Arcway Labs — Field Report

Report No. 07

Rigorous, publishable research for clients who want the truth, not a pitch.

Arcway Labs runs commissioned applied R&D across climate adaptation, biomaterials and low-power sensing. Published data is the default; extractive NDAs are not. Based at our Oxford field station with satellite sites at three UK coastal research points.

[commission →] [read projects]

§ 01 — Projects

Active & recent fieldwork.

ID: P-2026-04
Field: Climate
Status: Active
Funder: DEFRA

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. Open-sourced dataset and modelling code for local-authority planners.

→ Read project dossier

Field sites: 5
Core samples: 1,248
Papers: 3
Data: Open

ID: P-2026-02
Field: Biomaterials
Status: Reporting
Funder: Innovate UK

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 with three logistics partners over 12 months of live shipments.

→ Read project dossier

Stable temp.: −37°C
Intact: 98.2%
Compostable: 100%
Live trial: 12mo

ID: P-2025-11
Field: Sensors
Status: Published
Funder: RSPB

sensor-networks / biodiversity

Low-power acoustic monitoring of at-risk bird populations

Battery-powered edge-ML acoustic classifiers deployed across seven UK wetland reserves. Identifies forty-two target species in real time without cellular backhaul. All dataset and model-weights open-sourced.

→ Read project dossier

Reserves: 7
Species: 42
Battery: 14mo
Backhaul: LoRa

§ 02 — Papers

Published work & preprints.

ID Title / Authors Venue Year

24-07-A

Chloride diffusion profiles in Type-II coastal concreteM. Ashworth, P. Nakamura, D. Oyelaran

J. Materials in Civil Eng. 2026 24-05-A

Mycelium composites for cold-chain insulationD. Oyelaran, S. Birkett · preprint

bioRxiv · preprint 2025 23-12-B

Edge-ML acoustic classifiers for wetland biodiversityP. Nakamura, L. Mensah

Ecological Informatics 2024 23-08-C

Uncertainty quantification for local-authority climate plannersM. Ashworth · white paper

White paper 2023 22-11-A

Open-hardware reference platform for coastal monitoringP. Nakamura, S. Birkett

HardwareX 2022

§ 03 — Team

Four principal researchers.

— M. Ashworth

Dr Maya Ashworth

PhD Civil Eng., MICE · 12 yrs

Director, materials durability. Former research fellow at Imperial College London.

— P. Nakamura

Dr Priya Nakamura

PhD EEng., FIET · 9 yrs

Lead, sensor networks. Previously Smart Forests, Cambridge.

— D. Oyelaran

Dr Dele Oyelaran

PhD Mat. Sci., CSci · 15 yrs

Lead, biomaterials. Fungal-substrate composites, industry + academia.

— S. Birkett

Sarah Birkett

MEng, EngTech · 7 yrs

Research engineer. Trial design and field instrumentation across all programmes.

§ 04 — Commission

Brief a study.

— Contact

The lab

addr: Arcway Field Station, North Hinksey, Oxford OX2 9AX
email: [email protected]
phone: +44 1865 000 000
hours: Mon–Fri 09:00–17:30
data: github.com/arcway-labs