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engineered porous electrodes to unlock ultralow cost feair redox flow batteries
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this proposal will develop a gamechanging paradigm to design synthesize and functionalize porous electrode materials with farreaching consequences in electrochemical science and engineering focusing on the feair redox flow battery fairrfb which holds promise for lowcost long duration energy storage i will employ an interdisciplinary approach bridging electrochemical engineering materials science and computational design to address the following fundamental challenges 1 i will elucidate the role of the porous electrode microstructure i will introduce a new methodology that couples evolutionary algorithms with microstructureinformed simulations to predict ideal electrode geometries a versatile synthetic platform nonsolvent induced phase separation will be leveraged to synthesize highly controlled 3d microstructures and train neural networks to accelerate the discovery of optimal geometries 2 i will determine to what extent surface moieties of the porous electrode influence transport phenomena kinetics and durability i will employ electrografting of select molecules to functionalize porous electrodes and impart functional properties wettability activity stability i will perform nanoelectrochemical imaging to elucidate the role of electrodecoatingelectrolyte phenomena 3 i will develop a novel electrochemical reactor architecture for highpower feair rfbs building upon the two previous developments i will synthesize tailored iron and air electrodes and leverage polymeric bipolar membranes to realize a high voltage and low resistance electrochemical cell advanced imaging techniques ie energy and wavelengthselective neutron imaging will be employed to visualize reactive transport phenomena during operation thus helping to address these questions the novel approaches developed in fairrfb will enable breakthroughs in performance and durability of largescale electrochemical energy storage systems
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nextgeneration fungicides for crop protection based on artificial small rnas derived from viral vectors
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plants are threatened by a plethora of pathogens with fungi accounting for important crop and postharvest losses worldwide despite widespread spraying of fungicides losses keep rising in the current warming world and the increasing use of chemical and toxic fungicides favours the emergence of resistant fungi strains hence there is an urgent need to develop a new generation of highly efficient and environmentalfriendly fungicides for securing present and future food availabilityclassic rna interference rnai tools based on doublestranded rna have been used for inducing antifungal resistance in plants despite their lack of high specificity more modern and highly specific rnai tools are based on artificial small rnas artsrnas artsrna tools have been optimized mainly for high efficacy and transgenic use but are not well adapted for gmofree application and have not been used yet for inducing antifungal resistance in plants funsynvigs seeks to develop a novel gmofree rnai technology consisting in systemic viral vectorbased fungicides expressing artsrnas for plant immunization against pathogenic fungi the specific objectives are1 the development and optimization of viral vectorbased fungicides expressing artsrnas against botrytis cinerea the causal agent of the gray mold disease in the model plant species nicotiana benthamiana2 the application of viral vectorbased fungicides for immunizing tomato plants against b cinereasuccessful completion of these objectives will provide a novel class of mobile rnaibased fungicides for inducing highly efficient antifungal resistance in crops
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selfmonitoring of prostate cancer by automated hybrid recognition of exosomal mirna toward personalized analytical tool
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tumorderived circulating exosomes are a suitable readily accessible reservoir of cancer biomarkers for disease process analysis the micrornas mirnas inside the exosomes provide information about the mechanisms of change in cancer of affected individuals quantitative determination of mirnas in the exosome a clinical area of unmet need is tempting but challenging the main objectives of the proposal are to develop a noninvasive affordable userfriendly and deliverable platform that can measure mutant mirna107 in prostate cancer pcaassociated exosomes with unmatched accuracy combining a hybrid oligonucleotides onsnanomaterials integrated composite system with an epad the proposed platform offers selfmonitoring of prostate cancer by automated hybrid recognition of exosomal mirna towards personalized analytical tool named smart smart provides a universal technology for noninvasive pca diagnosis and quantitative tracking of mirna levels in cancerderived exosomes in a very simple and effortless manner in biofluids such as serum and urine the novelty of the proposed interdisciplinary project work will evolve into the next generation of intelligent pointofcare poc tools for precision medicine this proposal will contribute to the sustainability of the healthcare system by enabling patients to stratify andor predict disease thereby improving clinical decision making this msca pf will be carried out at the university of naples italy will provide the researcher with advanced technical training in exosome isolation pcr and dna sequencing molecular biology microfluidics pathology nanomaterials synthesis analytical techniques proposal and manuscript preparation and academic supervision in research management the proposed multidisciplinary collaboration in the smart project has resulted in a new generation of smart medical devices with functions comparable to existing highly specialized hospital devices
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from fragments to high affinity binders interfacing integrated structural biology medicinal chemistry and artificial intelligence
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fragmentscreen will develop innovative instrumentation workflows and experimental and computational methodologies for fragmentbased drug discovery fbdd enabling access to early phase structurebased drug discovery for all biological targets and for scientists both in industry and academia the established workflows will use structural biology insights and associated data to feed artificial intelligence ai methodology to guide medicinal chemistry in drug development fragmentscreen brings together scientists from four esfri landmark research infrastructures ris esrf the european synchrotron and the distributed ris euopenscreen eric medicinal chemistry elixir data resources for life science under the coordination of instructeric integrated structural biology and seven industry partners in scientific instrumentation and computational and ai sectors including smes to remove crucial bottlenecks in early phase drug discovery the new instrumentation and workflows will be available at european ris while the new instruments will be commercialised to increase the technological competitiveness of european industry in drug design and the attractiveness of structural biology ris for the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors fragmentscreen will implement open science approaches in early drug discovery to maximise the impact of screening campaigns generated data will be made accessible so that iterative cycles applying ai will improve response times for drug discovery we will create a framework for the objective and independent evaluation of ai in drug design to identify critical developments in this thriving research field methodologies for rigorous crossvalidation will be established through demonstrator and pilot studies and results will be disseminated to the large scientific communities affiliated to the european ris and beyond
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sustainable and green electronics for circular economy
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the eu requires also electronics industry to achieve the ambitious goals of the eu green deal circular economy action plan and industrial strategy for reduction of energy and material consumption and utilization of circular value chains sustronics project is targeting to improve capabilities of european electronics industry to meet these goals and develop new business opportunities from sustainable and greener electronics combined with increase in productivity and new functionalitiesthe current electronic industry poses significant environmental impacts such as increasing amount of ewaste great demand for critical raw materials and high energy consumption during manufacturing electronics industry can specifically decrease its environmental burden by shifting from fossilbased materials to biobased materials decreasing use of metals utilizing additive manufacturing processes and developing miniaturized and integrated components but also in broader scope by utilizing efficient circular economy business models that enable reuse recycle and repair of critical materials and componentssustronics main goal is to support renewal of european electronics industry towards circular economy ecodesign biobased materials and material and energyefficient manufacturing processes thereby sustronics will redesign electronics products into circular compostable and reusable products and demonstrate that there are business opportunities in sustainable electronicsquantification of environmental impact definition of business models involvement of external stakeholders and means to guarantee compatibility with policies and standards will guide the project implementation the pilots will focus on healthcare diagnostics and industrial sectors including topics such as medical and personal health devices singleuse and wearable diagnostics sustainable lighting solutions and embedded electronics for automotive
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battery management system and system design for stationary energy storage with 2nd life batteries
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battery2life will facilitate the smooth transition of batteries to 2nd life use and boost the innovation of the european battery industry by providing enablers to implement open adaptable smart bmses and improved system designs and proposing methods for the efficient and reliable reconfiguration of used batteries battery2life introduces two new battery system design frameworks serving the upcoming market needs the first supports the business transition for the initial market by restructuring existing battery design patterns while the second one introduces completely new design principles for 1st and 2nd life of the battery a completely new bms design mentality is introduced to the battery industry by delivering an open and interoperable hybrid bms architecture with an embedded and a cloud section leading the transition from technologydriven bms designs to serve the needs of specific applications and battery technologies to new datadriven and applicationagnostic bms designs that can be easily adapted and updated to serve the requirements of different battery technologies and any 2nd life battery stationary storage application furthermore battery2life introduces innovative embedded sensing and more accurate sox estimation algorithms new sox indicators appropriate for 2nd life use ie sos safety and sow warranty and a new eis implementation approach by integrating it in the bms that will enable the detailed safety and reliability monitoring at both cell and module level during 1st and 2nd life usage the project will specify an open bms concept data formats taking into account and extending the battery passport concept and interoperable communication via the cloud platform to third parties including the future passport exchange system to facilitate monitoring and assessment the project prototypes will be demonstrated within the context of two business cases ie domestic storage application and utilityscale load levelling one
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quantum software platform for multiphysics simulations
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this project will develop qucoflow the worlds first hybrid quantumai software platform for multiphysics simulations qucoflow integrates the most advanced simulation algorithms and deploys them to accelerate europes transition towards sustainable mobility qucoflow will be the first software capable of performing realistic batteryfuel cell performance and degradation and aerodynamics simulations further it can be seamlessly integrated into standard simulation software by leading vendors
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dynamics of crossover designation
