Faculty research

Supporting innovative research in the Faculty of Science

“Black Swan” funds

The “Black Swan” funds take their name from the 2007 book “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In his book Taleb discusses the disproportionately high impact of very rare and unpredictable events on history, science, technology and finance. In the world of science a Black Swan event will lead to a genuine step-change in our understanding of a particular problem or will result in an insight of such significance that it will change the way we approach a topic or question. In the Science Faculty we want to facilitate the occurrence of these Black Swan events. However, there is of course a catch and the catch is that by definition Black Swan events are unpredictable. However what we can do is to create the environment in which they might be more likely to occur. To do this we make Black Swan funds available to support highly innovative, high-risk, frequently opportunistic, projects where the prize is obviously high-value. In practical terms this can mean supporting small groups of researchers, typically people at the cutting edge of their disciplines from across the world to meet in Bristol to discuss an idea or topic. Multidisciplinarity might be useful, but is not essential, because cracking Black Swan “problems” could require ideas or ways or looking at problems from multiple perspectives or fields. However, it does not have to be about teams and Black Swan funding can also be used to support the employment of an undergraduate over the summer to, for example, subject an existing data set to a completely new form of analysis. In terms of output, “it doesn’t work” is more likely than “eureka” – but whatever the outcome the thought processes will have been useful and to the scientists the whole process will have been fun and intellectually rewarding. Black Swan funds can also be used to support experimenters – especially when an set of circumstances (techniques, theory, reagents, apparatus) coincide to present an opportunity to do something completely new and exciting. However rather than being shoe-horned into rigid schemes of what the funds can be spent on, the place to start with Black Swan funding is the “great idea” and then decide what flavour of support you need to find out whether it is a world beater.

One example will illustrate the sort of thing that we like to fund

Darwin’s ‘Abominable Mystery’: new avenues to an ‘abominable’ answer

Darwin famously described the origin and subsequent explosive adaptive radiation of flowering plants (angiosperms) as an ‘abominable mystery’. Over 130 years later we are still far from solving this ‘mystery’, which centres on identifying the closest living relatives of angiosperms among the seed plants (gymnosperms). New research by Phil Donoghue (Earth Sciences) and Simon Hiscock and Keith Edwards (Biological Sciences) offers new hope to solving this mystery by studying DNA sequences that regulate the development of all living organisms, including plants.

Using state-of-the-art ‘next generation’ DNA sequencing technology (available in Bristol’s Functional Genomics Facility), Donoghue, Hiscock and Edwards will probe the genomes of Amborella trichopoda, the most ancient living angiosperm (see accompanying image), and representative species of every extant lineage of gymnosperms, to indentify which gymnosperm shares the greatest affinity, in terms of these critical gene sequences, to Amborella, and hence all other angiosperms. Identification of the closest living gymnosperm to flowering plants will open up huge opportunities for comparative studies of developmental processes in plants. Ultimately, this unique study could provide an effective insight into the evolution of multicellularity and organismal complexity in plant (and possibly animal) lineages from their unicellular ancestor(s), which lived more than a billion years ago.

(male flowers of Amborella; the flowers are 4-5mm in diameter)

How to apply for Black Swan funds

If you have an idea that you think would benefit from Black Swan funding please write to Alistair Hetherington [Alistair.Hetherington@bristol.ac.uk ] outlining what you want to do, why its exciting and what you want to do with the funds (upper limit £5K). One page should capture the big idea and remember to write it in such a way that a botanist can get excited and send you the money.

Faculty Research Committee

The Faculty of Science has a number of faculty-wide committees which meet through the academic year and guide its work, as well as making recommendations to central groups. The Research Committee meets twice a year with membership from all Schools within the Science Faculty.

Note of Research Committee 10.02.12 (PDF, 19.5KB)

Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 results

RAE2008, the UK national audit of research quality, has confirmed that the University of Bristol's Faculty of Science is one of the UK’s leading centres of research excellence.
read more >>

Some of the most significant discoveries of the last century are associated with research carried out in Bristol. We currently enjoy an outstanding international reputation as is evidenced by the excellent outcome of the 2008 RAE and some of our significant research achievements.

FACULTY OF SCIENCE

Schools

About Us and What We Do

Information