Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) constitute a critical pillar of the UK economy. More than 99% of the roughly 6 million businesses in the UK are SMEs and they employ more than 16 million workers. As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic becomes clearer, it is evident that SMEs are facing serious and unprecedented challenges, including declining revenues, defaulting on loans, inability to retain employees and postponing growth plans. However, many SMEs in the UK find it extremely difficult to obtain funding through standard banking channels as the lack of financial information about SMEs makes it difficult to evaluate SMEs' credit risk and debt repayment capacity. Hence, to meet all these pressing needs, it is critical to develop an efficient protocol to assess SMEs' pandemic risk exposure and SMEs' resilience towards funding shortages caused by COVID-19. This project will use Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques including Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Big Data to develop two novel analytical tools: 1) The Pandemic Risk Index of UK SMEs (PRI): In this strand, the project will develop a novel Pandemic Risk Index (PRI) to model the potential economic, financial, and reputational effects of COVID-19 on UK SMEs in the short and long run. The academic and professional literature emerging in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis has considered several factors in isolation. However, this index aims to combine as many COVID-19- relevant variables as possible into one holistic multidimensional set of metrics. This is to have a better informed understanding of the big picture by accounting for and explaining the various weights and interrelationships of these variables. The main variables (but not exclusively) of this index would be (all of them are at the firm-level): exposure to global supply chains, exposure to international capital markets, corporate governance, financial flexibility, and geographical proximity to COVID-19 hotspots. 2) AI-based Programme Suite to assess the Credit Risk of Borrowing UK SMEs (AI_CREDIT): In this strand, the project will develop an effective AI-based Python programme suite (AI_CREDIT) using Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) to provide policymakers in the UK government and financial intermediaries with an accurate and timely evaluation of an SME borrower's credit risk profile. With this, policymakers and lenders can make prompt decisions in providing appropriate emergency loans to SMEs to overcome their funding shortages and mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Based on the cutting-edge application of ML/DL to corporate credit risk, this project will develop a novel programme suite by integrating innovative methods. The innovations introduced by this project will extend the application of ML/DL in the estimation of SMEs' credit profiles by training ML/DL with a large amount of seemingly irrelevant data about large firms. The research impact of this project is relevant to many stakeholders. Policymakers and lenders can directly benefit by gaining access to novel tools to allocate funds and support SMEs efficiently. Other financial institutions including Insurance companies and private equity funds will benefit from the tools in assessing the risk related to SMEs in terms of insurance policies and investment decisions, respectively. All these are likely to lead to efficient allocation of funds and reduction of cost of funds allocated to SMEs which in turn will help SMEs to survive and thrive the current and any future pandemic disruptions. The planned project is UK wide, and it will be applicable to all UK SMEs. The project is in collaboration with the Bank of England and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). CBI is a leading business lobby group that promotes business interests within public bodies and deals with the impact of policy on businesses in the UK. The engagement with the project partners and other stakeholders is crucial to scale up the implement

Survey research of ethnic minorities in the 1960s brought the reality of ethnic and racial discrimination to the forefront of the national debate, playing a key role in anti-discrimination legislation in 1968. Despite legislation, ethnic and racial discrimination and harassment continues to be a feature of British Society, although this has declined against some groups and intensified against others. Not only does this violate the principle of a fair and equal society, it also has palpable adverse impacts on health, particularly mental health. The last comprehensive evidence of harassment was collected in 1994 and since then there is little statistical evidence about the prevalence of harassment and its impact on the health of ethnic minorities in Britain. This research uses a new, large-scale data source, Understanding Society, on minorities in Britain to investigate the current prevalence and type of ethnic harassment and its relationship to mental health and health behaviours such as smoking, drinking and physical activity. Since 2009, Understanding Society has been interviewing around 51,000 adults, including 10,000 ethnic minorities. The large sample size of the Understanding Society database allows us to look at who experiences harassment, where harassment is most likely, and what kind of harassment is most common. For instance, we will investigate how gender, age and education level intersect to produce particular vulnerabilities to both verbal and physical abuse as well as avoidance or feeling unsafe. We will determine in which locations people are more likely to experience harassment: in the street, on public transport, at the workplace? How might these differ in areas of low or high ethnic concentration? Because Understanding Society asks the same individuals about harassment repeatedly over time, we can examine not only one off experiences but also find to what extent people report persistent harassment. After establishing new benchmark estimates of harassment in the UK, we will go on to test for the impact of harassment on mental health and health behaviours. It is well known that those who experience harassment are more likely to have poor mental health, and that those stressed by harassment may turn to unhealthy coping behaviours such as drinking or tobacco use. However, it is difficult to establish causality, because individuals who experience harassment may also have personality traits or underlying proclivities which also lead them to have poor mental health or worse health behaviours. Fortunately, Understanding Society will enable us to establish time-order reasoning and to use statistical techniques which allow us to better establish causality in these relationships. Moreover, we can also investigate to which extent family relationships, friendships, presence of others of the same ethnic group in the neighbourhood and sense of belonging and identity protects minorities experiencing harassment from worsening mental health and health behaviours. Having repeated observations across time also enables us to examine whether any negative effects of harassment dissipate over time or if repeated experiences are more stressful than one off incidences. This research will have direct relevance to those who work with minority communities such as local governments and local services, as well as policy makers concerned with health and health equality. To make best use of the research we will meet frequently with a policy-orientated advisory group who will help refine our research questions and disseminate our findings to those governmental and third party organisations that will benefit from it, and develop a platform for research co-production to support a better, shared understanding.

