Grant winners - 6 November 2014

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

• Award winner: Joanne Webster
• Institution: Royal Veterinary College
• Value: £763,444

Epidemiology and evolution of zoonotic schistosomiasis in a changing world

• Award winner: Sergey Kasparov
• Institution: University of Bristol
• Value: £492,210

Identification of the molecular substrate for L-lactate-mediated catecholamine signalling in the brain

• Award winner: Liliana Minichiello
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £392,780

Basal ganglia signalling mechanisms and ageing

National Institute for Health Research

Health Technology Assessment Programme

• Award winner: Colin Simpson
• Institution: University of Edinburgh
• Value: £296,106

Seasonal influenza vaccination effectiveness II (SIVE II): use of a large national primary care and laboratory-linked dataset to evaluate live attenuated and trivalent inactivated influenza vaccination effectiveness

• Award winner: Sallie Lamb
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £820,997

Synthesising a clinical prognostic rule for ankle injuries in the emergency department (SPRAINED)

• Award winner: Ruth Langley
• Institution: University College London
• Value: £3,124,812

Add-Aspirin trial: a phase III double-blind placebo-controlled randomised trial assessing the addition of aspirin after standard primary therapy in early stage common solid tumours

Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Awards

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

• Award winner: Graham Reed
• Institution: University of Southampton

Silicon photonics for the 21st century

• Award winner: Iain McCulloch
• Institution: Imperial College London

Disorder-free semiconducting materials platform

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

First grant – revised 2009

• Award winner: Karina Rodriguez Echavarria
• Institution: University of Brighton
• Value: £97,491

Automatic semantic analysis of 3D content in digital repositories

Standard research

• Award winner: Chris Speed
• Institution: Edinburgh College of Art
• Value: £306,871

Connected high street

In detail

Award winner: Emanuele Trucco
Institution: University of Dundee
Value: £922,996 (EPSRC contribution)

Multimodal retinal biomarkers for vascular dementia: developing enabling image analysis tools

Evidence already suggests that changes to the tree-shaped patterns of blood vessels in the eye can be linked to a number of diseases, such as stroke and cardiovascular disease. Emanuele Trucco, professor of computational vision, and his team - in collaboration with academics from the University of Edinburgh - will use specially developed computer software – which analyses high-definition images of the eye from multiple instruments – to establish whether such changes can act as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. “There is the promise of early warning in a non-invasive way,” said Professor Trucco. “And we even might be able to use the test to differentiate between different types of dementia.”