Departmental news

Staff and students from across WMG and the University of Warwick were pleased to support the Youth Energy SummitLink opens in a new window at the Coventry Building Society Arena in November 2024.

The Summit was organised by the Highly Sprung theatre group who asked delegates to reimagine a more equitable and sustainable future for the region.

The young delegates heard from keynote speakers on sustainability issues including WMG’s Principal Engineer and Member of Coventry City Council's Climate Change Board, Dr Russell HallLink opens in a new window. Workshops were also held by the WMG Outreach team and the Warwick Institute of Engagement. 

We are happy to announce that an academic from our department, Dr Sayan Bhattacharya, is among the winners of ERC Consolidator Grants 2024. According to the European Research Council: "These grants, totalling €678 million, aim to support outstanding scientists and scholars as they establish their independent research teams and develop their most promising scientific ideas. The funding is provided through the EU's Horizon Europe programme."

Sayan Bhattacharya has been awarded a €2million ERC Consolidator grant for a 5-year project entitled "Towards a Dynamic Algorithms Centric Theory of Linear Programming" (DYNALP). The project aims to build a new theory exploring the interplay between two key concepts, Linear Programming and Dynamic Algorithms, which, in turn, will pave the way towards attacking outstanding open questions in the field of Theoretical Computer Science.

In the 2024 round, this was the only project from the United Kingdom that was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in Computer Science and Informatics (PE6 panel). The press release contains more information about the ERC funding programme.

Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, a Research Software Engineer at Imperial College London, is visiting the department this week. She is working with Heather Turner on updates to the R Development Guide (https://contributor.r-project.org/rdevguide), aimed at contributors to the open-source statistical software R. Mastodon links: @saranjeet@fosstodon.org, @heathrturnr@fosstodon.org

Professor Kirstie Haywood from Warwick Medical School has been appointed as the University of Warwick's Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research Culture). Kirstie will work with the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Caroline Meyer, to lead the research culture agenda both internally and externally via the National Centre for Research Culture (NCRC).

Dr Ludovica Gazze, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a significant research grant by the Nuffield Foundation to investigate links between air quality and children’s welfare.

The “Clear Skies, Clear Minds” research project will investigate the impact of air pollution on children’s health and educational outcomes in England since the early 2000s.

Understanding the impact of pollution exposure on children’s wellbeing and academic performance is vital if children are to be supported in achieving their full potential.

Air pollution has severe implications for physical health and the brain. Children are at higher risk of ill-effects due to their smaller developing respiratory tracts, higher relative air intake, and greater amount of time spent outdoors.

Dr Gazze explains:

“Poor physical health resulting from air pollution can affect cognitive functioning and academic performance, which in turn may affect a child’s mental health.

“And poor mental health could in turn have repercussions for physical health, for example if children become less active, giving rise to a downward spiral.”

The Clear Skies, Clear Minds project aims to produce the first robust nationwide evidence on how changes in economic activity and transport networks affect children’s physical and mental health.

Using a variety of data sources, the team will show how social transformations such as the work-from-home revolution, budget air travel and the net-zero agenda are affecting the life chances of UK children.

The project team also includes Dr Lorenzo Neri from the University of St Andrews and Dr Titir Bhattacharya from the University of Warwick.

The team hope to produce implementable policy recommendations and a suite of resources to help parents, local authorities and government understand what actions they can take to mitigate the risks from exposure to pollution.

Commenting on the award, Dr Gazze said:

“We are really excited to receive support from Nuffield Foundation for this work.

“With this project, we aim to clearly demonstrate how the multi-faceted impacts of air pollution on children in England compound, resulting in poor physical and mental health, as well as worse education outcomes.

"Our goal is for this evidence to feed into policymaking that will ensure every child in the UK can develop to their full potential.”

Notes for Editors

• The Nuffield Foundation is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare and Justice. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-funder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. Visit www.nuffieldfoundation.org @nuffieldfound
• For further information on the project, including the research aims and methodology, please visit Clear Skies, Clear Minds: Air quality and children's welfare - Nuffield Foundation
• Further details of Dr Gazze’s work is available here.

'Communities within a Community - Life based on the Invisible' is a new artwork suspended above the lower ground floor of the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building at The University of Warwick. The set of five canvases are the result of a collaboration between the sculptor Suse Stoisser and Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Wellington.

In Germany, so-called hashtag#Gastarbeiter migrants were recruited to the labour market from the 1950s. How do their experiences affect their grandchildren hashtag#ThirdGeneration today? Online talk with Prof. Ayse Guveli of University of Warwick.

Dr Marios Hadjimichael has published a paper in Physical Review X titled 'Assessing the ubiquity of Bloch domain walls in ferroelectric lead titanate superlattices.'Link opens in a new window

The SafeBatt project, involving battery experts from WMG at the University of Warwick, has won a Safety Innovation Award at the Electrical Product SafetyLink opens in a new window Conference. 

The conference was held in London on Thursday (21^st November) with the awards recognising and celebrating the best engineering collaborations and innovations across the UK. 

Funded by the Faraday Institution, SafeBatt is a collaboration of seven universities as well as industry partners investigating the science behind battery safety.