We propose a research platform which will explore and underpin the development of new, integrative diagnostics based on a comprehensive analysis of blood. The integration of rheological and cytometric measurements is essential to the understanding of blood as a sophisticated tissue system in which biological mechanisms, initiated and controlled by cells, interact with complex fluid dynamics. The aim is to provide an appropriate technological platform which will provide biomarkers for the detection and analysis of pathological or therapeutic modifications of blood. These research aims demand multi-disciplinary skills, significant crossover of staff between academic and clinical environments and high risk, exploratory science - all aspects appropriate to the underpinning support of a platform grant.

The CHERISH-DE Centre at Swansea University is predicated on an extensive understanding of the human context and condition alongside the potential and limitations of digital technologies. It draws on - and unfolds - the broad experience and talent available to it, in its multidisciplinary researchers, to weave new socio-technical materials that will provide effective, comforting and pleasing fabrics to support future living. We combine researchers (both in the Centre and in our partners) from social science, computer science, economics, medicine, arts and humanities and law. Over the past decade, the Swansea team has developed a unique focus on multi-disciplinary work within challenging human environments. Specifically, we have collaborated with a broad range of stakeholders to understand and address fundamental challenges connected with health and social care; resource constrained communities; and, safety and security.This perspective has built a platform of enabling concepts, technologies, policies and approaches ready to facilitate next stage digital economy innovations and the people skills required. The CHERISH Centre will use the notion of an extreme and challenging human environment as the fulcrum to drive understandings of how future products and services can evolve to fit and extend the human condition. By focussing on a person's lived experience in relation to the three challenging human environments and contexts (C1-C3), we will maximise the likelihood that digital innovations address real human needs and values and hence lead to effective products and services. Each interconnected context theme will be led by investigators from a mix of disciplines. *C1 Health and social care (e.g., medical devices, e-health, health informatics, patient services); *C2 Resource Constrained Communities (e.g., novel devices and services to access technology for social development and economic regeneration); *C3 Safety and Security (e.g., cyberterrorism, cybersecurity, 'dark web'). Using the lens of a challenging human environment, the CHERISH-DE Centre will provide concrete, diverse impacts, stimulating and supporting digital innovation by: *producing compelling case-studies, proofs-of-concepts and toolkits to platform future product, policy and service development that will enrich the social, economic and cultural life of UK citizens. *creating and equipping a cadre of next generation Digital Economy (DE) researchers. The Centre will begin life with a dedicated core of experienced multidisciplinary research leaders, along with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) who have already been developed through the distinctive DE style of working. This team will draw in, train and innovate with strong discipline researchers across the host institution and partners in the UK - including the other DE Centres and related activities - and internationally. This growing team will not only be able to do DE-type work in private and public sector organisations but, critically, will be a credible and powerful advocate for the approach's methods and motivations. The Centre has been shaped and will evolve through the support and intense engagement with key private, public and third sector stakeholders including the BBC, DVLA, Microsoft, IBM and, critically for the economy, a broad and deep network of Small to Medium Enterprises

The Centre's themes align with the 'Towards A Data Driven Future' and 'Enabling Intelligence' priority areas, meeting the needs identified by UKRI to provide a highly skilled - and in demand - workforce focused on ensuring positive, human-centred benefits accrued from innovations in data driven and intelligence-based systems. The Centre has a distinct and methodologically challenging "people-first" perspective: unlike an application-orientated approach (where techniques are applied to neatly or simplistically defined problems, sometimes called "solutionism"), this lens will ensure that intense, multi-faceted and iterative explorations of the needs, capabilities and values of people, and wider societal views, challenge and disrupt computational science. In a world of big data and artificial intelligence, the precious smallness of real individuals with their values and aspirations are easily overlooked. Even though the impact of data-driven approaches and intelligence are only beginning to be felt at a human scale, there are already signs of concern over what these will mean for life, with governments and others worldwide addressing implications for education, jobs, safety and indeed even what is unique in being human. Sociologists, economists and policy makers of course have a role in ensuring positive outcomes for people and society of data-driven and intelligence systems; but, computational scientists have a pivotal duty too. Our viewpoint, then, will always see the human as a first-class citizen in the future physical-digital world, not perceiving themselves as outwitted, devalued or marginalised by the expanding capabilities of machine computation, automation and communication. Swansea and the wider region of Wales is a place and community where new understandings of data science and machine intelligence are being formed within four challenging contexts defined in the Internet Coast City Deal: Life Science and Well-being; Smart Manufacturing; Smart and Sustainable Energy; and Economic Acceleration. Studies commissioned by the City Deal and BEIS evidence the science and innovation strengths in Swansea and region in these areas and indicate how transformational investments in these areas will be for the region and the UK. Our Centre will, then, immerse cohorts in these contexts to challenge them methodologically and scientifically. The use of data-driven and intelligence systems in each of the four contexts gives rise to security, privacy and wider ethical, legal, governance and regulatory issues and our Centre also has a cross-cutting theme to train students to understand, accommodate and shape current and future developments in these regards. Cohort members will work to consider how the Centre's challenge themes direct and drive their thinking about data and intelligence, benefitting from both the multidisciplinary team that have built strong research agendas and connections with each of the contexts and the rich set of stakeholders that are our Centre has assembled. Importantly, a process of pivoting between challenge themes will be applied: insights, methods and challenges from one theme and its research projects will be tested and extended in others with the aim of enriching all. These, along with several other mechanisms (such as intra- and inter-cohort sandpits and side projects) are designed to develop a powerful bonding and shaping "cohort effect". The need for and value of our Centre is evidenced by substantial external industrial investment we have have secured: £1,750,000 of cash and £4,136,050 in-kind (total:£5,886,050). These partners and stakeholders have helped create the vision and detail of the proposal and include: Vint Cerf ("father of the internet" and Vice President of Google); NHS; Pfizer; Tata Steel; Ford; QinetiQ; McAfee; Ordnance Survey; Facebook; IBM; Microsoft; Fujitsu; Worshipful Company of IT Spiritual and Ethical Panel; and, Vicki Hanson (CEO, Association of Computing Machinery).