Eight interdisciplinary projects receive cross-academy APEX awards

Eight researchers have been awarded funding for innovative, curiosity-driven, interdisciplinary research projects in the 2024 round of the APEX Awards.

The awards will provide up to £100,000 for established independent researchers to collaborate with partners from different disciplines across the sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities. The grants are jointly awarded by the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

From the next round, opening on 2 October, researchers will be able to apply for up to £200,000 to support their projects. This can include costs to contribute to research assistants and technical support as well as requests for funding for public engagement work related to the project.

The APEX Awards have funded 49 interdisciplinary research projects across the UK since launching in 2017. Researchers supported through this grant have used the funding to address complex challenges where solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research.

The 2024 APEX Awards awardees are:

Please note: Awards are arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient. The institution is that given at the time of application.

Dr James Burridge

Dynamic spatial modelling and inference for language change

Lancaster University

Dr Selvino de Kort

Resounding calls: The impact of enclosure design on zoo soundscapes

Manchester Metropolitan University

Dr Bastien Dieppois

Foreseeing Management of Emerging Unprecedented Hydroclimatic Extremes to Embrace Resilience in Sub-Saharan African Communities

Coventry University

Dr Ksenija Dvurecenska

Would you trust a simulation? Communicating (un)certainty and establishing confidence in virtual testing

University of Liverpool

Professor Gabriel Egan

Shakespeare's Textual Variations: New Insights from Information Theory

De Montfort University

Dr Joseph Martin

The Soft Side of Physics

Durham University

Professor Igor Potapov

De Novo Algorithmic Crystal Structure Prediction for Material Design

University of Liverpool

Dr Bo Yao

Laying the Groundwork for EEG Classification of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: Multi-Objective Feature Attribution in Explainable Machine Learning for Inner Speech

Lancaster University

The awards listed are those for the 2024 APEX Awards. Previous award announcements can be found on the APEX Awards past awards page.