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unraveling brassinosteroid biosynthesis orchestrating br precursor movement via endoplasmic reticulumplasma membrane contact sites epcss
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since their discovery in 1979 brassinosteroids brs have been extensively studied for their biosynthesis and signalling pathways now in the year 2023 one fundamental question remains how do brs move as the only type of steroidal phytohormones essential for plant growth and development brs act in a dosedependent manner and do not travel long distances therefore br homeostasis is key to their function recent findings in my host lab revealed that in the arabidopsis root the expression domains of br biosynthetic enzymes are separated and the completion of br biosynthesis requires celltocell movement of precursors thus revealing the importance of the shortdistance transport for br homeostasis maintenance further we revealed that plasmodesmata pd mediate the passage of brs between neighbouring cells however we still do not know where in the cell brs are synthesized and how these hydrophobic molecules are moving through pd by searching interactors of br biosynthetic enzymes my host lab found interesting candidates associated with the endoplasmic reticulum erplasma membrane pm contact sites epcss including pd epcss are known lipid synthesis platforms and contribute to pd function in plants here i hypothesize that brs are synthesized at epcss and epcss coordinate br biosynthesis and transport through pd in braction i will combine live cell imaging with stateoftheart imaging techniques to pinpoint br biosynthesis sites in the cell combining advanced proteomics genetics and biochemistry i aim to identify novel candidates that regulate br biosynthesis and movement linked to epcss finally i will employ genetics combined with bioorthogonal chemistry approach to assess candidate influence on br symplastic movement bractions interdisciplinary approach will address knowledge gaps in br homeostasis and drive major conceptual advances in understanding how br levels are maintained across different cell types and tissues
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towards an understanding of artificial intelligence via a transparent open and explainable perspective
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the focus of the tuai project will be on the highest quality doctoral training on sustainable the ai that is used in smart manufacturing smart cities smart healthcare and smart mobility this will be achieved by multilateral academic and industry trainings for a new generation of creative entrepreneurial and innovative researchers doctoral candidates dcs who will be able to face both the current and future challenges that are associated with the development of machine learning ml and who will be able to effectively use the latest advances in artificial intelligence and data mining in order to ensure the competitive advantage of the european producers that will use the practical solutions from the tuai project the project will focus on mlbased smart services that should first meet the customers needs but with the same importance should focus on protecting the natural environment by creating smart services dedicated for smart mobility to reduce energy consumption by smart cities and to avoid the losses and suboptimal use of resources in smart manufacturing the scope of the research will be organised under four research areas ra i time series analysis ii sensor fusion iii federated learning and iv the sustainability and trustworthiness of the ai solutions the precise challenges for each ra will be expressed by research questions rq which will be resolved by the individual dc projects the rqs will not be separate areas of research but will be complementary and intertwined components therefore it is not sufficient to train dcs in one ra and ignore another the tuai project will provide holistic research training through secondments and networkwide training activities the proposed approach will ensure excellent research training for the thirteen dcs who will be prepared for future work both in academic and nonacademic sectors and will be able to face the challenges that are associated with the different application areas
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hightemperature flame retardant recyclable and low environmental footprint composite material for aerospace industry
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cpreg 400 is an exceptional hightemperature composite developed by nanotech utilizing a patented inorganic resin formulation this composite is inherently nonflammable and stable at high temperatures making it heatresistant it is the first marketready inorganic composite that can withstand working temperatures of up to 400c in an oxidant environment and shortterm exposure to 500c the material can be processed using the same methods as other common prepregs including compression molding hot plate presses or vacuum bagging techniques the properties of this groundbreaking material are outstandingmaximum service temperature of up to 400c in its polymeric statesuperior fire resistance with lower smoke release and toxicity certified for high fire smoke toxicity performanceexcellent mechanical propertieshigh recyclability approximately 85 of the materiallow environmental impactlightweight being 52 times lighter than steel and 44 lighter than aluminumthe intended end users of cpreg 400 are aerospace components manufacturers who are responsible for producing equipment and parts applied in hightemperature environments nanotech will initially focus on addressing the secondary structures segment which includes interior panels doors seats luggage racks and air ducts this segment is characterized by a lighter certification process then nanotech will expand its focus to primary structure manufacturing involving nacelles hightemperature ducts fans fuselages and wings the market potential for cpreg 400 is exceptional the total available market is the aerospace composite materials sector projected to reach a value of 87 billion by 2027 and experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 12 initially cpreg 400 will be introduced as prepregs designed for hightemperature applications focusing on flame retardancy and smoke toxicity solutions this segment is estimated to have a value of 800m by 2027
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selective sustainable hydrodeoxygenation of bioaromatics
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the depletion of fossil resources and the requirement to significantly reduce our co2 footprint made the production of chemicals from nonedible biorenewable feedstocks an intensive contemporary research field remarkably amongst the bioderived chemicals available bioaromatics are still scarce a typical feature of biobased platform molecules is their high oxygen content which is in sharp contrast with current base chemicals obtained via a classical petrochemical approach while petrochemical industry requires efficient and selective oxidation protocols biorenewables on the other hand require the reverse ie efficient and selective reduction reactions necessitating new reaction development chemical and biocatalytic processes on biorenewable resources eg wood cloves gallnuts deliver a variety of oxygenated arenes guaiacols syringols catechols pyrogallols hydrodeoxygenation hdo reactions on these biobased arene building blocks can give access to functional chemicals suitable for the chemical industry though extensively researched selective hdo on these oxygenated arenes is still poorly developed therefore the main objective of this proposal is to develop selective hdo in catechols guaiacols pyrogallols and syringols our approach involves sustainable activation of aroh and ar oh2 with a renewable and cheap reactant and subsequent reduction with a renewable reductant as catalysts readily available and cheap base metals will be explored rather than scarce and expensive precious transition metals both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis will be evaluated
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a holistic approach to training a new generation of scientists in marine biodiscovery
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the hotbio consortium will train a new generation of earlystage scientists to take marine microbial natural products from the seabed to the bedside they will be involved in every stage of the pipeline from microbial isolation through compound purification and identification to making analogues with desirable druglike properties they will gain associated skills in access and benefit sharing intellectual property and entrepreneurship students graduating from hotbio will be in a unique position to enter a challenging labour market as they will have received multidisciplinary training at world leading research groups in academia as well as at industry partners mentorship will be provided by industrial scientists and recent graduates from the msca itn marpipethe hotbio consortium consists of eight beneficiaries from seven european countries including two members from nonacademic sectors that will host ten phd students three more phd students hosted by two swiss associated partners will be funded by the swiss state secretariat for education research and innovation in addition to secondments at the partners in europe students will also get the opportunity to do secondments in lowtomiddle income countries lmics in africa and asia to get a deeper understanding of how modern research can be done in resourcelimited settinghotbio expands a conventional marine biodiscovery pipeline by including computer aided drug design cadd chemical synthesis of optimized compounds ie medicinal chemistry target deconvolution and extensive admet profiling this will advance the bioactive microbial secondary metabolites to the later stages of preclinical development and it will also inform the decisions and priorities of what kind of compounds that should be targeted in the initial phase of the drug discovery process the downstream development will include hit compounds from earlier projects
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selffeeding implants to improve and accelerate tissue healing using nutritional nanoparticles
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keeping large 1cm3 living tissues alive is an unresolved key challenge that hinders many clinical and industrial applications including tissueorgan transplants engineered tissues drug screening models and lab grown meat while natural tissues within our body are continuously provided with nutrients via the blood stream engineered explanted or even implanted tissues have to rely on the slow diffusion of nutrients until perfused vascularization is achieved this commonly leads to tissue starvation which inevitably causes tissue failure the nutribone project is based on the logical yet never before explored premise that these tissues need to provide their own nutrients if the environment cannot do so this is an innovative concept named selffeeding we have surprisingly discovered that glycogen offers celldriven longterm release of physiologically relevant quantities of glucose enabling longterm implant survival accelerated tissue formation reduced inflammation and immune responses and improved vascularization as this approach is a firstofitskind we have patented it and here propose its valorisationwe propose to develop a marketable selffeeding bone implant to address the current clinical challenge of critically sized bone defects although our technology is relevant for many clinical applications we will focus on large bone defects bone is the second most implanted tissue but implant failure remains high leading to high medical cost and low quality of life for patients moreover bone implants represent the largest and still fast growing market for engineered tissues while awaiting a solution to maintain implant viability thus we can foresee a concrete pathtomarket to this end we will perform product development towards a minimum viable product establishing a roadmap for certification and market research as well business plan development to ensure a good productmarket fit including a market entry and exit strategy
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decarbonising industry with renewable natural gas
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the threat of climate change is pushing every sector of the economy to decarbonise its operations but certain hardtoabate sectors such as heavy industry gas utilities and shipping cannot easily switch to renewable energy sources electrification is not feasible for these sectors and switching to alternative energy sources would require huge investment in new equipment process changes and civil infrastructure this places many net zero targets at risk turn2x aims to rapidly decarbonise these sectors using renewable natural gas rng a green energy source that can replace fossil natural gas in hard to abate sectors and enable rapid decarbonisation without the large infrastructural changes needed for other solutions our patented honeycomb reactor utilises green hydrogen and biogenic co2 to create rng this is chemically identical to fossilmethane and is 100 drop in ready with existing natural gas pipelines and can be used wherever fossil natural gas is used today this means no large capex investments are required on the customer side as they can continue using their existing burners or furnaces the superior heat removal properties of the reactor simplifies the heat management system of the plant this as well as the use of the standardised modular parts and the reduction of the plant size compared to competitor plants allow us to reduce the capex of rng plants by around 30 turn2x also boasts the fastest ramp up time which is critical when using renewable energy sources with fluctuating energy loads and enables operation at times of peak energy when costs are lower overall this leads to a lower cost for rng which is competitive with biomethane today and will reach price parity with fossil natural gas in the long term in line with the repowereu plan turn2x are offering a possibility to reliably and costeffectively produce renewable natural gas within europe
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high energy intelligence
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understanding the basic building blocks of nature has led to the standard model a non abelian quantum field theory with particles and glue that explains within a single framework the forces between the basic constituents of matter however the description of strongly coupled emergent phenomena has remained a hard problem to solve especially with traditional methods in recent years new techniques have challenged this difficulty by showing that an optimized knowledge of symmetries and consistency conditions actually leads to unprecedented quantitative results both the conformal and the amplitude bootstrap have proven this idea to be successful a first objective of the highenergy intelligence hei project is to extend the horizon of applicability of bootstrap methods by finding better constraints and more rigorous predictions eg as path towards quantum chromodynamics qcd study the conformal window of qcdlike theories study integrable and supersymmetric theories and for quantum gravity study those theories that have a gravitational dual within string theory a second objective of the hei project specific and original is to push the boundaries of our understanding of qcd physics by obtaining the most refined partonic distribution functions of quarks and gluons in nuclear matter a third objective timely and novel in the proposed approach is to combine an artificial intelligence and machine learning training with cuttingedge research in theoretical physics having in mind neural networks designs that can be trained on partial data sets and at the same time solve the nonperturbative constraint equations coming from theory the hei project for the first time brings together many scientists working on related aspects of highenergy physics but with different areas of specializations to make a collaborative scientific breakthrough through secondments to leading research institutes in brazil canada switzerland and the jefferson laboratories
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net zero pathway research through integrated assessment model advancements
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the ambition to achieve the paris agreement goals has led to the realization that a rapid and full decarbonization of the economy is required involving a structural transition of the current economy and society with the rise of quantified policy targets policy packages and consideration of multiple dimensions and sectors integrated assessment models with their ability to consider complex relationships and provide calibrated numerical results have become ever more important in the last decade the prisma project aims to bring these models to the next level by focusing on four key areas of improvement namely the representation of distributional justice and efficiency innovation and finance climate impacts and landuse implications and lifestyle change and circularity in these four key areas we will improve existing largescale iams and sectorial models and consider the linking of different models where applicable two crosscutting shared themes across these areas are the improvement of the temporal and spatial resolution of the analysis and the representation of disruptive and structural change in the economy notably we will increase the spatial granularity with a focus on europe and look at the yearly and in particular near term detailed modeling of rapid decarbonization pathways the extensive model development will be codesigned through an interactive stakeholder engagement process from the beginning and focus on model openness and usability to ensure the stakeholder and policy relevance moreover prisma will focus in its application on the analysis of the spectrum of fit for 55 package policies of the eu developing focalized robust and resilient net zero pathways and assess the uncertainty around key variables and outcomes prisma will also provide key insights to international climate assessments a large number of open modelling tools and databases including capacity building and dissemination activities for all countries
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advancing pandemic preparedness innovative multidisciplinary strategies for combating severe dengue
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the rapid increase in dengue fever incidence poses a formidable challenge to global public health with an estimated 100 million symptomatic infections annually and a geographical spread predicted to widen due to climate change and urbanization the combat initiative a pioneering european research constellation aims to address this by leveraging advanced technologies and knowledge from endemic regions to develop innovative solutions for dengue prevention and treatment this project advances superresolution microscopy to observe rare events in hostvirus interactions and introduces novel brainonchip technology for indepth dengue pathogenesis modeling it focuses on developing innovative antiviral strategies to target dengue virus denv entry and mitigate cytokine storms through hostdirected therapy furthermore it leverages multiomics strategies to identify early predictive biomarkers of severe dengue and develop artificial intelligence tools with the aim of crafting comprehensive policies for the eus pandemic preparedness combat employs a unique experimental strategy that integrates cuttingedge technologies such as superresolution optical microscopy ai and machine learning for advanced modeling of the dengue virushost interactions and early prediction of severe outcomes by combining efforts in drug repurposing development of a brainonchip model for neuropathogenesis studies and employing nanoscale imaging for indepth analysis of the viruss impact combat represents a significant leap forward in the fight against dengue the project not only aims to enhance our understanding of the disease but also to create scalable and affordable tools for pandemic preparedness setting a new standard in interdisciplinary research to combat viral epidemics
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disruptive ai project management solution to drastically reduce the costs risks of european largescale construction projects
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liliai is a breakthrough ai project management solution for organizations executing largescale 250m budget projects in infrastructure construction engineering waste management other industries liliai combines unique ai models trained on reallife largescale project management data with awardwinning natural language processing technology it extracts actionable insights from textual unstructured datasets emails meeting minutes memos reports etc our trl6 tech has proven successful in claims litigation with lynkea we are currently trialling the advanced prototype with ngeat trl9 our solution will register weak signals received through realtime monitoring of project documentation it will address organizations inability to detect address problems early which leads to their aggravation costly penalties average claim is 54m globally according to arcadis liliai will help them avoid such expensive delaysfailures
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reshaping sufi path in late modern southeastern europe the teachings and networks of the melmyanriya
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resusee is a project that will conduct an analytical and comparative indeep insight of the doctrines and the networks of deployment of the melmyanriya an islamic sufi path that emerged in southeastern europe see through muhammad nr alarabs d 1887 teachings since nineteenth century melmya centers were established in kosovo macedonia and albania including three womenonly in strumica vranjevci and prizren the melmya represents a still littlestudied case in the field of islamic studies and see history yet its study will challenge current understandings of sufi movements that reshape the islamic tradition along different practical organizational and doctrinal lines to cope with late modern social and political developments drawing on a translocal approach and network analysis resusee focuses on melmya sufi knowledge and its circulation among the translocal networks imbued with new forms of associationism it aims to shed light on the complex interplay between mobilization and associationbuilding patterns and on the theological and doctrinal reshaping of sufism since the nineteenth century employing mainly philological and comparative historical methods resusee aims to 1 reframe the sociopolitical context within which melmya spread taking into account the profound transformations that were taking place in see societies 2 retrace and explore muhammad nr alarabs melmya mysticalphilosophicalgnostic system 3 analysing and tracing networks and channels of melmya doctrines circulation in see by employing dh tools cytoscape and nodexl software 4 developing an analytical and comparative insight framework to understand whether melmya spiritual outlook can be considered as an approach to the sufi initiatory path perceived as liberal intellectual inclusive and openminded
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mechanisms of water sensing in plant roots
