renewable energy – to help build what is sometimes described as the ‘green economy’.

This issue of PIONEER raises some of these issues and opportunities. Hydrogen fuel cell technology, featured on page 30, could have an important role to play in low carbon transport. Further work at the University of Birmingham is looking at how we build a ‘hydrogen economy’ to support this, including supply chains, distribution and storage.

The Energy Technologies Institute, featured on page 26, has a vital role to play

make us a world leader, not only in developing new technologies, but in high value manufacturing and the associated service sector.

Recent changes to EPSRC’s business sector teams, outlined on page 11, will help us meet these responsibilities and ensure the UK’s research base fulfils its potential, that it improves and saves lives through better healthcare, combats the environmental challenges we face and safeguards our long term economic prosperity. Stimulating economic recovery is a tough challenge, but research at the frontiers has always been about meeting and overcoming tough challenges.

And, with what seems like a growing list of daunting challenges confronting us, we must continue to find time to marvel at the wonder of science and engineering as it helps us rediscover an instrument, the lituus, lost for nearly three centuries and allows us to hear one of Bach’s compositions in its full glory again. Download the PIONEER Podcast and take a listen!

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Balancing

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important challenges

David Delpy EPSRC chief executive

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briefings

REVIVING BACH RACING GREEN READING LIPS DIAMOND CHIPS

ART AND ENGINEERING FUTURE HEALTH DIGITAL HUBS CARBON CAPTURE BOOST

Lost horn breathes new life into Bach cantata CUTTING-EDGE computer modelling software has brought an extinct, trumpet-like instrument back to life – allowing a work by Bach to be performed as the composer intended for the first time in nearly 300 years.

No-one alive today had heard, played or even seen a picture of the lituus – a two metre long horn made from beech.

But it has been recreated thanks to software developed by an EPSRC-funded PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.

Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, a Swiss-based music conservatory specialising in early music, has now used Edinburgh’s designs to build two identical examples of the long-lost instrument.

Both were used in an experimental performance of Bach’s cantata ‘O Jesus Christ, light of my life’ earlier this year.

To hear recordings of the lituus and find out how it was recreated download The PIONEER Podcast: www.epsrc.ac.uk/ videoaudio

briefings

Green race car provides carrot for sustainable motorsport A CARROT steering wheel, potato starch body and flax fibre seat – no, not a healthy remake of Hansel and Gretel but the component list of a fully functioning high performance Formula 3 racing car.

The World F3rst car, made entirely from sustainable materials, underwent its first track test in May and passed with flying colours.

With motorsport, including Formula One, under increasing pressure to improve its environmental credentials and cut costs, this green racer could provide the answer.

Developed by the University of Warwick’s Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre, supported by EPSRC, the F3 car is fully operational and fully sustainable.

The steering wheel is made from a polymer derived from carrots. The engine cover is recycled carbon fibre and the side pods are manufactured using recycled bottles. Even the lubricants are plant oil based and the wing mirrors and front wings are made from potato starch and flax fibre.

The two-litre turbo engine, as you would expect, is fuelled by biodiesel.

Dr Steve Maggs, from the World F3rst Racing project team, said the car had attracted global interest including motorsport officials. He said: “We have had talks with motorsport officials about ‘green motorsport’ and there is a willingness within that industry to do it.

“A lot of it is driven by the sport’s need to be not quite as expensive as perhaps it appears, particularly to sponsors.

“Motorsport is still a big British

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engineering success story so we are trying to tap into that industry.” But he added the race track was only one aspect of the ecofriendly project: “The car is a good way of showcasing what we can do with sustainable materials and biodiesel technology and has created a network of collaborators.

“These materials could be used in production cars, race cars or in other industries. They could be used in architectural cladding or sports equipment.”

To find out more about the project and see footage of the track testing visit: www.worldfirstracing.co.uk

NEW lip-reading computers can ‘speak’ everything from English and Arabic to Cantonese and Italian.

The technology, developed by scientists at the University of East Anglia, was developed by modelling the lip movements of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers.

It could bring huge benefits to deaf people, to law enforcement agencies and those operating in noisy environments.

Professor Stephen Cox, who led the research, said it had confirmed long held beliefs about lip movement and language.

He said: “This is an exciting advance in automatic lip reading technology and the first scientific confirmation of something we already intuitively suspected – that when people speak different languages they use different mouth shapes in different sequences.

“For example, we found frequent ‘lip-rounding’ among French speakers and more prominent tongue movements among Arabic speakers.” The ground-breaking research was presented at a major conference in Taiwan in April.

Multi-lingual lip-reading computers

Diamonds sparkle in race for new chip generation THE WORLD’S smallest diamond transistor could pave the way for a new generation of electronics.

Developed by an EPSRC-supported team at the University of Glasgow, the length of the transistor’s ‘gate’ is just 50 nanometres – 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.

The smaller the gate the faster the transistor works.

The Glasgow device is half the size of the previous smallest diamond transistor, developed in Japan.

Diamond has been heralded as an ideal material for the next generation of nanoscale electronics and its ability to operate in adverse weather and temperature conditions could lead to a new wave of devices from safer medical scanners to anti-collision technology in cars.

Dr David Moran, who led the Glasgow team, said: “From its invention in 1947, the transistor has been the building block of

Engineers take the stress out of artwork

ENGINEERS and art researchers have used advanced computer modelling to help preserve old works of art.

The work is based on techniques used to model the stresses and strains of tensioned fabric structures such as the O2 arena in London.

Damaged works of art are often lined with new canvas and re-stretched, ready to be enjoyed by future generations.

The new techniques will allow conservators to create canvases with uniform stress and mitigate against the effects of temperature and humidity.

It has been led by Professor Wanda Lewis, at the University of Warwick’s School of Engineering, and Dr Christina Young, of the Conservation and Technology Department at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Dr Young, a senior lecturer in painting conservation, said: “This work will provide invaluable information to help us improve and develop structural conservation treatment for paintings on canvas. It also opens up new options for living artists in finding fabrics which are suitable for novel projects and have longevity.”

Professor Lewis added: “We have developed a sophisticated

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many modern day technologies, from silicon based chips in your computer, to gallium arsenide based circuits in your mobile phones.

“These types of materials – silicon and gallium arsenide – are chosen upon what their strengths and weaknesses are. Diamond on the other hand is very much an excellent all-round performer and has been described by many as a perfect material.”

Diamond transistor technology could lead to the development of new technologies such as terahertz (T-ray) imaging.

T-ray imaging devices can penetrate clothes and flesh but the radiation is non-ionising and does not damage cells, so could provide safer security or medical scans.

Diamond transistors could also aid the development of automotive collision devices – radar technology that would allow cars to detect imminent collisions and take evasive action.

Dr Moran said: “These applications require very fast and ideally high-powered transistor technology that needs to operate in adverse weather and temperature conditions.

This is where diamond transistor technology would excel.”

Dr David Moran

Diamond has been described by many as a perfect material.

computer modelling package that predicts the shape of fabric enclosures very accurately. This aspect of design affects the aesthetics, durability and function of these structures. I realised that we can apply the same modelling principles to predict the behaviour of artists’ canvases, which is simply a different material and structure.”

She added: “We can model every detail down to the number and the position of the staples used, friction of the fabric, the effectiveness of the staples and how the fabric is wrapped around the corner.”

The work has been used to improve methods for tensioning canvas to ensure as uniform distribution of stress as possible.

Researchers are also predicting the effects of temperature and humidity on the tensioned fabric.

briefings

EPSRC: future health service New technology and novel design are transforming healthcare, improving every aspect of treatment from emergency response and diagnosis through to rehabilitation and preventative monitoring. Research teams, supported by EPSRC, are providing the breakthroughs that might just save your life.

Emergency response Emergency care practitioners have the skills to treat a wide range of illnesses and injuries on-the-spot.

But emergency vehicles have not evolved to provide the necessary equipment and facilities.

The Smart Pods project, an EPSRCsupported collaboration between the Royal College of Art and Loughborough University, aims to change all that.

The ‘Smart Pods’ concept includes a suite of radical new features and design innovations like 360° access to the patient, incorporation of more modularised and portable equipment and treatment packages, plus greater portability, flexibility and adaptability of the treatment space itself.

“This is the first time emergency vehicle and equipment concepts have been developed with collaborative input from clinicians, ergonomists, social scientists and designers,” says Dr Sue Hignett of Loughborough University. Smart Pods could allow nearly half the patients currently taken to A&E to be treated in the community.

Drug selection The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), supported by EPSRC-funded research, aims to revolutionise medicine by personalising healthcare and tailoring medical treatments to the unique genotype of each individual patient.

It will use a network of computers across the world to simulate the entire internal workings of the human body. By feeding in relevant genetic information about a given patient, it will be able to show how that patient will respond to different drugs and help select the optimum course of treatment.

