The British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society have announced joint funding of £100,000 each for eight interdisciplinary research projects based at universities across the UK.
Awarded under the APEX scheme (Academies Partnership in Supporting Excellence in Cross-disciplinary Research) with support from the Leverhulme Trust, the funding will enable established researchers with a strong track record in their respective fields to pursue research that spans the social sciences and humanities, engineering and the sciences.
Each APEX award provides £100,000 funding for up to 24 months. Award holders can also separately apply for up to £10,000 to create and lead public engagement research projects linked to their APEX Award.
This year’s funded projects are:
- Does cognition predate life? A philosophy-inspired engineering approach to defining and testing proto-cognitive processes in inert matter – Dr Mazviita Chirimuuta, University of Edinburgh
- Exploring the feasibility of regenerating Medieval Licchavi Period irrigation infrastructure in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal – Professor Robin Coningham, Durham University
- Understanding and Explaining Variations in the Rate of Radiocarbon Samples – Professor Timothy Heaton, University of Leeds
- Bringing the Cosmos to the Lab: Explaining via Analogue Gravity Quantum Simulators – Dr Lina Jansson, University of Nottingham
- New geometric methods for mapping the space of periodic crystals – Dr Vitaliy Kurlin, University of Liverpool
- Robots in the Wild – Environmentally trustworthy robots for monitoring challenging natural ecosystems – Dr Hemma Philamore, University of Bristol
- Integrated risk mapping of culture meat – Dr Neil Stephens, University of Birmingham
- Responsibility for human-AI split-second decision-making (ROUTE) – Dr Ozlem Ulgen, University of Nottingham.
The 2024 APEX Awards will open for applications on 6th September and will close on 1st November 2023.