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water stress is a pressing global challenge for agriculture particularly given hostile climate change plants have the remarkable ability to shape their roots to forage for water for instance roots growing through an airfilled space eg soil gap temporarily halt branching until reentering moist soil an intriguing phenomenon called xerobranchingin a recent breakthrough i developed an elegant bioassay to reveal how roots stop branching by employing the abscisic acid hormone when they lose contact with water mehra et al 2022 science however the mechanisms by which roots primarily sense water availability is still a puzzlemy erc project waterblind is designed to unravel this mystery and discover how roots sense the absence of water to regulate downstream branching response built upon my preliminary findings i hypothesize that roots employ ionic fluxes and mechanosensing pathways to sense water to test this hypothesis i will pioneer firstofits kind screening of ion channel mutants to identify waterblind mutants defective in water perception furthermore i will uncover the underlying molecular networks responsible for this waterblindness and ultimately investigate the consequences of this condition on soil exploration and water foraging to achieve these ambitious goals i will exploit interdisciplinary stateoftheart approaches such as nextgeneration xray computed tomography phonon imaging singlecell rna sequencing and live imaging of advanced biosensors in growing roots tipsmy innovative real world approaches will generate groundbreaking insights that will significantly advance current understanding of the molecular and cellular basis of water perception in plants the fundamental knowledge arising from this project will lay a strong foundation for future translational efforts aimed at improving wateruseefficiency and stress tolerance of crops
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extending the rail network of phds in europes rail joint undertaking
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the project phds eurail aims to foster collaboration and innovation in the european railway sector by consolidating a scientific community and conducting research through 10 phd positions the project is closely aligned with the goals of the eurail joint undertaking eurail and industry partners the objectives of the project include developing a research plan for each phd position with the aim of submitting at least 2 peerreviewed journal papers per position the research topics cover a range of areas such as supporting the implementation of rail technical innovations for decarbonization promoting gender equality in the rail industry exploring new education and training methods enabling railbased urban logistics improving fast night train operations studying the dynamic stability of trains over bridges enhancing safetyrelevant communication in the railway system calculating societal kpis of rail research programs the railway inclusion and accessibility for individuals with intellectual disability and ict platforms for interoperable and reliable ertms systems the project also emphasizes collaboration with industry stakeholders and participation in relevant conferences and events to disseminate research findings by expanding the academics4rail project and involving major european rail companies and academia the project seeks to strengthen research and innovation capabilities in the european railway sector
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developing a novel parkinsons disease drug using small molecule mimetics of glial cell linederived neurotrophic factor gdnf
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genecode is developing a novel antipd drug that contains a central nervous system penetrant compound imitating gdnf peptide pathway activation that alleviates both motor and nonmotor symptoms in pd patients protecting and restoring lesioned dopamine neurons as well as potentially increasing dopamine levels in brain tissue genecodes unique solution uses smallmolecule compounds that penetrate the bloodbrain barrier target the gfl receptor complex containing gdnf protein and mimic gfl gndf family of ligands biological effects in neurons promoting survival in the affected dopaminergic neuronal pathways once fully developed the pd drug would be administered weekly or less frequently as an oral treatment considering the importance of gdnf family ligands andor retsignalling pathways for other groups of cells applications of compounds developed by genecode are not limited to pd but can be applied to cure other medical conditions such as neuropathic pain addiction als etc
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dynamical systems and reaction kinetics networks
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the primary goal of the project is to advance the theory of dynamical systems governed by differential equations with multiple parameters leveraging this enriched understanding to dissect mathematical models that mirror realworld phenomena and processes our exploration will span both qualitative and quantitative attributes of these systems including their general structure solution properties bifurcations stability etc in a practical application of our theoretical insights and computational techniques we will delve into the analysis of certain biochemical networks with a focus on those integral to reaction kinetics employing a synergistic approach that melds symbolic and numerical computation we aim to enhance the analysis of stability and bifurcations within intricate biochemical systems this will be achieved by developing bespoke symbolicnumeric tools designed to uncover instances of multistability and bifurcations our qualitative and computational evaluations will serve dual purposes elucidating established biological phenomena and forecasting emergent onesadditionally our research will extend to the emphasizing parameter estimation and the resolution of control dilemmas for biomedical applications we will explore novel territories of positive and impulsive control areas currently lightly tread in existing literaturethis project is inherently interdisciplinary seeking to fuse and expand upon the methodologies from mathematics applied mathematics and reaction kinetics alongside the computational algorithms of symbolic computation incorporating the principles of the green charter our research will also emphasize sustainable practices and the development of simulations aimed at addressing and mitigating environmental impacts associated with the processes under study furthermore this endeavor promises substantial training opportunities for earlystage researchers fostering an environment conducive to learning and innovation
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uncovering the biological relevance of the replicationassociated protein splicing during viral replication in geminiviruses and other cress viruses
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due to their limited proteincoding capacity viruses have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to hijack the host molecular machinery for their own benefit among these strategies splicing of the viral transcripts allows them to increase their transcriptome and proteome diversity and has been described in several virus families including plant dna viruses such as geminiviruses geminiviruses which cause devastating problems for the agriculture worldwide belong to the circular replicationassociated protein repencoding cress viruses a phylum infecting organisms from all three domains of life and potentially sharing analogous mechanisms for genome replication importantly rep is the only protein required for viral replication and is structurally conserved across cress viruses splicing of rep transcripts has been anecdotally reported in circoviruses and a few minor genera of geminiviruses with some splicing events required for a full infectivity on the other hand unpublished work in the host group has uncovered that i rep from different begomoviruses the major genus within the geminiviridae family associate with the plant splicing machinery and ii tomato yellow leaf curl virus tylcv rep transcripts are spliced during the infection giving rise to at least five unknown rep protein isoforms lacking either the oligomerization domain or part of the nterminal dna binding domain we propose to uncover the importance of rep splicing in tylcv and to establish its relevance during the viral replication by characterizing rep spliced variants interactome and functions we will also analyze the conservation of rep splicing landscape in different geminiviruses and cress viruses potentially outlining an unknown layer in the regulation of the replication of these crosskingdom infecting viruses
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do mountain plant responses to climate change depend on microbial mutualists
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plant interactions with microbial mutualists are critical for plant growth with mutualists enhancing plant access to essential nutrients and ameliorating the effects of stressful environmental conditions such as extreme temperatures and drought as a result microbial mutualists may play an important role in mediating plant responses to changing climates the goal of this project is to elucidate how interactions with microbial mutualists shape plant distributions and communities in response to climate change in mountain grassland habitats my project builds on recent advances in monitoring techniques like edna metabarcoding to characterize microbial communities at large scales allowing for detection of patterns in the relationships between environmental drivers plant community composition and microbial mutualist communities the novelty of this project lies in the combination of this type of data with an experiment manipulating microbial mutualists which is essential for identifying the causes underlying observed patterns specifically i aim to 1 determine variation in plant species responsiveness to mutualists with and without drought stress 2 examine whether mutualistresponsiveness predicts plant distribution responses to drier warmer climates and 3 model both direct effects of climate on plant community structure and indirect effects via microbial mutualist communities that are affected by climate and interact with plant communities in addition to advancing our understanding of how microbial mutualists shape plant communities this project will facilitate knowledge transfer between me and my host institution i will receive training in research areas such as advanced statistical modelling and edna metabarcoding techniques and analyses while sharing my expertise in the ecology of plantmicrobial mutualist interactions
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circular cities and regions initiative ccri coordination and support action csa
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the ccri csas goal is to strengthen and complement the ccri in order to foster the implementation of circular systemic solutions css in european cities and regions based on an initial scoping and needs assessment the csa will set up an expert team to support thematic working groups twgs and provide complementary technical assistance to ccri cities and regions during the duration of the project the csa will also deepen the ccri knowledge on circular economy with the production of highly impactful case studies on css a series of white papers on key research innovation ri gaps guidance documents for practitioners at the local and regional level as well as recommendations for eu and national policy makers to unlock barriers faced local and regional authorities by establishing a series of mechanisms such as including webinars study visits and a twinning program the csa will stimulate knowledge transfer pear learning and capacity building towards an audience of cities and regions including but not limited to ccri pilots and fellows all dissemination and communication activities will use the ccri existing umbrella identity and existing communication channels the csa will endeavour to strengthen links with the european ecosystem and to promote the circular economy towards all european cities and regions those activities will be done in close coordination with the ccricso and dg rtd to take advantage of potential synergies and importantly to prevent any overlaps and duplications with the work of the cso led by iclei europe the csa brings together 11 leading organisations active throughout europe and with considerable expertise and experience in supporting cities and regions sustainability transition
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contraband the only heart failure medical device that is placed outside the heart
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worldwide 26 million people suffer from congestive heart failure chf a chronic condition that worsens with time and leads to staggering healthcare costs and a significant reduction of quality of life contraband is an implantable device aiming to restore heart function in patient suffering from left ventricle failure contrabands benefits include builtin failsafe for full reversibility of functionality tremendous ease of use due to its proprietary stntwithinastnt design and transcatheter delivery system and full clinical flexibility to be compatible with pharmacotherapies and other chf devices in the project we will finalise clinical development and introduce contraband into clinical routines in europe we expect to launch contraband in 2024 generate 15m in revenues in 2025 and 60m in 2026 before market launch we will create 95 jobs at the company in strategic locations in europe
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adaptation strategies for the elderly in multidomain indoor environments wellbeing and building energy consumption
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europe faces significant challenges such as an ageing population shortage of energy and climate change as elderly peoples physical and adaptive abilities decline their needs for health and comfort in the indoor environment rise the gradually expanding elderly population may result in increased building energy consumption and a higher carbon footprint however indoor comfort standards are usually targeted at healthy young populations and address singular domain environment little knowledge is in the literature about how to balance wellbeing and energy consumption in multidomain indoor environments thermal visual acoustic and indoor air quality for older adults this knowledge gap has motivated ageadapt we aim to improve wellbeing and minimize energy consumption by comprehending the adaptive cycles for elderly people in the multidomain indoor environments enabling us to propose adaptive strategies a threestage hierarchical research methodology combining living lab experiments with fixed and adjustable environmental conditions and field investigations will be created allowing to 1 assess the effects of multidomain indoor environments on the physiological behavioural and psychological adaptation of older adults 2 assess the role of physiological psychological and energy consumption benefits after behaviours have occurred 3 create models evaluations and strategies for adaptive comfort in indoor multidomain environments for older adults at different health levels the impact of ageadapt on the scientific community industry and the general public will be significant and sustainable it will offer input into the establishment of indoor environmental design standards and behavioral adaptation guidelines for elderly people drive the development of products for indoor environmental comfort and health management and contribute to the goals of healthy aging and climate neutrality
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frequencyagile integrated photonic light sources across the visible and nearinfrared spectrum
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lasers are ubiquitous in science and technology with applications ranging from optical communications and quantum technologies to metrology and sensing and to life sciences and medical diagnostics however most commercially used lasers are still based on legacy optical schemes these devices are either bulky and expensive limiting product development or lack the ability to quickly sweep or precisely control the laser wavelength which is key to many applications at the same time the advent of advanced photonic integration platforms such as silicon photonics has opened new perspectives realized only for exascale data centers in telecommunication wavelengths around 1310 and 1550 nmagilight aims at establishing a new class of integrated lasers that can address the entire wavelength range from the blue 400 nm to the infrared 27 m these devices rely on a hybrid integration platform that combines ultralowloss silicon nitride photonic circuits with advanced tuning actuators and with iiiv gain elements exploiting highly scalable assembly concepts based on 3d printing the devices will offer high output powers 100 mw down to hzlevel laser linewidths and unprecedented frequency agility with nanosecond response times and wideband tunability comprising leading european research groups and hightech startups as well as a major industrial player agilight will translate groundbreaking research to rapid technology uptake and tailor laser systems for atomic and molecular physics and optics distance ranging and sensing using the expertise of endusers the project covers the theoretical and nanofabrication foundations of the envisaged light sources as well as their implementation and functional demonstration in highly relevant research applications throughout the visible and nearinfrared spectrum agilight will lay the foundation for an alleuropean value chain of a novel class of light sources covering the iiiv and lowloss pics
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production of a new biodegradable bioplastic made up of biomolecules extracted from expired milk
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the global plastic production reached up to 448 million tons in 2018 of which approximately 8 million tons are entering into the oceans every year the imprudent use of plastics in our everyday life elevated plastics into the major pollutant component of the world seas and oceans at the same time every year in europe 36 million tons of milk are thrown away as waste splastica is an innovative startup and a spin off from university of rome tor vergata founded in 2019 whose ceo is a woman which found an innovative way to turn expired milk into a biobased and biodegradable plastic by means of a patented process this bioplastic has been widely characterized showing good hardness resistance and great stability in a wide range of temperatures and in contact with food water detergents the singleuse plastic industry is the target field of application of spmilk bioplastic singleuse plastics often also referred to as disposable plastics are commonly used for plastic packaging and include items intended to be used only once the recent eu directive 2019904 the sup directive imposes from july 2021 eu wide market restriction measures bans for various singleuse products such as plastic cutlery plates stirrers and straws oxodegradable plastics and expanded polystyrene food and drink containers splastica business idea is to bring to the market spmilk bioplastic in the form of granules to be used by plastic processing companies with injection moulding and compression moulding machines or to produce films for industrial packaging applications project objectives within the women techeu program are the optimization of the bioplastic formulation to assess its machinability with industrial machines the material certifications bioplastic material compostability material in contact with food the study and design the wastewater treatment system inherent to the spmilk production process and the layout of a industrial scale plant
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flight centric atc project
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the flight centric atc project fca addresses industrial research validation for master plan phase c connected and automated atm horizonsesar2022desir01wa61 the main objective of fca is to finally develop v3 maturity level the flight centric atc concept for an ecacwide implementation in medium density traffic areas considering the existing national boundaries furthermore the project includes the development of ecacwide deployment scenarios which are consistent with the limitations of the vhf spectrum for voice communications ecacwide benefits of the concept in each of the deployment scenarios will be analyzed as well based on the exiting sesar2020 pj10w273 fca costbenefit analysis two different exercises and workshops will be conducted during the project to address the remaining gaps and to take the final step from a v3 ongoing solution to a v3 completed solution therefore an analysis will be conducted to validate the key performance indicators cost efficiency cef2 capacity cap predictability prd and fuel efficiency feff as well as human performance and safety in addition final validations will take place to validate eg the change from a sectorised airspace to flight centric atc and vice versa to assess the possibility of a fallback scenario to evaluate an appropriate allocation strategy and an acceptable approach for the opening and closing of cwps the final results will be dissiminated across the relevant stakeholders and the s3ju via scientific papers open days and a project website specificly designated to the industrial research flight centric atc project
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mediterranean researchers night 2022 and 2023 editions
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more than 500 million people on three continents are united by the worlds largest sea the mediterranean our strategic geographic location and the shared history gives us a common character and common challenges mediterranean researchers night mednight objective is to generate a mediterranean unity providing awareness about common problems fostering scientific careers reinforcing researchers commitment and progress and putting science and scientists at the cornerstone of our future and a relevant matter mednight shows the attractiveness and importance of the researchers work and professions to the general public and specially for girls and boys carrying out a series of activities framed under the common umbrella of what we have come to call mediterranean science placing particular emphasis on youngsters and female researchers and showing the potential of rd as a source of progress and wellbeing mediterranean science relates to research developed in the our territories but also the countless collaborations with other eu researchers mediterranean science is focused on mediterranean relevant topics according to our culture way of life or current challenges sea and pollution climate and clean energies diet and nutrition life and health many online and facetoface diverse activities are organised by mednight consortium in valencia san juan orihuela torrevieja messina lesvos nicosia istanbul main cities and also lliria santa pola limnos rhodes syros eyupsultan kadikov or el cairo among others satellite cities
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era chair program to advance inflammation research at imbbforth
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the institute of molecular biology and biotechnology imbb at forth stands as a beacon of scientific excellence in greece despite commendable achievements imbb faces significant challenges especially in the highly competitive field of biomedical sciences existing disparities between regional and european research approaches pose a hurdle that requires strategic alignment with broader european research initiatives to address this imbb aims to foster crossborder collaborations harmonize methodologies and ensure its continuous presence at the forefront of scientific innovation insufficient training programs and a growing shortage of skilled personnel present additional major obstacles for imbb persistent budget constraints hinder the institutes ability to maintain its research momentum and achieve innovative excellence imbb recognizes the importance of articulating and showcasing the realworld social and economic benefits of its scientific endeavours to bolster its reputation and garner sustained support in response to these challenges imbb introduces inflacare an ambitious program designed to recruit and fully assimilate the era chair holder and the inflacare team the programs objectives include enhancing the research capacity of imbb strengthening human capital improving capabilities in competitive research funding reversing brain drain boosting the institutes innovation capacity enhancing management and administrative competences maximizing benefits from eu and national investments raising imbbs reputation and promoting communication of ri results collectively the inflacare program aims to empower the institute to leverage cuttingedge technologies attract toptier researchers and cultivate collaborations that directly advance its research and innovation activities the tangible improvements in healthcare outcomes will underscore imbbs commitment to scientific excellence and its societal impact