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meiotic crossovers make us unique their distribution along chromosomes dictates which traits will be reassorted to create new and unique allele combinations on which selection can act early during meiosis a large number of recombination interactions are initiated all across the genome but only a few ultimately mature into crossovers the final number and positions of crossovers are tightly regulated along each chromosome crossovers tend to be evenly spaced this phenomenon called crossover interference was discovered in 1914 by sturtevant and morgan while drawing the first recombination map in flies emergence of spatial patterning requires communication but how does the crossover formation machinery communicate with neighboring crossovers half a chromosome away our understanding of how this communication is established has been hindered by the limited resolution in time provided by classical cytology giving us access to only snapshots of the process in the dynaco project i will develop innovative solutions to explore the dynamics of crossover designation and interference using gentle live superresolution microscopy combined with groundbreaking genetic and optogenetic tools in a very amenable system the filamentous fungus sordaria macrospora i will address the following questions i how do procrossover factors behave dynamically to enact and respond to crossover interference ii what is the medium supporting crossover communication iii what are the consequences of locally disrupting this communicationthe dynaco project will provide fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of crossover formation designation and interference we will confront and reconcile many aspects of current models for crossover interference and develop our own unified model this work also has the potential to provide tools for the manipulation of recombination to accelerate the introgression of selective traits into elite crop genomes
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validating biodegradation rates and reactions applying novel technologies and systems ecology approaches
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plastic marine debris pmd is now considered a planetary boundary threat and the plastic cycle a biogeochemical cycle the impacts of singleuse plastic litter in marine environments have prompted a search for greener alternatives such as the biodegradablecompostable plastics polyhydroxyalkanoates and polylactic acid already being used for consumer goods the diversity of microbes their enzymes and their role in influencing the rates of plastic biodegradation in nature remains poorly characterized particularly in cold or lowoxygen marine waters and seafloor where most pmd accumulates the impact of lag duration ph hydrostatic pressure and potential priority effects of initial microbial colonizers remain vital but unaddressed concerns in addition the impact of plastic its breakdown products and additives on marine organisms and ecosystems is largely unquantified two urgent questions are how long does plastic last in the marine environment and what are the impacts on ecosystems this technologyenabled project aims to quantify biodegradation rates of biodegradable plastics and plasticassociated additives in the field and under controlled laboratory conditions and to develop a fish model system for toxicity tests to fill these knowledge gaps this project will generate novel microbial metagenomes from global plastic samples collected during cruises and from biodegradation experiments to create a comprehensive list of genes and enzymes linked to biodegradation of biodegradable plastic in marine environments it will be the first to combine in situ respirometry stable isotope probing and advanced imaging techniques to measure biodegradable plastic biodegradation rates while visualizing microbemicrobe interactions on the plastic surface revealing cellular mechanisms occurring during active biodegradation finally it will develop the first marine fish organoid model for consistent and efficient testing of toxicity due to plastics and additives
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rise of the structureencoded unc5 interactome in aggressive behaviours of neurodevelopmental tumours
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paediatric tumours represent a challenge in the landscape of cancer research unlike adult cancers they typically originate from embryonic cells from which they inherit characteristic embryonic features this is exemplified by neuroblastoma nb the most common solid tumour in young children nb is a heterogeneous cancer with aggressive metastatic forms which emerges from neural crest cells these cells normally undergo a complex migratory process that depends on the functions of cell surface signalling receptors in a recent groundbreaking study we found that nb cells coopt one specific family of these receptors unc5 and the ligand gpc3 to disseminate cell 2022 disruption of this interaction in vivo impacted on cell cohesion migratory properties and redirected tumour localisation here we provide unpublished data analysis suggesting that an entire unc5 interaction network involving multiple different ligands besides gpc3 is at play in malignant nb understanding the mechanisms driving nb cell aggressive behaviours requires investigation of this network in the embryonic context a key strength of the proposal is our unique approach bringing molecularstructural biology to in vivo experiments our strategy maximises the use of targeted structurebased perturbation experiments where we control the activity of individual receptor interaction precisely in vivo we also have the necessary access to patient samples and will use our innovative avian xenograft model which recapitulates the embryonic environment of nb in a final workpackage we will apply our strategy developed with a focus on nb to two other paediatric cancers where unc5 is expressed in sum the results of sunrise will produce a first detailed picture of the where when and how unc5 network interactions drive paediatric cancer biology and could lead to new therapeutics for example using nanobody technology
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electrochemical borylation via borylene species bridging a gap in synthetic chemistry
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carbenoids carbene and nitrene have revolutionized the field of organic chemistry reshaping and improving the molecular construction landscape and unveiling previously inaccessible reaction pathways this chemistry has massively simplified the synthesis of complex molecular structures such as pharmaceuticals agrochemicals and polymers in contrast with the essential role of carbenes and nitrenes the boron analogue borylene has received limited attention in synthetic chemistry a basic understanding of borylene reactivity has hindered its utilization in organic synthesis primarily because of its synthetically challenging formationthis proposal aims to harness electrochemistry as a novel synthetic approach for the controlled generation of borylenes this chemoselective platform will determine the critical factors that influence the reactivity of borylene intermediates and will enable the use of new borylation techniques previously out of reach of chemists having successfully demonstrated the first example of electrochemical borylene formation we anticipate the emergence of various novel borylation techniques among others i the synthesis of underexplored strained threemembered boracycles by cycloaddition reactivity unlocking access to novel classes of molecules and ii the activation of ubiquitous bonds through boron insertion into cc which will utilize unprecedented retrosynthetic logic for ring expansion and 1nsubstituted chemical motifs thus shortening the synthetic scheme of functional materialsdrawing inspiration from the remarkable impact of carbenoids across a multitude of chemistry domains we envision that the electrosynthesis of borylenes will empower chemists to employ these reactive species to unlock access to entirely underexplored classes of molecules and will provide profound insights into borylene reactivity consequently charting a captivating course towards undiscovered realms in chemical synthesis
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ocean cryosphere exchanges in antarctica impacts on climate and the earth system
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oceanice will assess the impacts of key antarctic ice sheet and southern ocean processes on planet earth via their influence on sea level rise deep water formation ocean circulation and climate an innovative and ambitious combination of observations and numerical models including coupled ice sheetclimate model development will be used to improve predictions of how changes in the antarctic and greenland ice sheets impact global climate it will make new circumpolar and atlantic observations in observational gaps it will assimilate these and existing data into improved ice sheet boundary conditions and forcing producing new estimates of ice sheet melt and impacts on ocean circulation including the atlantic meridional overturning circulation it will develop calibrate and assess models used to predict the future evolution of the giant ice sheets it will reduce the deep uncertainty in the impact of their melt on societally relevant environmental changes on decadal to multicentennial time scales oceanice will assess the potential for passing ice sheet tipping points and their consequences for ocean circulation and climate oceanice will raise the profile of european research through its extensive network of international collaborators who provide scientific and logistical support it will directly contribute to the allatlantic ocean research alliance through observations logistical collaboration and analysis it will significantly advance the stateoftheart in coupled ice sheetclimate modelling and directly contribute to international climate assessments such as the intergovernmental panel on climate change and world ocean assessment it will link organically to european data centres to disseminate its data following fair and inspire principles it will deliver improved assessments of european climate impacts from the melting ice sheets with actionable risk and timescales to policymakers and the public
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printed computing enabling extremely low cost pervasive near sensor computing
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a large number of important domains such as fast moving consumer goods and personalized medicine have still not seen the benefits of computing mainly due to high production costs of rigid silicon technologies printed electronics based on additive manufacturing processes holds promise of meeting cost and conformity needs of such applications however the realization of traditional digital processor architectures is infeasible due to constraints of lowcost manufacturing such as form factor low device count large feature sizes and high variations the fundamental research question hence is how to perform accurate reliable and energyefficient classification computing to meet target applications requirements within the constraints of additive printed manufacturingthe aim of pricom is to make breakthroughs by developing unconventional mixedsignal classifier computing paradigms together with their hardware realization and mapping based on additive printing technologies this enables to significantly reduce the hardware footprint and directly process analog sensory inputs while achieving high classification accuracy nevertheless it is a major challenge as analog computing is very sensitive to variations and at the same time additive manufacturing is inherently prune to printing variations i aim at closing this gap by 1 utilizing the inherent tolerance of neuromorphic computing to variations with special hardware primitive design and training algorithms 2 designing novel variationaware physical design algorithms and 3 developing an iterative tuning flow exploiting unique features of additive manufacturing the feasibility of multidisciplinary research of pricom is underpinned by my unique crosslayer expertise and will be tested by fabricationbased demonstration of printed computing systems pricom can enable proliferation of computing in consumer market and personalized medicine bringing economical gains and improving quality of life
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policy evaluation of a pregnancy benefit as a novel form of family policy in the eu
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the proposed action contributes to tackling of a pressing challenge faced by the eu which is finding new birth policies that would be effective in countering demographic decline it does so by evaluating the impact of a new type of family policy pregnancy benefit on fertility behaviour births and abortions and on child health at birth this is a unique research opportunity as pregnancy benefits are very rare the evaluation will be conducted using highquality populationwide administrative microdata and stateoftheart microeconometric modelsthe project is inherently interdisciplinary as it connects economics with demography public policy sociology and womens reproductive rights the action includes intersectoral transfer of knowledge first the secondment institution conducts policyrelevant research tailored for the needs of the government and other public bodies second the nonacademic placement will occur in an ngo promoting gender equality and womens rightsthe novelty of this research is threefold first it evaluates the impact of a novel prenatal cash transfer on fertility as opposed to traditional postnatal policies second it contributes to understanding of abortionseeking behaviour which is rarely done third it evaluates the impact of an earmarked nonmeanstested transfer on child health at birth which has not been done previouslythe proposed policy evaluation is important in the context of1 tackling demographic decline in the eu a threat to longterm sustainability of public finances2 supporting costeffective policymaking evaluating effectiveness of costly family policies and choosing the best ones is useful for the taxpayer3 fostering gender equality the evaluated antiabortion policy is not restricting womens reproductive rightsthis project will strengthen the era as it will be executed in a low ri performing country currently no economists in slovak academia specialize in family policies
