In the UK, as in virtually every developed country, it is widely accepted that we need more people studying and working at all levels in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). STEM industries are vital elements of the global economy with jobs in science, technology and engineering predicted to grow at double the rate relative to other careers. Yet there is a widespread consensus that there is a substantial - and growing - STEM skills gap, with insufficient numbers of suitably STEM-qualified workers to meet demand. It has also been argued that STEM skills are beneficial for a wide range of careers and can promote social mobility. Relatedly, there are serious concerns about the lack of STEM-qualified graduates entering teaching and the potential impact of this shortfall not just on schools currently, but also for the future STEM skills gap. Alongside the need to increase STEM participation, important arguments have been made for the imperative to widen participation in STEM and ensure high levels of scientific, mathematical, technical and digital literacy across the population. Specifically, there is a need to broaden the gender, ethnic and social class profile of those who study STEM post-16, particularly in the physical sciences and engineering, where women, some minority ethnic and working-class communities are starkly under-represented. Yet initiatives aimed at increasing and/or widening the profile of STEM graduates appear to have had little lasting impact on the higher education participation rates. Understanding the factors shaping STEM participation is, therefore, a key priority area for governments and a wide range of stakeholders both nationally and internationally. The proposed three year study seeks to understand the processes through which young people develop their science and career choices and trajectories from age 20-23. Specifically, the proposed study will extend the unique dataset developed by the first and second longitudinal ASPIRES and ASPIRES2 studies, which tracked the development of young people's science and career aspirations from age 10-19 (surveying over 39,000 young people at five time points between the ages of 10 and 18 and longitudinal, repeat interviews with 61 young people and their parents over the same age period). ASPIRES3 will continue tracking this cohort via a representative national survey with c.7-10,000 young people at age 20/21, sampled from those who have previously conducted ASPIRES/ASPIRES2 surveys and boosted via online (social media) recruitment, as a media that is particularly successful for recruiting this age group. The project will also conduct interviews with c.60 students who have been longitudinally tracked from age 10 and their c.60 parents. The project will also undertake secondary analysis of previous ASPIRES & ASPIRES2 survey data from over 16,000 students, matched to large national data bases to examine whether/which attitudinal and social factors at age 10/11 relate to later attainment and life outcomes at age 20/21. The knowledge generated by the research will inform inter/national STEM education policy and practice, particularly how to better increase and widen post-compulsory participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The project will become the only longitudinal project to track young people's aspirations (in and out of science) from primary school, through compulsory, post-compulsory and higher education into work. In line with our commitment to achieving impactful research, the study will involve three impact collaborations with the Royal Society of Chemistry, Engineering UK and the Institute of Physics. Findings and recommendations will be disseminated via a wide range of academic journal articles and bespoke summaries, publications, events and social media for stakeholders.

Open science is perhaps best embodied by the FAIR principles for software and data: that they should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. When researchers make their code and data available for others to use, it becomes easier for others to verify results, as well as easier for others to build on and use to spur new research of their own. Alongside the FAIR principles is the idea of "sustainable" software, which is software that can continue to be used after its original intended purpose, remaining reliable and reproducible. Sustainable software is important for high quality research. The goal of this Fellowship is to help researchers in plasma science overcome barriers to implementing these principles and ideas in their work, and bring about a cultural change to make sharing FAIR software and data the norm. I will do this by establishing a national network of research software engineers (RSEs) who will undertake efficient, wide-ranging improvements across the plasma science software ecosystem. The objective is not to make a single code massively better; it is to create and maintain an environment and philosophy that will benefit all plasma codes used in the UK -- "a rising tide lifts all boats". In order to reach as much of the community as possible, this national network will focus on short usability and sustainability projects, along with training tailored to individual researchers and groups. This will be paired with code review, where an RSE will go through a piece of software with researchers and discuss its aims and implementation. Code review is commonplace in industry, but rarer in academia. Together, the use of code review and short projects will give the network a good idea of what software is needed and used by the community, targeting projects where they are most needed and encouraging reuse of software between groups. As well as improving software directly, I will also work on the data front. To do this, I will develop tools to help overcome the friction and effort needed for researchers to adopt FAIR data practices. These tools will add metadata output to software, capturing important information like what version of what code created the output. This metadata can then be used to automate uploading the output to a database. I will work with the plasma science and data communities to develop what this metadata will look like, while the national network will implement these tools across the plasma science software ecosystem.

