Grant winners - 14 August 2014

Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Awards

Awards are worth £10,000-£30,000 a year, which is a salary enhancement

• Award winner: Vladimir Markovic
• Institution: University of Cambridge

Dynamics and geometry of curves and surfaces in negatively curved spaces

• Award winner: Johnjoe McFadden
• Institution: University of Surrey

Building an in silico description of the host-pathogen interaction in TB

• Award winner: Rachel McKendry
• Institution: University College London

New paradigms in connected global health for infectious diseases

Health Foundation

Clinician Scientist Fellowships

• Award winner: Virginia Newcombe
• Institution: University of Cambridge
• Value: £526,7

Optimised imaging for integrated serial evaluation in traumatic brain injury prognosis (OPTIMISE-TBI prognosis)

• Award winner: David Church
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £720,325

Mechanistic and biomarker evaluation of POLE proofreading mutations in cancers

• Award winner: Jayati Das-Munshi
• Institution: King’s College London
• Value: £623,199

Health inequalities in ethnic minority service users with serious mental illness: understanding pathways to reduced life expectancy

Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grants
Sciences

• Award winner: Doerthe Tetzlaff
• Institution: University of Aberdeen
• Value: £249,380

Plant-water interlinkages in northern uplands: mediation of climate change?

• Award winner: Dudley E. Shallcross
• Institution: University of Bristol
• Value: £181,407

Urban airborne particulate pollution, air ions and electric charge effects

Social sciences

• Award winner: Matthew Struebig
• Institution: University of Kent
• Value: £226,392

Tolerating tigers: do local beliefs offset human–carnivore conflicts?

Economic and Social Research Council

• Award winner: Ernesto Schwartz-Marin
• Institution: Durham University
• Value: £196,000

Citizen led forensics: DNA and data-banking as technologies of disruption – a novel way to learn and intervene in the search for the disappeared in Mexico

In detail

Transformative Research Call

Award winner: John Garry
Institution: Queen’s University Belfast
Value: £186,018

Randomly selected “politicians”: transforming democracy in the post-conflict context

This project investigates an alternative to voting. Would randomly selecting ordinary citizens to become politicians enhance the quality of democracy? “A parliament made up of a random sample of citizens would be, statistically, very similar to society as a whole (unlike current parliaments dominated by middle-aged, well-educated men),” said Dr Garry. “We focus on the post-conflict setting of Northern Ireland and ask whether the addition of a random chamber could help to solidify peace, giving power to ordinary citizens (who typically have quite moderate views) to determine the direction of politics.” He added that the project hopes to discover how much support there is among Northern Ireland citizens for changing the system to incorporate a random component and what the views of current elected politicians are to such a proposal.