Read the full feature on page 12

Condition monitoring A system using mobile phones will help people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and asthma monitor their own health and prevent hospital admissions.

It was developed by Oxford University engineers in collaboration with clinical colleagues and was based on research supported by EPSRC. The system, designed by t+ Medical, uses software that can be downloaded to a standard mobile phone handset and has already been adopted by eight primary care trusts across the UK. The software enables patients to easily send data – such as blood pressure, blood sugar levels or medication side effects – to a remote server that gives immediate feedback on their state of health.

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Diagnosis A new technology which dramatically improves the sensitivity of Magnetic Resonance techniques used in hospital scanners has been developed by scientists at the University of York.

The technique is based on manipulating parahydrogen, the fuel of the space shuttle. It is expected to allow doctors to learn far more about a patient’s condition from an MRI scan at a lower cost.

Professor Ian Greer, dean of the Hull York Medical School, said: “This technological advance has the potential to revolutionise the accessibility and application of high quality medical imaging to patients.

“It will bring significant benefits to diagnosis and treatment in virtually all areas of medicine and surgery, ranging from cancer diagnosis to orthopaedics and trauma. It illustrates the enormous success of combining high quality basic science with clinical application.”

The research, supported by EPSRC, BBSRC and MRC, was published in the journal Science.

Treatment Silicon chips could one day be used to repair damaged tissue in the human body thanks to an EPSRC-supported breakthrough at the University of Edinburgh.

Researchers used conventional silicon chip design and manufacturing to grow neurons – the basic cells of the human nervous system – in fine-detailed patterns on the surface of tiny chips. The development may eventually enable chips to replace damaged nerve or muscle fibres.

During the chip manufacturing process, the engineers and scientists printed patterns on the smooth silicon surface.

The chip was then dipped in a patented mixture of proteins and neurons grew along the patterns on the surface.

It is hoped that the method will eventually enable any type of tissue to be grown on a tailor-made pathway and implanted as prosthetic tissue in the body. The prosthetic chips could eventually be used in support of conventional micro-surgery.

briefings

New centres to boost Digital Britain ambition HI-TECH kitchens to help dementia sufferers live independently and sat-nav systems that guide elderly people around shopping centres could be improving life in the future thanks to three new research centres.

The research ‘hubs’ will create digital technologies to transform the way we live, work and play.

Building on plans to provide universal connectivity to broadband in the UK, the hubs will develop inclusive technologies that could improve the lives of those in rural communities, elderly people and people with disabilities.

Supported by the Research Councils’ Digital Economy programme, led by EPSRC, the hubs will be based at

Research in carbon capture technology NEW RESEARCH could dramatically cut CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel power stations and help the UK meet carbon reduction targets.

EPSRC and energy company E.ON have announced £6.9m of research funding for four university-led projects investigating carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

CCS allows carbon dioxide to be captured from power stations and then stored underground to prevent it from entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Under the funding, the University of Nottingham will lead a consortium of four universities looking at how the surfaces of materials can be chemically altered to enhance CO2 absorption or ‘soak up’ rates.

Newcastle University and four others will address some of the technical and material

PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson

Aberdeen, Nottingham and Newcastle universities.

Head of the Digital Economy programme John Hand said: “Their mission will be to connect people with digital technology to radically improve the way we live and to ensure every one is included in challenges of large-scale transportation of CO2 through pipelines. Leeds University, Imperial College London, Cranfield University and the Universities of Kent, Nottingham and Cambridge are working on the oxyfuel combustion process – where coal is burned in a mix of pure oxygen and power station flue gases, creating a stream of CO2 that can be captured for storage.

A fourth consortium, led by the University of Edinburgh, is focussing on improving the economics of large-scale carbon capture and storage.

David Delpy, EPSRC chief executive, said: “Carbon capture and storage is already a research priority for UK researchers and through previous research council funding we have built up a significant expertise within the academic sector.

“The research programmes we have announced mean that we can rapidly build on this expertise and speed up the introduction of these vital greener energy technologies.”

Dr Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK, added: “Collaborations such as this one with EPSRC are combining innovation

our digital future. The centres will also develop new ways to utilise digital technologies to help business and stimulate economic growth.”

Research to be carried out at the centres includes the development of ambient kitchens equipped with sensors in utensils, appliances, cupboards and work surfaces.

The kitchens will help dementia sufferers live independently by monitoring the user as they follow the instructions in a cookbook recipe.

Walking ‘sat-nav’ devices will also be developed to help older pedestrians navigate around shopping centres and large shops.

Launching the new research hubs at The British Library, Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson said: “New technologies can transform our quality of life. The unique thing about the new hubs in Aberdeen, Newcastle and Nottingham is the focus on designing digital technology that includes people from all walks of life – this will ensure that everyone is part of our digital future.”

We can rapidly build on expertise and speed up the introduction of vital greener energy technologies.

Professor David Delpy

and some of the best minds in our universities to deliver clean, sustainable energy systems for the future.”

This funding is part of the Research Councils’ Energy programme, which EPSRC leads on behalf of Research Councils UK (RCUK). The Energy programme mission is to position the UK to meet its energy and environmental targets and policy goals through high quality research and postgraduate training.

The funding is the third phase of the partnership between E.ON and EPSRC. More than £6m of research into low carbon and energy efficiency technologies is already taking place in other projects launched by the partnership during the last three years.

interview 11

Emma Feltham Head of business relationships

Building strong bonds with business

EPSRC has reorganised its business sector teams to make sure world-class research and training supports the UK’s traditional strengths and stimulates emerging areas.

PSRC’s sector teams provide a vital link between academia and industry. They act as a communication channel – ensuring tomorrow’s business challenges are reflected in today’s blue skies research. They ensure industry’s voice helps shape EPSRC’s strategy and vision.

They broker partnerships – bringing together user organisations with research groups who can add real value and linking research groups with organisations who can bring valuable perspectives.

It is essential the sector teams remain forward looking to reflect trends and issues, allowing the research community time to help address them.

That was the driving force behind recent changes to EPSRC’s sector structure.

In consultation with industry advisers, new sector groups have been developed and existing ones evolved. The changes reflect emerging and growth areas and recognise new business models and company behaviours.

“We spoke to our advisory groups and they thought our existing sector structure was backward looking,” says Emma Feltham, EPSRC’s head of business relationships. “They felt it might not reflect some of the important sectors for the future, emerging sectors, those where the UK

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EPSRC sector teams • Aerospace, defence and marine • Transport systems and vehicles • Electronics, communications and IT • Creative industries • Medicines and healthcare • Manufacturing • Infrastructure and environment • Energy

can, and will, make a real impact and where it can be a world leader.”

She adds the new structure also accommodates changing thinking within industry: “A lot of companies don’t associate with any one particular sector. They associate with an identified market gap or opportunity where they can grow. A lot of companies work across different sectors.”

One sector area that has been given a greater profile, one not traditionally associated with engineering and the physical sciences, is the creative industries – including games development and computer-generated imagery.

“It is an area the UK already has real excellence in. We want to build on the contacts we have in that space and understand where engineering and physical sciences research and training can make a real difference,” says Dr Feltham. “If we invest in the right areas we can help this sector really grow and become a real world leader.”

Dr Feltham says making sure EPSRC’s sector relationships remain effective is vital to developing research and maximising the potential impact it can have.

“For the majority of research to have an impact it needs to be picked up by a user organisation, a company, charity or a government department. The majority of people we train will also end up working in these types of organisations.

So we cannot lose sight of what these user organisations need.”

But she adds the relationship is not about academics providing applied research and development for the private sector.

“The problems that industry faces are long-term problems that are really challenging. Industry cannot crack them without academic help. That’s why we need these partnerships.”

Dr Feltham says collaborations can increase investment in academic research – but that is not the primary benefit.

“The biggest benefit is the access to industry expertise and equipment.”

The changes EPSRC has made to its sector teams will help maintain an effective relationship with the communities that benefit from, and rely on, world-class research, and continue to support the aspirations of all involved.

To find out more about how EPSRC can benefit your organisation email: sectors@epsrc.ac.uk

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Pleased to meet me

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EPSRC-supported research to create a virtual human could revolutionise medical treatment and herald a new era of personalised healthcare.

Words: Kate Ravilious hat do you do when you get a headache? Some people swear by paracetamol, others claim that only ibuprofen will work and for some aspirin is the key. We are all different and none of us respond in exactly the same way to any one medication. When it comes to more serious medical conditions, such as cancer and HIV, choosing the right medication can be a life and death decision.

