Supporting world-class labs for early career researchers at The University of Manchester

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Since its creation in 2004, the University of Manchester has focussed on building its reputation for world-class research, and has risen rapidly in world university league tables. It now ranks well within the top 40 institutions in the world. Our stated aim is to attract, develop and nurture the careers of excellent researchers, and become the location of choice for staff at all career stages. This includes providing mentoring and support for early career researchers, together with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.Now we propose to use our EPSRC Capital Award to support the careers of early career researchers in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, by providing state-of-the-art equipment in fields aligned with University of Manchester strategic priorities. We will allocate the grant in two competitive bidding rounds. The first of these is complete, and the second will be held six months after the start of the award, targetted at early career researchers recruited in 2018 to highly prestigious University of Manchester Presidential Fellowships. The projects we have chosen for initial investment in round 1 are:* State-of-the-art air quality measurement, which will provide a mobile facility for testing air quality and emissions in new ways. For example, it could lead to lower emission domestic stoves, and will allow us to work with industrial partners towards zero emissions vehicle engines, or to calculate airport carbon footprints from aircraft taxiing, take-off and landing.* Tackling the world's water crisis, helping us to use novel ion exchange membranes to develop efficient new technologies for removing salt to produce affordable drinking water from seawater or brackish water, which comprises 98% of Earth's water.* Developing critical mass in cybersecurity, where the aim is to develop tools to find software vulnerabilities in the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, in order to ensure that IoT applications and environments are safe, secure, and operate correctly. There is potential to develop commercial products to be used by companies in the areas of consumer electronics, the automotive industry and the financial markets.* New applications of graphene nanocapillaries, allowing the potential of graphene in separating molecules and DNA/protein sequencing to be explored. This could result in more powerful, fast and portable diagnostic devices for DNA sequencing.