2025 Joint Seed Funding Awards
The Global Office is pleased to announce the outcomes of the University’s joint funding programmes with the University of Padua, Italy and Charles University, Czechia. Spanning broadly across humanities, health and science, the projects look to kickstart important areas of investigation and help St Andrews to develop its strategic partnerships with two of Europe’s leading universities. From improving understanding of ageing, public health communication, political violence and volanic eruptions to the exploring mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s, pain reception and sustainable chemistry, the projects address pressing environmental, medical and social challenges.
Health is a major theme across the joint seed funding this year, with projects investigating the mechanisms of diseases and bodily functions and public health. Dr Katherine Keenan (School of Geography and Sustainable Development) and Prof Marco Tosi (Department of Statistical Sciences, Padua) will draw on healthcare data and experiences from Italy and Scotland to understand intergenerational influences in health ageing, exploring factors like living arrangements, and understand how frailty is defined and recorded in both healthcare systems. Dr Keenan said, “This novel cross-country comparison study will enable sharing of knowledge and expertise on measuring elderly health using electronic health data, and also foster international connections between our ESRC-funded Connecting Generations Centre and the University of Padua.”
Dr Matthew Broadhead (School of Psychology and Neuroscience) and Prof Laura Civiero (Department of Biology, Padua) will look at common pathological mechanisms in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer’s disease. Both researchers have been working on how the junctions between brain neurons are lost during the early stages of these diseases, leading to loss of voluntary movements or memory and cognition. Dr Broadhead and Prof Civiero aim to work together to understand these mechanisms, and consider how they might be targeted by new treatments. Dr Broadhead noted “This will be the beginning of a future pipeline of investigations into this field of research that could one day lead to clinical benefits for patients with neurodegenerative conditions.”
Prof Paolo Annibale (School of Physics and Astronomy) and Dr Davide Malfacini (Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences, Padua) will use nanotechnology to explore how pain-modulating receptors work and provide insights for new therapies. Dr Kenneth Mavor (School of Psychology and Neuroscience) and Dr Lukáš Hejtmánek (Faculty of Humanties, Charles University) will investigate how young adults engage with health information in digital environments, and produce bilingual resources and workshops to promote better understanding of health information.
In the Humanities, Dr Tim Wilson (CSTPV, School of International Relations) and Dr Ota Konrád (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University) will investigate the common grounds between Western and Eastern European Histories of Political Violence. As war, hybrid warfare and violence threaten European security once again, this project aims to span diverse examples of political violence conducted against states and the repression conducted by states. The project will promote dialogues between the differing Western and Central-Eastern European historical traditions, and create the first network of European historians of political violence.
In the Sciences, Dr Richard Streeter (School of Geography and Sustainable Development) and Dr Daniel Vondrák (Faculty of Science, Charles University) will work to develop automated detection of volanic ash in ice cores, acquatic sediments and peatlands. This project will develop improved, standardised methods for detecting volacanic ash in samples, enabling scientists to understand the impacts of volcanic eruptions in the past across vast areas and informing modelling for future eruptions. Prof Eli Zysman-Colman (School of Chemistry) and Prof Luca Dell’Amico (Department of Chemical Sciences, Padua) will collaborate on research which uses light energy to catalyse reactions that produce high-value molecules in a sustainable and clean manner. Bringing two of Europe’s leading photocatalysis groups together should help develop low-solvent, sustainable chemistry of the future.
Finally, Dr William McCarthy (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences) and Dr Filip Tomek (Faculty of Science) will bring together two leading rock magnetism research groups to share perspectives and improve fieldwork and laboratory procedures. Together, they will analyse the geology of Unst and Fetlar in Shetland. These islands are one of the best places in the world to see where the oceanic crust pokes out above the continental crust, which make up most of the Earth’s continents. Dr McCarthy commented, “By uniting the expertise of the rock magnetic facilities at St Andrews and Charles University, this exciting collaboration on the Shetland Ophiolite promises to unlock new frontiers in our understanding of plate tectonics and the mysteries of ophiolite obduction.”
We would like to congratulate our researchers on their joint seed funding awards, and wish them all the best with their collaborations. Further updates on their projects will be posted on the Global Office blog.