As China is set to be the major source of global economic growth for the next decades, it is clearly essential that the UK is linked into and can benefit both from the excellent research that is being fostered in China (China's engineering research is already in the world top three for impact, for example, and second in Physics, with nearly 20% of world papers), and from the potential for the exploitation and implementation of that research. Queen Mary has an outstanding track record of working in collaboration with Chinese partners. Our ability to collaborate successfully with China HEI's is best evidenced in our long-term award-winning partnership with China in teaching providing IET-accredited joint (dual) degree programmes in telecommunications with BUPT, but also through institutional partnerships and research centres, and through numerous individual research collaborations. Our track record of working with industrial partners in China builds on the Innovation China UK (ICUK) programme which was the first UK-China collaboration to promote joint innovation and knowledge transfer. Launched in 2007, the £4.9 million HEFCE and BISfunded initiative, was led by Queen Mary and with the end of the original funding ICUK has been embedded into Queen Mary's business development unit. This project aims to build on Queen Mary's experience in China to develop our joint Sino-British Institute for Materials Research with Sichuan University and use it as a base for developing collaborations with top Chinese Institutions which are funded primarily through the Chinese Government. The project aims to build on our existing strengths in Organic photonics and spintronics to develop true international research projects.

The project BBChina aims to establish a Master Course fully devoted to the whole bioenergy and biochemicals chain in three Partner Countries HEIs of China. The Master Program “From the Field to Bioenergy, Biofuel and Biochemicals” will be a common and advanced interdisciplinary Master program where the complex biomass chain is deeply analysed until the output of the biorefinery, to the bioenergy production, to the biofuel utilisation as well as to the integration with other Renewable Energy Sources.The Six universities involved, 3 of them from Europe and 3 from China, with their team of experts, will cooperate to develop and promote the Master, specifically targeted to Chinese students and teachers, with the aim to define an ad hoc curriculum.The project will establish an International Advisory Board, where representatives from professional and scientific sectors of China and Europe will be invited to support decisions, dissemination actions and to assess the developed syllabus and course curriculum. About 18 academic members per each Chinese HEI will travel to Europe for a ten days study and training tour in order to share experience and knowledge, improve their competencies and skills in the sector, as well as learn state-of-the-art new teaching methodologies.Each PC HEI will select and enrol at least 15 students that will take part to the first edition of the Master Programme. The students of the first edition will take part to 14 days of Mobility in Europe.Further 45 students will be enrolled, within the project running, for the second edition of the course. New lab equipment will be acquired in order to set up premises fit to the new course’s needs. Training activities will be held to trigger and encourage students towards young entrepreneurship and innovation. A devoted e-learning platform will be developed in English to support students, both providing teaching and training materials and tools, and promoting discussion and dissemination forums.

Rice is one of the worlds most important crops, and it has a long history of supporting dense populations and civilizations throughout East, South and Southeast Asia. This project will reveal the history of rice cultivation comparatively across the region using cutting age archaeological science. One major aim is to reconstruct how rice was grown across the region at different times. Rice may be grown in wet cultivation systems (irrigated or flooded) and dry cultivation (based only on rainfall, often in upland areas), and in intermediate lowland, rainfed conditions. These different systems have important implications in terms of how productive rice is, and therefore how much human population it can support, as well as how labour-intensive it was. Dry systems yielded less but also cost less in terms of labour. How rice was grown has important implications for the impact that humans and rice had on environmental change. Intensive systems tend to require greater landscape modification and by supporting higher populations have knock-on effects on other resources, for example through deforestation. Another very important impact is the production of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Dry rice cultivation systems produce little methane whereas the more productive wet systems produce a lot. It has been hypothesized by some climate scientists that methane from rice contributed to an anomalous rise in methane over the past 5000 years which is not explained by natural sources. If so, then this has contributed to global warming even before the industrial era and will need to be factored into models that hope to predict where global climate change is going. One of the aims of this project is to ground truth this hypothesis by modelling up from the empirical archaeological evidence for rice cultivation over time to assess whether this fits with explaining at least part of the methane anomaly. In order to do this we need better evidence not just for where and when rice was cultivated but also whether it was grown in wet or dry systems. Through systematic study of archaeologically preserved seeds, we can identify the weed flora associated with past rice and whether it fits with a wet or dry system. In addition we have developed methods for classifying the assemblages of phytoliths (microscopic silica from the decomposition of plants) from archaeological sites as indicating wetter or drier rice cultivation regimes. We are now hoping to apply these methods over a larger number of sites and regions, especially regions for which archaeobotanical evidence for early rice is limited or lacking, including parts of India (western and northeastern), Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and southern China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangdong). By combining these new results in a GIS modelling system, together with data from other parts of the region, mostly collected by us and colleagues over the past few years, we will be better able to produce realistic spatial models of the spread of rice, the extent of wet rice, and likely methane emissions over time. We will also be able to improve our understanding of how the development of rice agriculture relates to the long-term history of human societies in this region.