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condensates at membrane scaffolds integrated systems as synthetic cell compartments
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comeincell will establish a novel integrated synthetic cell platform to provide cost and resourceefficient environmentally friendly widely applicable and quantitative model systems to elucidate key cellular mechanisms of health and disease based on the integration of condensate and membrane models understanding membranecondensate interactions is vital for deciphering their functional roles in cellular processes our consortium employs synthetic vesicles as model systems to explore these interactions these tailormade mimics of cellular compartments offer a platform for studying membrane dynamics and the impact of compartmentalization on the activity of reaction networks and the assembly of complex machinery we will design synthetic cells as lifescience prototyping tools to decipher the role of membraneassociated condensates in essential cellular processes linked to membrane transport membrane transformation metabolic networks and repair the network will confront global challenges providing solutions in drug development therapeutics greenrelated issues and synthetic biology our goal is to equip junior scientists with crossdisciplinary expertise for developing integrated synthetic cellular testbeds encompassing condensates and membranes revolutionizing prototyping systems we will train the next generation of biophysicists biochemists and bioengineers in rigorous quantitative and mechanistic thinking while establishing strong ties to young and emerging european smes in the health sector for efficient dissemination towards new therapies
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sustainable glass industry with fuelflexible technology
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europe is the world leader in glass making a highly energyintensive industry that emits high amounts of co2 the past century has seen improvements in the production process but they are now approaching their limits the objective of gifft is to develop a sustainable hybrid and biofuel flexible heat production technology and process that can be integrated into industrial glass manufacturing through efficient use of plasmaassisted combustion and gasification systems an integrated heat production technology and process for glass manufacturing will be developed utilising biomasswaste and excess or cheap renewable electricity for syngas production what will contribute to europes progress and leadership for bioenergy integration into industrial settings gifft will then develop and validate in an industrially relevant environment a fuel flexible entrained flow gasifier efg with a novel egasification function and a new plasmaassisted fuel flexible gas burner for hybrid operation in glass furnaces this will help diversify feedstock and improve the technological performance as well as cost reduction of bioenergy ensuring a better circularity and increased use of renewables the technoeconomic feasibility and environmental impact of the technology will also be assessed to confirm that gifft contributes to an increased sustainability of biomass combustion and gasification and bioenergy value chains while reducing emissions
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nextgen wireless chip and antenna tech for wifi 8
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pharrowtechs innovative project aims to revolutionize wireless communication by integrating millimeterwave mmwave technology into the future wifi 8 ecosystem leveraging expertise developed over 15 years at imec a global leader in nanoelectronics semiconductors and digital technology pharrowtech focuses on advancing chip and antenna technologies that promise to propel europe to the forefront of wireless communication this project envisions wifi 8 as a transformative force offering speeds up to 100 times faster than the stateoftheart and ensuring reliable highperformance connections by tapping into the mmwave spectrum offering 10x higher frequencies and 10x wider bandwidth pharrowtech addresses the spectrum shortage making connections more robust as data demands continue to increase in our digital worldthe proposed project prepares the ground for the integration of our mmwave technology into wifi 8 the work encompasses optimization of wireless system design refinement of critical components through rfic and analog block design enhancement of adaptability through digital processing and software development and realworld validation to overcome challenges like signal penetration and range limitationsthis undertaking positions pharrowtech as a key player in addressing the evolving needs of various industries including smart cities industry 40 healthcare arvr and beyond the successful execution of this project not only signifies technological leadership but also opens new markets enhances pharrowtechs competitive edge drives revenue growth and fosters strategic partnerships reinforcing the companys commitment to reshaping the wireless communication landscape it will also help strengthen the eus technological sovereignty in this key sector
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lepton symmetry experiment matter antimatter symmetry test with electron and positron
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in modern physics we are faced with the unsatisfactory situation that the standard model sm which condenses our current state of knowledge in the form of quantum field theories despite its spectacular success in the prediction of laboratory results fails in explaining even the most basic properties of our universe such as the disparity of matter and antimatter and the possible existence of dark matter in the quest to search for answers to these questions low energy high precision experiments in ion traps have taken a pivotal role by allowing precise tests of the charge parity and time cpt reversal symmetryi propose an ambitious nextgeneration penningtrap experiment that will enable us to directly compare the magnetic moments of electron and positron at 14 digits precision to this end we will simultaneously trap a single positron and an electron in the same trap and directly compare their spin precession frequencies to enable the cotrapping of the oppositely charged particle and antiparticle we will bind the electron in a hydrogenlike 4he ion as a result of the binding the spins of both particles show a slow beat which can be accurately measured any deviation of this beat frequency from the prediction by quantum electrodynamics qed reveals a cpt violation this way lsym will enable a uniquely sensitive comparison of particle and antiparticle charge mass and gfactors and thus yield the most stringent cpt test in the lepton sectorto this end we will develop a novel superconducting penning trap apparatus which can be cooled to millikelvin temperatures to largely eliminate blackbody radiation building upon techniques recently pioneered by my group lsym will allow the coherent quantum measurement of the difference of the spin precession frequenciesfurthermore with this toolbox at hand we will have access to a new class of intriguing measurements such as an order of magnitude improved determination of the electron atomic mass
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myonanocell cardiomyogenic nanosized cellbased vehicles for cardiac microenvironment modulation and heart fibrosis therapy
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cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide accounting roughly for 45 of all deaths in europe and costing billions of euros to the european union economy among these most cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction lead to the formation of heart scarring which is the formation of fibrotic tissue that impairs contractility and cardiac function ultimately causing heart failure despite the prevalence and serious consequences of heart fibrosis current benchmark therapies have low longterm efficacy and alternative novel therapies that have reached clinical testing still present severe limitations or lead to little improvement in cardiac function thus there is still an urgent unmet need for the development of novel and efficient therapies for cardiac fibrosis cuttingedge research regarding the use of stem cells or delivery of molecules to induce cardiomyocyte proliferation are yet to be successful as most of these therapies present challenges regarding immunogenicity efficiency and longlasting effect thereby myonanocell project aims at developing a radically new platform for heart fibrosis and cardiac regeneration by using a combinatory approach where the myonanocell nanohybrids incorporate not only the ability to carry different cardiomyogenic molecules but also the ability to modulate the cardiac microenvironment and recognize cardiac fibroblasts myonanocell will radically increase therapeutic efficiency moreover the simultaneous modulation of cardiac microenvironment and its repopulation with cardiomyocytes by fibroblast reprogramming will directly impact contractility and heart function representing a paradigm shift in cardiac fibrosis therapy myonanocell will be fully characterized in vitro to have a full biological fingerprint on the process of cell identity shift and also tested in advanced 3d in vitro models to evaluate its overall effects at tissue level
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cytosolic iron delivery for symbiotic nitrogen fixation
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symbiotic nitrogen fixation snf carried out by legume nodules is one of the most efficient ways of introducing nitrogen in natural ecosystems and in sustainable agriculture it relies on the transfer of a relatively large amount of iron from the host plant to the endosymbiotic bacteria colonizing nodule cells where it will be used as cofactor of many of the enzymes participating in snf however the required steady iron supply for snf is challenged by its low bioavailability in soil prevalent in many of the main agricultural areas of the world this is worsened by the hundreds of ferroenzymes that compete for iron cofactors within a cell due to the relevance of snf for a more sustainable agriculture and the importance of ensuring iron supply to achieve this a substantial effort has been done in understanding how legumes incorporate iron and deliver it to the nodules and how it is used to synthesize nitrogenase cofactors however no information is available on how iron is specifically allocated to the nitrogenfixing compartments in this proposal we intend to study the mechanisms enabling targeted iron delivery to nitrogen fixation particularly those events occurring at the cytosol and at the interface between the two symbionts to do this we will identify and characterize the proteins interacting the known symbiosome iron transporters as a result we will characterize the ironinteractome of these elements these findings should not only increase our understanding of iron homeostasis in snf and more broadly in plants but also lead to dedicated iron delivery pathways for ironbiofortification or to engineer ironproteins in plants
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exploring inflammasome activation and targeted inhibition
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inflammasomes are cytosolic multiprotein complexes that form in response to a wide range of pathogens tissue damage and other harmful stimuli members of the family of nodlike receptors nlrs sense these pathogen and danger associated molecular patterns triggering innate immune responses nlrp3 is a wellstudied nlr whose activation by a broad spectrum of stimuli leads to inflammasome formation and pyroptosis yet the mechanisms inducing nlrp3 activation and the way how antagonistic small molecules counteract its function remain poorly understood just recently we have determined the cryoelectron microscopy structures of fulllength human nlrp3 in its inactive form and bound to the inhibitor crid3 native nlrp3 is a decamer composed of homodimers of intertwined lrr domains that assemble backtoback as pentamers we made the surprising finding that the effector pyrin domain is shielded inside the decamer cage providing a safeguard mechanism against accidental activation to obtain insights into the activation mechanism of nlrp3 and the molecular formation of the inflammasome i here propose a challenging and pioneering endeavour employing biochemical biophysical and structural analyses we will resolve the structure of activated nlrp3 associated to lipid membranes unravel its regulation by posttranslational modifications design specific inhibitors for the targeted protein degradation and explore filamentous seeds for the maturation of caspase1 and alzheimers disease forming amyloidbeta fibrils further transferring our knowledge of crid3mediated nlrp3 inhibition to other nlrs as nlrp12 and nlrp1 will shed light on their mechanism of action and open new avenues for directed targeting collectively this work will uncover fundamental molecular principles of inflammasome activation and the mode of action of antiinflammatory drugs i foresee that these insights will open a wide field for the development of nlrspecific inhibitors as new medicines
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characterizing the neuronal effects of behavioralmodifying proteins from the zombie fungi ophiocordyceps using c elegans
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ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a species complex of entomopathogens known for their ability to manipulate the behavior of infected ants zombie ants while these behavioral effects are well described the molecular basis for behavioral manipulation is still being explored during my current postdoctoral fellowship with the national science foundation usa i have identified a set of putative behavioral effectors and am currently utilizing the model organism yeast to express these biomolecules and test their behavioral effects in ants this proposal will build on my previous work by utilizing another model organism c elegans to analyze the transferability of these effectors to other animal models and to understand their effect on core neurological pathways to accomplish this goal i will collaborate with the van den heuvel lab at utrecht university a developmental biology team known for their excellence in the imaging of nematodes their access to a preestablished c elegans yeasttwohybrid library and experience with the genetic modification of nematodes will be paramount in addressing three research objectives set for this project identifying the biological targets of behaviormodifying effectors using yeasttwohybrid mating analyzing the behavioral effects of these effectors via transgenic expression in c elegans and evaluating tissuespecific changes at the molecular level in c elegans using mass spec such a project spans many biological subdisciplines and thus lends itself well to the international exchange of personnel advanced training and ideas allowing me to make use of my experience with molecular cloning and acquire new skills handling and observing c elegans furthermore the study of ophiocordyceps effectors present an innovative approach towards new drug discovery particularly those with the potential to treat behavioral disorders as fungal secondary metabolites are often used for medications impacting the public in a positive way
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recreating a hero of modern science the making reception and legacy of the works of francis bacon
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the monumental victorian edition of the works of francis bacon works appeared some 150 years ago in the midst of the second scientific revolution with the oxford francis bacon project yet to be completed it is still the standard edition of francis bacons 15611626 collected works the edition itself however has never been studied in any detail this is remarkable since by presenting the most uptodate baconian canon it played a key role in the creation of baconianism an outlook crucially formative of 19thcentury british science and philosophy a major intellectual event the works climaxed the emergence of serious bacon scholarship and propelled the search for a single scientific method shared across disciplines in the work of baconians like john herschel william whewell and john stuart mill at the same time it marked the start of a decadeslong process of revisionism which made that bacon eventually lost of his status as legislator of modern science and induction seized to be seen as the motor of scientific progress this project provides the firstever history of the making reception and extraordinary legacy of the works revealing its centrality to 19thcentury philosophical debates on science as well as its significance for 20th and 21stcentury bacon scholarship it will combine fresh archival research historical contextualization and philosophical analysis carried out at the worldleading department of philosophy and cultural heritage at ca foscari university of venice host and the department of history and philosophy of science cambridge secondment the projects original results will be disseminated through a monograph and peerreviewed articles and communicated through various targeted outreach activities it will enable the researcher to acquire significant new skills and expertise that will further strengthen his position as a leading scholar of the history of science and philosophy in the 19th century
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sociallyacceptable and trustworthy humanrobot teaming for agile industries
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manufacturing construction and agriculture are major driving forces for the european economy and prosperity maintaining its competitiveness in these sectors demands highly efficient and flexible processes and this can be achieved through digitization novel intelligent robotic capabilities that can be deployed sidebyside with humans and can operate and adapt to dynamic environments can accelerate this process however existing robotic systems cannot fit well into such settings as they are not versatile and flexible enough to automate certain tasks cannot collaborate safely with humans in open and dynamic environments nor are they easily and economically adaptable to process changes the soprano project coalesces multidisciplinary research and innovation in humanrobot collaboration and intelligent multiagent systems aspiring to design the next generation of manufacturing floors construction sites and agrifood production where humans and intelligent machines will seamlessly work together it proposes to scale collaboration from the single humanagent dyad to a peerbased synergy between multiple interconnected robotic systems featuring different physical and cognitive properties supporting various tasks in collaboration with human workers robotics and other agents soprano will validate the technological offering in three novel and openaccess use cases addressing both largescale industries and small to medium enterprises adding value to eu key sectors and instrumenting community building surrounding the opensource technologies in the eu industrial ecosystem during the project we will also enable external smes and startups to benefit from the project technologies via an open call which will enable the building of demonstrators using soprano technologies that will open new market opportunities for their products and services
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mechanisms underlying functional disabilities in chronic musculoskeletal pain the role of protective factors
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chronic musculoskeletal pain is a major health issue which translates into a severe economic burden studies on chronic pain conditions have focused primarily on characterizing pain mechanisms with a focus on alleviating clinical pain intensity the success of these studies in terms of effective treatment remains extremely limited rather than focusing on pain intensity protect will focus on functional disabilities associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain which are the main complain of patients they can be extremely debilitating and often result in social isolation of persons with chronic musculoskeletal pain to date their mechanisms remain poorly understood a better understanding of these mechanisms is essential to improve treatment efficiency in work package wp 1 of protect the impact of athletic identity and mental and physical fatigue on the relationship between resilience and functional disabilities will be studied in adults and minors with chronic musculoskeletal pain ro1 resilience is associated with functional disabilities athletic identity and fatigue a frequent comorbidity of chronic musculoskeletal pain characterizing the complex relationship between these factors using computational modeling will define new treatment targets that can be addressed by adapting already available therapeutical interventions all factors will be assessed using questionnaires as well as physical and behavioral tasks in wp2 restingstate fmri will be used to assess brain networks of functional disabilities in adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain in particular the role of the default mode network dmn in functional disabilities will be investigated ro2 changes in dmn connectivity have been associated with acute and chronic pain as well as with resilience and athletic identity finally protect will focus on the potentially mediating role of resilience and athletic identity on the relationship between the dmn and functional disabilities ro3
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new value landscapes for plant protein pathways
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the current european plantprotein landscape is flawed heightened societal awareness of the environmental impact of consuming animalbased protein is driving the publics awareness of alternative sustainable sources of dietary protein yet production systems are focussed heavily on the production of feedstock for direct transfer into animal sectors in an attempt to counter the eus overdependency on imported feed in essence there is an absence of premium supply chains farmers miss out on addedvalue opportunities that exist within the crops they already grow across europe there is a need to increase resilience in farming systems to mitigate against increasingly volatile climate patterns and to support farming systems to meet farmtofork strategic objectives built on the principles of cocreation innovation and demonstration valpro path will design validate and deliver sustainable and competitive plant protein crop systems and value chains focussed on underpinning economic value for all actors in the supply chain it will exploit beyond stateoftheart innovations demonstrating and evaluating potential across 5 multistakeholder living lab innovation production systems ipss with strong industry involvement the project will deliver a stronger ecosystem for plant protein production supported with robust evidence of the social economic environmental climate and health benefits valpro path will deliver new sustainable business models showing how focussed research can come into practice sustainable diversification of rotations with grain legumes will support the transition to more environmentally sustainable farming european agriculture is at a juncture in regards to the sustainable provision of dietary protein it can embrace opportunities presented through existing innovations that are integrated into reallife scenarios to support stakeholders realise the new market opportunities that exist for indigenous fully traceable plant protein
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next generation datadriven reference european models and methods towards silent and green aircraft operations around airports
