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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Funds
Types
Addressing Gender Based Violence
Initiator
Overview
This community aimed to create a concrete network of GW4 Gender Based Violence researchers to build on existing links across GW4 and identify new and innovative collaborative research opportunities.
Community lead
University of Bath: Tina Skinner
University of Bristol: Marianne Hester (PI)
Cardiff University: Amanda Robinson
University of Exeter: Anthony Musson
Awarded
May 2014
GW4 Epigenetics Consortium
Initiator
Overview
We aimed to establish a GW4 Epigenetics Consortium that capitalised on the complementary strengths in clinical, population-based and experimental research conducted in this general domain at GW4 institutions.
Community lead
University of Bath: Andrew Ward, Adele Murrell
University of Bristol: Caroline Relton (PI), Matthew Hickman
Cardiff University: Anthony Isles, Stan Zammit
University of Exeter: Jonathan Mill, Katie Lunnon
Awarded
May 2014
Paramagnetic Species for Catalysis and Materials Applications
Initiator
Overview
The community brought together investigators from GW4 with overlapping, yet wide-ranging interests that relate to paramagnetism, in order to tackle big-scale, high-risk high-reward problems in the field.
Community lead
University of Bath: Mike Whittlesey (PI)
University of Bristol: Robin Bedford
Cardiff University: Damien Murphy
Awarded
May 2014
The Impact of Offshore Windfarms on Marine Organisms
Initiator
Overview
The community aimed to bring together an interdisciplinary team of GW4 researchers capable of substantially advancing knowledge of the impacts of offshore renewables.
Community lead
University of Bath: Phillipe Blondeli
University of Bristol: Andy Radford, Daniel Robert
Cardiff University: Roger Falconer
University of Exeter: Rick Bruintjes (PI), Steve Simpson, Darren Croft, Matt Witt, Phillipp Thies
Awarded
May 2014
Synbio Showcase and Strategy Meeting
Initiator
Overview
This project brought together GW4 researchers and key stakeholders in a showcase and networking event, and established a GW4 Synthetic Biology Strategy Group for leading future cross-institute collaborations.
Community lead
University of Bath: David Leak
University of Bristol: Paul Race
Cardiff University: Dafydd Jones
University of Exeter: Thomas Howard (PI)
Awarded
May 2014
Health-Related Behaviour Change Interventions
Initiator
Overview
We aimed to establish a GW4 inter-disciplinary community of researchers interested in developing state-of-the-art interventions to generate long-lasting behaviour changes to improve health.
Community lead
University of Bath: Fiona Gillison, Afroditi Stathi, Julie Barnett
University of Bristol: Anne Haase, Simon Sebire, Russ Jago
Cardiff University: Sharon Simpson, Graham Moore
University of Exeter: Jane R Smith (PI), Charles Abraham, Colin Greaves
Awarded
May 2014
GW4 Imaging Network
Initiator
Overview
This community aimed to create a GW4 network of inter-disciplinary expertise to promote, inspire and support quantitative image analysis across the disciplines, in each institution, and to promote GW4 scientific imaging at the international level.
Community lead
University of Bath: Silvia Munoz-Descalzo, Jim Caunt
University of Bristol: Mark Jepson
Cardiff University: Jim Murray, Peter Watson, Joaquin de Navascues Melero
University of Exeter: Michael Deeks (PI), Jacqueline Christmas, George Littlejohn, Jeremy Metz
Awarded
October 2014
GW4 Environmental Humanities
Initiator
Overview
A new community of researchers in the Human Sciences focused on raising the profile and collaborative potential of interdisciplinary work on environmental problems in Wales, the South West and internationally.
Community lead
University of Bath: Axel Goodbody
University of Bristol: Peter Coates
Cardiff University: Ria Dunkley
University of Exeter: Nicola Whyte (PI)
Awarded
October 2014
Unlocking the Science for an Autonomous Structural Health Monitoring System
Accelerator
Overview
The primary vision of this collaboration was to become a world leading research consortium that advanced the state of the art in wireless Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in composite structures by bringing together the unique combination of expertise within GW4.
Community lead
University of Bath: Alicia Kim
University of Bristol: Stephen Hallett
Cardiff University: Carol Featherston (PI)
University of Exeter: Meiling Zhu
Awarded
October 2014
Avarice: Algal Valorisation & Remediation of Metal Ion Contaminated Effluents
Accelerator
Overview
Our aim was to investigate the use of algae native to contaminated mine sites to remove metals from acid mine drainage (AMD) and then convert the algae to biofuels.
Community lead
University of Bath: Christopher Chuck
University of Bristol: Tom Scott
Cardiff University: Devin Sapsford
University of Exeter: Chris Bryan (PI)
Plymouth Marine Laboratory: Mike Allen
Awarded
October 2014