Over £450,000 has been awarded to 18 projects covering areas such as dementia, child injury, quantum technologies, the environment, modern British politics and history, and biomimetics.

The Alliance is providing the funding as part of its Building Communities Programme, which helps to galvanise research communities across the four institutions (Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter) in order to tackle major research and societal challenges.

Professor Nicholas Talbot, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Exeter, who chairs the joint steering group which developed the programme, said: ‘The first six months of the programme have been extremely successful, with 35 projects in all being awarded over £650,000 in funding to date. The diversity of applications demonstrates the breadth and depth of expertise we have in the South West and Wales across all major subject areas. Our intention is that this programme will enable this expertise to be harnessed to find answers to some of society’s greatest challenges.’

This is the second round of funding awarded as part of the Building Communities Programme since it was launched earlier this year.