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needed responds to the second and third bullets of the expected outcome of the horizoncl52022d50112 topic delivering the next generation datadriven reference european models and methods to estimate present and future aircraft emissions pollutants and noise achieving trl 4 at the end of the project to do so needed will advance the state of the art byimproving the accuracy of the reconstruction of aircraft operations by using realworld adsb dataadvancing emission inventories for current and future aircraft technologies while delivering more accurate pollution dispersion modelsextending the applicability of the ecac doc 29 noise model towards future aircraft technologiesperforming more accurate estimation of the number of people affected by local air transport operations by using dynamic population mapsthese activities are complemented by i local air quality laq and experimental noise measurements performed at rotterdam airport ii validation of the needed toolchain in a 30week pilot study involving three airports and iii delivery of a methodology to optimise the flight patterns for minimum detrimental impact on the population in present and future scenarios the project aims to function as a technology enabler laying the methodological groundwork for facilitating the entry into service of transformative aircraft technologies while capitalising on the potential of adsb data needed ensures its impact on the next generation of air traffic management atm regulation and policies through the direct involvement of eurocontrol
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electrically pumped perovskite lasers
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electrically pumped lasers are considered as a holy grail in the field of optoelectronics despite the success of lasers based on expensive epitaxially grown semiconductors lowcost solutionprocessed semiconductors provide new opportunities to significantly expand the applications of lasers on one hand lowcost and scalable deposition can meet increasing demand of using lasers in consumer electronics on the other hand solutionprocessed semiconductors can be easily proceeded into thin films providing great promise to develop thinfilm lasers which are required for highly integrated photonics chips in advanced applications a superstar in the family of solutionprocessed semiconductors is metal halide perovskites which have shown great success in a range of optoelectronic applications especially recent breakthroughs on optically pumped perovskite lasers and highperformance perovskite lightemitting diodes indicate great potential of developing perovskites into a new generation of materials for electrically pumped lasersthis project has the ambitious goal to realise solutionprocessed electrically pumped perovskite lasers i will take a holistic approach where novel concepts are proposed to address critical challenges on the development of perovskite lasers both typei and typeii perovskite quantum well heterostructures which utilise fundamentally different mechanisms to reach low thresholds will be developed as the gain media edgeemitting devices based on these new perovskite gain media will then be coupled into rationally designed cavities for lasing actions at the core of the research is the synthesis of new perovskite materials combined with advanced spectroscopic characterizations and devicecavity development this project makes use of recent advances in perovskite optoelectronics to create a new paradigm for electrically pumped perovskite lasers and will open up new possibilities to revolutionize the current laser technology
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smart sponge microbiomes adaptation and resilience to thermal stress
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marine sponges the multicellular and sessile with associated microbes constituting 40 of their biomass are vital in marine ecosystems for habitat creation nutrient cycling carbon sequestration biodiversity support and water filtration this project investigates how associated microbes enable sponges particularly the blue icing sponge lendenfeldia chondrodes to adapt to heat stress by studying microbial communities we explore their influence on sponge resilience survival and recovery from hightemperature conditions the findings contribute to global climate change understanding the findings could contribute to the european unions commitment to safeguarding marine biodiversity and ecosystems ensuring longterm resilience and sustainability unravelling the roles of microbes in sponge adaptation holds broader societal implications including improved ecosystem management conservation strategies and the development of early warning systems for monitoring environmental stress while previous studies have explored microbial associations in sponges under stressful conditions the specific focus on the adaptation of blue icing sponges to heat stress and their potential as early indicators remains unexplored the interdisciplinary nature of the project combining molecular biology omics studies metagenomics and metatranscriptomics ecology and bioinformatics promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing across disciplines economically and technologically identifying microbial indicators of environmental stress can facilitate the establishment of early warning systems and monitoring protocols leading to more efficient conservation efforts and reduced costs associated with ecosystem degradation societally the outcomes of this research can influence policies and decisionmaking related to marine conservation and climate change mitigation the project will also support professional development through knowledge dissemination and research publication
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thermospin 3d platform for skyrmion motion
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the overall power consumption of information technology accounts for almost 10 of the global energy demands and it is predicted to reach 20 in 2030 as a result we need new ways to store and compute data utilizing more efficient and environmentally cleaner alternatives to current technologies and the eu should be leading this transformation the development of a lowpower nonvolatile memory is one of the most soughtafter technologies and racetrack memories based on topological magnetic skyrmions are one of the most promising candidates there are however several drawbacks for spintronic devices based on skyrmions their trajectories under currents are nontrivial the thermal contribution to skyrmion motion is yet to be well understood and fully electrical detection of skyrmions is challenging due to the small contribution of the topology to the hall effect in 3dsky i propose to take advantage of stateoftheart 3d nanopatterning to obtain fine control over the energy landscape for the motion of skyrmions in 3d racetracks for this i will exploit the precise and unique tuning of thermal and geometrical properties that 3d devices enable to decouple the nanostructure from the substrate opening the possibility to use much higher temperature gradients to tackle the main drawbacks of skyrmion racetrack memories in short in 3dsky i aim to create a platform for skyrmion motion based on 3d nanodevices focusing on the impact of temperature on their dynamics nucleation and properties this will provide the fundamental knowledge needed to understand thermaldriven skyrmion motion in different systems including the different driving forces in play furthermore i will tackle the current challenges in reliable nucleation and electrical detection of skyrmions taking advantage of the singular properties of 3d nanostructures for the creation of defects and efficient heating
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delivering clean affordable and safe nuclear energy with the compact molten salt reactor
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seaborg proposes a novel type of nuclear reactor called the compact molten salt reactor cmsr our ambition is to use the csmr to complement and not substitute other sustainable energy sources like renewables to accelerate the global decarbonization processthe cmsr works according to different principles than the existing nuclear power plants it is safe by design by the physics of nature cannot melt down or explode and reduces radioactive waste the goal is to recycle spent fuel waste to reduce footprint and storage the cmsr emits no greenhouse gases while operating and has the lowest resource use concrete glass steel fuel of all other energy sources including renewables the cmsr outcompetes fossil fuels on free market terms the levelized cost of electricity is about 50 the one of coal and 70 the one of gasseaborg is the largest nuclear reactor startup outside of north america and it has patented technologies prestigious partners and pilot customers
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mobilising investments for protecting and restoring biodiversity by harnessing innovative financial solutions and advanced geospatial analytics
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biodiversity protection and restoration are critical for maintaining the ecological balance and ensuring the planets sustainability in the absence of sustainable management and protection of natural resources the negative impacts of climate change and other environmental issues will only increase private investment can be a critical tool that has the potential to play a transformative role in financing conservation and restoration efforts as public financing alone may be insufficient to address the scale of these challenges by activating innovative sustainable finance solutions and incorporating technological advances within the field of geospatial analytics the project can attract private investment in a way that benefits the environment and secures investors confidencebiocapital project is going to develop and implement an interdisciplinary research and innovation endeavour by combining actions in the three fields of i biodiversity protection and restoration ii biodiversityfriendly financing mechanisms and iii advanced space technology the implementation will involve three key steps to leverage innovation first biocapital will analyse understand and learn from ucs second it will elaborate monitor and demonstrate through ucs finally it will codevelop implement and amplify back to the ucs biocapital will engage stakeholders through iterative processes in order to reach shared views on the aforementioned three stages and how they can be effectively combined to increase financial flows for biodiversity protection restoration and sustainable utilisation
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engineering viral vectors for highthroughput crispr genetic screens in plants
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tools based on crisprcas systems hold great potential both for fundamental plant genetics and precision crop breeding unlike traditional mutagenic approaches crisprcas systems allow for the simultaneous delivery of thousands of unique guide rnas enabling the generation of collections of higherorder mutants for rapid functional screens and the discovery of genetic interactions however crispr technology suffers from a transformation bottleneck relatively few crop genotypes can be transformed and often only a handful of mutant lines can be produced in virusinduced genome editing vige plant viruses are engineered to deliver grnas into cells such a capability is highly attractive for crispr knockout ko screens as it could simplify the delivery and generate large populations of mutant lines in a broader range of crop genotypes however the application of vige for crispr ko screens is hampered by the lack of a proper viralbased multiplex grna delivery vector my host lab has pioneered the development of crispr ko screens in plants and in viscreen i will combine this knowledge with my expertise on vige to scale up crisprcasmediated manipulation of plant genomes the main objectives of my project are i to develop barley stripe mosaic virus bsmv for highthroughput crispr screens in wheat and maize and ii to engineer and validate a set of viral vectors for vige in soybean the viral vectorbased highthroughput editing systems developed in viscreen will expand crispr screens in a wider variety of crops and allow to test fundamental biological questions that are limited by functional redundancy overall this innovative approach will make me a welltrained academic researcher with the capabilities to develop a professional career within the plant genome editing field
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mesoscopic understanding of supported catalysts with overlapping electric double layers
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a defossilized global energy ecosystem hinges on efficient conversion between renewable electrical energy and chemical energy stored in molecules this conversion requires precious catalysts to drive relevant reactions at practical rates many catalysts are employed in the form of nanoparticles np dispersed on support materials all relevant reactions occur in a nanoscale region at the interface between the solid catalyst and an electrolyte solution ie an electric double layer edlour current knowledge of edl is essentially limited to planar electrodes with a single edl whereas supported np catalysts snpc exhibit radically different edl characteristics featuring overlap of individual edls around the nps and the adjacent support material this knowledge gap concerning crucial local reaction conditions within the edl prevents effectively transferring knowledge obtained at planar electrodes to performance improvements of snpcmesocat aims at launching the mesoscopic 1100 nm science of overlapping edls in snpc and unravelling the influence of overlapping edls on structureactivity relationship of snpc mesocat will address three foundational questions in electrocatalysis of snpc using theoretical methods in an interaction loop with experimentalists first how are the overlapping edls formed under realistic conditions this will be studied using a unique theoretical approach for mesoscale edls with both quantum mechanical electrons and classical electrolyte particles treated on equal footing second how do overlapping edls influence elementary electron transfer kinetics this will be unravelled using a model hamiltonian for protoncoupled electron transfer considering various edl effects third how do overlapping edls influence the overall structureactivity relationship this will lay the groundwork for transformative advancements in electrochemical energy conversion via regulating the mesoscale edl effects
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european higher education institutions network for climate and atmospheric sciences
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the eastern mediterranean and middle east emme region faces rapid population growth currently about 400 million inhabitants as well as political and socioeconomic instabilities these challenges experienced by a part of the world that is already hot and arid are exacerbated by droughts and the extreme weather conditions associated with rapid climate change extremes of temperature in combination with increasing air pollution and windblown desert dust could in the near future lead to intolerable conditions ultimately compromising human habitability and promoting migration since climate change and air quality share many common sources it appears logical to focus on the development of amelioration strategies that combine the goals of limiting climate change and reducing air pollution it has been estimated that mankind may have a relatively smalltime window up to the middle of the century in which to implement solutions to these challenges particularly as far as climate change is concerned edu4climate will engage advanced partners from france austria germany finland to strengthen the scientific excellence of higher education institutions heis from twin islands of widening countries greece cyprus with a view to establish a regional hub of knowledge in air pollution and climate change research and innovative solutions engaging their respective surrounding ecosystems from the quadruple helix in addressing these societal challenges over the wider emme edu4climate will enhance local regional and international clusters led by its consortium with a view to build the foundation of an inclusive european universities alliance made of advanced and widening heis in climate atmospheric sciences to optimally support the current eu green deal ambition and its regional challenges train and educate the next generation of researchers and innovators to achieve the eu longterm 2050 climateneutrality objectives
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development of a toolbox to improve preparedness strategies on surveillance in humananimal interface and countermeasures to reduce recurrent ebola impacts
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the recent outbreak of ebola virus ebov in particular the ebov sudan strain is a major cause for concern as there are currently no available vaccines and treatments for this fatal disease moreover surveillance measures are suboptimal and the social response to viral outbreaks hindered by limited acceptance of countermeasures the ebola preptbox consortium aims to make significant strides in developing essential tools and strategies for effective surveillance response and control of ebola outbreaks fostering a safer and resilient futureour objective is to build a toolbox permitting earliest ebola outbreak containment a spatiotemporal model utilizing environmental animal reservoir socioeconomic and human movement data will be developed enabling prediction of future outbreaks the sensitivity of current diagnostics will be improved through innovative viral capture techniques ebov exposure and immune response will be tested from humananimal interface samples from the republic of congo roc democratic republic of congo drc and uganda new treatments for the ebov sudan strain will be developed by testing for broadspectrum activity of the ebov antizaire equine polyclonal antibody further development of mosaic antigens composed of several filovirus strains incl ebov will create new tools for broadspectrum vaccine and therapeutic development conductance of knowledge attitude and practice kap studies gap analysis and targeted trainings in roc drc and uganda will improve population acceptance for future ebov outbreak interventions the training of african researchers by the consortium will increase local skills and competencesebola preptbox is an interdisciplinary and complementary consortium including partners from the congo basin fcrmroc inrbrdc uvriiaviuganda prof jj muyemb ebola discoverer 1976 and partners from europe fabentech and bacflycnrsfrance imas12spain and the support of g kobinger gnlus
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determining impact of viruses on biogeochemical processes in soil
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microorganisms have a central role in soil biogeochemical processes essential functions include nutrient cycling controlling greenhouse gas fluxes and supporting crop productivity soil is one of the most diverse habitats in the biosphere high throughput sequencing has enabled characterisation of microbial communities and determination of drivers such as climate and land use are well underway however we are only beginning to recognise the scale of viral diversity in soil and importantly the impacts of virushost interactions on key soil biogeochemical cycles and subsequent functional consequences on ecosystems are unknown viruses have a range of life strategies including infection and lysis of host cells or integration followed by lysis facilitating horizontal transfer of genes and augmentation of function when a host is lysed cell contents are released into the labile organic matter pool in marine systems 40 of prokaryotes are lysed per day releasing 150 gt carbon per annum however there is a paucity of information about the impact of topdown control by viruses on soil populations nor the scale of the viral shunt of nutrients it is likely that viruses have a major impact on microbial diversity and nutrient cycling with consequences for ecosystem processes here we propose a research programme that not only aims to characterise active viral communities in situ but advances the stateoftheart by identifying actual impacts of viruses on selected key biogeochemical processes specifically using a series of soil microcosm incubations utilising 13c stable isotope analysis high throughput metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches in combination with measurements of soil n and c fluxes we will characterise for the first time active viruses together with direct measurements of their impact on biogeochemical cycles
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strengthening ethics and responsible conduct of clinical trials in east and subsaharan africa
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the increased number of clinical trials taking place in africa as well as the complexity of clinical trials designs require that the countries have the regulatory capacity to review monitor and utilize data generated from the research research ethics committeesinstitutional review boards institutional animal care and use committees and national regulatory agencies nras are required to be abreast with the evolving landscape thus require continuous capacity building as well as have platforms to share clinical trials information with both the public and private sector the 11th annual national research ethics conference held in 2021 in uganda highlighted challenges in the low and middle income countries for research ethics and open science specifically the lack of infrastructure for open data sharing and fair data management specifically i lack of the national and regional guidelines and codes of conduct for scientific integrity ii limited training and education in responsible conduct of research and pharmacovigilance this proposal focuses on strengthening ethics and responsible conduct of clinical trials in east and subsaharan africa project through the establishment of a research ethics and integrity framework open data access framework for clinical trials elearning platform for the good research regulatory research practice course and establishing research ethics committees in national regional hospitals the consortium will leverage on the legal establishment of the institutions collaborative efforts with the partner institutions east african health research commission eahrc african vaccine regulatory forum avaref having a robust regulatory system encompassing research integrity and open science will ensure that clinical trials is conducted to the highest ethical standards and in compliance with existing polices and laws hence protection of safety rights and welfare of the individual participants community researcher and sponsors
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network fairness a novel complex network approach for tackling inequalities in society and algorithms
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social inequalities are on the rise and will have devastating impacts on education healthcare economiesand societies for many generations to come structural barriers to equality despite being complex and dynamicare poorly understood through the lens of complex evolving social networks more crucially withthe rise of ai and machinelearning algorithms it is extremely important to detect forecast and mitigatethose inequalities in a systematic manner in order to avoid unintentional algorithmic consequencesa network fairness framework is proposed premised on topological and temporal features of social interactionsthat shape the formation and evolution of inequalities these features include 1 people havemultiple and correlated attributes that determine how they identify with groups and interact with others2 people belong to a variety of social groups with different sizes hierarchies and historical precedentsand 3 interactions between people evolve over time in a hybrid space of society and algorithmsto this end i will develop a suite of dynamical complex network models of inequality that are driven bysocial theories eg homophily intersectionality consolidation and calibrated and evaluated with big dataand network experiments this will allow us for the first time to investigate inequalities that arise fromnetworkbased algorithms in a systematic manner more importantly i will devise a novel methodology ofnetwork intervention a set of datadriven principles for tackling network inequalities in a broad range ofapplications finally based on the models developed in this project i will create a cuttingedge interactivesoftware netfair to visualize and forecast the evolution of inequalities and implement various fairnesscriteria the software will contribute towards bridging the gap between research and policy applicationsin academia and industry