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preventing bone loss by targeting endothelial celltissue crosstalk
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during healthy aging but also in osteoporosis a disease that affects more than 22 of european women beyond the age of 50 loss of mineralized bone is caused by a disbalance between bone formation and resorption while blood vessels are abundant in the skeletal system and play essential roles they are currently not considered in the context of antiosteoporosis therapy moreover apart from the role of sex hormones we know too little about the impact of sexspecific regulators in physiological and disturbed bone homeostasis our recent work has provided fundamental insights into the organization of the bone vasculature in mouse the heterogeneity and functional specialization of endothelial cells ecs and the changes during aging recent and unpublished research from my team has utilized single cell rna sequencing in combination with advanced immunostaining and imaging to identify a novel ec subpopulation termed type r for remodeling type r vessels are postarterial capillaries found at sites of homeostatic and therapeutic bone turnover mainly trabecular bone and their activation in young mice can enhance osteogenesis in aging mice type r vessel clusters emerge inside cortical bone at sites of bone loss protect will systemically characterize the function of ecs and in particular type r capillaries in healthy homeostasis and during bone loss this will involve the generation of new mouse lines for intersectional genetics and the characterization of critical molecular regulators we will also characterize sexspecific and agerelated factors controlling bone homeostasis and employ approaches to translate our findings into the human system preclinical experiments in mice will establish whether ecs and type r capillaries are involved in the response to therapies aiming at osteoblasts or osteoclasts protect will generate the conceptual basis for future approaches utilizing endothelial cells for the prevention of bone loss and antiosteoporotic therapy
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innovative nanostructured aluminium composite
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innovative nanostructured aluminium composite a constant goal in almost all areas of electronics is miniaturization miniaturization leads to a reduction in strip thicknesses and places ever higher demands on materials in terms of strength conductivity and formability the trend towards transmitting higher currents goes hand in hand with higher demands on the base material a key requirement for materials is thermal relaxation resistance which enables it to maintain spring forces and transmit currentssoluterials goal is to develop produce and to offer nanostructured lightweight materials based on ms kasakewitschs scientific work and doctoral thesis we developed a nanostructured aluminium material inc and transferred the production process from laboratory to pilot industrial scale inc is the material that meets contemporary requirements and sets the course for the future its a key enabling technology that will lead to farreaching developments in downstream industries the material properties are needed in all future industries such as emobility 5g and electronics for example electrical conductors such as highvoltage cables could be constructed as selfsupporting materials in future
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dynamics of proteinligand interactions
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proteins are biological macromolecules that are vital to all processes of life understanding the functions of proteins has great scientific and commercial value proteins are used as industrial enzymes as pharmaceutical treatments and many proteins are the targets of drugs current knowledge of protein function is primarily based on static structures which have provided great insights about structurefunction relationships that today form the basis for protein science and protein engineering proteins are however not static molecules but undergo spontaneous transitions between alternative structural states some of which are rare transient conformations that are essentially invisible to traditional methods these dynamical properties are known to be critically important for function but highresolution studies of dynamics have so far been conducted merely as an addon following structural studies to change the situation we aim to establish integrative biomolecular dynamics by developing methods that integrate timeresolved xray crystallography nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular simulations to study the motions of proteins while they carry out their function we focus on the challenging problem of molecular recognition because it represents a poorly understood frontier in molecular science where advances are expected to have great impact specifically we will address the question of how proteins bind ligands by describing with atomic resolution the entire dynamic process to reach a consistent kinetic thermodynamic and structural view we are at a point where it will be possible to develop the individual techniques required for our integrative biomolecular dynamics approach as a team we can leverage ongoing developments in hardware and methods while ensuring the tight integration between methods that is needed to study complex dynamical systems we thus aim to move structural biology into a new era of protein dynamics
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mycobacteriophages to treat tuberculosis passed station or future promise
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the emergence of drugresistance to tuberculosis tb drugs poses an increasing challenge to tb control and new treatment options are urgently needed novel or repurposed antibiotics are still being introduced but this pipeline will dry out in the near future bacteriophages are viruses that kill bacteria they have been used to treat infections before the introduction of antibiotics with the emergence of drugresistance there is renewed interest in this ancient treatment option clinical use of mycobacteriophages to treat tb and nontuberculous mycobacterial ntm infections is still in its infancy this project contributes to 3 areas in the development of clinically useful mycobacteriophage treatments for tb and ntm infections phage discovery from soil samples collected in the compounds of tb clinics and hospitals in cape town south africa we will isolate mycobacteriophages using spot tests and plaque assays dna of newly discovered mycobacteriophages will be sequenced and during the return phase of this project i will select promising mycobacteriophages with lytic effect against tb or ntm infections that can be used for development of phage cocktails for clinical use phage inhalation method the efficiency of phage treatment is dependent upon the phage concentration reached at the site of disease phages that can attack m tuberculosis have long tails which might be vulnerable to manipulation we will optimize an inhalation method leaving the phages intact and functional preparation for a clinical trial an existing mycobacteriophage cocktail active against tb will be used for a first clinical study in humans to assess dosing safety and efficiency if our mycobacteriophage hunt is successful and the translation can be made into purified and adequately dosed administration of mycobacteriophages a virtually inexhaustible addition will be made to the therapeutic armamentarium for drugresistant as well as drugsensitive tb and ntm infections
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coevolutionary approach to unlock the transformative potential of naturebased solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities
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naturebased solutions nbs are governance techniques and models that directly and costeffectively benefit both nature and humans despite the progress in nbs design and implementation the sociopolitical challenge is that nbs are often tailored for the privileged their design is expertled and their implementation hampered by institutional and administrative inertia nbs have not been able to support a just transformation of habits for sustainability and fail to incorporate nonhuman actors or include marginal and vulnerable humans as true beneficiaries of these solutions coevolvers goes beyond the state of the art by introducing a coevolutionary approach which offers a radically new view for nbs design and implementation by looking at nbs at the interface of technological and biological spheres and considering full cocreation as an interplay not only between the stakeholders but also between human and nonhuman actors to accomplish this coevolvers explores through seven living labs ll across europe the situational and placebased conditions around the sociopolitics of nbs design and implementation the purpose is to alter the socioecological conditions to provide governance models and techniques motivation structures and practices for more inclusive nbs and resilient communities coevolvers helps develop already existing incipient and emerging nbs with local actors by means of participatory and digital transdisciplinary methodologies coevolvers will support the growth of novel capabilities entrepreneurship and renewal capacity for a just transition coevolvers engages and informs policy and decisionmakers to ensure their contribution to transformational impacts we integrate cocreated knowledge and preparedness to act with actual governance and decisionmaking structures to ensure implementation and critical evaluation together with the continuous reconfiguration and development of models techniques and tools
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the historical roots of global inequality
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the aim of this project is to understand the historical roots of global inequality specifically it will address two questions why did some regions experience an early start in the development of complex hierarchies how relevant is such an early transition in explaining current comparative economic development a series of theories going back to the origins of the social sciences emphasize the role of some crucial environmental factors in explaining the rise of the very first complex hierarchies unfortunately however the scarcity of global datasets on natural environment and hierarchy going back to the first human societies has made it difficult to test these theories partial empirical validation has come almost exclusively from either crosssectional empirical studies using data on the current environment to proxy for past conditions or case studies focusing on a limited numbers of wellstudied areas this project aims at filling this gap by combining new global panel data on ancient climate a result of recent advances in paleoclimatology ancient migrations reconstructed through archaeogenetics and ancient societies constructed from aggregating archaeological reports with advanced econometric techniques the project comprises three lines of research the first line will test a prominent theory that relates a series of changes in the natural environment with the emergence of intensive food storage and the subsequent rise of the first relevant socioeconomic inequalities among huntergatherers the second line will focus on farming societies and investigate the role of longdistance trade spurred by the invention of bronze on the rise of the first urban civilizations and new unprecedented economic inequalities among farmers the third line will document the long shadow that ancient hierarchies either among huntergatherers or farmers have produced on current comparative economic development
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assessing longterm changes in indigenous environmental knowledge
