University of Birmingham academics awarded Future Leaders Fellowships to support ambitious research, with a combined funding total of more than £6.9 million.
Four University of Birmingham academics have been awarded Future Leaders Fellowships from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to support their ambitious research with a combined funding total of more than £6.9 million.
Sandra Pertek, Katja Kornysheva, Megan McDonald and Matthew Coak have each been awarded Future Leaders Fellowships from UKRI to support and develop their groundbreaking research.
This is the most successful round of Future Leadership Fellowship funding for the University of Birmingham.
The Future Leadership Fellowship (FLF) programme is designed to support talented researchers in universities, businesses and other research and innovation environments with their long-term projects. It allows early career researchers to develop and tackle ambitious, challenging, and important research.
...the principles of Islamic philanthropy, such as zakat (obligatory charity), sadaqah (voluntary charity) and waqf (endowment) have received little attention regarding their use in supporting women who become forcibly displaced (...) I am delighted to become a Future Leadership Fellow and look forward to beginning this urgent policy-oriented research and engaging with policymakers and practitioners.
Dr Sandra Pertek is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Research into International Migration & Superdiversity and the School of Government. She has been awarded £1.2 million for her project ‘Making Aid Work for Displaced Women’. The project will begin in September 2024 and last four years. Dr Pertek will work across Bangladesh, Kenya, Turkey and the UK to research and explore ways Islamic philanthropy (IsP) principles can be leveraged to improve humanitarian aid work for displaced women. Her project involves a research team and multiple humanitarian, technical and academic partners, including leading charities and a multilateral development bank.
Dr Pertek said: “With the numbers of refugees increasing yearly due to armed conflict and climate change, the need for inclusive humanitarian aid has ballooned in recent years, and it is estimated that over half of the world’s forcibly displaced people are hosted in Muslim-majority countries. Despite this, the principles of Islamic philanthropy, such as zakat (obligatory charity), sadaqah (voluntary charity) and waqf (endowment) have received little attention regarding their use in supporting women who become forcibly displaced and so lack integration into policy and humanitarian discourse. I am delighted to become a Future Leadership Fellow and look forward to beginning this urgent policy-oriented research, engaging with policymakers and practitioners.”
Many people struggle with everyday activities like typing, tying their shoes or cooking due to stroke, Parkinson's, or dyspraxia (...) This is a significant opportunity to accelerate the development of non-invasive brain technology for learning and rehabilitation.
Dr Katja Kornysheva is an Assistant Professor in Human Neuroscience at the School of Psychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health. She has been awarded £2.1 million to study the neural basis of skilled action planning and develop neurotech solutions to improve movement rehabilitation.
Dr Kornysheva commented: “Many people struggle with everyday activities like typing, tying their shoes or cooking due to stroke, Parkinson's, or dyspraxia. This can be very frustrating for individuals and impair their independence. We will be using brain scans and machine learning to identify how the human brain controls skilled actions, even before we start moving. Our goal is to then build non-invasive neurotechnological tools to modify action planning and improve performance in healthy individuals. This could transform rehab and open up neurotechnological advances to a broader spectrum of individuals with movement coordination problems. To achieve this, I will lead an interdisciplinary team, working with partners at Imperial College London and EPFL. This is a significant opportunity to accelerate the development of non-invasive brain technology for learning and rehabilitation.”
Fungal plant pathogens pose a serious threat to global food security and yet are one of the most understudied groups of pathogens (...) Being awarded this fellowship is an amazing honour and I am excited for the opportunity to build an interdisciplinary team as well as expand my own knowledge in plant health policy.
Dr Megan McDonald is an Assistant Professor and Birmingham Fellow within the School of Biosciences. She has been awarded £1.6 million to study a novel mechanism that facilitates the horizontal transfer of virulence genes between different fungal pathogens of plants. As part of her Fellowship, she will work with the Risk and Horizon Scanning team within the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to develop her knowledge of plant-health policy.
Dr McDonald said: “Fungal plant pathogens pose a serious threat to global food security and yet are one of the most understudied groups of pathogens. This project will explore how a novel group of giant transposons, called Starships, facilitate the horizontal movement of virulence genes between different fungal wheat pathogens. This project will establish an experimental system where we can study these transposons moving in real-time and assess what risk they pose to the emergence of novel diseases. Being awarded this fellowship is an amazing honour and I am excited for the opportunity to build an interdisciplinary team as well as expand my own knowledge in plant health policy.”
I am absolutely thrilled to be included in this round of UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships. My project will identify, synthesise and explore new 2D materials, searching for exotic quantum functionalities to form new sustainable electronics and new types of computing.
Dr Matthew Coak is an Assistant Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, working on the physics of 2D materials. He has been awarded £2 million to explore routes to new multifunctional quantum devices through the synthesis, measurement and tuning of exotic 'magnetic graphene' materials and nanodevices. The project will work with eight international partners across France, South Korea, Netherlands and the UK, and a key industrial partner in graphene tech company Paragraf Ltd, to 'close the loop' from the discovery of new 2D materials and properties to real-world industrial-scale production of new electronics devices.
Dr Coak said: “I am absolutely thrilled to be included in this round of UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships. My project will identify, synthesise and explore new 2D materials, searching for exotic quantum functionalities to form new sustainable electronics and new types of computing. Tuning nanostructures of these materials with extreme pressure will unlock entirely new physics and new applications in this space. It’s incredibly exciting to be starting this work, with full support there to enable these challenging experiments and to build collaborations with all these international partners."
Assistant Professor
Staff profile for Dr Matthew Coak.
Teaching Fellow
Dr Sandra Pertek is a Research Fellow in the School of Government, University of Birmingham
Assistant Professor
Dr Megan Mcdonald uses next-generation sequencing tools identify and characterise virulence genes from fungal pathogens of wheat and barley as a Birmingham Fellow at University of Birmingham
Assistant Professor in Human Neuroscience
Dr Kornysheva studies how the human brain learns and controls skilled behaviour, with a focus on action planning and execution, sequencing and timing, as well as disorders of the latter.