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deciphering the mechanistic basis of minimal residual disease and treatment resistance in acute myeloid leukemia
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acute myeloid leukemia aml is one of the most aggressive and deadliest cancers with frequent relapse although initial therapies eliminate most aml blast cells rare cells with leukemic stem cell lsc activity can persist and likely generate minimal residual disease mrd to reinitiate aml thus targeting resistant lscs during mrd might provide a unique opportunity to prolong remission and prevent relapse however because it is notoriously challenging to identify rare lscs present within the vast number of normal blood cells during mrd the phenotype plasticity function and mechanisms of lscs in resistance and relapse remains poorly understoodprevious study from the trumpp laboratory demonstrated a convergent pathway via hypermethylationn to drive initiation and progression of aml with idh mutations or bcat1 overexpression however the common and distinct mechanisms driving resistance in the two aml subtypes has not been explored despite the observation that bcat1 expression is upregulated in lscs and upon relapsethus in this proposal i will first perform systematic phenotypic characterization of idhmutbcat1hi aml cells to develop a highquality lsc enrichment strategy subsequently i will combine cutting edge singlecell multiomics technologies to deeply characterize the mutational transcriptomic and epigenetic dynamics of individual lscs at diagnosis mrdpositive remission and relapse state of the art analytical methods will be used to integrate these data to dissect idhmutbcat1hi aml with unprecedented resolution examine the contribution of lscs in mrd and identify molecular regulators mediating lsc survival and resistance functional validation using pharmacological intervention genomic editing in cell lines and patientderived xenograft models will be performed to uncover causal relationships of the identified regulators overall this work will lead to better mechanistic insight of mrd and therapy resistance in idhmutbcat1hi aml
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novel bioinspired energy harvesting and storage allinone platform for implantable devices based on peptide nanotechnology
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over the past decades implantable biomedical systems have greatly advanced offering previously unavailable therapeutic options for millions of patients worldwide such applications most commonly utilize conventional lithiumion batteries as the energy source however while readily providing adequate energetic performance lithiumion batteries are inflexible rigid may contain toxic substances and require periodic replacement surgeries due to their limited capacity posing both health risks and an economical burden here aiming to address these issues we will develop pepzopower a biocompatible energy harvesting and storage device designed for biomedical applications energy harvesting will be facilitated by highlyefficient piezoelectric peptidebased assemblies allowing to harvest mechanical energy from the human body and convert it into electric energy the harvested mechanical energy will be stored by a biocompatible peptidebased supercapacitor thus giving rise to an autonomous miniaturized controllable and biocompatible power device with adequate performance and mechanical properties this ambitious goal will be achieved by utilizing our patentprotected piezoelectric and energy storage peptidebased supramolecular structures to be incorporated into an integrated device the performance of each layer will be optimized and the integrated pepzopower device will be validated to verify efficient incorporation of the two components we envision the breakthrough pepzopower technology to serve as the basis for the next leap toward biocompatible soft miniaturized lightweight and morphologicallycontrollable implantable devices this will pave the way towards postproject commercial exploitation of the pepzopower system which will be further developed by a spinoff company to be integrated into implantable devices ranging from cardiac defibrillators to spinal cords stimulators opening a huge market opportunity for this radically new technology
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targeted nanohorns for lithium neutron capture therapy
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cancer accounted for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020 half of all cancer patients are treated with radiation therapy either alone or combined with other therapeutic modalities mainly surgery and chemotherapy one of the first concerns related to radiotherapy is the toxicity of healthy organs and tissues close to the tumour it is wellknown that radiation therapy not only kills cancerous cells that divide but also affects to the cells in division in healthy tissue neutron capture therapy nct is a form of radiotherapy that exploits the potential of some specific isotopes for cancer treatment the nuclear reaction that takes place when some isotopes are irradiated with neutrons produces lethal particles with path lengths that can limit the destructive effects to a single cell thus conferring high therapeutic precision to this form of radiotherapy for this therapy to be successful enough neutron active atoms must be delivered to the tumour site so a lethal capture reaction can take place however current benchmark pharmacologic agents are limited in their performance due to the low concentration of active species delivered in the tumour sites tarlit goes beyond the stateoftheart and presents an innovative approach that consists on the design of nanoparticles as carriers of enriched lithium compounds the possibility to deliver lithium nuclides into cancer cells and the fact that nuclear reactions of lithium resultant from neutron irradiation produce higher energetic particles that the current state of the art can significantly improve the efficiency of nct in the eradication of cancer cells and tumours
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innovative toolbox empowering effective cap governance towards eu ambitions
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the new delivery model established in regulation eu 21152021 entails significant changes to common agricultural policy cap governance with the introduction of strategic plans and new monitoring review and evaluation requirements the cap is expected to contribute significantly to the green deals ambitions securing the achievement of sustainability and resilience goals for the eus agrifood systems innovative governance models are essential to enable resultbased policymaking to deliver the best policy pathways to facilitate the green transition tools4cap will 1 support the implementation of national strategic plans 20232027 and 2 lay the foundations for sound preparation of post2027 strategic plans accordingly tools4cap establishes a flexible and participatory coordination support action designed to boost learning exchange processes and adoption of innovative solutions and good practices for the design monitoring and evaluation of cap strategic plans tools4caps methods and tools will cover three key areas 1 quantitative modelling tools for exante and expost evaluations 2 participatory and multigovernance decision tools and 3 novel data and monitoring solutions the project will deliver a comprehensive inventory of methods and tools used in the 27 member states methodological guidelines on innovative solutions and a handbook of good practices results will be integrated in a capacity building toolkit designed to enhance sciencepolicy interfaces tools4cap utilises a stakeholder engagement platform to boost bottomup adaptation of innovative methods and tools it will establish a replication lab to demonstrate their use in 10 member states and to promote their uptake across the eu27 the project will also set up a capacity building hub to help endusers ministries management authorities paying agencies other stakeholders reinforce their capacity to use innovative tools including models used by the european commission
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building the first automated causal discovery platform
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causal discovery is desperately needed in both science and the industry but it is largely inaccessible to nonexperts autocd proposes to create the first automated causal discovery software engine and explore its commercial exploitation autocd will largely boost the productivity of experts as well as allow the application of causal discovery with minimal expertise it will provide functionalities such as a induction of causal models and causal relations from data by automatically tuning the algorithmic causal discovery choices and their hyperparameters b inferences regarding the strength of causal effects and exploration of whatif scenarios of possible interventions such automation has only become recently possible due to research performed of the origin erc named causalpath we will work with two industrial partners namely gnosis data analysis and huawei to validate autocd on real data and problems gnosis commercializes the jadbio product which is a saas automl platform with obvious synergies to autocd it has an expressed interest in autocd for a potential licensing deal see letter of intent autocd parallels the development of automated machine learning automl libraries and platforms that is growing to a 14bil industry the project will create an mvp at trl 5 and a business plan to commercialize the product the research team 2 profs 1 phd student 1 scientific programmer have extensive collective experience not only inventing and designing novel causal discovery algorithms in addition the pi is also the cofounder of gnosis with extensive experience in creating deep tech automl products and commercializing them he will devote 70 of his research time to the project
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boosting efficiency and stability of tinlead perovskite photovoltaics with chemically smart device architectures
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perovskite photovoltaics offer a lowcost highefficiency solution to speed up the transition to netzero emissions in particular tinlead perovskite solar cells have ideal optical properties for peak performance however their largescale use is hampered by stability issues at perovskite surfaces ie oxidation vulnerable defects and chemical mismatch with ordinary charge transport layers in solar cells selfassembled monolayers sams are alternative transport layers that allow the manipulation of critical interface regions yet their use in tinlead perovskite photovoltaics remains in its infancy careful choice of sam functional groups molecular structure and redox chemistry are key to tackle perovskite limitationssamper will develop ultrastable and highly efficient tinlead perovskite solar cells by designing sam device architectures with interfacespecific smart functionality defectpassivating perovskitehealing and oxidant scavenging sam moieties will afford the targeted properties as will be demonstrated via structural chemical and electrical interface analysis top sambased devices will be tested outdoors to demonstrate their excellent durability and efficiency comprising the first example of tinlead perovskite solar cell testing under realworld conditions and paving the way towards their commercial deploymentsamper contributes towards clean energy in alignment with european green deal decarbonisation targets the project will further the researchers excellence and career prospects via training on cuttingedge multidisciplinary research knowledge transfer with the supervisor will foster the researchers scientific independence via key management skills the secondment for outdoor tests will facilitate international synergies project outputs and datasets will adhere to fair principles aiding the benchmarking of the technologies herein various activities will disseminate these results and foster stem vocations among local youth
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catalysing investment into catalan bioeconomy via onestopshop accelerator
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catalonia offers huge potential to become a showcase for bioeconomy innovation and deployment in europe the region is a hub of hightech manufacturing research and industry vehicles chemical health has extensive forests 60 coverage agricultural production and fisheries and it is backed by strong institutional support for the bioeconomy with the catalan bioeconomy strategy launched in september 2021however circular bioeconomy projects involve a wide range of stakeholders complex business models and demand strong technical and legal knowledge from developers investors regulators and local planning authorities for these reasons many viable bioeconomy projects are overlooked and are unable to raise sufficient investmentbioboost aims to accelerate the growth of the bioeconomy in catalonia by delivering project development assistance pda services that address the specific and systematic barriers preventing bioeconomy projects from reaching the investment stage pda services will be delivered via a onestopshop office in barcelona the accelerator the needs of bioeconomy projects will be assessed project development plans developed and a package of pda services offered the office will also work together with the investment community and public institutions to prepare these stakeholders for investment and construction phases pda services will be delivered by a powerful consortium of sector specialist that bring together all the core components of successful project development 1 facilitation and coordination symbiosis
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regular and exotic behavior in hamiltonian and lowdimensional dynamical systems
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rexhalodyn aims at understanding some of the regular and exotic features of hamiltonian systems circle maps and generalized interval exchange transformations or giets hamiltonians provide a powerful description of classical mechanics phenomena circle maps and giets are archetypal examples that illustrate fundamental concepts and phenomena within dynamical systems moreover the latter two offer simplified models that capture essential features of more complex systems eg they appear naturally as poincar maps of locally hamiltonian flows on compact surfaces and thus are closely related to hamiltonians in this context within this framework the words regular and exotic do not have a precise mathematical meaning however we use them here to stand for features in each system that are either wellbehaved regular such as the existence of stable quasiperiodic motions in hamiltonian and rigidity phenomena in circle maps and giets and for features that are illbehaved exotic such as sensitive dependence to initial conditions in hamiltonians or existence of singular invariant measures in circle maps and giets understanding these complementary features deepens our understanding of the systems their properties and the underlying mathematical structures that give rise to a rich spectrum of behaviorsthe main objectives of this project areprove the existence of lowerdimensional invariant tori associated with a resonant torus with any number of resonances for general classes eg convex of nearintegrable hamiltoniansobtain precise estimates for the hausdorff dimension of the unique invariant probability measure of multicritical circle maps with irrational rotation number of bounded typeobtain rigidity results for multicritical circle maps with irrational rotation numberthe research is planned for two years and takes as a basis many of the results and methods developed by the applicant in his previous works
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rna and nanotechnology enable wider accessibility to stem cell transplantation
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every year more than 50 000 patients receive blood stem cell transplantation as a curative treatment for diseases such as leukemia immune deficiencies and sickle cell anemia for a successful transplantation a matching donor who is willing to donate blood stem cells needs to be found worldwide around 30 patients in need of a transplantation cannot find a suitable donor umbilical cord blood ucb is an easily obtainable alternative source of blood stem cells but unfortunately most ucb units do not contain enough stem cells for a successful transplantation which is why ucb is currently only rarely used in the clinic within the erc project unexpected we have identified several small rna biomolecules that can be used to expand engraftable blood stem cells efficiently however it is difficult to safely deliver molecules to blood stem cells and currently used methods are highly toxic we recently applied cutting edge nanotechnology to solve this longstanding problem in stem cell biology we established nanostraws as an efficient and gentle alternative delivery method with which both cell function and viability are fully maintained our method that allows efficient nontoxic delivery of blood stem cellexpanding rnas will allow us to greatly increase the number of ucb units that can be used for transplantations our approach could provide a lifesaving treatment option for the thousands of patients yearly with malignant or inherited diseases that currently are ineligible for a stem cell transplantation procedure
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adaptive fire testing a new foundation stone for fire safety
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the current fire safety paradigm is based on a set of standardized tests which have been developed as part of a prescriptive design framework and do not provide indepth understanding of construction products fire performance the resulting incomplete fire performance characterization hampers the much needed innovation in the built environment the current fire safety paradigm also places tremendous emphasis on the expertise of controlling bodies ahj making them responsible both for the specification of detailed prescriptive rules and for the acceptance of performance based designs this is unsustainable in the face of innovationafiretest strives to induce a paradigm shift in fire safety science and engineering fsse the core of afiretest is the development of adaptive fire testing whereby optimum fire tests are determined from the infinite number of possible test specifications through the maximum expected net information gain value of information voi this will be developed using modern glazing and load bearing glass as innovative case study resulting in breakthroughs in fire performance understanding secondly a framework for advanced grey surrogate modelling will be developed combining the pattern identification strengths of machine learning with fundamental fsse constraints this will introduce a powerful new tool to fsse and enable the voi optimization a grey modelling approach will also be developed for quasiinstantaneous building specific risk evaluations allowing a new approach to the ahj acceptance of fire designs the future operationalization of the new framework for fire design acceptance will require large followup investments thus stakeholder buyin is crucial therefore afiretest will develop a methodology for the costbenefit evaluation of fire safety frameworks for the first time fire safety approaches will be evaluated from the perspective of law and economics laying the groundwork for an entirely new field of study
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european action for the diagnosis of early nonclinical type 1 diabetes for disease interception
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edent1fi is a unique and timely project building and operationalising an open platform for general population screening of childrenadolescents for type 1 diabetes t1d throughout europe the case is compelling t1d is a common chronic disease affecting 1 in 300 children or adolescents decades of european research have signposted the stepwise nature of t1d development and generated tools for early diagnosis monitoring and disease modification edent1fi now positions europe as the leader in early interception of t1d our goals are to identify individuals at earlier preclinical stages dramatically reducing clinical severity at t1d diagnosis and providing the opportunity for interventions with disease modifying therapies to delay or prevent clinical t1d spurred by the success of our collaborations in model european childhood screening activities and clinical networks in gppad and innodia edent1fi will establish harmonised islet autoantibody surveillance programmes to screen 200000 childrenadolescents across europe assess the psychosocial medical and economic impact of screening in diverse european health systemspopulations including underserved families use state of the art metabolic sensors and biomarkers to optimise monitoring schedules for earlystage preclinical t1d aligned to maximising compliance and identifying disease progression strata design smart trials to expedite evaluation of disease modifying therapies and inform and educate the public healthcare professionals and regulatory authorities of the new paradigms in t1d diagnosis and care to achieve this edent1fi assembles academic clinical and industry expertise in screening clinical care biomarkers machine learning population outreach ethics regulatory affairs and policy to accelerate evidencebased early t1d screening into regular healthcare in europe the success of these activities will promote early diagnosis and prevention pathways for other chronic childhood diseases
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a spinwave ising machine
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the swim project will tackle a critical challenge for the emerging field of ising machines ims the development of miniaturized lowpower and lowcost ims with high computational power commercial feasibility and speed beyond classical vonneuman and cmosbased solutions swim will achieve this through exploiting exceptionally slow propagating spinwaves and using offtheshelf powerefficient microwave electronic components and circuits in an entirely novel architecture of yigfilmbased ising machines im with potential performance many orders of magnitude beyond the stateoftheart the projects objectives are to explore the possibilities of using spinwaves and microwave signals to construct multiphysical timemultiplexed ims and study and determine the spinwave phenomena and electronic design techniques needed to improve targeted parameters power consumption ising spin capacity physical size and speed performance the objectives will be achieved through a multidisciplinary approach involving classical and modern methods theoretical magnetostatic description of propagating spinwaves micromagnetic simulation methods and electronic circuit design theory will be used for the swim design brillouin light scattering spectroscopy and microwave measurement techniques will be used for the analysis of the results and further improvement
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powering wearable devices by human heat with highly efficient flexible bioinspired generators