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ethnobiological research provides contradictory evidence of changes in indigenous environmental knowledge iek systems with some studies suggesting processes of knowledge erosion and others emphasizing adaptability and resilience the ecological impacts of such changes are also largely unknown given that ethnobiologists generally lack diachronic or longitudinal data for the study of iek changes over long periods of time and their knockon effects on biodiversity using systematic ethnobiological placebased data collection in a unique research site in the bolivian amazon with an untapped wealth of longterm ethnobiological information in this project i will rigorously assess the processes through which iek systems change over time and the ecological impacts associated with such changes this project will be conducted in partnership with the tsimane indigenous peoples through processes of knowledge coproduction the combined use of cuttingedge geospatial analyses with ethnographicallygrounded data will allow me to disentangle the interwoven relationships between iek changes and biodiversity loss and provide a more granular interpretation of causality in hypothesisdriven ethnobiological research the project will contribute to a paradigm shift in the way in which change and causality are addressed and theorized in ethnobiological scholarship enriching scholarly discussions about the push and pull between continuity and change within iek systems and significantly expanding our knowledge of the pathways through which the loss of collective intergenerational memory impinges negatively on biodiversity conservation the projects groundbreaking nature lies on its focus not only on changes in iek content eg plant uses but also on the contexts for such changes eg biocultural landscapes and its interwoven ecological impacts eg forest loss
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sustainable and affordable urban geothermal exploration novel technologies and workflows
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europe needs urgent solutions to decarbonize its heating sector geothermal energy can play a prominent role in this transition providing heat in urban areas as an alternative to fossil fuels however its growth is hampered by the limited knowledge about the resources and risks in these challenging environments existing exploration methods are not suited for reservoir characterization in urban contexts the urgent project addresses this gap by providing sustainable and affordable solutions for urban seismic exploration of geothermal resources lowimpact innovative technologies consisting of an electric seismic source and novel mems based sensors integrated into autonomous nodes will be designed built and tested on 3 sites balmatt be konin pl batta hu they will enable highquality data recording including low frequency signals resulting in high resolution imaging up to 4000m of depth ultimately improved reservoir characterization will reduce the geological uncertainties and contribute to increase drilling success rate by 20 also by optimizing survey design including compressive sensing and simultaneous shooting urgent eventually aims at reducing exploration costs by 30 for more efficient analysis of the acquired data ai ml methods will be developed and tested to assist and automate fault and fracture detection structural models including these features will be the basis for geomechanical modelling to assess fault reactivation and the corresponding seismic risk in addition ml techniques used in the og sector will be updated and combined with thm reservoir modelling to optimize the location and design of wells maximizing heat extraction while minimizing seismic risk leading to increase plant lifetime up to 40 years and higher revenue urgent will contribute to accelerate the deployment of urban geothermal projects through exploration workflows suited for these environments market uptake analysis and reinforced community acceptance
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development and application of ultrafast lowenergy electron microscopy
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this proposal aims at the development and application of ultrafast lowenergy electron microscopy uleem a new experimental technique for studying dynamics at surfaces it addresses a key question in ultrafast surface science namely the observation of rapid structural changes with high spatial and temporal resolution and with ultimate surface sensitivity down to the monolayer level in order to achieve this goal a number of conceptual and technological challenges will need to be addressedthis project is designed to support a comprehensive approach to the successful implementation of uleem pulsed electron source concepts and electron pulse compression schemes will be realized for the conditions of lowenergy electron microscopy furthermore tailored contrast mechanisms will be employed to enhance the timeresolved mapping of specific structural features and domainswith this newly established methodology we will study a selected set of model systems and nonequilibrium phenomena to explore ultrafast surface imaging of the dynamics and control of phase transformations interlayer energy transfer in van der waals heterostructures and the excitation and propagation of collective modes
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towards a computational account of natural sequential behavior
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imagine navigating through your kitchen walking around your table and chairs reaching the counter sliding a cup on the countertop pouring yourself some coffee and preparing a sandwich such an everyday situation requires a sequence of behaviors involving the sophisticated interplay of perception attention cognition planning and action all unfolding in an ambiguous and uncertain world yet although past research in the behavioral sciences has revealed many properties of these constituent faculties the understanding of how humans coordinate these cognitive abilities when carrying out everyday tasks is still rudimentarythe goal of this project is to carry out behavioral experiments and develop computational models to identify and characterize perception cognition and action in the wild our hypothesis is that sequential actions involving perceptual uncertainty action variability internal and external costs and benefits can be understood and modeled in the unified framework of optimal sequential decision making under uncertainty to achieve this goal we integrate ideas and methods from psychophysics statistical decision theory active vision intuitive physics optimal control under uncertainty navigation and inverse reinforcement learning the proposal is structured in such a way that subsequent work packages consider tasks with increasing naturalness from classical psychophysical production tasks visuomtor control to navigation and sandwich making we will develop methods that allow recovering subjects perceptual uncertainties beliefs about tasks their subjective costs and benefits including effort and action variability based on our previous experimental work on visuomotor behavior and theoretical work in modeling such behavior on an individualbyindividual and trialbytrial basis we seek to elucidate how perception cognition and action are inseparably intertwined in extended sequential behavior
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epicuticular electrification spontaneous charging of materials at the worlds largest bioair interface
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the materials on the outer plant surface create the worlds largest bioair interface invisibly this surface spontaneously charges when hit by raindrops and solid materials this is due to contact electrification a phenomenon used in technologies like printing and energy harvesting yet extraordinarily little is known about its role in nature and how biosurfaces charge epic will target two exciting and unresolved questions a can one exploit the generated charges to power hightech devices at the leafair interface and b how is the organism affected by the electric fields generated on the outer leaf surface the core of epic is thus a detailed surface analysis to gain the highest resolved insights in solid and liquid contact electrification of biosurfaces to achieve this i will combine studies of materials surface charging chemical and topographical analyses with observations of cellular responses plant growth and adaptationthis data set will then indicate how to engineer material systems named artificial leaves that can be installed on the plant leaf or sprayed on it to harvest the contact charges for technical purposes epic will eventually enable energy harvesting environmental and plant health sensing communication with robots and electrocatalytic reactions autonomously driven by electricity and reactants from the leaf environment moreover i will develop additional features in the materials of the artificial leaf to specifically protect the plant and to boost its growth during energy harvestingthe result of epic will be new insights into contact charging of materials in nature its effect on plant life and a groundbreaking energyautonomous and sustainable technology platform for the worlds most significant bioair interface with crossdisciplinary impact in materials science environmental sensing and robotics smarter agriculture and plantbased bioelectrochemical systems
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international innovation network for the development of cost and environmentally efficient seasonal thermal energy storages
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future energy systems will integrate diverse variable renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels use sector coupling and waste heat recovery and interact symbiotically with a variety of users seasonal thermal energy storages stes are existential for peakshaving and loadshifting in these systems and they increase the usability of decentrally generated thermal energy interstores aims to achieve successful market acceptance technological attractiveness and competitiveness by improving performance cost efficiency and increased reliability by pooling engineering hydrogeological environmental and applied disciplines as well as expertise from different sectors 14 partners from 9 countries will ensure a high exploitability through technology transfer measuresfor this interstores promotes the fullscale realization of two different stes variants two demonstrators address one crucial concept of versatile stes solutions in europeans future energy systems the combination of several tuneable stesoverarching goal is proving the international market potential of novel renostes and gigactes by demonstration of highly favourable technoeconomic and environmental performance with the unique opportunity of fullscale demonstration interstores innovations will close critical gaps for arriving at reliable facilites robust operational functioning and replicable implementation the two solutions will reveal crucial differences regarding optimal design integration potential on different scales operating conditions costs environmental impacts and benefits finally interstores will not only demonstrate application of planned innovation modules for stes to projects demo sites but set a major focus on maximizing their replication potential this will be achieved by complementing technological and digital developments at the demos with research on european transfer sites regional markets and new business opportunities
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sustainability and resilience for infrastructure and logistics networks
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due to globalized supply chains and the prevalence of justintime production all economies of the industrialized world are reliant on the flawless operation of the logistical network during the cov19 pandemic it became apparent that this network can be massively shattered and that a better understanding of its robustness risks and vulnerabilities is of vital importance additionally it is obvious that the accelerating climate change demands a much greener fright transportsaril aims to complement the classic definition of resilience which focuses on threat prevention robustness and system recovery by green aspects key performance indicators will be defined which quantify both the system resistance against disruptions as well as the environmental burden of freight transport adopting three different scenarios on different geographical scales regional national and internationaleu models will be developed which are able to capture the unperturbed system operation as well as the behavior in case of a disruptions while the regional italy and national spainportugal scenarios focus on natural hazards which become more threatening due to climate change the international scenario northerncentral europe considers the disruptions due to pandemics like cov19 or wars like the russian war against ukraine although the three scenarios will be modelled with varying levels of detail saril aims at a universal understanding of green resilience by using a common frameworkthe results for the three scenarios will be used to assess similarities and differences between the three geographical scales by exploiting the findings recommendations to improve the classic resilience like eg synchromodal approaches will be derived additionally saril aims for recommendations to reach the results will be widely disseminated to the scientific community and relevant stakeholders
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a feminist and decolonial approach to studying environmental movements in the democratic republic of the congo
