The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has awarded £35.4m to a consortium of universities led by the Oxford Health Research Centre (announcement here). Surrey’s involvement is led by Prof Derk-Jan Dijk (Surrey Sleep Research Centre, SSRC) and the team includes Dr Victoria Revell (SSRC), Prof Simon Archer (SSRC) and Prof Anne Skeldon (Maths). Surrey is involved in two of the eleven themes of the Centre: Brain Technologies (Dijk, Revell, Skeldon) and Better Sleep (Archer). In the Brain Technologies theme they are looking at deep brain stimulation and how to use mathematics for mechanistic understanding and optimisation of delivery. Deep brain stimulation involves placing electrodes deep within the brain and delivering electrical stimulation to reduce symptoms of, for example, Parkinson’s disease, epileptic seizures or chronic pain. The project funds a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics, to be supervised by Anne. The universities in the consortium are Birmingham, Brighton, Liverpool, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Reading, Sheffield, and Surrey.