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selfpowered wearable electronic devices will be key technologies for future portable electronic systems in the internet of everything ioe however their potential is limited because of their need for batteries which are bulky heavy lack the flexibility to be adapted to the human body and require frequent recharging or replacement in that context flexible thermoelectric generators tegs that capture the bodys heat and convert it into electrical energy are a potentially promising and sustainable alternative nevertheless commercial tegs are produced on rigid substrates so they cannot adapt to the human body the current solution proposed is to produce them on flexible polymeric substrates which unfortunately have low thermal conductivity the active powergenerating layer must be very thick and it is not efficient enough additional problems are no good electrical and thermal contacts and the nonavailability of commercial low input power dcdc converters powerbyu seeks to merge four scientifically disruptive concepts to achieve the technological breakthrough of getting flexible and efficient enough flexible tegs 1 generate not yet existing bioinspired nanoengineered flexible polymeric substrates with very high thermal conductivities in the outofplane direction 2 generate a bioinspired patterning of the polymer surface to drive the thermal flow from perpendicular to parallel to the energy generation layer this is important because then the important length to avoid thermalization is not thickness but lateral size 3 produce worldrecord efficient quasi2d thermoelectric layers generated by a unique deposition tool and 4 new solutions to the commercial dcdc converter by assembling all the previous concepts i expect a novel high efficiency flexible teg able to generate tens mwcm2 enough to selfpowering wearable devices additional fields of application could be thermal management in buildings textiles packaging
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valorising and balancing the ecosystem service benefits offered by legumes and legumebased cropped systems
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the legumes will ensure 1 the uptake of best practices in agrobiodiverse legumebased cropped systems 2 the uptake of methodologies and tools to quantify and balance the environmental and economic ecosystem service es benefits provided by legumes 3 that the es benefits and cost offered by legumes are quantified across scales from field farm regional national and global levels and 4 es will be assessed to identify those conditions which are able to meet the eu targets to decrease agrichemical inputs and losses combat climate change reverse biodiversity loss and ensure the best nutritional provisioning to achieve this legumes offers a multidisciplinary consortium comprising 22 partners from 12 eu and third countries uk ch and including 7 academic institutions 6 research and technology organizations 5 smes or microsmes 2 nongovernmental organisations and 2 large commercial companies the individuals comprising legumes offer skills which include agriculturalcrop and environment es monitoring life cycle assessment economic and socioeconomicmodelling socialscience euagricultural and environmental policy and law plus decision support systems the legumes research and innovation strategy centres on the use of a multiactor actionresearch approach that is where legumefacing stakeholders and especially producers though all value chains actors can operate collaborate and reflect critically on the measured es benefits and costs of legumebased cropped systems including legumes use in marginal lands so that an optimal balance of es can be achieved with success locally and globally to help achieve this legumes also centres activities on a suite of 25 innovative legumebased pilot studies which use a wide range of legume species and types plus different cropping approaches and linked value chains spanning the pedoclimatic regions of europe
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human collaboration with ai agents in national health governance organizational circumstances under which data analysts and medical experts follow or deviate from ai
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this project will study a multisited ethnography of a currently evolving revolution in global health systems big dataaiinformed national health governance with health data being considered countries future oil public and scholarly concerns about algorithmic ethics rise research has long shown that datasets in ai reproduce social biases discriminate and limit personal autonomy this literature however has merely focused on ai design and institutional frameworks examining the subject through legal technocratic and philosophical perspectives whilst overlooking the sociocultural context in which big data and ai systems are embedded most particularly organizations in which human agents collaborate with ai this is problematic as frameworks for ethical ai currently consider human oversight crucial assuming that humans will correct or resist ai when needed while empirical evidence for this assumption is extremely thin very little is known about when and why people intervene or resist ai research done consists of single mostly western studies making it impossible to generalize findings the innovative force of our research is fourfold 1 to empirically analyze decisive moments in which dataanalysts follow or deviate ai moments deeply impacting national health policies and individual human lives 2 to do research in six national settings with various governmental frameworks and in different organizational contexts enabling us to contrast findings eventually leading to a theory on the contextual organizational factors underlying ethical ai 3 to use innovative anthropological methods of futurescenarioing which will enrich the anthropological discipline by developing and finetuning futurefocused research 4 the research connects anthropological insights with the expertise of aidevelopers and partners with relevant health decisionmakers and policyinstitutions allowing to both analyze and contribute to fair ai
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detection of chronic toxicity of xenobiotes using pandoraseq of small nonconding rnas
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the xenoseq project aims to develop tools for detecting epigenetic changes caused by chronic toxicity of chemicals by sequencing small noncoding rna sncrna profiles xenobiotics including herbicides like glyphosate have raised concerns regarding their possible effects on human and environmental health but chronic and especially transgenerational effects are often ignored due to limitations of time and resources this research project seeks to study whether the newly developed pandoraseq unveils subtle changes in sncrna profiles that may serve as early indicators of chronic toxicity pandoraseq utilizes two rna modifying enzymes t4 polynucleotide kinase and alkb demethylase to extend the repertoire of detected sncrnas to an unprecedented world comprehensive sequencing of sncrna profiles may reveal chronic toxicity associated with xenobiotic exposure here we aim to 1 characterize baseline sncrna profiles in healthy systems offering a reference point for comparison 2 expose biological systems to potentially toxic agents and track changes in sncrna expression using pandoraseq and 3 detect early indicators of chronic toxicity allowing the development of a complementary tool for the assessment of chemical toxicity pandoraseqs precision and sensitivity make it a promising tool for studying epigenetic regulation which may cause chronic and transgenerational diseases as this msca project is a first effort to use sncrna for chronic ecotoxicology we open the research field by using the fruit fly as a model organism but the technique can be easily adapted for studying other relevant organisms such as honey bees and mammals
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researcher night bringing researchers into the light
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with this project we want to bring the figure of the researcher and his work closer to the entire society for this reason we organize events in diferent areas of the country we carry out actions in educational centers and we will organize activities in rural areas disadvantaged neighborhoods activities for people with special needs and specific activities of interest for elderly people we want to include all areas and audiences of society to do this we present this project between 2 coordinators and an associated entity that complement each other we include an entity with great experience in this project and actions to disseminate and bring science closer to society in general and an entity with a national dimension which covers the field of culture research and education throughout the country all this is complemented by the participation of an associate the spanish association against cancer that combines research and dissemination at the national level
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delox air continuous air biodecontamination compatible with human presence
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we learned from the pandemic that air quality is essential for peoples health current technologies did not effectively manage infectious diseases propagated by aerosol suspensions of pathogens leading to the need for social distancing and dramatically impacting the economy and peoples mental health the challenge is not only cleaning the space but keeping people safe and free from microorganisms exposure without harming them with harsh chemicals delox air solution will change the paradigm of biodecontamination of airborne pathogens in occupied spaces a disruptive factor in the market based on our proprietary dryvhp delox air can kill microorganisms in the air with 9999 efficacy ensuring 100 human safety and consuming up to 20 less energy than current systems delox air can be readily integrated into any hvac systems for continuous air purificationdelox air is part of the air purification market we are targeting the commercial applications that capture the largest market 70 in 2021 accounting for 150 b by 2030 we will first target settings characterised by high occupancy density presence of vulnerable individuals and elevated risk of pathogen spread such as nursing homes and hospitals office spaces and educational and governmental buildingsour business model b2b is based on indirect sales through distributors already working in the sector that will easily reach hvac consultantscontractors customer designing and delivering a turnkey hvac system for the enduser we request eic funding to complete the development of our system and validate it in three different types of closed environments our solution addresses the eic challenge of aerosol decontamination for pandemic management satisfying the unmet need of facilitating social interaction and preventing disease spread
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policy recommendations to maximise the beneficial impact of unexplored mobilities in and beyond the european union
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premiumeu will develop a regional policy dashboard rpd for policy makers in vulnerable regions to help them formulate policies to use the potential of mobility to enhance regional inclusive growth and wellbeing it is an evidence based tool where policy makers are offered tailormade selections of policies that reflect the mobility and regional development profiles of their region the dashboard contains three modules that contain state of the art euwide regional qualitative and quantitative information a mobility module mm a regional development effects module rdem and a policy module pm the mm covers both past current and future trends forecastsscenarios in constructing past and current patterns and trends innovative methodologies will be used that combines traditional migration statistics with novel geocoded data from social media usage moreover mobility flows will tae into account the human capital dimension which allows to study brain drain and brain gain processes and mismatches on the labour market such as evidenced in labour exploitation of migrant workers filling the lowest sports of the labour marketa typology of regions based on the mix of different types of mobility will be developed the rdem uses a multidimensional definition of development covering not only economic but also social and cultural aspects a typology of regions based on the multidimensional set of regional development indicators will also be developed causal modeling of mobility and regional development will point at the key drivers of mobility relevant for development and the reverse relation of the key regional determinants of inward and outward moves the pm will choose a palette of relevant policies for the user based on the regional profile in the mobilityregional development typology users will also be given the opportunity to feed their experiences into the rpd
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unveiling atomicscale elemental distribution of electrodeelectrolyte interfaces and interphase in batteries
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developing highenergydensity rechargeable battery technologies is essential to solve energy and environmental problems however its development is currently impeded by a poor understanding of elementary processes occurring at electrodeelectrolyte interfaces several longstanding issues such as short cycle life low coulombic efficiency and hazardous dendrite formation in batteries cannot be fundamentally solved due to the knowledge gap the bottleneck is that interfacial chemistry on the atomicscale is as yet unresolved owing to the lack of sufficiently suitable analytical capabilities i will address this gap using atom probe tomography coupled with a highly innovative cryogenic sample preparation and transfer platform to provide atomicscale insights into solid electrolyte interphase sei formed at the electrodeelectrolyte interface the key open questions to answer are i what is the composition and elemental distribution in a stable sei ii how do ions in the electrolytes affect sei formation iii how does stable sei inhibit dendrite formation my goal is to advance fundamental understanding of sei formation establish its structureproperty relationships and elucidate its interplay with other elementary processes occurring at electrodeelectrolyte interfaces in a lithium metal battery model system i will i reveal elemental distribution and compositional details of sei inunder different electrolytes and working conditions ii unveil compositional evolution of sei and the electrolytes during charging and discharging and iii interrogate their roles in dendrite formation in a half and full battery cell respectively these unique data will shed atomistic insights into how to tailor sei and electrodeelectrolyte interfaces to mitigate longstanding issues furthermore the novel cryogenic platform is not systemspecific and will be applicable for studying other liquid or solidstateelectrolyte battery technologies
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green technologies for 56g servicebased architectures
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the 6green project aims to conceive design and realize an innovative servicebased and holistic ecosystem able to extend the communication infrastructure into a sustainable interconnected greener endtoend intercompute system and promote energy efficiency across the whole 56g valuechainthe ultimate objective is to enable and to foster 56g networks and vertical applications reducing their carbon footprint by a factor of 10 or moreto achieve this objective the project will exploit and extend stateoftheart cloudnative technologies and the b5g servicebased architecture with new crossdomain enablers to1 boost the global ecosystem flexibility scalability and sustainability and 2 enable all the 56g stakeholders from the ones acting at the infrastructure and network platform to vertical industries reducing their carbon footprint by becoming integral parts of a winwin greeneconomy business and meeting a decarbonization service agreementthe 6green intentbased crossdomain interactions among stakeholders will allow achieving a tight proportionality between the timevarying and geographically distributed mobile workload produced by vertical applications and network slices and the energycarbon footprint induced to the 56g network and computing infrastructure continuum 6green will provide stakeholders with flexible and green artificial intelligence mechanisms that will allow propagating the environment impact to any players acting on virtual domains and triggering zerotouch operations according to customizable energy and carbonaware policies allowing to optimally use renewable energy sourcesthe project will also deliver three futureproof usecase applications that will provide a diverse awareness of the green capabilities of the 6green platform and that will demonstrate the potential 56g impact in enabling other vertical industry sectors to reach the carbon neutrality targeted by the european green deal
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digital twinning for personalized atrial fibrillation care
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the goal of the twincareaf project is to develop innovative core methodologies for accurate and realtime calibration of cardiovascular electrophysiological models and to support medical decisions in the context of atrial fibrillation and catheter ablation therapy planning the proposed approach will focus on the generation of digital twins of patient hearts calibrated through robust and efficient machine learning techniques and able to replicate measured clinical data such as electrocardiogram and electrogram recordings specifically physicsinformed andor deeplearning techniques will be extended and implemented within the context of anatomicallyaccurate and biophysicallydetailed cardiac electrophysiology to accelerate the solution of classical forward electrophysiological model and to solve inverse problems for identifying patientspecific physical and tissue properties of the heart additionally a robust methodology for verification validation and uncertainty quantification will be adopted to showcase the agreement between model predictions and empirical observations and to provide reliable estimates of confidence in the model predictions the developed approach will be used to predict atrial fibrillation progression and determine potential ablation sets for individual patients the predictions of the developed model will undergo testing through in vivo intraoperative clinical measurements to enhance easy flow robust analysis and interpretation of patientspecific data the novel realtime mathematical workflow for atrial fibrillation simulations will be integrated into a clinically viable platform these tasks will leverage leadingedge mathematical methodologies improve the observationtodiagnosis clinical process by efficiently handling patientspecific data and support therapy planning ultimately enabling a scalable translation to large population cohorts
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fullfield experimental and numerical investigation of novel fire resistant fibre reinforced concrete for tunnel lining
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the problem of tunnel fires is one of the most complex areas of fire research under fire concrete linings spall resulting in the collapse of the tunnel structure causing a significant scourge in the economy society and the environment in summary the design of tunnel concrete linings is based on thermal calculations which ignore spalling based on such calculations new types of more durable strong and hence denser concrete have been introduced on the market recently that are much more probable to spall due to their lower permeability to increase the permeability of the concrete and ultimately its fire resistance it is commonly suggested to add polypropylene fibres however these tend to decrease the strength of the concrete and potentially its durability in fire2c i propose a new type of fire resistant fibre reinforced concrete to improve on the tunnel linings performance and ultimately the postfire structural stability of the tunnel to enhance our understanding of the performance of the concrete on a multiscale level i will employ a holistic approach between stateoftheart numerical discrete element method and fullfield experimental methods advanced material and fire testing xray computed tomography pushing the existing boundaries of our scientific knowledge specifically i will study experimentally the effect of size distribution and orientation of the fibres on the strength and fireresistance of concrete linings by employing fullfield imaging techniques pre and postfire which has not been done before and finally i will create a novel dem model to predict the thermomechanical response of fibrereinforced concrete utilising for the first time quantitative 3d experimental measurements at different lengthscales to validate accurately the material response
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using deep learning to understand computations in neural circuits with connectomeconstrained mechanistic models
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advances in experimental techniques yield detailed wiring diagrams of neural circuits in modelsystems such as the drosophila melanogaster how can we leverage these complex connectomes together with targeted recordings and perturbations of neural activity to understand how neuronal populations perform computations underlying behavior achieving a mechanistic understanding will require models that are consistent with connectomes and biophysical mechanisms while also being capable of performing behaviorally relevant computations current models fail to address this need mechanistic models satisfy anatomical and biophysical constraints by design but we lack methods for optimizing them to perform tasks conversely deep learning models can be optimized to perform challenging tasks but fall short on mechanistic interpretabilityto address this challenge we will provide a machine learning framework that unifies mechanistic modeling and deep learning and will make it possible to algorithmically identify models that link biophysical mechanisms neural data and behavior we will use our approach to study two key neural computations in d melanogaster we will build largescale mechanistic models of the optic lobe and motor control circuits which are constrained by connectomes and physiological measurements and optimize them to solve specific computational tasks extracting behaviorally relevant information from the visual input and coordinating leg movements to achieve robust locomotion our methodology for building interpreting and updating these deep mechanistic models will be applicable to a wide range of neural circuits and behaviors it will serve as a powerful hypothesis generator for predicting neural tuning and optimizing experimental perturbations and will yield unprecedented insights into how connectivity shapes efficient neural computations in biological and artificial networks
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decision making methodologies for optimal design and operation of energy systems
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the central challenge in energy systems is to balance costefficiency environmental responsibility and living standards multiobjective optimization in such systems is critical for striking compromises among stakeholders and ensuring competitiveness and sustainability as energy systems face uncertainty volatility and environmental regulations holistic optimization becomes more criticalhowever three main challenges currently hinder energy system optimization complex models demanding substantial computational power a lack of holistic and robust approaches and the use of realtime data for proper operation and analysis although each of these challenges has been addressed individually no contribution was able to bring them all together in a consistent methodological framework this is the main objective of this fellowshipthis fellowship will be conducted at istuniversity of lisbon under the supervision of prof henrique matos and aims to bridge these gaps by integrating machine learning systems optimization uncertainty analysis and realtime operation it seeks to develop advanced surrogate generation techniques emphasize system integration and holistic analysis optimization under uncertainty and the use of realtime data for operation these methods will be applied to real industrial challenges in an industrial secondment this research project will develop methods and tools to address such challenges and contribute to a sustainable profitable and responsible european economy