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in the face of an escalating climate crisis social scientists are confronted with an urgent challenge how can our research contribute to facilitating the kind of radical economic and political reorganizations necessary for reduced resource use on a global scale european scholars and activists and are at the vanguard of this research and many approaches have coalesced around theories of degrowth and postgrowth which envisage the transformations necessary to create a socially just and ecologically sustainable society however this is not solely a european challenge it is a global challenge people of the global south have been and continue to be the most impacted by the environmental devastation being wrought by the climate crisis one of the most pressing challenges is therefore to coconstruct these theories and movements with activists and thinkers from the global south while some research connecting postgrowth theories with existing environmental justice movements has begun in latin america and south asia almost no research has been conducted in subsaharan africa this project therefore proposes to work on environmental justice movements in africa using novel participatory methods that engage african activists and scholars the overall aim is to develop this research into a novel paradigm postgrowth anthropology which prioritizes decolonial methods to contribute to this novel paradigm ethnographic research will be conducted on environmental movements which have challenged growthism and green development in urban and rural democratic republic of the congo drc
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conveniant advanced secure and touchless fingerprint scanning for identification purposes
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our solution is the first contactless multifingerprint scanner for identification purposes which scans the ridge and valley structure of the humand finger in full 3d this enables unambigously the differentiation between the fingerprints ridges and valleys and ensures the interoperability with contactbased scanners where only the ridges are scanned in 2d this interoperability enables access to the governmental biometrics market where compatibility with existing databases ist a must havefurthermore the 3d scanner is hard to fake as the 3d structure of the finger with its fine 3ddetails is really hard to get this gives a huge boost in terms of security of the system compared to contactbased systems where you leave your fingerprints on the device as latent imprints the aisupported data evaluation and the specialized design lead to a unmatched user experience in terms of conveniance and security
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nextair multidisciplinary digital enablers for nextgeneration aircraft design and operations
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radical changes in aircraft configurations and operations are required to meet the target of climateneutral aviation to foster this transformation innovative digital methodologies are of utmost importance to enable the optimisation of aircraft performancesnextair will develop and demonstrate innovative design methodologies datafusion techniques and smart healthassessment tools enabling the digital transformation of aircraft design manufacturing and maintenance nextair proposes digital enablers covering the whole aircraft lifecycle devoted to ease breakthrough technology maturation their flawless entry into service and smart health assessment they will be demonstrated in 8 industrial test cases representative of multiphysics industrial design maintenance problems and environmental challenges and interest for aircraft and engines manufacturersnextair will increase highfidelity modelling and simulation capabilities to accelerate and derisk new disruptive configurations and breakthrough technologies design nextair will also improve the efficiency of uncertainty quantification and robust optimisation techniques to effectively account for manufacturing uncertainty and operational variability in the industrial multidisciplinary design of aircraft and engine components finally nextair will extend the usability of machine learningdriven methodologies to contribute to aircraft and engine components digital twinning for smart prototyping and maintenance nextair brings together 16 partners from 6 countries specialised in various disciplines digital tools advanced modelling and simulation artificial intelligence machine learning aerospace design and innovative manufacturing the consortium includes 9 research organisations 4 leading aeronautical industries providing digitalphysical scaled demonstrator aircraft and engines and 2 hightech sme providing expertise in industrial scientific computing and data intelligence
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appraising the critical role of prognostic biomarkers in the assessment and triage of sick african newborns advancing a pointofcare device based on strem1 towards ce marking and implementation
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the main concern of clinicians when addressing sick patients is to promptly identify ie not miss those at higher risk of severe disease so as to prioritize their care and better target therapeutic interventions unfortunately riskstratification practices for infections remain suboptimal and prone to misclassification leading to adverse outcomes and misallocation of resources particularly in children and even more so among newborns from subsaharan africa ssa we recently developed btriage a pointofcare rapid triaging test designed for the quantitative assessment of strem1 a biomarker of sepsis and a highly performing prognostic marker irrespective of underlying disease levels of strem1 stand out as a quantitative and independent predictor of severity and death in allcause infections being superior to other markers and clinical scores showing promise also for riskstratification of noncommunicable diseases we propose to specifically validate btriage for riskstratification of all cause sickness in the newborn the age group concentrating 50 of all child mortality acrobatnewborns aims to continue and accelerate the valorisation of our device with clinical studies in mozambique ethiopia uganda and gabon the industrialization of its prototype and a goto market strategy for ssa the project includes strong components of health economics and impact assessment as well as sociobehavioural sciences usability acceptability and feasibility studies with the overarching aim of generating the necessary evidence to support btriages introduction to the african market the proactive use of our device for riskstratification of the sick newborn at first clinical presentation will determine objectively and with high precision those at risk of severe outcome and death resulting in improved outcomes and survival and an optimized use of healthcare resources including antibiotics and high value therapeutics
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real spacetime imaging and control of electron dynamics
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the sted project aims at giving an important push to the scientific career of the applicant in a timely and interdisciplinary topic imaging the early stages of quantum motion of electrons at their natural spacetime scales ie with picometer and attosecondfemtosecond resolutions the project will take place at imdea nanoscience a leading multidisciplinary research center dedicated to nanoscience and the development of nanotechnology applications in connection with innovative industrieselectron motion in molecular systems is responsible for natural processes such as photosynthesis photooxidation or electronic transport it is also at the heart of novel technologies based on photovoltaic devices artificial photosynthesis molecular wires etc understanding the underlying electron dynamics demands investigating these processes at their natural spatial and temporal scales in the sted project i will build a setup where a cw laser and fewfemtosecond long laser pulses will be combined with a lowtemperature stm this setup will allow me to image and eventually control electron dynamics occurring in different molecular systems deposited on solid substrates at electronic time scales from hundreds of attoseconds to a few femtoseconds with simultaneous submolecular spatial resolution i will focus on investigating rabi oscillations of individual phthalocyanine molecules and chargetransfer processes between a donor and an acceptor phthalocyanine the goals are to spectroscopically characterize the induced electron dynamics in real space with the cw laser and subsequently provide the film of the distribution of the electronic density in real time and real space with the pulsed laser source this will allow me eg to understand the origin of early sources of decoherences that reduce the efficiency of electronic transport with possible implications in photovoltaics and quantum information technologies
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center for glacial biome doctoral network
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glaciers and ice sheets were long believed to be sterile environments but just like other large ecosystems eg tropical forests tundra they are now widely recognized as one of the earths biomes teeming with life active algae fungi bacteria and viruses dominate the glacial environment and they have the ability to change the physical and chemical characteristics of the ice and snow with global effects for instance increasing ice melt rates are observed due to growth of pigmented algae on glacier surfaces and substantial amounts of methane from subglacial habitats are added to the global greenhouse gas budget despite their global influence many of the microbiological processes within the cryosphere remain poorly quantified a deeper understanding of such processes are relevant to researchers interested in the possibility of life on icy extraterrestrial bodies the survival and proliferation of life forms on our early earth eg during the part of the proterozoic era known as snowball earth and the positive and negative feedbacks that the cryosphere may have on global warming the microbial communities living in association with icy environments may also harbor unique metabolic pathways providing novel opportunities in biotechnology icebio is a doctoral network that will train the next generation of glacier microbiology and biogeochemistry experts the training and research programme is made up of seven interlinked work packages wp wp1 to wp4 are research work packages at the cutting edge of glacial microbiology and biogeochemistry and these will be supported by three overarching wps wp57 associated with the management training and dissemination of results icebio will deliver a detailed framework and database of the functional diversity and potential of the glacier biome not only serving to dramatically advance our understanding of a threatened biome but also laying out potential for use in economic and environmental services
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agoprene biofoams for the future furniture
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agoprene develops furniture foam from biomass to help the furniture industry reduce the need for petrochemicals by combining biomass from plants such as seaweed and wood waste we have developed a furniture foam with zero petroleum the idea came to life in november 2019 after a long research within the field of biomaterials we learned that petroleum is a byproduct of degraded biomass over time this might be common knowledge to others and that this enables us to produce the same materials from plantmass as petroleum the endproduct is somewhat different when composed from crude oil because it has been converted over geological time but in principle we can make the same products that is exactly what agoprene is doing
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sarscov2 variants evaluation in pregnancy and paediatrics cohorts
