IMM
Funder: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Duration: -
Studentship
Funder: EU
Duration: June 2026 - May 2029
Lead Coordinator on the project
Funder: the European Union
Duration: May 2026 - December 2026
We are confronted today with a strong change in paradigms relevant to the emergence of LLM (Large Language Model) technologies that are taking up the scenes and presenting themselves as a big part of the future of the digital space. It is evident that, on a regulatory level, the EU is launching strategic and legislative initiatives that aim to regulate and emphasise the role of these solutions. However, the technical powerhouse of the technology is still the American ecosystem. With ELOQUENCE, we try to better understand unstructured dialogues and translate them into explainable, safe, knowledge-grounded, trustworthy and bias-controlled language models in accordance with the strategies and future legislations of the EU. ELOQUENCE will thus work upon the solutions that paved the way for a robust ecosystem in the domain of conversational agents such as the chatGPT, LaMDA2, or LLaMA3. The project will thus exploit pre-trained LLMs and tailor them to specific domains, with considerations given to green computing and eventual regulations on AI. This will result in a more trust-worthy LLM with mitigated impact from the usual memory distortion. ELOQUENCE is set to achieve its goal by putting in place use cases to validate the technologies it will produce. These will be segmented into four settings, the first being a language model learning through decentralised training in smart homes. This setting will pay close attention to the fundamental rights of privacy and data protection. The project will also delve into context-aware language model detecting biases. The project will also aim at retrieval-augmented LLMs as virtual agents, capable of understanding the user’s goals, making calls and responding. And finally the project will aim to develop support call centres through AI-based supervision of multimodal dialogues. By integrating conversational AI agents in contact centres or smart home assistants we can improve outcomes of AI technologies to better identify and resolve the reason of a call, or any request of action.
Funder: EC Horizon MCSE
Duration: November 2025 - October 2029
Funder: European Commission
Duration: October 2025 - October 2029
Funder: The Henry Royce Institute
Duration: October 2025 - February 2026
Funder: Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Duration: -
Funder: TWI - The Welding Institute
Duration: -
Studentship extension
Funder: EPSRC Park Royal Net Zero Food Systems
Duration: -
Funder: European Research Council
Duration: -
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: September 2025 - March 2027
Sustainable textiiles
Funder: Broadway Colours / Sebi Ltd
Duration: July 2025 - July 2026
Extrusion processing and development of biodegradable lightweight injection mouldable plastics. Under development are fully home compostable food packaging, e.g. disposable coffee cup lids and masterbatch that can be let down into these applications for injection moulding and for thermoforming of extruded sheets. The funding underwrites 10% including overheads of Prof Fern's support research projects with Sebi (Park Royal IAA) and BWC. This is for research since consultancy projects are funded separately, e.g. testing of graphene enhanced packaging currently also live.
Funder: EIT Higher Education Institutions (HEI) Initiative
Duration: April 2025 - December 2025
Funder: EPSRC Place Based IAA
Duration: February 2025 - January 2026
Utilising agri by-products to develop sustainable materials materials
Funder: EPSRC
Duration: January 2025 - December 2028
Funder: Broadway Colours Ltd
Duration: January 2025 - December 2030
Part time PhD student registration and bench fee, development of biodegradable masterbatch
Funder: UK Space Agency
Duration: October 2024 - February 2025
Study to establish foundations for creating a satellite fragmentation model.
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council
Duration: October 2024 - September 2028
Studentship CDA - Ines Buetow Pelaez
Funder: UK Space Agency
Duration: October 2024 - February 2025
Phase 1: Capability towards developing a numerical simulations approach. Specific technical objectives include: - Literature review on existing capabilities catastrophic collision threshold analysis, including numerical and empirical models / approaches. - Development of a range of low fidelity models; - Validation of the model against the high-fidelity models; - Specify the minimum level of modelling details required to obtain predictive results; - Determine size effects in the context of material vs structural response, including the strength change, as function of impactor size; - Determine the stress distribution within the structure and propose recommendations to guide development of appropriate failure criteria; - Through simulation, identify catastrophic impact specific energies as a function of projectile size; - Provide an assessment of the mass and trajectory of any fragments that may be generated during the impact cases of interest to UKSA; - Compare results against NASA Standard Satellite Breakup Model (SSBM) to better understand the influence of debris cloud formation and properties, resulting from collisions with limited information, to guide design recommendations to improve predictions of future collisions. for the breakup of a complete satellite to help define Catastrophic Collision Threshold.