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japan and europe network for neutrino and intensity frontier experimental research 3
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jennifer3 aims to continue further develop and finalize the research and communication activities started in 2015 within the jennifer project and currently being carried on by the jennifer2 mscarise project which will conclude in may 2025 the community forming the jennifer3 consortium is putting together three research programs at experimental facilities located in japan where very rare processes can be observed accelerator produced neutrinos t2k and hyperk collaborations cosmic neutrinos detection hyperk collaboration and a high luminosity electronpositron collider belle ii experiment at superkekb such programs use different approaches are sensitive to different messengers of the new physics world and are essential to complement the so called energy frontier investigation which is carried on at the lhc sinergy and knowledge sharing among them is the drive force of the jennifer3 project which on one hand fosters the collaboration of european scientists with the japanese research community while on the other hand promotes close collaboration among different european research groups around key technologies such as cloud computing and data network developments machine learning applications for data filtering and reconstruction photon detection solid state detectors particle beam monitors collaboration with private sector technology providers is also essential to reach the scientific objectives of the project all project members are also committed to disseminate and communicate their work to the scientific community and to the european society through various initiatives aiming to different targetscross fertilization between different research communities and approaches is the real added value to boost the project impact both in terms of scientific results and of researchers careers
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expanding immune cells and their tumor antigens during checkpoint immunotherapy
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cancer immunotherapy using immune checkpoint blockade icb has revolutionized the treatment of advancedstage cancers one of the major limitations of icb is that durable responses are observed only in a subset of patients and in some specific cancer types we recently analyzed tumor biopsies from breast cancer patients collected during icb and indeed observed only in a subset of patients that tumorinfiltrating tcells undergo rapid expansion when exposed to icb we characterized the gene expression programs underlying this expansion at singlecell level and realized that although these expanding tcells are the main executors of therapeutic response to icb several key questions regarding their function remain unanswered first we lack accurate knowledge about where in the heterogeneous tumor microenvironment tme and in which metabolic niches tcell expansion occurs secondly based on their tcr sequence we cannot predict upfront which tcells will expand or rather act as bystander tcells nor can we say to which tumor antigens these expanding tcells are directed thirdly it is not known which molecular events underlie the generation of the tumor antigens regulating tcell expansion fourthly we also observed an expansion of the bcell repertoire and were left with similar questions as for expanding tcells for instance where are expanding bcells located how do they interact with expanding tcells and do they perhaps even recognize the same tumor antigens in expand it we will use several innovative singlecell technologies to provide answers to these questions these insights will much better characterize the mechanisms driving response to icb but will also provide important answers on how to sensitize patients not responding to icb our findings could also contribute to the discovery of highavidity antitumor tcrs that can be used in novel tcrbased cellular therapies
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reconstructing social memory through moroccan womens writing female prison literature between the 1970s and the 2010s
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the project proposes an innovative analysis of writings by women in morocco published between the 1970s and the 2010s that deal with prison experiences during the period known as the years of lead c 19651999 the projects general objective is to analyse how moroccan womens prison writings contribute to incorporating womens participation in social and political issues in accounts about moroccan history the texts studies will include the different genres testimonies poetry letters and fiction and languages arabic and french in which they are written the project aims at localising and analysing the different texts of this thematic published by women in morocco between the 1970s and the 2010s taking a feminist perspective this project considers that prison writings by women can constitute examples of alternative history and contribute to the reconfiguration of social memory by bringing womens experience to the centre and claiming their role in in the movement of political prisoners as structural rather than as exceptional or secondary in addition the project also intends to shift moroccan womens position from objects to producers of discourse to challenge orientalist constructions that prevail in hegemonic cultural perspective and to break stereotyped images about the moroccan woman that portray them as passive rather than as active individuals
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deciphering stem cell immunity
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stem cells guard tissue integrity by renewing the pool of differentiated cells and must therefore be shielded from threats such as transposable elements or viruses in that line stem cells can largely resist viral infections but they do so without deploying the antiviral pathways at play in differentiated cells so what guards the guardians i recently discovered a stem cellspecific immune pathway driven by a protein termed avid antiviral dicer which mounts an antiviral rna interference rnai response and thwarts rna virus infection this illustrates that stem cells implement specific defence mechanisms that are poorly understood or unknown my proposal aims at bridging the current knowledge gap in stem cell immunity we will do so by investigating the role of the avid pathway in vivo using an avid knockout mouse as well as by unravelling the molecular regulation of the pathway aim 1 stem cells demise can additionally be provoked by the expression of transposable elements tes converging evidence suggests that avid and the rnai pathway may play a second defensive role in shielding uninfected stem cells from te expression which we will explore in aim 2 because cancer is characterised by a stemness transcriptional program avid may similarly control tes in tumour cells we will study avid expression in various tumour models and assess its role in controlling tes this is of special interest because awakening te expression in cancer is being leveraged by new therapeutic approaches in multiple malignancies similarly we will explore if inhibiting avid and the rnai pathway could have an antitumour effect aim 2 finally i hypothesize that stem cells are protected by additional unknown antiviral pathways which we aim to identify and characterise using new genomescale approaches aim 3 overall this proposal aims at unveiling new biology in stem cell immunity as well as developing clinical applications in the field of antitumour therapy
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additive manufactured automotive antenna for autonomous driving
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to enable autonomous driving vehicles need to perceive their surroundings in 360 degrees under any conditions autonomous vehicles thus require a variety of highperformance sensors including camera lidar and radar systems these sensors need to be weatherindependent reliable costeffective and invisible while cameras and lidar are struggling with various drawbacks radar sensors have the potential to fulfil all requirements however critical technical hurdles need to be addressed first and golden devices technology plays a key role in overcoming them highperformance antennas are a crucial factor in achieving the necessary level of sensor system performance antennas are the connecting and at the same time limiting element between chips software and the external environment the antennas transmitting and receiving signals from radar sensors are currently based on printed circuit boards pcb due to their 2dimensional structure and very limited design possibilities these pcb antennas have severe shortcomings in terms of performance 3dimensional waveguide antennas are a promising alternative significantly reducing transmission losses and increasing bandwidth however the established design of waveguide antennas is based on a splitblock approach which means that several parts are assembled and manufactured mainly by injection moulding both factors are limiting the performance of waveguide antennas and therefore radar sensors to overcome this limitation golden devices has developed a unique manufacturing process based on 3d printing and a proprietary metallization concept unlike the splitblock process golden devices manufactures the waveguide antennas in one piece this provides numerous essential advantages in terms of technical performance significantly reduced product development times and costs and thus faster timetomarket in the next step we will now scale and automate the manufacturing process to realise series production
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trusted and green traceability through eu space technologies
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on b2b and b2c relations the reliability among stakeholders is an essential requirement every second of every day businesses exchange items with suppliers partners customers and others items mean goods services money data and more such exchanges are transactions that need to be reliable precise and agreed among the participants moreover in many transactions the fully automation is not possible it is needed a trusted centralized entity in many cases the human intercession is needed to certify the proper execution of such transaction audit public notaries thirdparty certifierblockchain aims to enable automatic transactions reducing the trust tax among stakeholders it is being used in more and more domains however blockchain cannot fully ensure that the digitally recorded information is taken in a certain location and time the automated and trusted proof of location has not been fully achieved without the human intercession a reliable and affordable source of positioningtiming data is essential to achieve the automated verification of location and time the new service open service navigation message authentication osnma of galileo will provide authentication of the navigation data in order to determine if the data used for processing was produced by the satellites or falsified the overall goal of space4greeneris to propose a technological solution that enable a trusted platform among stakeholders of different nature for the automated certification that an activity occurs or a thing is in a location in a certain point of time without requiring a thirdparty human certification the solution is based on the integration of galileo osnma signals and blockchain with smart devices and mobile platforms that will produce a trusted information and share it among the stakeholders the benefit of such approach is applicable to multiple domains but the technical validation will be focused on agrifood and fishing scenarios
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developments of the generalized retrieval of atmospheric and surface properties for the synergy of different satellites and groundbased networks advances in atmosphere and surface characterizations
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the graspsynergy proposal is to make an international and intersectorial network of organizations working together including scientists and engineers of different background and expertise the focus is on atmospheric sciences particularly in addressing the challenges about developing standard techniques that permit atmospheric and surface characterization from different techniques and measurements the main objective is further develop of the generalized retrieval of aerosol and surface properties grasp algorithm for joint inversions of different remote sensing instrumentation that permit advanced synergistic retrievals of atmosphere and surface properties to fulfil this breakthrough objective graspsynergy will address i advanced aerosol parameterizations modelling from new developments in multiwavelength polarized polar nephelometry iinew deployments and optimizations in grasp forward and inversion approaches for advanced retrievals iiisynergies of different space instruments to improve spectral spatial and temporal coverage as well as information content from multiangular polarimetry and ivsynergies of groundbased and space measurements for advanced retrievals and for satellite validations these objectives try to address challenge that the measurements from single spaceborne instrument is always be limited in one or another way this seriously limits the possibility of advanced atmospheric and surface characterizations from space measurements in this regard the synergy of different instrument allows essentially improve information content of measurements and bring the retrieval of atmosphere and surface properties to qualitatively new level to face all these challenges graspsynergy consists of an ambitious consortium and to favor all these interactions we propose a set of secondments workshops and training activities that will also foster a shared culture of research and innovation
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characterization of drought tolerance related mechanistic traits in sorghum related to water transport
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sorghum is a drought tolerant cereal crop grown extensively by smallholder farmers in west africa it is expected to become increasingly important to crop production in the sahel and grow as part of europes grain portfolio as incidences of drought become more frequent identifying drought tolerant varieties and what traits confer drought tolerance in sorghum is of great importance to food security both in the sahel and across the world the sorgheau project will investigate drought tolerance in sorghum to uncover the mechanistic basis for this trait the role of adaptive plasticity in the drought response and the genetic control of traits relating to drought tolerance the main focus of this will be investigating vascular anatomy particularly the metaxylem and its effect on physiology and water use using diversity populations in west africa and europe will capture data on the vast majority of global genetic diversity as well as highly agronomically relevant elite lines this will facilitate gene discovery and by investigating a highly drought tolerant crop with a known diversity for this feature we expect significant findings i will use this data to identify a vascular trait with a role in drought tolerance and select lines of interest and parental candidates for mapping populations contrasting in this trait i will investigate plasticity through controlled drought experiments to characterize the role of vascular traits in the drought response i will then use this data to identify a candidate trait and conduct genetic analysis to identify associated qtls and use gene expression analysis to uncover the molecular mechanism for regulation of this trait this work will develop my skills in conducting field trials anatomical analysis and plant physiological phenotyping and i will learn new skills in synchrotron scanning transpiration phenotyping and lysimetry gene expression and genetic analysis
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towards a paneuropean research infrastructure for excellent citizen science
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the riecsconcept project aims to conceptualize the european research infrastructure for excellence in citizen science that will leverage both citizens resources such as mobile phones desktop computers etc and scientific existing resources citizen science platforms data collections existing ris etc and will provide transversal servicies to the research community this proposal responds to the needs of citizen science actors atomization and interoperability issues efficiency etc and lays the foundation for the worlds first complete design of this nature it sets a flagship pathway for citizen science marking a supposes significant leap forward for excellence in citizen science for the coming decadesthe riecsconcept project will produce two key outcomes a conceptual design including a feasibility study and a fiveyear implementation plan for the new research infrastructure these outcomes will provide detailed insights into the diversity and maturity of the concept considering technical operational societal and environmental challenges associated with establishing the permanent and shared infrastructure to gather project findings and communitybased evidence the consortium will conduct primary secondary and metaanalysis research involving a wide range of communities and various themes and scientific domains with a transversal and holistic approach topics addressed will include the catalogue of resources and best practices gaps assessment legal and ethical considerations as well as sustainability and governance frameworksthe consortium will cooperate with major national and international networks coorganizing activities such as surveys and workshops to bring their related solutions and needs
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vortex microflow inducer that enables detection of ultralow concentrations of species in sensors
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according to who in 2018 more than 100000 chemicals were released into the global environment due to their production use and disposal in this regard water is the key element for their effective transport in the food chain and since remediation can be extremely difficult such pollution is leading to acute or chronic toxicity in aquatic organisms loss of habitats and biodiversity as well as human diseases but industrial wastewater flows contain hazardous and toxic species that are not easy to process and treatment installations need extremely reliable and sensitive sensing solutions to continuously monitor the efficiency of the side stream treatment processes at the same time the world population is increasingly depending on aquaculture for nutritious food frequent analysis of the water quality is essential and needs to be performed at pointoftesting not in remote laboratories the common challenges in environmental control wastewater management and aquaculture are that in small sample sizes species need to be detected that are present in very low concentrations with a technique that can be performed at pointoftesting at low cost and in a minimum of time in the last decade new sensor technologies have emerged that can meet these challenges these sensors however require the sample to flow over the sensor surface and importantly detection is only possible if the target species in flow makes contact with the sensor surface this is one of the key technological hurdles that todays microfluidics sensors have not overcome yet in vortex sensor vortices will be induced in the flow channel with acoustic streaming an approach which was developed in erc starting grant evodis this will enable long range transport of compounds towards the sensor surface in vortex sensor a prototype of the very first biosensor with vortex microflow inducer will be built and its performance will be validated with two relevant pathogens for aquaculture of salmon
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genome topology and mechanical stress
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the nucleus is the stiffest organelle in the cell and is constantly challenged by intrinsic and extrinsic forces that deform the nuclear envelope chromosomes are mechanical objects that can sense transduce and adsorb mechanical forces interchromosomal contacts and nuclear envelopeassociated domains contribute to transduce mechanical stress when cells experience compression stretching or interstitial migration we aim to study the mechanical properties of the chromosomes and how genome integrity and the chromatin topological landscape are affected by nuclear deformations we will combine mechanistic genetic and genomic studies in yeast wp1 with genomic imaging and microfluidic approaches in mammalian cells wp2 in wp1 we will investigate i how the topological context influences nucleosome chirality and the epigenetic landscape ii how the interchromosomal connections mediated by topoisomerase activities influence genome mechanics iii how chromosome topology contributes to generate aberrant dna structures and how dna damage induces topological changes iv how the nuclear envelope and the nucleolus influence chromatin topology and histone modifications v how nuclear deformation affects genome integrity and the topological landscape in wp2 we will study i the atr and atmmediated mechanisms controlling nuclear and genome integrity and mechanics under unperturbed conditions or in response to mechanical stress ii how the topological context of the genome responds to mechanical forces generated by cell compression or stretching and the implications for fragile site expression iii how mechanical stress generated by interstitial migration influences genome topology chromosome instability and those mechanisms causing amplification of specific chromosomal loci the expected results may contribute to elucidate the mechanisms controlling nuclear and genome mechanics and those pathological processes promoting certain mechanodiseases
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spatial skills and mathematics towards a causal understanding of mechanisms
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difficulties in learning maths usually begin at the start of education and are robust over time the number of students not reaching basic levels of maths achievement remains a major societal challenge at a time when societies are increasingly demanding maths skills due to scientific and industrial progress research examining the key cognitive foundations for successful maths learning has identified spatial skills as a promising potential contributor to maths development nevertheless how and why spatial skills contribute to maths learning remains elusive spaths will therefore develop a new framework that aim to understand the causal mechanisms via which spatial skills impact maths learning this will be done firstly by using graphical causal models in particular directed acyclic graphs dag to draw causal inferences from observational data this technique originally developed for computer science and novel to cognitive and developmental psychology is a way of visually representing and testing a priori causal assumptions various spatial skills and maths abilities will be tested and causal pathways between the different abilities will be estimated in a crosscultural context which varies in the extent to which children start formal school start at 5 vs start at 6 years and allows us to generalise findings across different educational contexts second to empirically validate the findings from the causal models a training experiment will manipulate the learning of spatial skills in 5and 6yearolds spaths will unravel longawaited knowledge about the mechanism underlying the spatialmaths association this is essential for future research into efficient interventions to improve maths and to make spatial training programs more effective moreover by introducing dags to cognitive and developmental psychology spaths will provide the possibility to test causality in natural environments eg schools in which experimental data are difficult to obtain
