Field · active · Q2 2026

Applied R&D for hard problems.

§ 01 — Projects

Active and recent fieldwork.

climate-adaptation · coastal-infrastructure

Sea-wall concrete degradation under multi-decade salt-spray exposure

Eighteen-month field study characterising chloride ingress and reinforcement corrosion across five coastal locations in south-west England. Outputs include open-sourced dataset and modelling code for local-authority planners.

5Field sites

1,248Core samples

3Peer-reviewed papers

OSOpen-sourced data

biomaterials · packaging

Mycelium-based flexible packaging for cold-chain logistics

Scaling trial of fungal-substrate composite packaging as a polystyrene replacement for vaccine cold-chain. Tested at three logistics partners over 12 months of live shipments.

−37°CStable temp.

98.2%Intact arrivals

100%Home-compostable

12moLive trial

sensor-networks · biodiversity

Low-power acoustic monitoring of at-risk bird populations

Battery-powered edge-ML acoustic classifiers deployed across seven UK wetland reserves, identifying forty-two target species in real time without cellular backhaul.

7Reserves

42Species classified

14moBattery life

LoRaBackhaul

§ 02 — Papers

Published work & preprints.

24-07-A

Chloride diffusion profiles in Type-II coastal concrete, 5-year field studyM. Ashworth, P. Nakamura, D. Oyelaran · Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering · 2026

Peer-reviewed → 24-05-A

Mycelium composites for cold-chain insulation: 12-month live-trial resultsD. Oyelaran, S. Birkett · Preprint · bioRxiv · 2025

Preprint → 23-12-B

Edge-ML acoustic classifiers for wetland biodiversity monitoringP. Nakamura, L. Mensah · Ecological Informatics · 2024

Peer-reviewed → 23-08-C

A primer on uncertainty quantification for local-authority climate plannersM. Ashworth · White paper · 2023

White paper →

§ 03 — People

Four principal researchers.

Dr Maya Ashworth

Director · Materials

Former research fellow, Imperial College. Twelve years in concrete durability.

Dr Priya Nakamura

Lead · Sensors

Edge-ML and low-power sensing. Previously Smart Forests, Cambridge.

Dr Dele Oyelaran

Lead · Biomaterials

Fungal-substrate composites. Fifteen years across industry and academia.

Sarah Birkett

Research Engineer

Trial design and field instrumentation across all programmes.

§ 04 — Commission

Brief a study.

The lab

We take on 6–24 month programmes commissioned by industry, government and NGOs. Open-data publication is the default.

addr: Arcway Field Station, North Hinksey, Oxford OX2 9AX
email: [email protected]
phone: +44 1865 000 000
data: github.com/arcway-labs