The Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) from the Department of Trade and Industry and the charity Wellcome Trust has released £320 million to be awarded to 47 projects at 27 UK universities. Included in the list of funded projects are several that environment-focused research studies:
- Work on atmospheric pollution and urban noise caused by road traffic, undertaken by The Leeds Health Air Pollution, Noise, Health & Emissions Research Network at Leeds University, will be provided with extra funding
- The Laboratory for Global Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of East Anglia will build a new lab for its study of atmosphere, air-sea exchange and the ocean surface. The research will concentrate on aerosol formation, ozone cycling and the impact of oceans on greenhouse gases
- Work into “plant environmental interactions” and “scaling between genes and ecosystems” at the University of Sheffield has been awarded funds
- An instrumented aircraft facility will be built for atmospheric research by the UK university community generally