A new project hopes to improve the odds of this medical lottery, by testing treatments on a ‘virtual human’ first. The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), is an EU Framework Programme 7 Initiative. It aims to revolutionise medicine by personalising healthcare and tailoring medical treatments to the unique genotype of each individual patient. Professor Peter Coveney is helping coordinate some of the work via the Virtual Physiological Human Network of Excellence and his EPSRC-supported research in this area is helping to support the aims of the EU-funded VPH. “This is the Holy Grail for medical treatment and an incredible ambition for us,” says Professor Coveney, from the Department of Chemistry at University College London, and team leader.

Essentially the VPH will use a network of computers across the world, to simulate the entire internal workings of the human body, right the way from the neural signals in the brain to the blood flow in the toes. By feeding in relevant genetic information about a given patient, the simulation will be able to show how a patient will respond to different drugs, indicating what will happen at the organ, tissue, cell and molecular level. Based on these results the patient can then be prescribed the optimum course of treatment for them.

Currently most medical treatments are designed for an ‘average’ person. Unfortunately many people fall outside of the average range. “Deviations from average can be very substantial,” explains Professor Coveney. And in some cases patients can become extremely ill, or even die, before the doctor manages to find the best treatment for them.

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Professor Peter Coveney

One such example is treating HIV patients, where choosing the right medication can be a critical decision. There are nine drugs available to inhibit HIV-1 protease, a protein produced by the virus to propagate itself. The drugs work by latching onto HIV-1 protease and disabling it, preventing it from reproducing and spreading the infection.

Unfortunately HIV-1 protease is good at mutating – changing the sequence and arrangement of amino acids that make up the protein. “HIV-1 protease is made up from 20 different amino acids, and so the number of possible variants is astronomically large,” says Professor Coveney. Just two amino acids switching places can make the protein unrecognisable to the drug, leaving the protein free to reproduce again.

Right now doctors have no way of matching which of the nine available drugs will latch most effectively onto the particular mutant of HIV-1 protease that a HIV infected patient carries. Instead they have to use trial and error; prescribing one course of drugs and then testing the immune response of the patient to see if it is working.

To overcome this problem Professor Coveney and his colleagues have been testing ‘virtual drugs’ on ‘virtual cells’ of ‘virtual patients’.

Their computer simulation is specific to the HIV virus and the nine drugs, but it demonstrates the VPH concept and illustrates how it might work.

In this case they collected genotypic assays from HIV patients (these show the amino acid sequence of the patient’s HIV-1 protease) and simulated how each of the nine drugs might bind to each individual’s HIV-1 protease. “We were able to rank the efficacy of the nine drugs for each individual patient,” says Professor Coveney.

It is still very early days, and the model must be validated and verified before the results can be used to help decide which course of drugs to prescribe on real patients. In addition, the team will need to address legal and ethical concerns. “Currently the Medical Research Council in the UK has no policy on using this kind of computer model,” says Professor Coveney.

Over the next few years the team hope to put their simplified versions of a VPH through its paces; testing it on other viral infections and verifying their results. “We are aiming to develop a framework for the methodology and lay down the ground rules,”

anatomy a brief history 1600 BC

16th century

This is the Holy Grail for medical treatment and an incredible ambition for us.

Professor Peter Coveney

he says. Currently they are doing another prototype VPH simulation, this time studying the way in which tumours evolve in lung cancer patients.

Potentially the applications of a full bodied VPH are limitless.

“It could be used to help surgeons plan brain surgery, improve our understanding of diseases and disease processes (osteoporosis, for example) and design and test new medical devices,” explains Professor Coveney.

And VPH could also be used in more general situations, such as drug testing for pharmaceutical companies, potentially reducing the number of tests carried out on animals and shortening the time it takes for a drug to get through clinical trials.

17th century

Ancient anatomy Anatomy explained Study flourishes Ancient Egyptian Between 1539 and 1542 M R Columbus, a pupil papyrus have one of the most influential of Vesalius, rectifies and revealed early books on human anatomy, advances previous De humani corporis fabrica studies of human knowledge of the anatomy (On the Structure of the anatomy. including the bones, heart Human Body), is compiled and brain. Italy becomes centre of anatomy, allowing

by Andreas Vesalius, often important research methods referred to as the founder of to be used such as modern anatomy. dissections on women.

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18th century Modelling in wax Anatomical wax models aim to reproduce the human body as close to nature as possible. Used for educational purposes, some models even become part of museum collections.

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Above: HIV-1 protease molecule and its interaction with one of the HIV drugs

Unfortunately such personalised medical care doesn’t come cheap: Professor Coveney estimates that it costs in the order of £7,000 to carry out a HIV-1 protease simulation for one patient.

However, he is confident that costs will reduce significantly with the economy of scale, and as computing technology advances.

It will be a long while before VPH arrives at your local doctor’s surgery, but for people with more serious medical complaints a simplified form of VPH may be just a few years away. Welcome to the era of personalised healthcare.

For more information contact: Professor Peter Coveney, p.v.coveney@ucl.ac.uk or www.vph-noe.eu/ For more information about the Research Councils’ e-science programme contact: Sarah Fulford, sarah.fulford@epsrc.ac.uk

19th century

20th century

Technology advances knowledge 1895: German physicist, Wilhelm Roentgen, discovers x-rays.

Within two months, x-rays are being used in Europe and North America.

Imaging the human body 1959: Ian Donald uses ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in obstetrics and gynaecology for the first time.

1972: A new imaging technique, Computerised Tomography (CT) scanner, is invented. Combining x-ray images to generate cross-sectional views as well as 3D images of internal organs and structures.

1974: The first low quality magnetic resonance (MR) images are produced in the UK and marks the beginning of many technological advances in the use of MRI in medicine.

21st century Dawning of a virtual human Research begins on the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) bringing together a network of computers to simulate the entire internal working of the human body.

“It’s not our science, it is the public’s science.”

The world-renowned fertility expert, broadcaster and writer, Professor Robert Winston, chairs EPSRC’s Societal Issues Panel. He talks to PIONEER about the role of society in shaping the future of research.

Words: Chris Buratta

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delivery has arrived in Professor Winston’s office – research material for the book he is busy completing, called Bad Ideas.

“It’s about human technology and how, ever since the hand axe, every piece of technology we have ever invented has brought us closer to our demise,” he says. After a thoughtful pause a wry smile suggests hope is not entirely lost.

One of the key themes of the book is science’s relationship with government and the state.

In parallel, Professor Winston has been heavily involved in the public’s relationship with science for more than three decades, as a leading researcher, broadcaster, writer and Peer. He has also chaired EPSRC’s Societal Issues Panel (SIP) since its inception in 2006.

The panel helps EPSRC promote a healthier relationship between science and society and take account of public thinking in deciding how to invest public funds in research.

And Professor Winston is adamant that society has a fundamental role to play in shaping the future of scientific research.

“What we as scientists and indeed politicians have to bear in mind is it is not ‘our’ science, it is the public’s science. They pay for it and they must have some degree of ownership. Not tell us what to do, but we should be accountable to them and not necessarily to government.”

He adds: “We should be arguing for the democratisation of science. Our best chance is if the public feel they own it. They will see the good and the bad in it and decide what is best.”

The work of SIP is still in its infancy and he admits that there is a long way to go. But, he says recognising and exploring societal issues is a major step, or in his own words, ‘if you have an oily coat, you have a view of what’s going wrong with the machine’.

He adds: “EPSRC promotes the highest quality research in its field in the world. But EPSRC is also leading the way by beginning to think about how this ties in with the perceptions of science and how that ties in with government and science.”

Professor Winston is also clear the research community must use the media to promote informed debate if ‘democratisation’ is to be achieved – a view you would expect from arguably the most high profile scientist of our time.

“The media has to be part of it. Lay representation on advisory bodies to the research councils is also part of it. Public dialogue is very much involved in this and we are doing that very effectively, particularly with some of the ethical debates such as nanotechnology.”

He adds: “But we have to use the media and we have to do that with high standards and integrity. We have to be aware of the fact that we need to be better at communicating the basics of what we

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Science has to be seen as part of our humanity.

Professor Robert Winston

do so that the complexities can be better understood.”

He also acknowledges that stigma and scepticism still surround media work in some quarters of the science community.

So what inspired a young, successful researcher to step into the media’s glare?

His first TV encounter, performing the first caesarean section on TV during the 60s, had an unexpected dramatic twist: his trousers fell down. Undeterred, he swapped the operating theatre for the stage and before returning his attentions to medicine he picked up a national award for his direction of a play at the Edinburgh Festival.

He continues to draw parallels between art, performance and science: “Looking down a microscope and seeing something living.

There’s a sense of wonder and it’s no different to looking at a great work of art.”

He is particularly fascinated by Joseph Wright’s ‘An experiment on a bird in an air pump’ in which the artist depicts a scientist removing the air from a glass jar containing a distressed bird, as a small group look on. “The little girl is looking up in horror, her elder sister cannot look at all,” he says. “But Joseph Wright’s view of the scientist is extraordinary. The scientist is looking at you, the viewer, with this fixed stare on his face. It is sort of saying ‘this is a failure of public engagement’.”

