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Funding

The LIFD have dedicated funds from the University’s UKRI Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF)  scheme to support knowledge exchange that benefits society and the economy.

LIFD’s Key priorities for this funding are

  1. Develop a detailed proposal for a Fluids National Initiative and secure high-level support. This will facilitate knowledge exchange, stakeholder engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and a world leading UK fluids community.
  2. Support Early and Mid Career Researchers working in fluids to collaborate with peers within and beyond the University and secure tenure track positions, prestigious fellowships and strategic collaborative projects.
  3. Build on existing partnerships with industry/PSRE/third-party/charities and seek opportunities for new partnerships to maximise the impact of LIFD research activities beyond the academic community and enable knowledge exchange.
  4. Continue to build the international profile of interdisciplinary fluid dynamics at Leeds and across the UK by hosting visitors, presenting research at international meetings, and building on our collaborative partnerships.

 

LIFD invites its members to apply for funds under the following categories. The total HEIF funds for July2022-July2023 is £40,000. Please email fluids-institute@leeds.ac.uk for further information on how to apply

 

Specific actions / interventions Output / benefit
Support for LIFD groups To support LIFD groups in developing interdisciplinary fluids-related resources and techniques.  The LIFD groups include: Biomedical, Computational, Energy, Environment, Experimental, Health, Machine Learning. For example, the LIFD Machine Learning group used HEIF 21-22 funds to produce ‘Jupyter notebooks’ at PGR level which are the first fluids-specific resource of its kind and are an important baseline from which researchers from PGRS to staff, both within Leeds and internationally, can develop new ideas. HEIF 22-23 funding can be used to further expand on this resource and host events with external visitors. There are opportunities for the LIFD Experimental group to access experimental equipment in order to pump prime future proposals or start new interdisciplinary collaborations.

These funds will be open to all LIFD groups to apply for.

Outputs focus on people and community engagement: applications for research funding, engagement with events.
Fellowship and strategic project support To support LIFD members in their fellowship and strategic project grant applications. For example to build consortia through support for hosting visitors and workshops, support for potential fellows visiting other institutes or stakeholders, support to pilot work. This includes engagement with external partners to support the Fluids CDT renewal proposal.

Outputs focus on people:  This support will strengthen fellowship and strategic grant applications.
ECR specific support To support our early career LIFD members in working towards new ways of thinking and working, with the ultimate goal of creating long-term shifts in attitude towards collaboration. The Crucible programme “aims to develop the competencies required to initiate and develop interdisciplinary working, knowledge exchange, innovative activity and creative thinking”. [see additional text in section 3 regarding the Crucible event].

Establish new collaborations within LIFD that lead to interdisciplinary projects and grant bids. Potential to establish new connections between institutes/commence new collaborative work. Equip LIFD ECRs with skills and confidence required to form and lead interdisciplinary research projects.

Outputs focus on people: applications for research funding and new collaborations.
National Fluids Initiative To support the development and scoping of a National Initiative in Fluid Dynamics. Travel for leads to meet with key funder/policy people to pitch for the proposal development.

Facilitated workshops/meetings with the UK fluids research community and with funders, industry and policy makers to co-create the detailed proposal for this initiative.

To develop a suite of communication material (slides, documents, videos) suitable for funding bodies, policy makers and governmental departments.

Outputs focus on securing high-level (funding) support, community engagement and international recognition.
Industry and PSRE/third-party collaboration and seed corn projects An event is proposed to introduce industry to available academic expertise in fluid dynamics to tackle industry challenges, and to make introductions to relevant colleagues.  In addition, following a successful session at the LUBS Business Engagement Day in June 2022, an LIFD session will take place again at a follow-up event on 22nd June 2023.

 

These events will be followed up by an LIFD-Industry hackathon or research sprint event, is proposed, where researchers at all levels join forces with specialists from industry to solve cutting edge research problems over a limited number of days. Although advancing the research agenda is the focus, everyone learns new techniques and methods of working from each other, and it is a proven way to facilitate knowledge exchange between academics and industry (speakers and participants from the computer science industry to be invited, e.g. snowflake, Google, Microsoft).

 

In order to support LIFD members in the initiation of new working relationships with industry seed corn funding will be promoted to support workshops or pilot projects that are intended to lead to new collaborations, KE and potentially progress towards new funding bids (e.g. Innovate UK, KTPs), proof of concept projects and/or market research. This will result in establishing new industry partnerships with academics in LIFD, leading to further investment from industry in LIFD, and expanding the portfolio of projects that make a positive contribution to the field of fluid dynamics in the industry sector.

Outputs focus on industry and third-party engagement, new project initiation.
Hosting visitors at LIFD To host visitors attending fluids related conferences and meetings at the University of Leeds (e.g. Newton).

Outputs focus on community engagement, knowledge exchange and reputation.