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integrated designs for future floating offshore wind farm technology
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the importance of an increased exploitation of renewable energy sources is highlighted by the recent geopolitical events with their impact on energy security and pricing together with the global efforts to mitigate the anthropogenic climate change floating offshore wind with its tremendous potential will play an important role in the future to achieve the european commissions ambitious goals towards a climateneutral energy transition however the required expansion of floating offshore wind capacity to achieve eg the eus set plan targets challenges the goal to protect and preserve biodiversity habitats and species in the eu sea basins as set forth eg by the mission healthy oceans the inf4inity project integrated designs for future floating offshore wind farm technology aims to support the solution of this challenge by developing critical technologies for the offshore wind farm of the future which enable balancing human needs clean energy with natures and societys demands decreased negative environmental and social impact in particular inf4inity provides two major technology innovations an innovative nature inclusive design for gravity anchors and their associated scour protection system and 2 an innovative primary artificial reef structure combined with the floating structure of a floating offshore wind turbine to that end inf4inity combines world class numerical modelling and experimental analysis expertise with leading industrial technology development being immersed in a holistic technoenvironomic multilevel multiobjective optimisation framework inf4initys technology development results in truly innovative economically viable and sustainable solutions for the current technosocioenviroeconomic challenges of the floating offshore wind industry
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photoswitchable supramolecular polymer networks toward spatial and temporal control of selfhealing function
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self healing polymers ie materials which the ability to repair themselves have emerged as an attractive alternative to traditional materials due to the advantages they offer to society in terms of durability reliability and cost and energy efficiencies a fruitful approach towards these novel materials is based on the introduction of supramolecular crosslinks into polymer frameworks which due to their reversible and dynamic nature can be dissociated and reconnected multiple times to heal the damaged area however polymer toughness and autonomous healing exhibit an inverse relationship and for practical reasons the healing process must be activated in conditions that are different from the working conditions or otherwise the material becomes too soft such activation is typically carried out through thermal heating which accelerates the dynamics of the noncovalent bonds and enhances polymer chain diffusion in lightheal we plan to make a groundbreaking impact in the field of dynamic polymer networks by developing phtotoswitchable supramolecular crosslinks that exploit the extraordinary attributes of light as an external stimulus concretely we want to be able to switch onoff cooperative noncovalent crosslinks in polymer networks so that the material can reversibly alternate on demand between a mechanically tough state and a soft healable state moreover we want to achieve such control with spatial precision temporal precision and wavelength orthogonality for such goal we will combine the knowledge of the host group in gquadruplex polymer networks with the experience of the candidate in stateofthe art azobenzene photoswitches lightheal introduces fundamental challenges and unprecedented approaches in the expanding field of stimuliresponsive polymer materials with smart functionalities and constitutes the best research scenario for the candidate to learn from different fields and further develop his career
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brain research and integrative neuroscience network for covid19
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the brain research and integrative neuroscience network for covid19 brainn will advance the research and innovation capacity of the university of cyprus ucy as indicated in the widening participation strengthening the era work programme by twinning with three advanced partners in brain research maastricht university um kings college london kcl and ghent university ugent through networking activities training and coordinated actions brainn will develop an innovative applied neuroscience approach to characterise the effects of covid19 on brain health and to elevate the standards of assessment diagnosis prognosis and treatment of patients with mental health and cognitive problems due to covid19 the um kcl and ugent teams have complementary worldrenowned expertise in neuroimaging noninvasive neurostimulation and digitalised assessment methods extensive research management experience and active interest in postcovid research engaging these teams as partners will provide the required mentoring and training towards a focused and systematic approach to neuroscience research in a mutually beneficial manner to raise the research profile of ucy as well as strengthen the research management and administrative skills of ucy staff brainn will benefit all partners as the standardisation of assessment and treatment protocols will expedite data collection and will safeguard the sustainability and future expansion of the network through interdisciplinary research and development of novel methods and technologies brainn will contribute to personalised treatments bringing both ucy and cyprus to the scientific forefront additionally brainn will address the brain drain challenge that has increased in cyprus over the recent years and contribute to the reduction in the burden created by covid19 the knowledge and methodologies produced will extend beyond brainn since they will be applicable to other conditions affecting brain health even when covid19 is eradicated
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development and evaluation of nutritional strategies to reduce and prevent obesity in shift workers
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shift work is an independent risk factor for the development of overweight and obesity as shift workers represent a huge target group throughout many sectors in europe obesity and associated diseases stress national health systems unhealthy food choices snacking high sugar intake preferences for spicy and sweetfatty foods were reported for this group which are likely the main causes for becoming obese the underlying mechanisms for these changed eating patterns remain to be resolved potential explanations are alterations in metabolic health conditions eg microbiome and inflammation taste perception and circadian misalignment empirically proven solutions are urgently needed to benefit national health systems and reduce the development of obesity and increase the wellbeing of shift workers in the euthis project aims to identify mechanisms and environmental and lifestyle factors leading to obesity in shift workers and to develop and evaluate products and strategies with consideration of the behavioural and relational level to support healthy eating patterns the project will focus on both healthcare female dominated and industrial workers male dominated two major sectors where working in shifts is common we will combine existing and new knowledge on nutritional behavioural perceptual and physiological determinants of unhealthy food choices in a crosssection trial and consider personal needs and wishes based on the latter results promising strategies technical solutions and products will be developed and tested within the target group in specific interventions during all steps stakeholders health work organisations shift workers representatives companies policy makers and scientists will be involved with the results new insights in the nutritionrelated mechanisms involved in the development of obesity among shift workers will be identified and tailored strategies benefitting shift workers and employers will be developed
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digitizing other economies a comparative approach
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how do longstanding primarily nonindustrial noncapitalist societies adopt and adapt digital technologies in their daily practices and systems of values classical anthropological theory once arranged basic economic types on an evolutionary ladder ranging from huntergatherers horticulturalists pastoralists and agriculturalists to industrialists today the existence of these economies other than industrialism are correctly approached not as anachronisms but as contemporaneous to postindustrial life still research on digitization has largely taken place in post industrial contexts meaning we know next to nothing about how different types of longstanding economies adopt and adapt digital technologies at the same time researchers have stipulated that digitization threatens global economic diversity by comparing digitization to processes of colonization they have argued that digital technologies facilitate assimilation into postindustrial economic systems and their often capitalist values by virtue of their technological design this project empirically investigates these claims through indepth ethnographic research among huntergatherers brazilian amazon pastoralists kyrgyz republic horticulturalists solomon islands and indigenous agriculturalists india who have long resisted assimilation into industrialcapitalism additional ethnological comparison of the four sites will offer unique macrolevel insights into the possibilities for economic diversity in the digital age finally the project advances a novel theoretical and methodological approach that advances both ethnographic research and ethnological comparison this approach recognizes the significance of both technological design and contextual adaptations and provides tools for new research agendas not just on digital industrialcapitalism but on diverse economic systems and values
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engineering vasoactive probes for brainwide imaging of molecular signaling
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brain function depends on spatiotemporally defined brainwide signaling via molecules such as neurotransmitters no current technology can measure signaling molecules throughout the brain with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution in living mammals this poses a major roadblock for understanding how molecular neuronal communication coordinates wholebrain functionmagnetic resonance imaging mri currently provides the highest brainwide resolution dynamic imaging of blood flow and oxygenation in the finely arborized vasculature socalled functional mri fmri is the only method that can visualize wholebrain function in mammals and humans however mri is inherently insensitive which precludes it from accessing molecular signaling that occurs at submicromolar concentrations and fmri cannot resolve neurotransmitter signaling underlying measured hemodynamic signalsi previously designed proteinbased vasoactive sensors named avatar that directly cause hemodynamic signals in fmri in response to target molecules at low nanomolar doses without using radioactive or metallic components they can be genetically encoded and also pave the way for noninvasive brain delivery through the vasculature critical for translational applications in primates and humanshere i will combine my expertise in synthetic biology and in vivo molecular imaging to develop my proofofconcept work into a robust preclinical neuroimaging method along three objectives1 engineering avatars that convert neurotransmitter signaling into hemodynamic signals2 brain delivery via noninvasive routes3 application for fmri of brainwide neurotransmitter signaling in rodentsmy project will provide neurotransmittersensing avatars to turn fmri into molecular fmri and bridge the longstanding gap between molecular nuclear imaging and functional hemodynamic imaging avatars will visualize how brainwide molecular signaling dynamics shape healthy and pathological brain function
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on the evolutionary significance of wild animal reproductive microbiomes
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our view of microbes has recently undergone a paradigm shift the socalled microbiome revolution previously seen as unwanted harbingers of disease it is now widely recognised that microbes can be beneficial and that the millions of microbes living in and on the bodies of animals and plants ie the microbiome can have profound effects on host biology however with the exception of the human vaginal microbiome the microbiome revolution has largely overlooked the reproductive microbiome this is especially true for wild animals yet if we are to understand the evolutionary significance of hostassociated microbiomes it is critical to study them in natural populations where hosts exhibit greater genetic variability and are exposed to greater levels of environmental and microbial complexity the aim of this proposal is to determine whether reproductive microbiomes impact host fitness and evolution in wild animals and reveal the role of host genetics and immune functioning in shaping reproductive microbiome variability i will leverage a unique wild system the house sparrow that can be studied in natural populations and in the lab and for which i have recently pioneered the use of microbiome transplant techniques that allows me to disassemble and reconstitute natural microbiomes of nestlings first i will determine the fitness consequences and heritability of reproductive microbiomes in a wild population second i will validate the impact of reproductive microbiome variability for reproductive success using novel in vivo microbiome transplants third i will uncover the genetic basis of reproductive microbiome variation fourth i will establish whether host immune functioning shapes reproductive microbiome composition altogether i will significantly advance our understanding of the causes and more importantly the consequences of reproductive microbiomes for host biology and evolution
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functions of genomic hypomethylation in gametogenesis
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replication in s phase duplicates not only the genome but also the epigenome to ensure cell identity is propagated and genome stability maintained in daughter cells epigenome propagation in development has been understudied due to lack of appropriate methods even though replication is widely accepted to be a primary vehicle through which programmed epigenetic changes occur in vivo in mammalian germline development the epigenome is reprogrammed via impairment of the epigenome maintenance network by dividing without maintaining core components of the epigenome primordial germ cells harbor genomes devoid of the crucial repressive mark dna methylation hypomethylation is destabilizing because it derepresses transposable elements despite this oocytes arrest in a hypomethylated state regaining methylation only in preparation for ovulation as part of puberty in parallel twothirds of the oocyte pool dies around birth in mammals and the features delineating oocytes that survive this process from those that die are unclear i propose that hypomethylation is alternately selected for and against across gametogenesis specifically that hypomethylation a positive feature in primordial germ cells but a deleterious feature in the female germline after sex specification to test this we will develop novel transgenic mouse models and technologies to study epigenome propagation in vivo and utilize stateoftheart sequencing mass spectrometry microscopy and metabolic labelling approaches by developing a method for tracking dna molecules and their associated methyl marks across division in live animals and embryos we will establish an unprecedented technology for understanding epigenome propagation in development cumulatively this work will uncover the functions and consequences of global hypomethylation in the germline and provide groundbreaking insights into the nature of mitotic and intergenerational epigenetic inheritance in vivo
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alloptical photoacoustic imaging for neurobiology
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measuring the electrical activity of neurons in vivo is of paramount importance to understand the underlying principles of the brain current imaging techniques fail to capture this activity across the entire brain with sufficient spatial or temporal resolutions while leaving brain tissue intact nonlinear fluorescence microscopy the most widespread optical imaging modality in system neurobiology provides optical diffraction limited resolution and high frame rate but is limited to shallow depth due to light scattering in tissue singleneuron activity in brain regions deeper than one millimeter can therefore not be probed combining widefield optical excitation and ultrasonic detection photoacoustic imaging has emerged in the last decades as a powerful technique to image of optically contrasted objects embedded deep inside biological tissue it relies on the emission of ultrasound waves upon the absorption of a light pulse as ultrasound are only weakly scattered when propagating in soft tissue optically absorbing structures can be reconstructed from the sole measurement of the ultrasound field at the tissue surfacethe highest spatial resolution is currently achieved using optical sensors of pressure waves which exhibit a better sensitivity to high ultrasound frequencies compared to conventional piezoelectric detectors however singlecell resolution is still beyond the reach of such sensors and the underlying sequential acquisition process prevent from imaging at sufficient frame rate to address this challenge i will develop new sensors and associated interrogation techniques with 1 high acquisition speed and 2 high sensitivity at high acoustic frequencies to resolve temporally and spatially the activity of single neurons this will enable to 3 image noninvasively neuronal activity at unprecedented depth of several millimeters in vivo in the mouse brain
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clonal dynamics and mitochondrial dysfunction in hematopoiesis following chemotherapy
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chemotherapy can cause significant damage to healthy tissues especially in the hematopoietic system as a result cancer survivors may experience bone marrow damage manifested as cytopenias which increase the risk of infections and bleeding despite this there has not been a thorough examination of these events including the clonal dynamics of hematopoiesis after chemotherapy exposure due to a lack of methodologies to perform lineage tracing in humans in vivo to address this i will study the effects of chemotherapy on the clonal dynamics of hematopoiesis mitochondrial dysfunction and genetic integrity in young cancer survivors i will analyze samples obtained before during and after treatment using emerging singlecell multiomic approaches to effectively capture mitochondrial dna mtdna genetic variation for inferences of clonal dynamics and studies of mtdna damage by combining mtdnabased clonal inferences with wholegenome sequencing wgsbased detection of somatic nuclear dna mutations i will provide deep phylogenies with scalable singlecell resolved clonal measurements of perturbed hematopoiesis following chemotherapy moreover orthogonal analysis of dna methylation and chromatin accessibility data will yield new molecular insights into chemotherapyinduced accelerated aging and mitochondrial dysfunction a hallmark of aging this project sets out to gain quantitative and fundamental insights into the longterm molecular defects of chemotherapy in young cancer survivors potentially paving the way for new interventions to improve the quality of life of this emergent population
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european open compute architecture for powerful edge
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cape european open compute architecture for powerful edge aims to redefine the landscape of edgecloud computing infrastructures by developing the edgemicrodatacenters emdcs and ehps as a new unit of computing for datadense edge environments the project designs and showcase an innovative open hardware platform that is dynamically composable via cxl to answer the end user needs emdc and ehps provides an open high density platform for heterogeneous computing units xpu riscv architectures all based on industrystandard form factor comhpc that is supported by a robust ecosystem of original equipment manufacturers oems within europe ensuring wide accessibility and adoption to allow end users to be digital sovereign eg manage the governance of data ai models applications deployed across an edgefirst edge to cloud continuum cape will employ a cloudagnostic overlay known as infrastructure from code ifc this innovative approach abstracts the complexities inherent in diverse cloud computing infrastructures and services empowering software developers to deploy applications effortlessly across the edgetocloud continuum this is achieved without necessitating extensive knowledge of the underlying cloud infrastructure enabling deployments across onpremise and offpremise public and private cloud environments with minimal complexitycapes solution will be validated in 3 use cases the management of intelligent electric energy microgrids edge ai and satellite communications all usecases will evaluate riscv epi and cxl solutions each usecase will be evaluated on technical economical and sustainability aspects and benchmarked against legacy hardware in local clouds against edgeoptimized data centers
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single microwave photon detection for hybrid quantum information processing and quantum enhanced sensing
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the waveparticle duality is one of the counterintuitive traits of quantum mechanics the fundamental constituents of matter and light can be either apprehended as corpuscules or waves depending on the choice of the measurement apparatus in the case of light one can either decide to measure the quadrature of the electromagnetic field or count the photons impacting the detector these two modalities come with pros and cons the first one is sensitive to both the phase and the amplitude of the field but at the cost of a fundamental noise associated to vacuum fluctuations while the latter is only sensitive to the energy of the field but at the photons lie at the heart of the human experience they are the most direct way to sense our immediate material environment a light source irradiates material objects in its surroundings and depending on their composition materials will reemit the incident light with slight variations in intensity and color in the course of the last century the meaning of imaging has been considerably broadened scientific and technological advances have enabled the detection of single quanta of light from further away at smaller scales and on a considerable enlarge portion of the electromagnetic spectrum at one extremity of the spectrum the field of microwave quantum optics 110 ghz has emerged as a powerful tool to probe quantum systems we have recently demonstrated highperformance single microwave photon detection based on elementary superconducting circuits based on this novel method a new window on new material systems is opened at unprecedented sensitivities this proposal aims at the improvement of the newly developed single microwave photon detector for the exploration of new luminescent systems in the microwave domain in particular the detection of individual paramagnetic electron spins for quantum computing and quantumenhanced sensing applications and the search of one of the leading darkmatter candidates axions
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