All communities are listed below in alphabetical order, and can be searched using key words or fund type.
Our “Featured Communities” are from the most recent round of Generator funding.
Our Communities
Our communities
The GW4 Building Communities Programme aims to build research and innovation communities of scale and capability, delivering a step change in world-class research that could not be achieved by one of the institutions alone. The Programme has two funding schemes:
- The annual Generator Fund which awards GW4 communities up to £20K for 6 month projects (launched in 2020). This replaced the Initiator (up to £20K for 5 months) and Accelerator (up to £75K for 8 months) funding schemes, which ran from 2014 – 2019.
- The Development Awards which support new, and advance existing, collaborations across GW4 by funding single activities or resources with up to £5K. This is a rolling scheme, with no closing date.
More details of both schemes, and how to apply, can be found at the links above.
Building Communities funding supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities, and is open to any academic area. To date, the GW4 Alliance has invested over £3.2M in 105 collaborative research communities, which have generated £63.4M in research income. This means that for every £1 GW4 spends on collaborative research communities, GW4 captures an impressive £20 in external research awards.
Research integrity
The GW4 Alliance has adopted the Russell Group Research Integrity Statement of cooperation in cross-institutional research misconduct allegations, which aims to support the efforts of researcher communities to foster research integrity (also known as good practice in research or the responsible conduct of research).
Explore our communities
Featured Communities
168 results found
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GW4 Centre of Excellence in the Built Environment
Initiator
Overview
This community addressed the need to reduce global carbon emissions, focusing on embodied carbon: the carbon produced from the construction, maintenance and eventual destruction of a building.
Community lead
University of Bath: Mike Lawrence (PI), Pete Walker
University of Bristol: Wendel Sebastian
Cardiff University: Chris Tweed, Yacine Rezgui
University of Exeter: Matthew Eames
Awarded
September 2015
GW4 Consortium for the Analysis of Intensively Collected Health Data
Initiator
Overview
The community aimed to build a GW4 community of statisticians, mathematicians, data scientists and epidemiologists who are developing and applying methods for analysing intensively collected data.
Community lead
University of Bath: Nicole Augustin
University of Bristol: Kate Tilling (PI)
Cardiff University: Kerry Hood
University of Exeter: William Henley
Awarded
September 2015
Harnessing Technology to Develop New Models of Alzheimers Disease
Accelerator
Overview
As a team we have identified some early changes that occur to control how genes are regulated in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. We will investigate how these gene changes might lead to Alzheimer’s disease.
Community lead
University of Bath: Vasanta Subramanian
University of Bristol: James Hodge, Caroline Relton
Cardiff University: Nick Allen
University of Exeter: Katie Lunnon (PI), Jonathan Mill, Jonathan Brown
Awarded
May 2015
Large Scale Brain Networks in Neurological & Psychiatric Disorders
Accelerator
Overview
This project will be cross-disciplinary, combining theory, clinical data and experiments. A broad aim of our network is to stimulate research collaborations that integrate experimental and clinical approaches with mathematical and computational modelling of brain networks.
Community lead
University of Bath: Roland Jones
University of Bristol: Richard Apps, Nina Kazanina
Cardiff University: Vincenzo Crunelli
University of Exeter: Marc Goodfellow (PI), Jon Brown
Awarded
May 2015
Prototypical Iterations in the Built Environment
Accelerator
Overview
This community has the long-term vision to change the way that all structures are designed and operated within the built environment. This is crucial if we are to achieve global sustainability in the face of a growing population and increasing urbanisation.
Community lead
University of Bath: John Orr
University of Bristol: Wendel Sebastian
Cardiff University: Iulia Mihai
University of Exeter: Prakash Kripakaran (PI)
Awarded
May 2015
The GW4 Pay Equality Research Consortium (PERC)
Initiator
Overview
A central goal of this GW4 consortium will be to determine the feasibility of establishing a multi-disciplinary team that will enable ground-breaking integrative equal pay research via the systematic collection of data using innovative methods. Ultimately, findings will have economic, managerial, human resource and policy implications.
Community lead
University of Bath: Susan Harkness
University of Bristol: Harriet Bradley
Cardiff University: Alison Parken
University of Exeter: Carol Woodhams (PI)
Awarded
May 2015
Modern British Politics & Political History
Accelerator
Overview
Our aim is to develop and strengthen our scholarly activities as a research cluster offering innovative and significant projects, with a distinct commitment to a cross-disciplinary approach.
Community lead
University of Bath: David Moon
University of Bristol: Mark Wickham-Jones, Hugh Pemberton
Cardiff University: Stephen Thornton
University of Exeter: David Thackeray (PI), Richard Toye
Awarded
May 2015
Building a GW4 Clinical Academic Training Community
Initiator
Overview
By creating a vibrant cohort of young talented clinical academics across GW4 we will significantly enhance our collective abilities to translate our basic biomedical and population health research into an impact on patient care.
Community lead
University of Bath: Stephen Ward
University of Bristol: Jeremy Tavaré (PI)
Cardiff University: Paul Morgan
University of Exeter: Angela Shore
Awarded
May 2015
Centre for Corporate Governance & Social Responsibility (CGSR)
Initiator
Overview
Our aim was to establish a world-leading multi-disciplinary research centre, The Centre for Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility (CGSR) across the Alliance.
Community lead
University of Bath: Ian Tonks
University of Bristol: Paula Hill (PI)
Cardiff University: Jason Xiao
University of Exeter: Rajesh Tharyan
Awarded
May 2015
Controlling Nucleation & Growth to Deliver Novel Materials Functionality
Accelerator
Overview
The aim of our interdisciplinary community is to take an integrative approach combining theoretical modelling, experiments and simulations to advance the state of the art in nucleation and crystallization theory.
Community lead
University of Bath: Johannes Zimmer (PI)
University of Bristol: Isaac Chenchiah
Cardiff University: Stefano Leoni
University of Exeter: David Wright
Awarded
May 2015