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variants of concern voc of sarscov2 raise the possibility of increases in transmissibility severity and immune evasion children and pregnant women who have not been prioritised in the pandemic are likely to be the last population for whom vaccines are approved and may have low uptake increasing the risk of voc arising in this population monitoring this group across regions is crucial given rapid changes in epidemiology due to interventions vaccine rollout and viral evolution verdi sarscov2 variants evaluation in pregnancy and paediatrics cohorts will build on a longstanding infectious disease research and trial network penta to address research questions on the impact of voc in these vulnerable groupsmpox virus known as monkeypox or mpx when this application was originally written is a zoonotic orthopox virus first described in the democratic republic of congo drc in 1970 it is an infection of global significance with cases reported in 11 african countries and sporadic cases reported outside africa as a result of zoonotic transmission and travellers returning from endemic areas however despite the global burden of mpox disease research into mpox has historically been neglected this current outbreak of mpox is like many communicable and noncommunicable diseases a complex biosocial phenomenon disproportionately impacting marginalised communities whilst exposing and amplifying global health inequitiessince may 2022 large numbers of mpox cases have been reported in nonendemic countries as of 9 september 2022 there have been 57527 confirmed cases of mpox since the start of the 2022 outbreak with the vast majority being reported in nonendemic countries of the 103 countries reporting cases in this current outbreak 96 are countries which have not historically reported mpox cases a recently published case series of 528 patients in 16 countries reported that 98 of cases were in gay or bisexual men with 41 also living with hiv sexual contact has been found to be the dominant method of transmission in this current outbreak in this case series 13 of cases were hospitalised mainly for pain management bacterial superinfection and fluid management more recently there has been an ongoing mpox outbreak in drc mainly affecting children 15 years of ageverdis objectives are i track and characterise voc and mpox in paediatric and pregnant populations and other high risk populations across the globeiiunderstand effects of voc and mpox on clinical outcomes shortlonger term vaccine effectiveness and transmission characteristics iii model outcomes and impacts of voc and mpox iv develop evidencebased recommendations for control of covid19 and mpox and other emerging or reemerging infectionsverdi will achieve these objectives by bringing together a diverse range of cohort studies including large scale national and regional level populationbased cohort studies from the eu and beyond providing a unique opportunity for harmonised analysis of data on voc and mpox from a range of sources eg electronic health records bespoke cohort studies household transmission studies screening programmes we will facilitate expansion of existing studies eg replicating ongoing european household studies elsewhere through this approach verdi will expand and enhance existing cohort networks including promoting flexibility to adapt to future emerging infections the project will improve understanding of the epidemiology and impact of voc and mpox leading to robust recommendations for control in a range of global settings as well as developing preparedness for future health emergencies
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virtual brain twin for personalised treatment of psychiatric disorders
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in the eu about 165 million people are affected each year by mental disorders and estimates indicate that mental disorders will become the number 1 economic cost factor in medicine in 2030 schizophrenia alone affects approximately 1 of the worlds population the clinical effectiveness of the antipsychotics on the market remains limited with 30 to 50 of schizophrenic patients showing an insufficient response to treatment several factors from genetic to psychological and social may lie behind poor treatment outcomes or side effects and varies from patient to patienttherefore the central aim of the virtual brain twin project is to create an ecosystem for generating virtual brain twins for psychiatric patients by leveraging the consortiums detailed knowledge and expertise in neuronal microcircuit simulation mathematical analysis innovative ai tools and psychiatric care and clinical studies this ecosystem will guide clinicians to optimise medication type and dosage and to evaluate alternative treatments such as brain stimulation and lifestyle changes multiscale causeeffect simulations and virtual brain simulations based on fmri or smri data from the individual patient will bridge the gap between molecules and the patients brainat the centre of this ecosystem will be the virtual brain twin platform which will make use of big data multiscale modelling and highperformance computing hpc that will be secured by appropriate data safety and protection the platform will be embedded in the european digital neuroscience research infrastructure ebrains and will be initially accessible to neuroscientists clinical researchers and mathematical modellers and in the future to clinicians and patients as well this groundbreaking project will pave the way for personalised treatment of psychiatric disorders with the potential to significantly improve the quality of life of patients suffering from these conditions
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molecular exchange at the plantfungal interface in arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis
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nutrient acquisition is the basis of life arbuscular mycorrhiza am symbiosis of plants with nutrientdelivering fungi is detected in the oldest land plant fossils and considered a prerequisite for plant life on land it is widespread in the plant kingdom and its secondary loss is the exception am improves plant nutrition stress resistance and general plant performance breeding amoptimized crops has significant potential for improving food security and sustainable agriculture understanding the molecular underpinnings of am function is thus imperative the hallmark of the symbiosis are the arbuscules highly branched hyphal structures which develop in root cortex cells they build a large membrane interface with the plant derived periarbuscular membrane pam that surrounds them most mineral nutrients are delivered from the arbuscules and taken up via the pam into plant cells through transporter proteins in return the fungi receive up to 20 of the photosyntheticallyfixed carbon the balance in mineralnutrientgainforcarbonloss influences the effect of the symbiosis in plant growth and yield however the full range of transported nutrients any mechanisms regulating transport and the balance in molecular exchange are unknown symbioticexchange strategically integrates transcriptomics phosphoproteomics metabolomics and proteinprotein interaction analysis with reverse genetics cell biology and transport physiology to identify novel plant and fungal transporters involved in symbiotic nutrient and metabolite exchange and to understand the molecular mechanisms of their regulation symbioticexchange will thus deliver major advances on the range of transporters at the plantfungal interface the exchanged goods and the regulation of exchange this important knowledgebase will provide crucial clues on how nutrient exchange can be tuned for profitable agricultural application of one of the most important symbioses on earth
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progressive lighthouse districts serving as green district gate towards leadership in sustainability
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european districts play a pivotal role in the achievement of a future low carbon economy the envisaged actions of the prolightproject are representative for innovative refurbishment with large potential of immediate replication of other residential buildingsfrom the municipalities the social housing involved prolight assembles closely integrates all needed actors measures theenvisaged solutions will lead to better quality of life for all targeted endusers this includes to find suitable social responses forawareness creation uptake of knowledge establishment of behavioral changes towards the energy efficient use the integration ofrenewables within an appropriate local political frame analysed districts include 1 building and renovating in an energy andresource efficient way in at fi gr 2 energy communities in es it pt combined in socalled innovation clusters a multiactorapproach uses a methodological concept that explicitly takes into account the energy transition as a societal lever for innovation in the involved demo districts applied research will be connected with theoretical analysis that involves identifying and compiling good practices successful initiatives and exemplar realworld demo sites these practices will be assessed and lead to a complete europeancompetence framework encapsulating the skills required to reach this change via recorded successful methods observed throughprolight the project combines individual gender collective aspects of active and responsible citizenship in an integrated workingconcept to conceptualize climateaware citizens and communities prolight exploits the potential of this growing wave of civicengagement and citizen science in order to facilitate the transition to green sustainable societies economies prolight achievesthis by understanding defining measuring assessing of 6 demo districts in different regions of europe disseminate effectively project results
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beyond restitution heritage dispossession and the politics of knowledge
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on the backdrop of ongoing debates to decolonialize museums beyondrest asks if the return of looted art can be regarded as a closure of historical wounds the project probes the focus on restitution that inadvertently casts dispossessed art in terms of contested property instead beyondrest explores what kind of loss dispossessed art engenders and how this loss has shaped the knowledge production on heritage it focuses on the interlocution between western europe the near and middle east and north africa mapping relationships between people and things that have largely been left out of current debates the project starts in the mid19th century which witnessed the rise of the museum in its modern form as well as violence unleashed by imperial and colonial projects and dispossession innumerable objects made their way into international collections categorized mostly as islamic art or as the universal heritage of humankind that nonetheless symbolically and proprietarily belongs to the west beyondrest tackles dispossession not as a loss to be mended but a means to transform knowledge through inquiries into absence the interdisciplinary research group will employ a wide methodologically matrix including ethnographic interviews visual analysis of exhibitions archival research and textual analysis of the laws governing cultural assets to capture the proprietary stakes in the interplay of epistemic remembering and forgetting beyondrest takes risks by centering on what is absent rather than present on what is lost rather than found it argues that the dispossession of art is not merely a problematic of colonialism or empire that is of the past but an ongoing process that is constitutive for the governance of heritage in its national and transnational formations beyondrests working hypothesis is that the dispossession of art and cultural heritage is not an aberration but a precondition for the ways in which art and cultural assets circulate
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enhancing nitrogenfixing symbiosis in crops using rhizobia bacterial effectors
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nitrogen n is vital for plants however its poor availability in soils has led to the widespread use of n fertilizers resulting in environmental problems like greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution legumes offer a sustainable alternative to n fertilizers by forming symbiotic relationships with nfixing bacteria known as rhizobia many rhizobia possess a type iii secretion system t3ss to deliver effector proteins into host plants to facilitate colonization and nfixing symbiosis some t3ss effectors activate host plant symbiotic signaling while others suppress plant defense responses furthermore plant genotypes with specific resistance r proteins can detect rhizobial effectors triggering immunity and limiting colonization although t3ss effectordependent nodulation holds potential for enhancing nfixing interactions in agricultural settings research remains limited nodulation outer protein i nopi from rhizobia sinorhizobium fredii hh103 enhances symbiosis in commercial soybean however there are gaps in our knowledge regarding nopi function interactions with plant targets and recognition by r proteins in this msca fellowship i will address these gaps using interdisciplinary approaches genomewide association studies interactomics and nopi structural determination in addition i will explore the custom engineering of rhizobial t3ss effectors for modifying symbiosis an innovative and timely strategy for improving hostrhizobia compatibility the host lab will provide a unique opportunity for me to expand my knowledge into the bacterial side of the legumerhizobia interaction while sharing my expertise in the plant side i will have valuable networking opportunities and cuttingedge training in protein biochemistry and structural analysis providing me with an interdisciplinary skills base to lead my own future research group focused on plantsymbiotic interactions and their practical applications in crop improvement
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mental health promotion in healthcare workforce helpcare a realist and economic evaluation of an intersectoral and multilevel intervention in denmark
