Polluted water is a complex global socioeconomic issue that affects human and animal health, and greatly impacts industries such as agriculture and fishing, recreational activities and transportation. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently estimated that contaminated water is responsible for almost 500 million deaths per year. In a wide range of applications across sectors, current filtration technologies are ineffective, relying on the specific physicochemical properties of the membrane and the target molecule(s) to be removed, and their manufacture often requires complex and expensive multi-step processes with high associated energy costs. In this project, we will develop bioinspired membranes as new solutions for water purification technologies, selectively removing contaminants with minimal energy input requirements. Utilising advanced polymer synthesis strategies, we will develop new bespoke polymers that can extract transmembrane proteins capable of moving molecules across membrane with exquisite specificity and enable their subsequent incorporation into biomimetic artificial membranes. This will afford water purification membranes with previously unrivalled molecular selectivity and specificity. The new membrane technology developed in this project will help to advance and evolve the landscape of membrane science. The platform materials and approaches devised will be transferrable to additional membrane filtration and water purification applications and will enable universal manufacturing processes to afford high-performance reusable, recyclable devices that can contribute to a circular economy. The need for such new systems is recognised by the UN with Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation.

Membranes are protective barriers surrounding all cells, providing structure and shape, and controlling what enters or leaves a cell. These membranes comprise lipids and proteins that work together to allow the cells of complex higher organisms to communicate (e.g. by transfer of vesicles - small membrane 'bags' carrying essential molecular cargo) and function (e.g. by protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions within and between membranes). There is much to learn about how these membrane components work together to support these essential functions. In physiology, in response to stress, and across the life course, membranes and their components undergo constant change. These seemingly small chemical modifications to proteins and lipids profoundly alter cellular shape and activity. However, these changes remain poorly understood and must be defined to enhance our understanding of fundamental physiology in health and disease. We are a vibrant, multidisciplinary team of Midlands leaders in membrane biosciences, based at Aston University, in the heart of the Midlands, within the new £10M Research England-funded Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence (AIME). This proposal seeks funds for the latest generation of mass spectrometer, the Orbitrap Ascend Tribrid ('Ascend') that, based on our preliminary data collected in collaboration with the manufacturer, will revolutionize our ability to detect proteins, lipids and their modifications in biological membranes with the utmost sensitivity, resolution and throughput. This investment will provide the first Ascend in England outside of the London-Cambridge-Oxford "golden triangle", with capability to support not only Aston's researchers, but also further partnerships across the Midlands region and beyond. We have carefully selected the Ascend platform to analyse membranes with the highest sensitivity and resolution, ensuring we can confidently identify the rarest (often previously undetectable) proteins and lipids, including their subtle but critical modifications, which are technically challenging to measure, yet fundamental to fully deciphering the importance, mechanisms and consequences of intercellular signalling. Ascend will enable information-driven discovery and translational research at a level not previously possible across four main research objectives: Defining membrane microenvironments (protein-lipid interactions) that control membrane protein function in health and disease (e.g. Aquaporins and ABC transporters in physiology, inflammation and cancer) offers transformation in advancing biomedical research, drug development, and therapeutic strategies to design selective drugs and innovative treatments, including for traumatic brain injury and neuroinflammation; Defining protein changes under stress and ageing (e.g. platelet receptor changes in wound healing and vascular disease) will help us understand key regulatory signalling processes which, when altered, drive disease; Defining functionally significant vesicle cargo mediating intercellular communication in inflammation and repair (e.g. vanishingly rare enzyme components of extracellular vesicles), enabling new therapeutic approaches for inflammatory conditions, such as non-resolving wounds; Membrane engineering to produce active proteins, improve stress tolerance of industrially-important microbes, and inform design of novel precision-controlled drug delivery systems for cancer. This investment will have significant impact on UK membrane biology, allowing us to understand the details of protein and lipid interactions and modifications that underpin essential cellular responses, in order to develop new therapeutics for diseases and age-associated conditions with unmet clinical needs.

