Seven European Research Council Advanced Grants for UCL

Michael Browne, Head of European Research and Development at UCL said: ?These grants are designed to allow exceptional established research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue risk-taking, interdisciplinary and pioneering research. The Advanced Grant scheme, in particular, is highly competitive (with an overall success rate of seven percent) and highly prestigious. MECHANICITY (Morphology, Energy and Climate cHANge In the CITY) led by Professor Michael Batty (UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis). This project will develop new methods of modelling energy in cities using ideas from allometry and energetics which will be related to urban form, economic structure and the cost of location, using methods pioneered by Professor Batty in social physics. It is hoped that the theories and models developed will provide a new foundation for examining the impact of climate change on cities. Some theoretical models in evolutionary anthropology potentially explain how social learning can generate behaviours that Darwinian selection does not generally predict, such as altruism towards non-relatives or limiting your reproductive rate. The projects proposed are designed to help provide empirical evidence to test these models in relevant ecological contexts, concerning behaviour that actually influences reproductive success.