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supporting the mental wellbeing mwb of healthcare workers hcws is a global public health priority with farreaching societal and economic consequences hcws face multiple occupational risks that can significantly affect their mental health the covid19 pandemic has exacerbated strained working conditions in hospitals leading to increased rates of stress depression and burnout particularly among women and nurses this has resulted in a concerning shortage of hcws triggering a negative cycle of deteriorating working conditions reduced job satisfaction compromised healthcare quality and patient safety to address this critical issue an intersectoral action using innovative multilevel interventions promoting mwb is necessary however the lack of robust evidence of costeffectiveness for preventive approaches in the healthcare sector hampers informed health policies and sustainable actions three major hindrances to progress are identified the absence of positive mental health indicators mwb as the primary intervention outcome the need for a multifaceted approach considering individual and organizational factors and the lack of health economic evaluationsthe helpcare project emerges as a solution aiming to provide a realist and economic evaluation of a multilevel mwbbased intervention in the public healthcare sector launched by the technological company howdycare in denmark the study will use structural equation modeling sem and costbenefit analysis on large longitudinal data of danish hcws to understand how this type of intervention works and its economic impact helpcare entails a strong intersectoral collaboration academicpublicprivatengo whose findings will pave the way for more effective interventions to enhance hcws mwbthe involvement of leading experts in the field from the department of psychology at university of copenhagen offers valuable resources and infrastructures for the success of this project and my career
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advanced analysis of multiparametric volumetric ultrafast ultrasound a novel approach for noninvasive breast cancer diagnosis
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tumour development follows a diversity of complementary biological pathways including the modification of the tissue structure and vascularization which are not currently captured by imaging techniques in the clinic breast cancer patients undergo a series of imaging sessions using complementary modalities including ionizing mammographies in many cases this imaging is not precise enough for a diagnosis so that tissue samples in the form of biopsies are used to further characterize the tumour and determine the appropriate treatment beyond the pain and stress associated with biopsies this complex process is costly and time consuming and delays the time to diagnosisultrasound bmode imaging is largely used in the diagnostic process of breast cancer in part because it is low cost portable and largely available as well as nonionizing and noninvasive our laboratory institute physics for medicine paris has recently developed several quantitative techniques allowing for the measurement of tissue stiffness fiber organization and vascular mapping all relevant to tumour development in this project i propose a new approach to diagnosing breast cancer noninvasively by applying machine learning analysis to rich volumetric multiparametric maps of complementary tumour aspects obtained using these innovative ultrafast ultrasound techniques the project will tackle the technological challenge of integrating these techniques into a common acquisition and analysis framework and include the collection of a large clinical dataset and the development and validation of a predictive malignancy model informing on tumour characteristics for the diagnosis this approach will open the door to fully virtual biopsies impacting society on a large scale in terms of cost diagnostic efficacy and patient comfort
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an euwide springboard for regional implementation of innovation procurement
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this project is a preparatory action for creating innovation procurement policies and instruments that can be effective and sustainable at regional level but also relevant at european level the preparatory work will be achieved by using four european regions that cover the full range of innovation performances defined by the ecs regional innovation scoreboard as development sites murcia es skne se bucharestilfov ro and oulu fiduring the project the project consortium will1gather information from i regional public bodies in charge of innovation policies and funding instruments and ii innovation ecosystem players which propose and execute projects using state of the art learnings and best practices2analyse this information to produce a joint programme and four regional action plans to incorporate innovation procurement to each regions policy and increase its impact by leveraging eu initiatives and fundingthe prepare consortium will produce and widely disseminate addedvalue results including a knowledge asset on the state of the art of innovation procurement and policy recommendations exploitation initiatives will deliver capacity building policy promotion at eu national and regional level and the engagement of a network of eu regions interested in leveraging public procurement instruments to foster impactful innovation
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printed perovskite solar cells for large area user applications
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renewable energies provide clean inexhaustible and increasingly competitive energy source differing from fossil fuels in diversity abundance and potential for use solar energy capacity in european union has been increasing in recent years with germany spain and poland leading the way in new installations in 2022 the european union added a recordbreaking 414gw of solar power increasing the total solar power capacity by 25within the solar energy market perovskitebased solar cells pscs will contribute significantly towards the overall mix of solar energy due to pscs differentiators compare to other solar photovoltaic technologies of i lowcost ii excellent powertoweight performance and iii high power conversion efficiency pce of 257 at labscale in 2022 up from 38 in 2009 a key challenge of psc technology is replication at largescale as there is a substantial difference in performance from smallarea cell labscale and largearea module performance perseus is designed to establish a foundation for psc production and application development within europe the project will develop and demonstrate 3 different large area psc architectures that offer broad adoption potential across multiple industries such as floating photovoltaics building integrated and applied photovoltaics agriphotovoltaics and urban photovoltaics as each enduser requires different properties eg performance lifetime and cost targets perseus will develop parallel solutions to meet enduser needs covering 1 singlejunction opaque modules 2 semitransparent modules and 3 4t perovskite cigs tandem module architectures these will be translated into blueprints of multistage manufacturing lines which have validated matched outputs and allow immediate postproject progress to the commercialization phase
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innovative design and implementation of nextgeneration pointofcare cart
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innocart is a doctoral network designed to provide training and carry out breakthrough research on the high impact field of chimeric antigen receptor car t cell immunotherapy in a carefully integrated academic and intersectoral programme we aim to develop nextgeneration cart therapy and deliver a set of young researchers uniquely qualified for a career in academia andor industrycart cell therapy represents a revolutionary advance in oncology particularly for b cell lymphoma patients however longterm response is still restricted to 50 of patients with resistance being even more prominent in other cancers thus additional innovations to overcome resistance are needed to improve cart responses unfortunately the currently centralized production of cart hampers rapid innovation and associates with prohibitive costs long veintovein time and poor carbon footprint due to intercontinental deliveryinnocart aims touse innovative academic and industrial concepts to address these issues by 1 developing innovative manufacturing solutions for cart production at local academic hospitals and 2 developing the nextgeneration of more effective cartsat the core of innocart is its training objective to offer a cuttingedge multidisciplinary training programme herewith outstanding young scientists can generate breakthrough ideas and assume leading positions in academia and industry the training programme includes an array of disciplines ranging from biomedical sciences eg immunology car engineering geneediting physical sciences to mechanical engineeringindustrial partners are central to the programme and provide pivotal expertise on how to translate scientific discoveries into commercial reality intersectoral partners will host doctoral candidates provide key secondments and networkwide training events further innocart will foster longterm multidisciplinary research and bilateral cooperations between academia and industry
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innovative community engagement for building effective resilience and arctic ocean pollutioncontrol governance in the context of climate change
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the iceberg project has a twofold aim to comprehensively assess sources types distributions and impacts of pollution in combination with chronic climateinduced stressors on ecosystems and communities in the european arctics landocean continuum using a one health approach and to develop strategies for enhancing communityled resilience as well as pollutioncontrol governance to this end the project focusses on three subregional case studies western svalbard southern greenland and northern iceland iceberg investigates known and emerging pollutants including macro micro nanoplastics ship emissions wastewater persistent organic pollutants dioxins pcbs pfas pahs old and new generation pesticides and terrigenous elements heavy metals to assess the effects of pollutant discharges from arctic ship traffic freshwater dischargecryosphere meltwater wastewater and landbased atmospheric pollution on the marine food web the project is using model simulations and complementing these with remote sensing insitu observations and measurements iceberg analyses the sanitary quality of the food chain by characterising chemical contaminants using an exposomics approach gaining a comprehensive understanding of the synergistic impacts of climate change and pollution on human health it evaluates toxicological impact of micro and nanoplastics and pops on human digestive health the project develops automatic marine litter detection tools combining use of drones ai and citizen science iceberg champions multistakeholder and genderbased approaches to assess the impacts risks and vulnerabilities on indigenous and local communities and cocreate scenarios of change scenario modelling is used to codesign local pollutioncontrol strategies which includes both mitigation reducing pollution and adaptation reducing vulnerability to pollution iceberg creates novel governance approaches pollutioncontrol in the arctic at multiple scales
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development and characterization of a novel car tcell therapy for nhl
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nonhodgkin lymphomas nhl are a group of blood cancers characterized by the expansion of malignant b lymphocytes creating tumors throughout the body the standard of care for patients with aggressive nhl is a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy even though it is well tolerated 40 of the patients respond poorly and eventually relapse novel personalized treatment options are now available for such individuals and engage patients own t cells genetically manipulated to express a chimeric antigen receptor car capable to recognize and attack malignant cells thus far cart products recognizing and attacking cells expressing the protein cd19 have been approved by regulatory agencies across the planet however longterm followup studies show that more than half of these patients eventually succumb to relapse after cart treatment one of the causes for this is the loss of the cd19 protein on nhl cells therefore finding other proteins beyond cd19 that could be targeted or cotargeted with cartcells is desired indeed in the proposed project i intend to develop and characterize a cart therapy directed against a cell surface protein highly expressed in nhl preliminary data herein i plan to evaluate the levels of the new target protein in a large cohort of nhl patients using immunohistochemistry and to perform a thorough preclinical assessment of this novel cartcell approach using cuttingedge preclinical nhl models to achieve these goals i will exploit the experience of the hosting institution in generating nhl patientderived xenografts and in the benchtobedside cart development process as well as the external collaborators who are experts in blood cancer treatmentthis fellowship will significantly expose me to worldclass theoretical and handson preclinical research in hematooncology and adoptive cell therapy thus boosting my career as an independent researcher