That was 1768. Move forward two and a half centuries and Professor Winston argues that portraying the reality of science, its potential and its flaws, is still the way forward but this needs to be done in a constructive way.

He is aware of the pitfalls of ‘science as story’ and says science cannot afford to be portrayed as simply ‘great breakthroughs’.

It must be seen as a continuous and complex process. He adds the reporting of science in recent years has moved in this direction, helped, in part, by the issue of climate change.

Ultimately, it is about an open, honest and balanced representation of science and technology, a representation that allows informed debate and one which is contributed to by the research community.

“If we get that right, we will see science as much more than just a driver of the economy, we will see it as a way of looking at the world, a way of reading the world, and one that is fundamentally important,” he says.

“It is having science as an inherent part of culture and through that you have a better chance of wise decisions in the way science is used. Science has to be seen as part of our humanity.”

For more information on EPSRC’s Societal Issues Panel: www.epsrc.ac.uk

Research in the disaster zone

PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

earthquake engineering 19

Just days after a major earthquake struck central Italy in April, a team of specialist engineers were combing the streets and buildings for clues.

Supported by EPSRC, earthquake engineers are building a safer future for those who live with constant seismic threat.

Words: Chris Buratta

t 3.30am on April 6, the Italian city of L’Aquila was rocked by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. The powerful tremors left at least 299 people dead, up to 40,000 people homeless and reduced many of the city’s buildings, and those in the surrounding towns, to rubble.

The days that followed were dominated first by the rescue operation and then by the clean up and re-building process.

Among those on the deserted streets of the disaster zone was a team of earthquake engineers.

“We were taking trips into the area to look at the damage to buildings, why they had been damaged and to look at ground features associated with the faulting,” says Dr Tiziana Rossetto, an EPSRC-supported earthquake engineer at University College London and part of the UK Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT). It is building failure that causes the vast majority of deaths in an earthquake.

The team arrived just days after the main quake. The entire area had been evacuated due to the risk of aftershocks. Accompanied by police and emergency services they documented the damage to buildings, bridges, roads and pipelines.

The team carefully classified buildings by structure type and assessed the earthquake’s effect. Much of the city centre consisted of 18th century stone masonry buildings held together with lime mortar and topped with wooden roof structures.

“There was extensive damage in the city centres where you have those older buildings,” says Dr Rossetto. “It was interesting to see where they had been restored or strengthened they resisted better.

We were also looking at the newer areas outside the town centres where you have reinforced concrete structures.”

These newer buildings performed well and most of the structural elements were undamaged. But the team found that non-structural damage to windows, partitions and cladding, had still caused major issues.

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Above and right: Devastation caused by the Italian earthquake in April

“If these elements are damaged it can be dangerous and a particular case was the hospital. The structure was OK, but the partitions and the cladding had been damaged. You had compromised hygiene and there might have been damage to sensitive equipment. So the hospital was still not being used at the time we were there. They still had a field hospital in place,” recalls Dr Rossetto.

These research missions to earthquake zones are vital to progressing engineering techniques and improving building performance in areas of seismic risk.

Dr Rossetto has been part of research teams investigating the most powerful earthquakes of the last decade, including Kashmir in 2005, the Sichuan region of China in 2008 and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.

The frontline research is vital to updating building codes and mitigating the effects of future quakes. Earthquake engineers must act fast, to assess damage before it is cleared or repaired, and often work in dangerous and remote locations. In 2008, the EEFIT team were trapped overnight in the mountains in Sichuan because of a landslide. In Kashmir, they talked their way on to a US Army Chinook helicopter to get closer to the affected areas.

“It is really important teams like ourselves go in,” Dr Rossetto says. “An earthquake is almost a testing ground. You can simulate an earthquake in the lab but you have to reduce the model structures to such a scale they are not representative or it is extremely expensive. In any case, you would never be able to test the variety of structural systems and building techniques that exist. To see how PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

Every earthquake teaches us something and every earthquake is different.

Dr Tiziana Rossetto

earthquake engineering 21

You get hit by the fact there are people there and this is their home not just a building.

Dr Tiziana Rossetto

different structures perform, how different building codes perform, we have to get out there.”

Earthquake engineering is a relatively young discipline in a scientific context but has progressed dramatically over the past 60 years. In Europe, the first building regulations specific to earthquake risk were introduced in the 1970s and these are now referred to as ‘old codes’.

“Every earthquake has taught us more and the lessons learnt are incorporated into the building codes,” says Dr Rossetto.

“For example, the engineering community thought steel buildings were ductile and would have no problems resisting earthquakes.

Then the Northridge earthquake happened in 1994 in the USA and caused the failure of many steel buildings.

“It was seen that the building system was not the problem but the welding procedure followed created brittle welds which fractured in the earthquake. Subsequently provisions have been added to building codes to prevent this happening. Every earthquake teaches us something and every earthquake is different.”

Back at UCL, Dr Rossetto is leading the Earthquake and People Interaction Centre (Epicentre), supported by EPSRC. The centre is pioneering a new approach to earthquake engineering and developing new tools that will help co-ordinate and improve the amount of vital information gathered on the front line.

Earthquake engineering is multi-disciplinary by its nature, combining the skills of structural engineers, geo-technical engineers and seismologists. But what is less often investigated is the social and psychological factors that play out in areas hit by disaster.

“The ethos behind Epicentre came directly from the field missions.

You go there, you look at the damage in a clinical way and you report back. Then you get hit by the fact there are people there and this is their home not just a building. The effects on the community are much larger than the structural damage, it can affect the development of an entire country, have economic impacts and so forth,” says Dr Rossetto.

“Social science has gone on its own, engineering has gone on its own and now I think Epicentre is bridging that gap. We can gain enormously from collaboration with other disciplines, for example we work with psychologists on pre-disaster mitigation. That’s the philosophy behind Epicentre.” She is convinced this approach will help accelerate the knowledge and techniques to combat the dangers posed by earthquakes.

Dr Rossetto and her team, in collaboration with other groups, are also developing new tools and utilising new technologies to aid the investigation of earthquakes.

The Virtual Disaster Viewer project, supported by EPSRC, will allow greater co-ordination of field missions between international research groups, global collaboration and interpretation of findings and remote evidence gathering from inaccessible areas.

“What used to happen is we’d all go to a site, do a separate report and no-one really talked or discussed it in real time,” says Dr Rossetto.

“What we thought was missing was a common data sharing and visualisation tool. The Virtual Disaster Viewer uses satellite imagery, overlaying before and after shots so we can systematically approach the research. We can target areas we know are damaged, not just from media reports but from these GIS images. At the same time we can upload information onto the site from the field. In future, if we had a very large event we could partition areas to visit between the various international teams and pull the information together.

“In China we couldn’t access all the affected areas so we have developed the tool to allow experts to interpret damage extent from before and after satellite images. We are still working on this aspect of the tool and seeing how interpretations compare with ground truth data.”

One goal binds the research, both combing the rubble in the disaster zone itself and developing new tools to analyse the damage from space, to create a safer environment for those who live with the everyday threat of earthquakes.

For more information contact: Dr Tiziana Rossetto, t.rossetto@ucl.ac.uk For further information on EPSRC’s process, environment and sustainability programme contact: Matthew Davis, matthew.davis@epsrc.ac.uk

e spray our antibody solution onto the item, let it bind, remove unbound particles and then shine a light on it. We can see exactly what body fluids are present and exactly where they are. That is just not possible with the techniques available at the moment,” says Dr Sue Jickells.

It reads like a scene from a TV crime show – and until now that’s exactly what it was. But EPSRC-supported research teams, at the University of East Anglia and Kings College London, have turned crime fiction into crime reality. The Light It Up project has developed a technique that can quickly locate and identify minute specks of body fluid at a crime scene, such as saliva, blood and semen. A spray solution quite literally ‘lights up’ the evidence, giving each sample a fluorescent glow under a forensic light.

The project has also adapted the technique to extract more information, known as ‘lifestyle intelligence’, from fingerprints – information such as whether the suspect is a smoker or a cocaine user or if they have handled explosives.

The techniques offer huge advantages to investigators. Not only will they be able to gather more information from crime scenes, and from evidence sent to the laboratory for analysis, but they will be able to do it quickly and efficiently. As you would expect, the work has attracted considerable interest from the Forensic Science Service and police forces.

“Body fluids are important sources of DNA for DNA profiling so it’s key to try and locate these fluids at crime scenes. Identifying what type of body fluid is present, and where, can also provide vital evidence,” says Dr Jickells, who along with Dr Barbara Daniel, heads this aspect of the project.