Over the last decades manufacturing in UK regions has been exposed to intense global competition, particularly as a consequence of trade liberalisation. At the same time, there is an increasing recognition that regions play a central role in national development, and there are mounting pressures on regions' ability to independently strategise and interconnect globally. These trends are particularly visible in the redistribution of power and funding from national to local government currently occurring through the so-called devolution deals, and through the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships that since 2010 have succeeded Regional Development Agencies. The renaissance of industry and manufacturing and the recognition that industry plays a central role in job creation, growth, and regions' economic recovery is also a priority in the policy agenda, with the 'Northern Powerhouse' strategy dominating the political lexicon, and setting the ambition to deliver business and enterprise growth with economic benefits for local communities. However, without adequate technology foresight and the identification of emergent technologies that may lead to innovations in practice, industrial manufacturing regions face the challenge of industrial stagnation and the threats of global outsourcing. Therefore, it is critical for regions to overcome the debilitating problem of poor innovation capabilities reinforced by the frequent overspecialisation of the knowledge infrastructure in these areas. It is also necessary to identify the technology enablers that may lead to opportunities for development and growth: the upgrading or revitalisation of businesses; the development of new business activities in areas related to the existing industries; or new industries based in new technologies. Focusing on Sheffield City Region as an internationally recognised manufacturing hub, and on the Advance Manufacturing and Materials sector, this project will generate new knowledge and procedural solutions to the extremely important issue relating to the enhancement of a region's ability to identify and exploit knowledge of technological innovations, in order to maximise competitiveness and sustainability. Working closely with firms, local enterprise partnerships, policy makers and innovation experts, the project focuses on the understanding and development of concrete regional practices and processes for identifying, transferring and integrating technological innovations. This set of practices and processes includes the identification of relevant emergent technologies, the production of visions concerning their applicability (e.g. ability to generate product, processes or business innovations), and the contextualisation and application of the knowledge produced (brokerage activities) to allow exploitation and use in practice by firms.

We are in a biodiversity crisis. A million species of plants and animals are threatened with global extinction, and wildlife populations across much of the planet have been dramatically reduced, perhaps by as much as a half in recent decades. This is of profound concern because biodiversity underpins human existence. Biodiversity provides the foundation of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life. Increasing numbers of people, organisations and governments recognise the need to reverse the perilous state of our ecological inheritance. However, while there is unprecedented willingness to act, what we do not know is what will work most effectively to renew biodiversity and ensure continued delivery of its benefits. The Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach (RENEW) programme will develop solutions to the renewal of biodiversity. We will work, with a sense of urgency, to reshape understanding and action on biodiversity renewal across scales, creating knowledge at the cutting edge of global debates and policy development, and influencing national institutions, communities and individuals. We know that understanding of, and action on, renewal must take a step change and we will focus on the agency of people in nature, both as part of the problem and as the solution. We focus on a set of challenges: how popular support for biodiversity renewal can be harnessed; how populations that are disengaged, disadvantaged, or disconnected from nature can benefit from inclusion in solutions development; how renewal activities can be designed and delivered by diverse sets of land-managers and interest groups; and how biodiversity renewal can most effectively be embedded in finance and business activities (as has occurred with carbon accounting and climate change). This sits alongside the scientific and technical development necessary to underpin solutions options. Biodiversity renewal is a complex and whole system problem. The solutions require the creation of a new kind of inclusive and diverse research community, one that transcends traditional boundaries between the disciplines needed to tackle the environmental crises of the Anthropocene. Solutions also need to address the inequalities and lack of diversity found in current renewal practices. RENEW has therefore prioritised partnership building, to allow us to combine research with experiment, learning, sharing, outreach and impact, across relevant organisations and wider communities. Our approach means that practical impact is guaranteed. With the National Trust as co-owners of RENEW, we will have significant reach through their membership, outreach programs and public voice. Alongside other key partners in RENEW, our links are responsible for or have influence over much of the UK landscape in which biodiversity renewal activities need to occur. We will use the many landscape-scale nature activities currently underway (or planned in the near future) to develop learning, as if they were 'real time' experiments. The UK is one of the most biodiversity depleted countries in the world. Our ways of working in RENEW, the knowledge we develop, and the solutions we propose, will be of international importance. The lessons we learn will enable future biodiversity researchers and practitioners around the world to do better science, and deliver fairer outcomes.