The Turner Kirk Trust Sprint Challenge funding recipients announced

In partnership with Imperial College London, the Challenge was established to bring together conservation scientists and mathematicians from Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy, Department of Life Sciences, and Department of Mathematics.

Academics were invited to submit projects for funding that applied mathematics to challenging global conservation problems at a unique self-contained event held earlier this year in front of a panel of academic experts. The panel included Professors Mark Burgman and Dan Crisan.

The proposals had to be no more than two pages, and academics were asked to apply mathematical tools in novel and unusual ways to difficult conservation challenges. Researchers were encouraged to submit projects that had a high risk of failure, but could catalyse a significant conservation breakthrough if successful.

The Sprint Challenge was a novel way of encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration as well as supporting high-risk/high-reward experimental projects, which might otherwise have difficulty raising funding. These two fundamental values drive the Trust's work.

12 proposals were submitted and pitched to the panel, with three projects selected and awarded funding. The successful teams have now completed their research projects.

Award recipients

The Turner Kirk Trust Sprint Challenge funding recipients have been announced. The recipients are:

• Prof. Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, Dr. Cristina Banks-Leite, Dr. Samraat Pawar, and Ben Howes will be investigating how biological and mathematical frameworks can be combined to predict how vulnerable populations will be impacted by climate change. It is hoped that the model they create will help conservationists promote biodiversity and validate existing data.

• Dr. Morena Mills, Dr. Vahid Shahrezaei and their team are aiming to make an agent-based model which simulates how people interact with resources in space and time. This will help conservationists predict how well conservation and restoration initiatives are adopted, and what the consequences of this will be on the system overall.

• Dr. Domènec Ruiz-Balet, Dr. Rafael Chiaravalloti, and Dr. Mark Dyble will attempt to understand how we can avoid the ‘tragedy of commons’ — where many selfish actors exploit an unregulated resource until it is completely depleted. They aim to do this by using game theory to understand how small communities across the globe successfully conserve natural resources.

To see the outcomes of each initiative and interviews with our researchers, visit the Turner Kirk Trust website.