“At the moment for every body fluid type you have to carry out a different test to get an indication if a particular body fluid is present. For the most commonly used tests, each test works by a different principle meaning that the operator has to be skilled in several tests and has to have equipment available for each. Some of the tests cannot be carried out at a crime scene for safety reasons and some tests don’t definitively identify the body fluids. These are considerable limitations,” says Dr Jickells.

“Another problem is that some body fluids aren’t visible to the naked eye. If you can’t see it, how can you test for it? Some body fluids, semen in particular, show up under the types of light sources used to examine crime scenes but some don’t. For example, saliva probably won’t show up so you have to make a best estimation of where it will be.”

Dr Jickells adds: “An example would be where you have a cup at a murder scene and it’s got half a cup of coffee in it. Maybe the person who carried out the crime drank out of that cup and left their saliva, and hence their DNA, on the cup. The scene examiner will swab the cup and send the swab for DNA profiling. If they already have a suspect but they deny being at the scene, finding their DNA there can be very useful evidence.”

Locating samples that are not visible is down to the experience of investigators, using prior knowledge to determine the likely location of possible samples.

“But it might be that a stain from a body fluid has been deposited somewhere at a crime scene that wouldn’t be anticipated from examining the scene. If that stain isn’t visible to the eye and

“W See crime scenes in a whole new light

Fingerprinting and DNA profiling are the cornerstones of crime detection. New techniques pioneered by EPSRC-supported researchers are set to take these methods to a whole new level.

Words: Chris Buratta

PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

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Fingerprints and DNA: the cornerstones of detection Ancient clay tablets from Babylon and China reveal thumb marks were used to confirm business transactions more than 4,000 years ago.

Above: A fingerprint treated with the new solution is able to detect direct cannabis use

isn’t detected by the light sources, it will probably be missed because you simply can’t test all surfaces at a scene. I suspect there are a lot of body fluids that don’t get detected because of the limitations of the current technology.”

With the Light It Up solution, investigators will be able to search for these hidden clues using a far more scientific approach. “It will make it much more efficient because you only have to carry out one procedure. You will see exactly where a body fluid is present and we think it will offer sensitivity advantages in that it will be able to detect very small body fluid stains,” says Dr Jickells.

The solution uses metal micro-particles coated with antibodies that will target and bind to specific fluids – blood, saliva or semen.

Each particle is also ‘tagged’ so it will fluoresce or ‘light up’ under a forensic light source. The solution is sprayed onto the area under investigation and the excess is removed with a magnet. What remains has bound to the ‘target’ fluid and will show up under the light. By tagging each antibody with a different colour, each body fluid will show up as a different colour.

The work on fingerprinting, led by Professor David Russell, works in a similar way.

The team use antibodies to target particular substances present in the sweat residue that forms the fingerprint. Using the technique, not only can they locate and capture the fingerprint pattern itself, giving the identification information, but also gain vital lifestyle intelligence such as whether the fingerprint belongs to a drug user or a smoker.

“Fingerprints are still the primary source of evidence. It is the cornerstone of policing. But a fingerprint is only useful when it is matched to one on a database. If someone has never committed a crime or never been caught before they won’t have had their prints taken. Without that match you have a dead end,” says Professor Russell.

“What we decided to do was try to get more information, more chemical information, from a fingerprint to help police narrow down the list of suspects.”

“A lot of people say that all bank notes have drug residue on them. So what about the chance of accidental contact, could that be picked up? By detecting the drug metabolite (the substance produced by metabolism) we can say that person has ingested that drug, that they have used that drug.”

In the 19th century, Sir William Herschel developed the theory that fingerprints were unique to individuals and remained unchanged throughout life.

Another Englishman, Sir Edward Henry, developed this further by establishing a Classification System which is still used today.

In 1901, the first Fingerprint Bureau was established at Scotland Yard and in 1902 the first person was convicted on fingerprint evidence.

The first computerised automatic fingerprint recognition system was installed in Scotland Yard in 1984, replacing the need for manual searches.

DNA profile fingerprinting was invented in 1984 at the University of Leicester by geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys.

Its first use in criminology was in a 1986 murder investigation in Leicester. Within a year, DNA profiling was being used by police forces around the world.

The team began by detecting the major metabolite of nicotine, cotinine. Now they can detect the metabolites of other drugs of abuse such as cannabis and cocaine. Researchers are also extending the technique to other substances such as explosives.

Both aspects of the Light It Up project have been carried out in collaboration with the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, the Forensic Explosives Laboratory (DTSL), the Forensic Science Service and Foster and Freeman Ltd, a manufacturer of forensic light sources.

“They have all been very supportive,” says Professor Russell.

“These projects would not have moved on so fast without them.”

The fingerprinting work is due to be trialled in the field over the coming months and Professor Russell is confident that it can progress from the lab to crime scenes.

He adds: “We have the right people working with us. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch are the people who approve all the technology for our police forces so if they approve it, it could be implemented. A number of police forces have come to the labs and talked to us about using it. It’s really difficult to put a time frame on it but I am optimistic we could do it within 12 months.”

For more information contact: Dr Sue Jickells, sue.jickells@kcl.ac.uk Professor David Russell, d.russell@uea.ac.uk For further information about EPSRC-funded research on crime, terrorism and security contact: Anita Howman, anita.howman@epsrc.ac.uk or Alex Hulkes, alex.hulkes@epsrc.ac.uk

Forging a heartbeat A sensor device designed to protect workers in the harsh environments of a metal foundry could help save the most fragile lives on earth.

Words: Maria Burke

round 70,000 babies receive resuscitation at birth each year in the UK to ensure their tiny hearts are beating fast enough to supply oxygen to their brain and vital organs.

Typically, doctors use stethoscopes to measure the babies’ heart rates. But this cannot continually monitor a baby’s condition and resuscitation has to be suspended momentarily while doctors mentally count the beats. Other procedures, such as ECG electrodes, cannot be used to monitor the heart because the skin of a newborn baby is extremely delicate, often wet and inaccessible as they are placed in insulating bags to prevent heat loss.

A new core technology, originally developed by an EPSRCsupported student to monitor the health of workers in metal foundries, could help protect and save these fragile lives.

The device allows clinicians to continue with resuscitation without interruption and so save valuable seconds in the important first stages of life. The device will give clinicians an early warning of any unexpected or rapid change in a baby’s condition so they can intervene more rapidly.

In 2003, University of Nottingham student Mark Grubb was researching ways of monitoring the health of workers in metal foundries as part of his PhD. He was supported by an EPSRC CASE award (studentship funding in collaboration with an industrial sponsor) attracting sponsorship from the mining

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company Rio Tinto. His work centred on a novel optical sensor with wireless electronics that monitored the pulse and breathing rate of the wearer.

The sensor deploys a low power light source that illuminates the skin. A corresponding detector measures how much light is absorbed and reflected back. The amount of light absorbed varies with the changing volume of blood under the skin as the heart beats. The sensor sends signals back to a small computer that continuously monitors both the heart and breathing rates.

“The clever stuff is the signal detector and signal processing electronics that allows the device to analyse only the light that penetrates the body and comes out again,” explains Barrie HayesGill, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham and Grubb’s PhD supervisor. “Remember we are dealing with very, very small amounts of light and an even smaller change in light intensity.”

He continues: “The trick is to label the light from the light source with a unique signature. The detector is programmed to pick up only light with this signature.”

A prototype hard hat incorporating the sensor produced good results and a patent on the optical sensor and signal processing technique was filed in 2006.

After he finished his PhD studies, Mark Grubb continued to

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work on the commercialisation potential of his patented work.

A chance meeting between Professor Hayes-Gill’s colleague and joint PhD supervisor John Crowe and two medical colleagues opened up the potential of the technology in a completely new direction. These medical colleagues were a university lecturer in child health, Don Sharkey, and Professor Neil Marlow initially based at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham and more recently at University College London. Together they recognised the potential use of the sensor to measure the pulse, and potentially the breathing rate, of premature babies.

With funding from the charity, Action Medical Research, the team has modified the sensor to make it small enough to be placed

on a baby’s forehead to measure heart rate on a continuous basis.

A three phase clinical study started in December 2008, and the team have undertaken recordings from stable newborn babies in the intensive care unit of Nottingham Queen’s Medical Centre.

These readings have now been successfully validated by comparison with ECG traces.

Once the team have readings from 60 newborn babies, they will progress onto phase two, which will validate the sensor on newborn babies delivered by elective caesarean. “This will illustrate how well the device works on babies with different skin colours whilst covered with fluids, and when their physiology may be changing,” explains Professor Hayes-Gill.

From metal foundry to delivery room 2003: University of Nottingham PhD student Mark Grubb, funded by an EPSRC CASE award studentship, researches ways of monitoring the health of workers in metal foundries, with industrial sponsorship from the mining company Rio Tinto.

