Departmental news

The Department of History at the University of Warwick is pleased to announce that the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme is now open and welcomes expressions of interest. More information available here.

For an outline of the process and required documents visit: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DBE888/british-academy-postdoctoral-fellowship

Note that Warwick's internal deadline for receiving the materials is 28th August.

An exciting opportunity is available for this PhD Scholarship funded as part of the Monash Warwick Alliance. The studentship will be jointly supervised by Professor David Lambert (Warwick) and Professor Gordon Pentland (Monash).

For full details and how to apply visit Jobs at Monash. Closing Date: Sunday 3 September 2023, 11:55pm AEST

Arun Advani, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, has been appointed as a member of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) advisory panel.

The advisory panel consists of leading economic and fiscal experts whose remit is to help develop and scrutinise the OBR’s work programme and forecasting methods.

The revised panel membership was announced in August 2023 and includes 25 academics, economists and industry specialists with expertise across different aspects of the OBR’s work. Dr Advani will contribute specific advice in the areas of public sector finances and public economics, and labour market and migration.

The OBR was created in 2010 to provide independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances. Its roles include economic and fiscal forecasting, evaluating the Government's performance against fiscal targets, scrutinising the Government’s costing of tax and welfare policies, and assessing fiscal risks and the long-term sustainability of public finances.

Commenting on his appointment, Dr Advani said: “I am delighted to be joining the OBR’s revised advisory panel. The OBR plays a key role in ensuring the sustainability of public finances and holding the UK Government to account and I look forward to contributing to its important work.”

Find out more about the OBR advisory panel

View Arun Advani’s staff profile

On 26 July, 2023, Professor Stanley Whittingham FRS, Nobel Laureate 2019, was awarded an honorary degree as part of the Chemistry graduation ceremony.

Researchers from WMG, at the University of Warwick, were pleased to welcome partners and guests to a live trial and project workshop on the AirQKD project.

AirQKD addresses the cyber security of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) and specifically addresses components, manufacturing, software, and testing for last-mile Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems between shared parties for 5G and connected cars.

It is an Innovate UK funded collaboration between BT; Lexden Technologies; OLC; Duality, Bristol University; Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics; Strathclyde University; WMG; Bay Photonics; Heriot Watt University; Angoka; ArQit; Nu Quantum; National Physical Laboratory; CSA Catapult and Edinburgh University.

The trial combines BT’s expertise in building quantum-secure networks using QKD – an essentially un-hackable, cutting-edge technique for sharing encryption ‘keys’ between locations using a stream of single photons) with other new techniques for applying quantum security to mobile devices, developed by UK start-ups Nu Quantum, Angoka and Duality.

On the University of Warwick campus, as part of the Midlands Future Mobility testbed, WMG has created a Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) testing facility enabling AirQKD partners’ technology in key management, key consumption, and security protocols to be used for secure communications.

The AirQKD system implements Free Space Optics (FSO) cryptographic key generation and standards-compliant key management. WMG is now managing the workstream between telecommunications (4G/5G cellular at BT’s Adastral Park site) and V2I communications on the University of Warwick campus. In combination, these technologies will be used to deliver an ultra-secure link between connected 5G towers and mobile devices, as well as to connected cars.

Find out more about CAV research at WMG here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/research/cav/connectivity/

Read more about AirQKD here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/research/transformation/securecybersystems/projects

Dr John James' lab have used a cellular reconstitution of preTCR function to investigate the trafficking dynamics of this developmentally important immune receptor, work which has just been published in the Journal of Cell Biology.

Expression of the pre-T cell receptor (preTCR) is an important checkpoint during the development of T cells, an essential cell type of our adaptive immune system. The preTCR complex is only transiently expressed and rapidly internalized in developing T cells and is thought to signal in a ligand-independent manner. However, identifying a mechanistic basis for these unique features of the preTCR compared with the final TCR complex has been confounded by the concomitant signaling that is normally present. Thus, we have reconstituted preTCR expression in non-immune cells to uncouple receptor trafficking dynamics from its associated signaling. We find that all the defining features of the preTCR are intrinsic properties of the receptor itself, driven by exposure of an extracellular hydrophobic region, and are not the consequence of receptor activation. Finally, we show that transitory preTCR cell surface expression can sustain tonic signaling in the absence of ligand binding, suggesting how the preTCR can nonetheless drive αβTCR lineage commitment.

Read the paper here.

Advanced cell-based therapies are often delivered to the patient frozen. Hence, any technology which increases the number of recovered, viable, cells post-thaw may improve clinical outcomes or allow more treatments per donation. The GibsonGroup have previously shown strategies to protect cells during freezing. In this latest work, in collaboration with Cytiva, the team show that incubating a model t-cell line with proline before cryopreservation leads to increased post-thaw cell yields. All proline is removed before cryopreservation so the actual freezing and thawing processes are unchanged. It was shown that proline limits cell proliferation, which might be contributing to its mode of action similar to ‘metabolic pre-conditioning’ which has been shown before.

Read the paper here.

Glycans (sugars) dictate cell-cell communication, are sites for pathogen invasion and are a key part of our immune systems. Current synthetic platforms to display glycans to investigate their biology almost always are imperfect, with heterogeneity in terms of number of glycans and the synthesis is not reproducible batch to batch. The Gibson and Ward (chemistry) groups have collaborated on a Leverhulme-Trust funded project to create ‘programmable’ glyco-clusters - before entering the lab, this method enables a research to know exactly how many glycans and their 3-D location are present on a material, and gives zero heterogeneity. This is achieved using metal co-ordination cages - 3D structures formed by spontaneous self-assembly. The team used these with model glycan-binding proteins to identify key interactions which would not be possible with traditional materials. The team are now using this to interrogate a range of targets including toxins, for diagnostics.

Read the paper here.