Congratulations to David Lloyd on the award of an EPSRC First Grant for work on the “Nucleation of Ferro-Solitons and Localised Ferro-Patterns” (value: £99, 700). This will fund a two-year programme focusing on the analysis of localised ferro-patterns in equations describing experiments involving ferrofluids in the presence of a vertically directed magnetic field. The aim of the research is to provide theoretical insight for experimentalists working on ferrofluids (with Dr. Reinhard Richter, Bayreuth) and other solution bearing systems, while also providing new analytical techniques for free- boundary problems such as the ferrofluid problem (with Prof. Björn Sandstede, Brown).