Grant winners – 1 September 2016

Medical Research Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Paolo Madeddu
• Institution: University of Bristol
• Value: £622,762

In vitro and in vivo preclinical testing of pericyte-engineered grafts for correction of congenital heart defects

• Award winner: Gemma Nixon
• Institution: University of Liverpool
• Value: £425,519

Rational design, synthesis and biological evaluation of benzimidazoles: towards a novel therapy selectively targeting C. neoformans beta-tubulin

• Award winner: Eric Aboagye
• Institution: Imperial College London
• Value: £3,776,850

Development of metabolism radiotracers to probe disease pathology in human subjects with cancer

National Institute for Health Research

Health Services and Delivery Research Programme

• Award winner: David Osborn
• Institution: University College London
• Value: £820,915

Acute day units as crisis alternatives to residential care (AD‑CARE)

• Award winner: Rod Sheaff
• Institution: Plymouth University
• Value: £168,161

From programme theory to logic models for multi-specialty community providers: a realist evidence synthesis

• Award winner: Jenny Shaw
• Institution: University of Manchester
• Value: £650,018

Dementia and cognitive impairment in the prison population of England and Wales: identifying individual need and developing a skilled, multi-agency workforce to deliver targeted and responsive services

Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grants
Humanities

• Award winner: Sethina Watson
• Institution: University of York
• Value: £152,339

The register of Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York (1215-55)

• Award winner: Clive Oppenheimer
• Institution: University of Cambridge
• Value: £165,547

Nature and impacts of Middle Pleistocene volcanism in the Ethiopian Rift

Social sciences

• Award winner: Charles Watkins
• Institution: University of Nottingham
• Value: £141,462

British amateur topographical art and landscape in Northwest Italy, 1835-1915

In detail

Award winner: Alex Mesoudi
Institution: University of Exeter
Value: £217,042

The cultural evolution of social hierarchy: an experimental investigation

Picture the scenario: a friend starts a new job. Is she more likely to learn from the assertive, intimidating supervisor whom her new colleagues fear, or from the thoughtful, reserved supervisor whom they look up to and respect? How people acquire information from others, “social learning”, has been explored widely in academia, but the wider social context within which they do so has not. There has been little study of how the socio-hierarchical organisation of human groups influences social learning. This project will combine cultural evolutionary theories from biology and anthropology with experimental social psychology and behavioural economics methodologies. The team will explore how social learning unfolds within, and may itself generate, social hierarchies. The researchers will also examine how social learning can generate social hierarchies based on knowledge exchange.