Dr Joanna Collingwood has been awarded a £418k grant at the September 2016 EPSRC Physical Sciences Panel. The three-year project includes Professor Peter Sadler and Professor Peter O’Connor from Warwick Chemistry as co-investigators (pictured). The award is made alongside an award of £338k to collaborator and Principal Investigator Dr Neil Telling at Keele University, for the joint project “Nanoscale metallomics and mineralization: advanced spectromicroscopy determination of the role of iron and calcium in Alzheimer's disease”. This project area became especially topical in the autumn when new research suggested that air pollution may cause the accumulation of iron oxide nanoparticles in the human brain, a question which made front-page news internationally, and on which Drs Collingwood and Telling were invited to comment: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-magnetite-air-pollution-and-alzheimers/

The EPSRC project grant will increase the impact that the team can deliver in this field, it ensures that Dr James Everett (currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Collingwood’s group in the School of Engineering) can continue making a significant contribution in this specialist area, and it will support recruitment of an additional experienced postdoctoral researcher to the collaborator team. A summary of the project is available here: http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/N033140/1