Sandpit

The AIR HUB, in-person Sandpit will take place on the 8th & 9th July in Sheffield.

The sandpit will bring together researchers and stakeholders to develop pilot projects to better understand particulate matter (PM) in indoor environments, what it is made of, what it does to our health, and what we should do about it. We will award a total of £150,000 (at Full Economic Cost (FEC)) across approximately 3 projects. We will fund 80% of the FEC. The projects must be delivered before the end of July 2027. 

Who can apply to attend the sandpit?

We welcome applications from a wide range of disciplines who are interested in indoor air quality and its impact on health. This includes, but is not limited to, the broad areas of health, social science and engineering, for instance: aerosol science, atmospheric chemistry, bioaerosol science, biomedical research, epidemiology, health inequalities, behavioural science, citizen science, fluid dynamics, building physics etc. 

We welcome co-investigators from relevant industry and public stakeholders, however, project leads must be in a UKRI eligible UK research institution (see eligibility below). If you are unsure whether your expertise would be a good fit, please contact us. 

What type of projects will we fund?

We will fund projects that further our investigations on particulate matter indoors under the three broad sandpit questions laid out below. We are interested in particulate matter in its broadest sense - including both biological and non-biological particles. Indoor environments also cover the full range of building types such as homes, workplaces, social infrastructure (e.g. schools, health centres), transport interchanges. We will not fund work on the interior of vehicles. Although we recognise the importance of homes and schools for exposure we are also keen to explore the wider range of environments, particularly workplaces, that remain under-explored. We are focussed on indoors, but recognise the outdoor environment as an important source of pollution. As such the indoor/outdoor interface is in scope. We also recognise the benefit in considering the respective outdoor environment (e.g. urban, sub-urban, rural, local greenspace etc) within any analysis.

We specifically encourage the exploration of methods (e.g. sensors for air quality, health monitoring, or how to work with participants in real-life settings) that consider the full daily exposure. We are happy to support projects that explore existing datasets and include knowledge synthesis. However, we welcome any ideas that fall under the three main headings below.  

Research Sandpit Questions

1. What is the composition of indoor particulate matter?

We will fund projects that further our understanding of the composition of particles found indoors. This includes the chemical characterisation of particles and the presence of biological particles and their viability. We encourage any proposals in this area, but have a particular interest in:

• Research that can help improve the scalability of measurements of indoor particulates (and their constituents) with the final aim of producing methods that can inform future stock models of indoor air pollution across a range of building typologies and enable better quantification of daily exposures. Simple methods that could be used with large numbers of people e.g. those that are part of the UKs longitudinal cohort studies are of particular interest. 

• Research that better characterises particles, their sources, transport and fate. This could be via controlled experiments or field studies and includes ingress of outdoor air pollution and air chemistry resulting in particle formation.

2. What does particulate matter in our indoor environments do to our health?

We will fund projects across the full breadth of health disciplines that aim to better understand the short and long term health effects of particles found indoors. We encourage any proposals in this area, but have a particular interest in:

• Feasibility work to develop processes for incorporating exposure data with existing health surveys.

• Trials of new methods to monitor long-term/daily average exposure in different environments.  

• Trial / develop methods to assess health impacts in new ways that can be combined with air quality monitoring. 

• Work with existing (secondary) data-sets to advance our knowledge of the health impacts of indoor particulate matter pollution

3. What are practical solutions to improving our indoor environment?

We will fund projects that incorporate lived experience to better understand how to mitigate indoor air pollution in the real world. We encourage any proposals in this area, but have a particular interest in:

• The transfer of learning from other areas / disciplines in order to develop methods for changing behaviour and practices to reduce indoor air pollution

• Trial methods for engaging those that are most affected by poor indoor air quality – working towards the creation of ethical, equitable and feasible approaches to carrying out research on indoor air quality and health.

We encourage projects that are co-created with relevant stakeholders and members of the public with respiratory diseases. We will support these connections during and after the sandpit - you are not expected to already have relationships in place prior to the sandpit. We welcome and encourage interdisciplinary approaches where relevant. Through the sandpit we will support shaping the separate projects to contribute towards a shared main outcome in line with Air Hub’s aims.  Projects funded through the sandpit will be expected to regularly liaise with our leadership team to ensure the projects remain within our remit. 

Eligibility

UKRI eligibility rules apply - see here. 

We welcome submissions from Early Career Researchers (ECR) as co-investigators or project leads (i.e. principal investigator). For any ECR applicants on fixed term contracts, your current contract must extend beyond the project duration for you to be eligible to be a project lead. It is possible to apply to the sandpit, and to become a co-investigator on shorter contracts. 

If awarded funding, you will be expected to work with the other funded projects and the network to publish your findings; contribute to relevant network reports and dissemination activities, including publishing a short, open access, report for our website; deliver a mid-term and final presentation to project leads (dates to be determined based on project length) and present at a year 2 network event to disseminate findings.

Resources

Within the sandpit, or during your project, you will have the opportunity to engage with our co-design group of adults  who have a respiratory condition or care for children with a respiratory condition. 

Within the sandpit, the leadership team will be able to offer some support to facilitate interdisciplinary approaches. Where appropriate we may be able to support  development of investigator skills into specific areas such as building physics, co-design, access to secondary data, and health impact assessments. 

Any ECR in recipient of funding as a project lead will be assigned a mentor from the project team. 

How we will assess your application

The application to attend the sandpit is likely to be highly competitive, as there are only a small number of spaces available. 

You application will be assessed by members of Air Hub’s leadership team and Impact Panel using the following criteria

• Research / professional expertise in a field of relevance to the sandpit’s aims.

• Innovative ideas that will lead to rigorous research

• Potential for interdisciplinary project development within the sandpit

• Project fits well within a broad portfolio of research funded by the sandpit

• Potential to lead to future funding

We aim to let people know the outcome within a couple of weeks. Please note that although we will attempt to provide feedback to those who are unsuccessful, our ability to do this and the time taken to share this with you will depend on the total number of applications. 

The final sandpit projects must fall under EPSRC remit and applicants must be eligible for EPSRC funding. Funding through the sandpit can cover

• support for posts such as research and technical support

• research consumables

• equipment under £10,000

• travel and subsistence costs

• data preservation, data sharing and dissemination costs

• estates and indirect costs

The sandpit will run over the two days during which we expect rapid development of proposals with final ideas presented to the whole group. Associated paperwork will also need to be submitted at this point including approximate costings. If selected onto the sandpit, you will be expected to liaise with your research support office in advance about likely costings, to enable you to complete this. Proposals will be ranked the following week, and an in-principle decision made. This will be confirmed once costings have been finalised within the following 2 weeks. More information about the sandpit process will be provided to those selected to attend.  

Deadline 

The deadline for applications is Monday 1st June 2026 at 9am (BST).

Please note that this is a competitive process as places on the sandpit are limited. The applications will be judged by:

• Research / professional expertise in a field of relevance to the sandpit’s aims.

• Innovative ideas that will lead to rigorous research

• Potential for interdisciplinary project development within the sandpit

• Project fits well within a broad portfolio of research funded by the sandpit

• Potential to lead to future funding

Contact Us

Please address any queries to airhub-communications@sheffield.ac.uk. Please note this email is only monitored two days a week so there is likely to be a delay to responses.