Funding awarded to 10 ECR Catalyst Grant projects in Mental Health & Wellbeing

UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health & Wellbeing has awarded 10 Catalyst Grants, each worth up to £15,000, to support innovative, cross-disciplinary research that translates discovery into practice. Taking place during the 2025-26 academic year, these projects will drive impactful, catalytic work by enabling new interdisciplinary collaborations and testing fresh approaches to intervention, discovery, and development.

Co-chairs of the review panel, Dr Liza Griffin (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit) and Professor Jonathan Roiser (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) commented on the successful applications:

A wide range of high-quality proposals were submitted to UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health and Wellbeing Catalyst Call, aimed at UCL Early Career Researchers (2025-26). We are delighted to support 10 interdisciplinary applications across UCL faculties, representing a range of projects with novel methods, including many which incorporate co-production approaches. We look forward to learning more about the outcomes of these exciting projects as they progress, and the impacts they have in transforming prevention and early intervention in mental health and wellbeing.”

Summary details of the projects awarded are below: 

Project name: 
You Are Not Alone: Co-creating Preventive Mental Health Support with and for Postgraduate Students from the Global South
Amount awarded: 
£13,700.00 
Lead applicants: 
Mr Enze Guo, Education, Policy and Society, UCL Institute of Education
Dr Peng Zhang, University of Edinburgh

Project name: 
Designed by us: Autistic students co-designing a theory of change map for holistic digital support in higher education
Amount awarded:
£14,957.00 
Lead applicants: 
Dr Susanne Gaube, Global Business School for Health, Population Health Sciences.
Dr Brian Irvine, Psychology & Human Development, Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education

Project name: 
The impact of social policy on the mental health of sexual and gender minority young people
Amount awarded:
£14,999.00 
Lead applicants: 
Ms Ishrat Pabla, Division of Psychiatry, Brain Sciences
Dr Gemma Lewis, Epidemiology and Applied Clinical Research, Brain Sciences

Project name: 
CONTINUUM: A Modular System for Monitoring Personal Environmental Exposure and Mental Wellbeing
Amount awarded:
£14,988.34 
Lead applicants: 
Dr Mandana. S. Khanie, Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources (BSEER), Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE), The Bartlett
Professor Glenn Jeffery, Institute of Ophthalmology, Brain Sciences.

Project name:
M.E.E.T. — Mental Environment Ergonomic Tools: Designing Furniture to Prevent Mental Strain at Work
Amount awarded:
£14,991.36 
Lead applicants: 
Dr Martin Dechant, Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, Brain Sciences
Dr Bettina Moltrecht, Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Institute of Education. 

Project name: 
An insight case study on instructed indoor bouldering as short-term MHW intervention: cross-disciplinary perspectives from Psychology and Human Geography
Amount awarded: 
£8,836.78 
Lead applicants: 
Dr Jacob Fairless Nicholson, Geography, Social and Historical Sciences
Dr Abigail Thompson, Brain Sciences

Project name: 
Causal pathways between risk behaviours, mental health, and education in adolescents: a genetic epidemiological study.
Amount awarded: 
£14,508.00 
Lead applicants: 
Dr Michelle Arellano Spano, Division of Psychiatry, Brain Sciences
Dr Kate Lewis, Population, Policy and Practice Research and Teaching Department, Population Health 

Project name: 
Programming the Brain: Investigating GLP-1 and insulin signalling in offspring neurodevelopment following maternal obesity
Amount awarded: 
£15,000
Lead applicants: 
Dr Gabrielle Crombie, EGA Institute for Women’s Health, Population Health Sciences.
Dr Lauren Jones, Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, Life Sciences

Project name: 
Re-imagining Home: a participatory-action-research (PAR) project using room boxing to evaluate how Community-Led housing (CLH) in London affects children and young people’s (CYP) mental health.
Amount awarded: 
£15,000.00
Lead applicants: 
Mr Daniel Ovalle Costal, Bartlett School of Architecture, The Bartlett. 
Dr Dalia Iskander, Anthropology, Social and Historical Sciences. 

Project name: 
Addressing Psychosis during Extreme Temperatures: Early Intervention Strategies to Protect Young People Living with Schizophrenia against Climate Change Heating in Peru
Amount awarded: 
£14,999.00
Lead applicants: 
Dr Rebecca Irons, Institute for Global Health, Population Health Sciences
Professor James Kirkbride, Division of Psychiatry, Brain Sciences