Imagine materials that allow better protection against impact because they push back when hit, rather than getting thinner. Or optical materials that could make the next generation virtual and augmented reality vision devices energy efficient and fast enough to produce real-time holograms. Or new, non-toxic materials for that convert heat energy to electricity, and flow so provide the heat-exchanging medium. Such materials have come into existence in the last 5 years, and this proposal is designed to take them from early stage discovery, building a deep and comprehensive understanding of the physics, towards new applications. The proposal is founded on two of my discoveries in liquid crystals; the first synthetic auxetic material (a liquid crystal elastomer), and a novel electro-optic response in a rather esoteric liquid crystal state, the dark conglomerate phase. It also builds on my exploratory work of the electrocaloric effect in well-known ferroelectric LCs positioning me to examine the potential of newly discovered polar nematics. 1. Auxetic LC elastomers. Imagine a material that gets thicker when you stretch it rather than thinner! Such materials are known as auxetic and exist in nature in tendons, nacre, the cell nucleus and even cat skin. Auxetic materials are predicted to have extremely desirable properties including: high shock absorbance; tear resistance; high shear moduli; and to be acoustic meta-materials. Most existing synthetic auxetic materials involve porous geometries with typical dimensions of >10micrometres, limiting the possible device dimensions and introducing inherent weakness (it is easy to tear a sponge). I recently discovered the first synthetic molecular auxetic material offering a paradigm shift in developing materials for applications spaning automotive, aerospace, electronics and healthcare industries. My aim is to develop a deep understanding of the physics underpinning the phenomenon and engage academic and industrial collaborators. 2. Optically isotropic electro-optic modes. Liquid crystals have been a potential solution for switchable optics (and optical switches) for decades, but are inefficient and too slow for next generation devices. The dark conglomerate (DC) phase shows a remarkable electro-optic response, a large change in refractive index which is both fast and polarization-independent that could completely change the way in which switchable lenses and gratings could be designed. I plan to build on my work on the DC phase, understanding materials and mixtures that exhibit the phase, to take it from a scientific curiosity to one where the potential for new electro-optic devices is fully understood. 3. Polar nematic LCs for energy. This strand combines a recent discovery at York with my exploratory research into liquid crystals as electrocaloric materials. Electrocaloric materials convert heat into electricity (and vice versa) and having a fluid material that does this offers a new approach to device design. Unfortunately, fluid materials tend to have an electrical polarization that is orders of magnitude too small to be effective. The polarization in the splay nematic phase is reported to be three orders of magnitude bigger than other ferroelectric LCs - a real game changer! I will take the opportunity to explore this new nematic phase in great detail, with the aim of determining its potential in energy applications. My programme is timely, exciting and ambitious, designed to take fundamental understanding to a stage where engineers or industrial partners can begin to develop the ideas with the greatest potential.

CCP9 has a large group of researchers in electronic structure in the UK that develops, implements and applies computational methods in condensed matter. The electronic structure of condensed matter underpins a vast range of research in Materials Science, including but not limited to areas such as semiconductors, superconductors, magnetism, biological systems, surfaces and catalysis. The computational methods are very powerful in helping us to understand complex processes and develop new technologically important materials. The researchers in CCP9 develop first-principles methods to solve for the electronic structure of materials and obtain materials properties. First principles methods employ the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics as starting point and do not rely upon experimental input. Our calculations therefore predict the behaviour of materials without bias, adding insight independent from experiment that helps us to explain why materials behave as they do. As computers become cheaper and more powerful each year and the methods become more accurate we are able to solve for more complex structured materials, now with many thousands of atoms which means that the areas of CCP9 research are broadening from traditional electronic structure into, for example, biological systems, large scale magnetism, matter in extreme conditions and exotic materials with highly correlated electrons such as spintronic technologies. The methods are also widely used beyond academia, particularly in industry with materials modelling now an important part of the materials discovery workflow. The CCP9 community develops a number of major, internationally leading codes for electronic structure solution and these codes run on the whole range of computational architectures available to us today from PCs to national and international supercomputing facilities, and we support as much as possible new chip architectures such as Arm and GPU. Not only do we develop codes for these machines but also train a large number of people to understand the underlying science and use the codes through many workshops, training sessions, hands-on courses and also to present work at the CCP9 networking meetings. Throughout all of this our leading experts, both UK and internationally, engage with the community particularly our young researchers to train and enthuse. CCP9 is a strong partner with our EU colleagues in the Psi-k network reaching many thousands of electronic structure code developers, software engineers and applications scientists. Density functional theory is the workhorse of our electronic structure methods that is highly effective and beneficial, but its accuracy is limited and for some important classes of materials, more advanced methods are needed. Such beyond-DFT methods have become important as they can solve more complex problems; their accuracy giving them greater predictive power. Our proposal develops our electronic structure technology, both DFT and beyond, by improving interoperability between codes and broadening the properties that they can calculate. Other work focuses on addressing the accuracy of beyond-DFT methods for different problems by comparing different codes and theories, and with experiments, ensuring these new methods are accurate, consistent and efficient. This EPSRC CCP call is an important part of CCP9's research strategy with funding that is needed to provide the training and networking to support the UK electronic structure community and also for access to highly qualified scientists/software engineers at CoSeC.