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: October 2024 - February 2025
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: October 2024 - March 2025
Extrusion of recycled plastics using real-time in-situ ultrasonic senor
Funder: Innovation Voucher and Peak to Peak
Duration: August 2024 - July 2025
In-situ ultrasonic extrusion sensor for melt flow monitoring also had Innovate UK project and in pre-award for Eureka project
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: June 2024 - December 2025
Standardistation of bio-processing derived pigments
Funder: The Royal Society
Duration: March 2024 - August 2026
Funder: Innovate UK (Horizon Europe Guarantee)
Duration: February 2024 - January 2026
Fellowship
Funder: Innovation voucher and Biomr
Duration: February 2024 - March 2024
Development of water repellant coating
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2024 - June 2027
Sustainable pigment development - follow-on from Prof Fern DR&D projects with DJ
Funder: the European Union / Innovate UK
Duration: January 2024 - December 2026
We are confronted today with a strong change in paradigms relevant to the emergence of LLM (Large Language Model) technologies that are taking up the scenes and presenting themselves as a big part of the future of the digital space. It is evident that, on a regulatory level, the EU is launching strategic and legislative initiatives that aim to regulate and emphasise the role of these solutions. However, the technical powerhouse of the technology is still the American ecosystem. With ELOQUENCE, we try to better understand unstructured dialogues and translate them into explainable, safe, knowledge-grounded, trustworthy and bias-controlled language models in accordance with the strategies and future legislations of the EU. ELOQUENCE will thus work upon the solutions that paved the way for a robust ecosystem in the domain of conversational agents such as the chatGPT, LaMDA2, or LLaMA3. The project will thus exploit pre-trained LLMs and tailor them to specific domains, with considerations given to green computing and eventual regulations on AI. This will result in a more trust-worthy LLM with mitigated impact from the usual memory distortion. Objectives ELOQUENCE is set to achieve its goal by putting in place use cases to validate the technologies it will produce. These will be segmented into four settings, the first being a language model learning through decentralised training in smart homes. This setting will pay close attention to the fundamental rights of privacy and data protection. The project will also delve into context-aware language model detecting biases. The project will also aim at retrieval-augmented LLMs as virtual agents, capable of understanding the user’s goals, making calls and responding. And finally the project will aim to develop support call centres through AI-based supervision of multimodal dialogues. By integrating conversational AI agents in contact centres or smart home assistants we can improve outcomes of AI technologies to better identify and resolve the reason of a call, or any request of action.
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: December 2023 - May 2024
Funder: IAA and Broadway Colours Ltd
Duration: November 2023 - March 2024
Use of endothermic foaming agents by injection moulding - led to new Research, consultancy and PhD projects
Funder:
Duration: October 2023 - March 2027
Funder: Innovation Voucher with Planet Smart
Duration: October 2023 - January 2024
Synthesis of Super Absorbent polymer
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: October 2023 -
ICASE Studentship 230041
Funder: IAA and Emnandi Bioplastics
Duration: July 2023 - November 2023
Development of water barrier compostable films
Funder: Renishaw plc
Duration: -
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: May 2023 - April 2024
Development of the use of recycled homeware products using 100% recycled polymer and manufactured in the UK
Funder: Innovate UK
Duration: April 2023 - March 2024
Decontamination of land and recovery of valuable metals
Funder: IAA
Duration: February 2023 - July 2023
CEM microwave and vacuum stack for extruder
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2023 - January 2026
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Duration: January 2023 - December 2025