Research grants and contracts November 2012
Wednesday, 02 January 2013
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Scanner in the University's Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics
The University was awarded over £1million in research grants and contracts in November
The total amount of money awarded in research grants and contracts in November was £1,148,510. The grants awarded ranged from £2,075 to £327,957, and this money came from a number of sources including the European Commission, UK Government, research councils, industry, charitable trusts and other research institutions.
Dr Holly Robson from Clinical Language Sciences was awarded £170,477 from the Stroke Association for ‘Profiling chronic and recovered language comprehension networks post stroke: psychoacoustic, neurophysiological and fMRI investigations'.
After a stroke many individuals suffer problems with language; this can include difficulties with understanding. Such understanding difficulties are very difficult to treat, particularly if they persist longer than nine months after the stroke. However, most people who have understanding problems just after their stroke are able to recover their understanding over the following 9+ months.
The research this grant will fund will investigate the differences between those who do and do not recover, whether or not there are predictors of who will recover, and identify the brain changes which are present in those who recover compared to those who do not. The research will take place over three years and aims to answer some of these questions by monitoring how people change after their stroke using language and cognitive tests, and functional neuroimaging. The findings will be used to develop new types of treatment for this condition.
Professor Frantisek Hartl from Chemistry was awarded £327,957 from the EPSRC for a project titled ‘Electronically gated single molecule FETs'.
Molecular electronics looks at using molecular-sized building blocks to create electrical components. This would much reduce the size required for electronic devices providing a wealth of new possibilities. The future development of molecular electronic devices such as nanowires, molecular based sensors and solar cells however, requires new strategies for characterising and controlling the electrical properties of the junctions between molecules and metal within the circuits.
This project is part of a larger £1.2M research project with researchers in Liverpool and Durham. The Reading part of the project will use specialised techniques to identify the most suitable compounds and metal surface binding groups for further studies of the molecular-scale structures.
A comprehensive list of Research Awards from September 2011 to date is available to staff (you will need your University username and password to access this page) via the Research and Enterprise web pages