2006: A prototype hard hat incorporating the sensor produced exciting results.

A subsequent patent was filed on the corresponding optical sensor and signal processing technique.

2007: The team received an Action Medical Research grant to develop the sensor for

use on babies. The sensor was modified to make it small enough to be placed on a baby’s forehead to measure heart rate on a continuous basis.

2008: Phase one patient trials begin using stable newborn babies in the intensive care unit of Nottingham Queen’s Medical Centre. Phase two will trial the sensor on newborn babies delivered by elective caesarean.

2010: Phase three trials due to be completed. This final phase will focus on premature babies in the delivery room immediately after birth.

The device allows clinicians to continue resuscitation without interruption and save valuable seconds.

Phase three will focus on premature babies in the delivery room immediately after birth, the real target of the work. When the trials are completed by March 2010, the sensor will have been used to record the heart rate of over 120 newborn babies.

If the work is successful the team expect to commercialise the device and estimate the annual EU and US market could be £18m. Professor Hayes-Gill has considerable experience in spin-out creation, having formed Monica Healthcare Ltd in May 2005, where he is currently the research director. This spin out company owes its origin to technology that detects the tiny fetal ECG on a pregnant mother’s abdomen that was previously funded by another EPSRC PhD CASE studentship (also in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham) back in 1996.

“A considerable volume of work has been generated from a simple and basic EPSRC PhD CASE award. Certainly without the correct personnel this project would not have generated this level of output but the importance of EPSRC in providing these highly important PhD CASE awards must never be underestimated,” says Professor Hayes-Gill.

For more information contact: Professor Barrie Hayes-Gill, barrie.hayes-gill@nottingham.ac.uk For further information on EPSRC’s CASE awards and opportunities for involvement contact: Anita Howman, anita.howman@epsrc.ac.uk

The carbon clock is ticking Fifteen per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Slash CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The targets are clear.

But are they realistic? And how are we going to reach them?

Words: Chris Buratta

n 2006, Gordon Brown announced the formation of the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) – a major new partnership between the public and private sector – to help cut the UK’s carbon emissions.

The ETI’s goal was clear, accelerate the development and deployment of energy technologies that will help achieve this carbon reduction – from wind and marine power to carbon capture and storage, and energy from waste. But hitting the UK’s energy targets will be a formidable task, and ETI chief executive David Clarke harbours no illusions.

“It is a huge challenge, no two ways about it. Will we meet the targets? By operating in a collaborative way, both in technical development and also internationally in learning from each other, I think the answer can be yes.”

He adds: “If we learn from the best, learn quickly, then we have a real opportunity to succeed.”

Based in Loughborough, the ETI is a partnership between the UK Government, including EPSRC, the Technology Strategy Board, the Department of Environment and Climate Change, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and global energy developers, BP, Shell, E.ON, EDF Energy, Caterpillar and Rolls-Royce.

This £1bn private-public partnership aims to reduce the risk in developing and deploying fledgling technologies. It will identify and fund projects that will demonstrate the commercial viability of new technologies, sharing the risks involved and accelerating take up by the wider market.

But Clarke stresses the risks are more than simply financial:

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“The ETI is a partnership of skills, market access and deployable routes into that market.

“We have to be rational. Most demonstration projects are just too big for any one company to take on by themselves. I don’t mean that from a financial point of view but in terms of the breadth of skills and technologies you need to successfully address all the issues.

“So the collaborative element is absolutely key. We need the right skills, the right deployment routes and the right innovation. Putting the right partnerships together is at the heart of the job we have to do here at the ETI.” EPSRC’s role is pivotal to ETI’s success, says Clarke. “EPSRC brings the access routes for ETI projects into the university and academic base in the UK and potentially elsewhere in the world.”

He adds: “Clearly we have to involve a very broad range of industrial groups who can address these technologies from a deployment point of view, but we need collaborations with the innovation base to enable us to pull forward brand new ideas and new thinking. That’s one of the critical roles for EPSRC, to help us identify who we should be talking to.”

Since its inception, the ETI has been developing a UK energy model that will help direct efforts at key technologies and identify stumbling blocks within those areas.

This ‘techno-economic’ model has opened up an informed debate about the UK’s future energy landscape, but Clarke is quick to stress that it cannot conjure up the answer to all our energy woes.

“It’s a fabulous tool for getting all the issues on the table,” he says. “For instance, it enables us to identify that there might be opportunities for a greatly reduced cost solar PV cell system.

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networks (generating power and heat closer to the end user); transport; and buildings.

In January, the ETI announced £20m funding for its first four projects. Three focus on cutting edge offshore wind turbine design and the fourth will demonstrate a new commercial scale tidal turbine. It expects to launch a further ten to fifteen projects in 2009 alone.

But all these efforts, models and strategies are framed by two targets; cutting CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and, looming large on the horizon, generating 15 per cent of the UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. This is reinforced by the new 2020 target announced in the budget to cut emissions by 34 per cent.

Clarke says many of the decisions about 2020 are already locked down. But he adds the ETI will tackle some key areas such as reducing the cost of low carbon energy, starting with offshore wind

The Energy Technologies Institute and EPSRC • THE ETI is a partnership between the UK Government, including EPSRC, and global energy developers, BP, Shell, E.ON, EDF Energy, Caterpillar and Rolls-Royce.

• This £1bn partnership funds projects to demonstrate commercial viability of fledgling technologies, sharing the risks involved and accelerating commercial take up.

• EPSRC chief executive Professor David Delpy is a member of the ETI board. He said: “The projects funded by the ETI will involve and build upon significant expertise within UK universities. Academic research groups will be part of ETI projects and research teams will be needed to tackle new challenges uncovered as the projects progress.”

“We can start to say ‘what would be the real benefits on the UK energy system if you could cut the cost of solar PV cells by 80 per cent or improve CCS separation efficiency by 30 per cent.

“We can then go back to the research base and say what would you have to do to make these kinds of cost savings or these kinds of manufacturing volumes possible. So it helps us set the challenges.”

The model has also helped to shape the ETI’s three-year technology strategy that will focus efforts on seven key areas: wind; marine; carbon capture and storage (CCS); distributed energy,

Left: The ETI supported NOVA project will demonstrate the feasibility of offshore vertical axis wind turbines

energy, by improving reliability and reducing the installation costs.

It will also focus on the UK’s tidal and wave energy resources, some of the best in the world, and aims to develop low cost reliable devices to harvest that energy. Hitting the 2050 target will force the ETI to tackle more fundamental questions. “In the medium to long term the question is ‘how are we going to deliver low carbon energy efficiently, both in cost and technology, to the consumer in the middle part of this century’,” says Clarke.

“It probably won’t be the way we do it today. It will be a ‘portfolio future’ involving fossil fuels and CCS, true renewables such as wind, nuclear and by 2050 potentially hydrogen. These types of solutions start to come up from 2020 onwards.”

He adds: “By demonstrating new technologies at full-scale we will uncover new research challenges that we really need to address and we will feed those back into the academic base through EPSRC.” Clarke says major new technologies may only have two ‘deployments’ over the next 40 years due to the development timescales involved. Therefore there will only be two opportunities to iron out any issues, only two opportunities to get it right.

So this feedback loop – the ETI progressing technologies and feeding back new research issues to EPSRC as they arise – will lie at the heart of meeting the 2050 CO2 reduction targets.

Whichever perspective you take, technological, political or environmental, only one thing is certain: The CO2 clock keeps ticking and it will not stop. For the ETI, together with EPSRC and other partners, it is a constant reminder of what is at stake and the scale of the job in hand.

For more information: www.energytechnologies.co.uk

Image: Jannick Meyer

Size

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Graphene is the thinnest material in the universe and its discovery re-wrote the text books. But what can we actually use it for? New research supported by EPSRC will unlock the potential.

Words: Barry Hague

heoretically, some said, it shouldn’t exist. But since its discovery in 2004, graphene has stirred plenty of excitement in the world of science. At just one atom thick, there cannot be a thinner material in the universe.

It is also the strongest material ever measured, astonishingly stiff yet flexible, and a phenomenal conductor of heat and electricity. Of course, identifying potential is one thing.

Exploiting it is another. Now, with EPSRC funding, two university partnerships aim to unleash the possibilities that graphene offers.

Graphene consists of a sheet of carbon atoms connected in a honeycomb-like structure. Led by Professor Andre Geim, a team of physicists at the University of Manchester first created it five years ago, with EPSRC support. Starting with bulk graphite, they successfully extracted individual sheets of carbon atoms from the graphite crystals. “Our objective was simply to see how thin

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materials could be,” Professor Geim recalls. “At the time, it was presumed that materials one atom thick couldn’t exist.

But eventually we produced graphene and proved this supposition wasn’t correct.”