This 5-month project will establish a West Midlands Local Policy Innovation Partnership (WM LPIP). This will involve connecting local policy and research partners across the region to deliver a programme of activity that supports inclusive and sustainable local growth. We will achieve this through the provision of research, evidence, data and expertise to take advantage of opportunities and to find place-based solutions to challenges that matter to local people and communities. Our emphasis in the Phase 1 period which is the subject of this application is on building, strengthening and diversifying partnerships between research organisations and local stakeholders in the West Midlands to identify local priorities and formulate a plan for addressing them in the coming years in the WM LPIP Phase 2 programme. Insights and solutions will be developed within and across policy domains relating to economy (inclusive and sustainable local economic performance, innovation, skills), community (communities in their places, felt experiences and pride in place, cultural recovery) and environment (living and working sustainably in a greener economy) themes. Our ambition is to make inroads towards tackling 'wicked problems' across geographical scales (hyper-local, local, regional, national) that are challenging to address because of their complex and interconnected nature, as well as more straightforward challenges where the prospects for people and places can be improved more quickly. To achieve this, we will map relevant local and national administrative data to outline data sources that are available for analysis and insights into thematic priorities. We will also undertake a rapid evidence review of the academic and grey literature on the challenges relating to achieving inclusive and sustainable economic growth, with a particular emphasis on place. We will also draw on academic and policy literature and strategies relating to circumstances and activities in the different sub-regions in the West Midlands. Alongside this we will design and deliver a series of place-based stakeholder and community workshops across the West Midlands. Each stakeholder workshop will bring together local stakeholders from across the public, private and third sectors to discuss key challenges and priorities for the local area and the region, with local universities drawing on their networks to enable this. A public engagement event will follow to help us to further understand the needs of local communities and to receive feedback on the priorities identified in the place-based workshops. In this way priority areas of focus will be established in consultation with local stakeholders and communities and we will develop a platform for sustained engagement with them. Together the place-based and policy prioritisation workshops will inform the design of our model and work programme for Phase 2 of the WM LPIP.

Along the well-to-wake value chain from upstream processes associated with fuels production and supply, components manufacture, and ships construction to the operation of ports and vessels, the UK domestic and international shipping produced 5.9 Mt CO2eq and 13.8 Mt CO2eq, respectively in 2017, totalling 3.4% of the UK's overall greenhouse gas emissions. The sector contributes significantly to air pollution challenges with emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matters, harming human health and the environment particularly in coastal areas. The annual global market for maritime emission reduction technologies could reach $15 billion by 2050. This provides substantial economic opportunities for the UK. The Department for Transport's Clean Maritime Plan provides a route map for action on infrastructure, economics, regulation, and innovation that covers high technology readiness level (TRL 3-7). There is a genuine opportunity to explore fundamental research and go beyond conventional marine engineering and naval architecture and exploit the UK's world-leading cross-sectoral fundamental research expertise on hydrodynamics, fuels, combustion, electric machines and power electronics, batteries and fuel cells, energy systems, digitization, management, finance, logistics, safety engineering, etc. The proposed UK-MaRes Hub is a multidisciplinary research consortium and will conduct interdisciplinary research focussed on delivering disruptive solutions which have tangible potential to transform existing practice and reach a zero-carbon future by 2050. The challenges faced by UK maritime activity and their solutions are generally common but when deployed locally, they are bespoke due to the specifics of the port, the vessels they support, and the dependencies on their supply chains. Implementation will be heavily dependent on the local community, existing infrastructure, as well as opportunities and constraints related to the supply, distribution, storage and bunkering of alternative fuels, in decarbonising port handling facilities and cold-ironing, with the integration of renewable energy, reducing air pollution, to land-use and increased capacity and capability, and the local development of skills. The types of vessels and the cargoes handled through UK ports varies and are related to several factors, such as geographical location, regional industrial and business activity and wider transport links. Therefore, UK-MaRes Hub aims to feed into a clean maritime strategy that can adapt to place-based challenges and provide targeted technical and socio-economic interventions through a novel Co-innovation Methodology. This will bring together Research Exploration themes/work packages and Responsive Research Fund project activity into focus on port-centric scenarios and assess possibilities to innovate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, 2040 and 2050 timeframes, sharing best practice across the whole maritime ecosystem. A diverse, and inclusive Clean Maritime Network+ will ensure wider dissemination and knowledge take-up to achieve greater impact across UK ports and other maritime activity. The Network+ will have coordinated regional activity in South-West, Southern, London, Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, Midlands, North-West, North-East, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. An already established Clean Maritime Research Partnership has vibrant academic, industrial, and civic stakeholder members from across the UK. UK-MaRes Hub will establish a Clean Maritime Policy Unit to provide expert advice and quantitative evidence to enable rapid decarbonisation of the maritime sector. It will ensure that the UK-MaRes Hub is engaging with policymakers at all stages of the hub activities.