Following a year-long open competition, the Oxford Martin School has awarded around £1 million each to four new interdisciplinary research programmes addressing major challenges in health, climate, food security and the environment.
The programmes span very different areas of research, but share a common starting point: each asks what becomes possible when we look beyond the limitations of existing systems, knowledge or technologies.
Oxford Martin Electrification Accelerator will investigate why the shift from fossil fuels to electricity is not happening quickly enough, despite electric alternatives already being available in many sectors. The programme will examine where electrification is progressing, what is holding it back, and which combinations of policy, regulation and infrastructure can help governments and industry move faster.
Oxford Martin Programme on Geological Hydrogen will investigate whether hydrogen could be produced in a cleaner and more locally accessible way by stimulating the natural reactions that generate it underground. Hydrogen is essential to fertiliser production, but is currently overwhelmingly produced from fossil fuels, leaving food systems exposed to emissions, price shocks and geopolitical disruption. The research will explore where stimulated hydrogen could work, at what scale, and whether it could help strengthen food and energy security.
“These are four wonderfully exciting and diverse programmes to welcome into the Martin School fold; I look forward with great anticipation to see the fruits of their research.”
Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Oxford Martin Programme on Safer Antifungals starts from an unlikely source: tiny bdelloid rotifers. These microscopic animals have acquired thousands of genes from microbes that allow them to produce compounds that defend them against fungi. The researchers will investigate whether evolution has effectively selected some of these compounds for their ability to fight fungi without harming animals, potentially opening a new source of safer treatments at a time when fungal resistance is threatening crop protection and human health.
Oxford Martin Programme on Immune Ageing will investigate how our immune systems change as we age and why those changes differ between men and women. The team aims to build a dataset from healthy people across a wide range of ages to analyse what healthy immune ageing looks like and explore whether an individual’s “immune age” could eventually help identify disease risk earlier.
Professor Sir Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin School, said: “These are four wonderfully exciting and diverse programmes to welcome into the Martin School fold; I look forward with great anticipation to see the fruits of their research.”
The four programmes each brings together different disciplines to investigate a significant problem from a new perspective, and they reflect the School’s commitment to supporting bold, high-risk, high-reward ideas that have the potential to open new approaches to global problems.
The Oxford Martin School will announce details of its next funding call this week. Further information on the call and how to apply will be available soon.