Experiments quickly confirmed graphene’s extraordinary properties. It became clear that not only had Professor Geim and his colleagues discovered a brand new material – they had found a whole new class of material. In particular, graphene’s amazing electronic properties soon stimulated a real buzz among scientists worldwide. “In graphene, electrons don’t behave as they do in other materials,” says Professor Geim. “For instance, the free particles that carry electrical charges through graphene have zero mass and can travel further at room temperature than those in any other substance.”

There seems no shortage of potential applications. For example, graphene’s unprecedented thinness and remarkable conductivity open up the prospect of graphene-based integrated circuits becoming available within 10-20 years, aiding further miniaturisation of electronics. The ability to pack more electronics into smaller spaces would have obvious benefits in reducing the size and/or increasing the sophistication of computers, mobile phones and other appliances. Intel is one company funding work in this direction.

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We’re certainly enjoying our encounter with this extraordinary material.

Professor Andre Geim

In the shorter term, ultra-high-frequency graphene-based transistors will almost certainly reach the market, according to IBM and Samsung. Transistors amplify electronic signals in all kinds of communications devices. Making them from graphene, rather than silicon or gallium arsenide, could deliver huge benefits by plugging the so-called ‘terahertz gap’. Much of the electromagnetic spectrum is already exploited by today’s communications technologies.

However, many frequency ranges are now over-cluttered. But it hasn’t yet been possible to use the terahertz part of the spectrum between microwaves and infra-red radiation. Graphene-based transistors would change all that. Moreover, because solid bodies are transparent to – but remain unharmed by – terahertz radiation, such transistors may also find applications in airport security scanners, for example.

In partnership with Lancaster University, Manchester University has received a £5m EPSRC award to boost development of real-life uses of graphene. “This award enables us to extend our pool of expertise and manpower and explore graphene’s uses from the perspective of materials science, chemistry, engineering and computer science,” says Professor Geim.

One area of particular interest is the role graphene could play in nanoelectromechanical systems – micro-machines which measure tiny forces and movements, down to molecular scale. For example, many wristwatches keep time by using oscillators equipped with a crystal of vibrating quartz. Replacing quartz with graphene could achieve even greater accuracy of time measurement and reduce the space needed to accommodate the crystal.

Graphene’s discovery has also created the possibility of incorporating simpler, much more powerful sensors in pollution or toxin detection equipment within a decade. Graphene-based sensors have the potential to identify a single atom of an element, whereas current sensors can’t detect traces consisting of less than around 100 atoms. “We’re certainly enjoying our encounter with this extraordinary material,” concludes Professor Geim.

Exeter and Bath Universities have also received around £5m

in EPSRC grants. Building on previous collaborations, they aim to investigate the fundamental properties of graphene and pave the way to a broad range of applications. Their interdisciplinary approach will mobilise complementary expertise in physics, engineering and biosciences (Exeter) and physics, chemistry, pharmacy and pharmacology (Bath).

The EPSRC funding is helping the two universities create a Centre for Graphene Science which will include a worldwide network of experts in this field. Professor Alex Savchenko of Exeter University explains: “The centre will focus on three main areas: methods of producing graphene nanostructures, theoretical and experimental studies of graphene-based systems, and development of new electronic devices and chemical and biological sensors.” Another priority is to look into using graphene as a

Graphene facts:

Discovered five years ago, graphene is the world’s thinnest material. One atom thick, it’s the strongest material ever measured, incredibly stiff yet flexible, and a phenomenal conductor of heat and electricity. Electrons travel further in graphene than in any other material, opening up a range of potential electronic applications.

• Graphene-based integrated circuits could reduce the size and increase the sophistication of devices such as computers and mobile phones.

• Graphene-based transistors could help communications technologies exploit the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

• Other potential uses include a new generation of toxin and pollution sensors that are much more sensitive than those currently available.

template to create additional new materials with specific properties, by bonding elements to graphene’s surface and edges. “We aim to maintain a truly collaborative relationship with the Universities of Manchester and Lancaster,” says Professor Savchenko.

“Together, we can help establish the UK as a global leader in graphene research.”

Graphene, then, seems certain to touch many lives in the years ahead. “We could be at the dawn of a very big era for what is, without doubt, a quite remarkable material,” concludes Professor Savchenko.

For more information contact: Professor Andre Geim, geim@man.ac.uk or Professor Alex Savchenko, a.k.savchenko@ex.ac.uk For more information about EPSRC’s physical sciences programme contact: Natalie Stear, natalie.stear@epsrc.ac.uk

The barge showcasing zero-carbon technology

As the Ross Barlow glides serenely along Birmingham’s canal network, it looks to all the world like a relic of a bygone landscape – but could this barge contain the key to a greener industrial future?

Words: David Bradley

hydrogen-powered canal barge, the Ross Barlow, is proving there will be life after oil.

Its technology, developed in association with EPSRC’s Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium, could pave the way for zero-carbon transport and even breathe new life into Britain’s inland waterway network.

Named after a young researcher in the group who died tragically in 2005, it combines hydrogen fuel cell and storage technologies with a highly efficient electric motor. A conventional battery stack provides additional power and is recharged by the fuel cell during the journey.

The barge stores the hydrogen fuel in the form of a solid state metal hydride, a technique that is both safe and overcomes one of the major issues with using hydrogen powered vehicles – the volume of gas needed for longer trips.

The idea was originally conceived by Professor Rex Harris, of the University of Birmingham, who has been working on hydrogen storage materials and rare earth magnets – used in the electric motor – for four decades. Back in 1979, Professor Harris developed a hydrogen-propelled moped.

“The barge and its successors have great potential with regard to water-based transportation,” says Professor Harris. “Hydrogen will provide a zero-carbon fuel provided that ‘green’ electricity is employed to produce the hydrogen and to charge the batteries,” he explains.

“We believe the project provides a very attractive link with the general public. It is vital to show that there is ‘life after oil’ and that hydrogen offers a safe and viable alternative.

“The barge provides a very attractive showcase for hydrogen

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PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

It is vital to show that there is ‘life after oil’ and that hydrogen offers a safe and viable alternative.

Professor Rex Harris

technology and for the use of high-energy NdFeB magnets in efficient electric motors,” he enthuses. “There is an elegant link between these two areas since the hydrogen-based manufacturing process for the magnets was pioneered by my research group as part of an EPSRC-funded collaboration with Philips in the 1980s.”

The hydrogen barge has other advantages over conventional technology in that there is no diesel fuel pollution, which is particularly important in urban areas or within the confines of a lock. Hot water is the only fuel cell by-product, and that can be used onboard, and the system is silent, which means no noise

hydrogen barge 31

Above top: Professor Rex Harris Above: The Ross Barlow before and after

pollution to affect wildlife or people using the waterways.

“The hydrogen storage developments are part of an Anglo-Swiss project with EMPA Zurich and Andreas Zuttel’s team,” adds Harris.

Other partners include British Waterways, Advantage West Midlands, BT, Less Common Metals, the Universities of Sheffield and Coventry, and TRW. Now that the ‘Ross Barlow’ has proved itself, the next stage will be to create the necessary hydrogen generation and refuelling infrastructure throughout the waterways network and to develop bigger vessels. “British Waterways is clearly a vital partner in these

developments,” says Professor Harris.

The barge has been developed in parallel with other leading hydrogen fuel cell research at Birmingham University.

A team led by David Book are working on novel hydrogen storage materials with Kevin Kendall and his team who are working on a fleet of fuel cell micro-cabs for university campus transport.

Kendall will also head a new EPSRC-funded doctoral training centre focusing on hydrogen fuel cell technologies.

“Our hope is that all these activities will help to lay the foundation for a hydrogen economy within the UK,” says Professor Harris “and that the various hubs will eventually join up to form a nationwide network.

“It’s been a long and sometimes bumpy journey from the hydrogen moped to the Ross Barlow,” Professor Harris says “but it is now possible to see that hydrogen will become a global fuel for the future. If it is to prevent the full ravages of climate change and of oil depletion, it must happen sooner rather than later.”

For more information about the Ross Barlow or hydrogen technology research at Birmingham University: www.hydrogen.bham.ac.uk For more information about the Research Councils’ energy programme contact: Jason Green, jason.green@epsrc.ac.uk or Rachel Bishop, rachel.bishop@epsrc.ac.uk

viewpoint Innovation in manufacturing has been a key driver of economic growth since the early days of industrialisation. Professor David Gann, head of the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre at Imperial College London, supported by EPSRC, says developing next generation innovation processes in manufacturing has a vital role in protecting the future health of the UK economy, with significant benefits for the service sector.

Manufacturing ideas to create value for innovative business nnovation is the process by which ideas are created and turned into commercially viable opportunities as new or enhanced products, processes and services. Knowledge production is a global business fuelled by public and private sector investments of $1 trillion a year. Innovating to create wealth, and improve quality of life using this knowledge, has become an ever more complex process.