The aim of this project is to build on the success of Techniquest's previous STFC small awards and meet a current gap in provision creating an opportunity for Space Science for All. This project will focus on the pivotal Rosetta and Gaia missions, following the STFC's identification of the need to develop public communication resources around these. Techniquest is seeking part-funding from STFC to develop and deliver a range of innovative programmes to communicate current STFC research to target the following priority audiences: 1. Foundation Phase pupils (3-7 year olds) 2. Key Stage 2 pupils (7-11 year olds) 3. Key Stage 3 pupils (11-14 year olds) 4. Key Stage 4 pupils (14-16 year old pupils) 5. Public audiences. To overcome geographic and socio-economic barriers, the programmes will be developed as outreach projects, to be delivered through Techniquest's All Wales Strategy (AWS) directly to audiences across Wales. Through this, Techniquest works with partners who deliver to local schools, and last year reached 345,000 people, of which 115,000 were school audiences. These programmes will be delivered in their own schools and communities, and free of charge. The planetarium programmes will be delivered in a mobile digital planetarium acquired as part of this project. It is anticipated that the project will achieve the following objectives: 1. To develop immersive and stimulating full-dome digital planetarium programmes for Foundation Phase pupils, Key Stage 2 pupils and Key Stage 4 pupils to facilitate their understanding of astronomy. 2. To develop outreach workshops for Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4, as part of Techniquest's wider strategy to encourage young people, particularly girls, to engage in and be motivated by Physics. 3. To develop an immersive and engaging public planetarium programme on meteorites and the possible causes of the extinction of the dinosaurs, linking with the previous STFC-funded project, Back Down to Earth. 4. To develop school programmes that support both the National Curriculum for Wales and the National Curriculum for England, enabling the programmes to be disseminated to as many organisations as possible. 5. To develop supporting online resources for all programmes and make them freely available for widespread use through the National STEM library, UK Space Agency and ESERO UK website in York. 6. To develop and deliver the programmes and all associated resources in both English and Welsh. 7. To purchase a mobile digital planetarium and dome to enable the programmes to be delivered across Wales through outreach. 8. To target delivery to schools located in the most disadvantaged communities in Wales. 9. To motivate and inspire up to 5,000 school pupils within the first year of delivery to engage with astronomy, cosmology and current STFC research, with an aim of reaching up to 25,000 pupils over the next five years depending on the securing of further funding. 10. To inspire up to 3,650 public visitors in the first year of delivery to engage with astronomy, cosmology and current STFC research, with the aim of reaching up to 18,000 people over the next five years, depending on the securing of further funding. 11. To promote STEM and STEM careers, to female pupils in particular, through the use of female scientists and engineers as positive role models. 12. To disseminate the programmes to other organisations across Wales and the UK. There are three elements to this project: the development of programmes and purchase of a mobile planetarium funded by STFC, the development of programmes funded by Techniquest, and the delivery of all programmes to be funded by STFC. In the delivery of each programme, Techniquest's presenters will pose open-ended, exploratory questions to the audience. All programmes will focus on STFC-funded research and be developed using high quality music, graphics and narration. All programmes will be supported by online resources.