Academics at The University of Nottingham will conduct joint research with their counterparts in India after success in the biggest ever education initiative between the two countries.
They will join forces with researchers in Delhi, Kanpur and Lucknow as part of a major Government drive to strengthen links between top academics in the UK and India.
Nottingham experts are celebrating two new grants made under the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), an international scheme launched last year by Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The first grant, of more than £300,000, has been made to a team of researchers led by Dr David de Pomerai in the School of Biology and Professor John King in the School of Mathematical Sciences. The Nottingham team will work with Drs D Kar Chowdhuri and Daya K Saxena of the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre, Lucknow, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, on a four-year project.
Collaborators will also include Professor Pradip Sinha at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, also in Uttar Pradesh.
Their aim is to develop a mathematical model that will allow them to predict how living organisms respond when exposed to chemical pollution, particularly where a number of different pollutants are mixed together. While many individual defence mechanisms have been studied in the past, there has not yet been a systematic study of how the whole system — known as the 'stress-response network' — responds to chemical mixtures.
Dr de Pomerai will be working with Dr Matt Loose of the School of Biology, who will model the genetic circuitry that controls the stress-response network.
Dr de Pomerai said: "This project will achieve a step-change in our understanding of mixture toxicity, by building a predictive mathematical model of the entire stress-response network, based on experimental data from two model invertebrates — nematode worms and fruit flies.
"We know a lot about how organisms respond to single pollutants — the problem arises with chemical mixtures that may in some cases exacerbate each other's effects, but in other cases cancel them out. If we understood clearly how the stress-response network functions as a whole, we might be better able to predict these unexpected mixture effects.
"Because the stress-response network is very similar in all animals, it is hoped that predictions based on our mathematical model will hold broadly true for vertebrates as well — including the likely effects of pollution on fish, livestock, wildlife and human health."
The University of Nottingham is also part of a second successful UKIERI project sharing a second major award, which aims to exploit the potential of micro-structured optical fibres (MOFs), one of the newest concepts in fibre optics. Nottingham is part of a research consortium co-ordinated by City University, London, and including Heriot Watt, Southampton and Strathclyde Universities.
They will be working with three world-class Indian teams led by the Indian Institute of Technology, in Delhi, with the aim of coming up with new technologies to underpin the multi-billion pound industry in optical communications and measurement systems. Micro-structured optical fibres are similar in size to a human hair, but have tiny holes running down their entire length giving them remarkable properties.
Professor Trevor Benson, of the George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, leads the Nottingham team. He said: "International research links provide great vitality for our work at Nottingham.
"We are delighted to be involved with this major collaboration that brings together world-leading expertise in materials, design and modelling to find solutions to our increasing need for high-speed global communications."
The UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) was launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2006, in a bid to increase education and research co-operation between the UK and India.
The initiative is associated with high-quality, innovative research and academic excellence. UKIERI has also formed partnerships with four corporate partners — BAE, BP, GlaxoSmithKline and Shell.
The UKIERI scheme made a total of six major awards of £500,000, allocated over four years. A further 23 standard awards were also made, worth up to £150,000 each. In all, the UKIERI awarded £5m to institutions in the UK and India.
Making the awards, Chancellor Gordon Brown said: "Each of the winners — and the many other excellent candidates — is evidence of the strength of education links, research partnerships and learning collaborations between our two countries.
"And these are themselves a sign of strength of the much broader economic, political and cultural relationship between our two countries that I have had the privilege to witness for myself."