That is why we need research on how to innovate more efficiently and effectively – creating and extracting value from ideas more quickly and accurately than before. Detailed studies of innovation in engineering and science-based companies have been supported by EPSRC at Imperial College’s Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (IMRC) since 2003. The IMRC provided the fly-wheel that created Imperial College’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group growing from seven researchers to a position of international leadership in innovation research, linking business economics with engineering management.

The Group currently has more than 40 staff and works with companies like GSK and P&G, and has strategic relationships with Arup, Atkins, BP, IBM, Laing O’Rourke and QinetiQ. It includes the Entrepreneurship Hub, working with technology start-ups and Design London, integrating design methods into the development of new systems and services with the Royal College of Art.

I

Results show that innovative firms have greater rates of survivability in recessions and enhanced profitability during periods of economic growth. This work is published in the top management journals and developed into valuable frameworks for management and tools for R&D – processes that can be adopted by innovative firms. Most knowledge about how to

Successful business

PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

In today’s business environment, innovation means survival.

Professor David Gann

innovate comes from manufacturing, with its long history of new product development. Innovation includes the obvious commercialisation of a scientifically derived material, like Kevlar or Teflon. But it is equally important in complex engineering systems such as in energy supply or in healthcare systems within the NHS. Today, innovation processes include the development of novel business models, enabling firms to capture value from new approaches to organisation, logistics and customer experiences.

The development of services by Google or Amazon – relying upon deep mathematical modelling capabilities – is as much an innovation as any physical product such as a stronger, cheaper widget crafted by a team of skilled engineers.

So why do we need to continue research on innovation?

It will provide tools, techniques and management approaches to enable UK firms to capture the benefits of successful knowledge A rapidly changing environment

viewpoint 33

application. With the financial sector in a spin, it might be just the right time to reassert the UK’s quality of work in innovation, entrepreneurship and design. Combining excellence in manufacturing to transform performance in global markets for health, energy, environmental and digital services can provide the platform for sustained prosperity in future.

In addition, the processes by which new ideas are created, developed and implemented are themselves changing rapidly.

In today’s business environment, innovation means survival.

Firms need to know how to make best use of scarce talent and resources for R&D, engineering and design, in order to create and sustain market share.

To compete, firms have to be good at managing and applying new ideas taking advantage of opportunities in science, technology and the marketplace. Our Group’s work takes a systems perspective, using empirical evidence and quantitative analysis to develop new models, tools and techniques for management. This places much of its work within the engineering systems and management science fields.

Firms have to be market-facing in order to sense when and where to develop new products and services. Generating and acquiring new ideas has become an international activity – firms have to scan global horizons. Innovation processes are also becoming more distributed, taking place in networks of engineers, scientists, marketing experts, financiers and lead-users. And working with innovative users often provides significant advantage in honing applications and functions. Intellectual property regimes are evermore important and complex. Large firms and small firms need each other to develop, trade and commercialise new technologies, and often collaborate in eco-systems with universities.

To support them in managing these processes, successful innovators – like IBM and P&G – are using a new digital infrastructure we call ‘Innovation Technology’ (IvT). This includes the use of modelling and simulation for rapid and virtual prototyping linked to Web 2.0 social networking technologies and eScience, or the Grid. Many of these capabilities in design,

Digital innovation technology

EPSRC’s Innovative Manufacturing Research Centres

Innovative Manufacturing Research Centres provide worldleading knowledge and support to the UK manufacturing sector. They provide the UK’s leading manufacturing researchers with a base of stable yet flexible funding, allowing them to be responsive to the needs of UK industry and tackle strategic research themes. IMRCs cover a broad spectrum of research topics from business strategy and construction management to free-form fabrication processes and bioprocessing. Individual IMRCs vary in remit from those with a narrow focus on a single topic, such as e-business, to those covering the full range of manufacturing research.

David Gann

David Gann is head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. He holds the Chair in Technology and Innovation Management – a joint appointment between Imperial College Business School and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is responsible for a large portfolio of EPSRC funded research in collaboration with firms in design, manufacturing, engineering, construction, ICT services and healthcare industries. He is group innovation executive at Laing O’Rourke plc and chairman of Think Play Do Group Ltd.

engineering, rapid and virtual prototyping are derived directly from experience of innovation in manufacturing. Analysis and development of this infrastructure derives directly from the EPSRC-supported IMRC, initially through publication of the book ‘Think, Play, Do’, the launch of the Think Play Do Group and most recently in the development of a Virtual Worlds environment for innovation management with IBM. It is the use of these digital systems combined with new business models that enable firms to tune and capture specific market opportunities, providing them competitive edge. And the real impact of this approach is only just coming into view.

Our economy is increasingly oriented towards a high-value, service-led model. The number of UK jobs in manufacturing is declining, at the same time nearly 80 per cent of GDP is generated by the service sector. But hitherto, innovation in services has been a hit-and-miss experience, because it has been difficult to prototype new services off-line from their consumption by users. The use of Innovation Technology changes this. It is now possible to use virtual environments to test new services and the systems that will deliver them before they are launched in the market.

This has profound consequences for the organisation and management of innovation and the possibility of revolutionising productivity in the development of new services in a way comparable to that in manufacturing through the introduction of machine tools in the 1850s, or lean production processes in the 1980s. This mix of old and new knowledge from manufacturing, IT and the service sector is blurring traditional boundaries between products and services, such that firms are able to find new approaches to integrating solutions for their customers.

EPSRC’s investment in Imperial’s IMRC demonstrates how UK universities can create the critical mass of high quality talent to be world leaders in research, development and management of innovation processes themselves, providing opportunities to leverage these capabilities in design, engineering, consulting and business advice, selling our knowledge to the rest of the world.

Innovation for the service sector

For more information: www.epsrc.ac.uk

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Marcus du Sautoy EPSRC Pioneer

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy is an EPSRC senior media fellow and was recently appointed Oxford University’s Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science – succeeding Professor Richard Dawkins.

He recently wrote and presented BBC4’s The Story of Maths, presented quiz show Mindgames and is a regular contributor to newspapers, including a weekly column, Sexy Maths, for The Times.

His books include The Music of the Primes and Finding Moonshine.

Career accolades range from the Dr Johnson Prize for his D.Phil thesis in 1989 and the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2001 to being listed as one of Esquire Magazine’s 100 most influential men under 40, in 2004.

He lives in London with his wife and three children. He plays the trumpet and piano and supports Arsenal FC. What makes maths so fascinating?

Maths is a way of understanding the way the world works. It’s about seeing where you are coming from and, more excitingly, predicting what happens next. It is the language of nature and it is a way of unlocking the secrets of the universe.

Is it still as exciting as when you started?

Yes. It’s a case of the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.

As you answer one question even more exciting questions appear behind it.

What do you consider your greatest achievement… and why?

Maths gives you a chance of immortality.

The power of proof, which is unique to maths, means your discovery will last forever. My most exciting discovery was finding a new symmetrical object. I want the equation that defines this object carved

PIONEER 03 Summer 2009

What is the most important question facing science?

There are so many it depends on your perspective. You could say something relating to saving our planet like climate change, or medical research or the problem of understanding the brain. For me, you should not ignore the blue sky stuff that doesn’t always look like it has an immediate application – things like the Riemann hypothesis. It’s work on these types of problems that give us the tools to solve others.

What frustrates you?

People who are illogical. When you give an argument and people make illogical steps, that drives me crazy. It goes against my whole being. That’s why I chose maths I guess.

Maths gives you a chance of immortality.

The power of proof means your discovery will last forever.

Marcus du Sautoy

on my gravestone I am so proud of it.

It’s quite long and you have to pay per character so my family will have to start saving now.

Is following in the footsteps of Richard Dawkins a daunting prospect?

Not at all. My science is very different to his and I am very different from him.

I will do my own things and in some ways it’s a continuation of what I have been doing for 15 years, doing science then communicating it.

Who do you most admire?

One of my heroes is Sir Christopher Zeeman. He’s a first rate mathematician but he is also a great communicator. I went to see the Christmas Lecture he gave in 1978 when I was 13 years old. It was the first one on maths and I came away saying ‘I want to be him when I grow up’.

Who or what has been your greatest influence?

The teacher at school who turned me on to maths is certainly one – Mr Bailson.

It was a normal comprehensive school.

He recommended a couple of books which brought the subject alive and unlocked a door into a secret world.

What are your main interests outside science?

I love music. I play the trumpet and I’m a very bad piano player. Football – I play for a Sunday League side in East London and I have also been called up for the England writers’ team. I also love theatre and recently worked with theatre company Complicite on a play at the Barbican called A Disappearing Number.

In another life what would you be?

I would probably go into the theatre.

When maths is going badly my fantasy is always to run away and be part of the theatre.

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