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the integrate study an adaptive platform trial for the development of a new intervention to combat lassa fever in africa
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lassa fever lf is an acute febrile illness associated with bleeding organ failure and shock caused by lassa virus lf causes outbreaks in west african with inhospital mortality up to 12 challenges in the clinical care of patients are multiple due to the limited availability of lf molecular diagnostics the risk for nosocomial transmission and the limited treatment optionsthere are currently no safe and effective treatment options available for lf except ribavirin the efficacy of which is debated the clinical development and accessibility of effective treatment options would be a gamechanger towards reducing mortality associated with this disease and limiting its socioeconomic impact nigeria is the country by far most affected by lf in the world with about 80 of global casesthe integrate consortium builds on a more than 15 years lasting highly successful collaboration between leading european and west african institutions focusing on the joint priority to better understand manage and combat lf in west africathe overall objective of the integrate project is to establish a gcpcompliant adaptive clinical platform trial in west africa nigeria and other countries to test the efficacy tolerability and safety of repurposed and novel drug candidates for the treatment of lf to address this objective we focus our activities on 3 specific objectives to develop and implement an adaptive randomised controlled phase iiiii clinical platform trial evaluating drugs with proven preclinical activity against lf to build capacity for sustainable and independently conducted clinical research in west africa by developing site laboratory and medical care capacity through northsouth and southsouth technology transfer and training this activity encompasses capacity building of the lead nigerian institution in gcp compliant clinical trial sponsorship to engage communities with the proposed work plan and to assess acceptability of the trial
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innovative marine soundscape characterization to effectively mitigate ocean and sea noise pollution
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seasounds aims to better characterize and predict marine soundscapes in order to provide recommendations for appropriate and proportionate underwater noise mitigation solutions for improved knowhow decisionmaking and standards setting for a sustainable blue growth limiting the impact on marine wildlife seasounds addresses important knowledge gaps related to understanding characterization and modeling of the entire noise transfer chain from the noise source eg offshore foundation installation unexploded ordnance uxo disposal shipping to the receiver whether a technological tool or an animal seasounds methodological approach is built around the idea that to address effectively these complex scientific questions we need to go beyond the underwater acousticsrelated approaches thus seasounds incorporates concepts models and tools from seismology and mechanics to i develop solutions based on distributed acoustic sensing das technology to monitor marine mammals and provide information on seabed properties ii characterize the soundscape of ecoregions where noise pollution is poorly known and hence insufficiently regulated and highlight the temporal noise dynamics marine life has to face iii investigate methodology biases on noise assessment biases being induced either by numerical models or by uncertainties in the environment properties iv develop efficient physicsdriven modeling of noise generation including seabed vibrations and propagation in shallow waters v study the impact of noise and vibrations on marine invertebrates and plants vi understand the link between exposures of individual animals and the overall quality of the habitat that the animals live in seasounds will train the next generation of professionals with high multidisciplinary intersectoral and transverse skills who will comprehend noise pollution issues in a holistic way and hence be highly valuable for public organizations policy makers and stakeholders who have to take sciencebased decisions
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group stability and quantum information theory
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the main focus of the project will be on stability properties for groups and their connections with quantum information theory intuitively the term stability refers to the phenomenon of when approximate properties are close to actual properties concretely the project will introduce for the first time stability with respect to quantum groups and provide a systematic approach towards different important notions of stability for various classes of groups notably graph productlike groups and amenable groups for the latter stability is also connected to character theory and dynamical systems which will allow for different techniques from these areas to be applied towards our results
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novel small molecule attenuator of neuroinflammation in parkinsons disease
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parkinsons disease pd affects 85 million individuals worldwide according to who estimates pd remains cureless and treatments are based on administration of dopamine precursors or analogues neuroinflammation is a central hallmark of pd however no molecule is present in the market to tackle neuroinflammation in pd patients neuroinflammation contributes to the exacerbation of the disease as the release of inflammatory signals leads to reduced neuronal fitness driving to neuronal death neuroshield will address this gap in pd treatment to ensure an increased quality of life of pd patients while exploiting this therapeutic market opportunity the use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs nsaids in pd has been considered noneffective or raised longterm usage complications due to adverse sideeffects neuroshield will employ a novel small molecule tackling neuroinflammation through a yet unexplored pathway different mechanism to the classic nsaid cox2 inhibitors mechanism we have identified a novel potent firstinclass small molecule that is a strong attenuator of neuroinflammation neuroshield aims to explore this new safe brainpermeable molecule addressing neuroinflammation in parkinsons disease through a novel pathway
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association between genotypes and phenotypic responses of honeybee subspecies under stresses posed by xenobiotics applications in pesticide risk assessments
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apis mellifera l hb is the most influential pollinator in the world hb colony decline worldwide has been associated to multiple stressors the efsa recently devised an integrated framework focused on developing a holistic approach to the risk assessments ra of multiple stressors on hb it requests research data on the influence of genetic diversity on toxicological sensitivity at subspecies sbp level hb is the model organism for ra studies and there are at least 24 sbp described surprisingly ra require no distinction among them toprab will push the known boundaries of ra by examining for the first time the genetic background of hb using 3 sbp and snp markers toprab will perform an innovative study connecting the genetic diversity in the cytochrome p450 to the pesticides and pathogens exposure in hbs wp1 entails the application of bioinformatic tools on over 176 whole genome sequences owned by the host institution wp2 will consists of designing the reduced assay from the list of snps generated in wp1 wp3 will consist of laboratorybased bioassays of exposure of bees to pesticides and pathogens and by employing the link between genotypes to the phenotypic responses the wps will help solve four of the nine data gaps raised by the current ra addressing the results for the efsas policymakers toprab brings a strong interdisciplinary intersectoral and international framework since it will deal with the principal model organism of ra the magnitude of this innovative technology and approach will be available worldwide with a high potential of being adopted for universal ra schemes the importance of the results consists of the optimization of the current and future ra and the efficiency in genotyping large sample sizes toprab will be committed to the united nations 2030 agenda lined with sustainable development goals and european green deal
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screening and future enhanced mri
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safemri aims to prevent needless mortality from breast cancer by optimizing the use and performance of dedicated breast mrifirst safemri aims at detecting breast cancer early in women that are currently deemed too young for population screening age 4550 early diagnosis of breast cancer in these women will lead to a large gain in dalys averted i will initiate a prospective screening study inviting women to a onetime only abbreviated breast mri at the age of 45 the primary outcome will be the cancer detection rate per 1000 women actually screened this will validate abbreviated breast mri as standalone screening technique psychosocial and risk information will be collected from all participants costeffectiveness modelling will be included 5year followup will be performed in all women up to and including the first screening round at the age of 50second safemri aims at improving breast mri by reducing the need for contrast administration this is a major downside of breast mri for women ivcanulation and a small risk of allergic reactions and the environment pollution of surface water first i aim to enhance signal changes using a strongly reduced dose of contrast with advanced deep learning dl further studies are tailored at assessment of unenhanced mri particularly i will validate novel diffusion weighted imaging dwi sequences capable of generating high resolution diagnostic images within short scan times using dlbased reconstruction furthermore i will investigate arterial spin labelling asl based breast imaging strategies that show perfusion without the need for contrast administration finally we will combine unenhanced mri techniques in a general adversarial network to construct synthetic breast mri images repeated reader studies will be conducted to assess image quality and diagnostic value safemri will thus consolidate my leading role in breast imaging and enable me to design the breast screening of the future
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public participatory cocreation tools for naturebased solutions
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naturebased solutions nbs have gained traction over the past decades as a urban design philosophy that reduces pressures of climate change by creating sustainable and resilient urban spaces with an investment of over 240 million eu proves that nbs is essential component in its sustainable development strategy however the use of bluegreen infrastructure a core component of nbs is often too technical excluding a primary user and beneficiary general public from giving input into nbs planning this further leads to the lack of public acceptance of nbs projects and poor sociallyresponsible design hence there is a need for better tools and processes to facilitate cocreation of nbs projects between public and planning professionals the aim of public participatory cocreation tools for nbs pactnbs project is to create a framework for facilitation of urban nbs codesign by using public value frameworks integrated within serious games to aid decision making this will be achieved by 1 using systematic approach to establish public values metrics relevant to diverse european communities 2 developing and testing serious gaming tool integrated with environmental and social objectives for urban design and 3 providing holistic cocreation framework for serious game application in nbs planning based on the results of public and professionals testing across europe pactnbs goes beyond the stateoftheart by addressing critical gaps in nbs public planning but also captures eus policy objectives and sustainability agendas through european green deal and sdgs 6 and 11 utilising researchers extensive background on nbs development and social engineering together with crosseuropean collaboration and professional networks through hosting institution and nonacademic placement the project will not only deliver the highest benefits to research industry and general public but form international network to advance eus climate and social resilience
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returns to work in occupational relational and corporate settings
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the rise of platforms and remote work has refashioned concerns about work security and flexibility in public debates academic studies have documented an increase in nonstandard work over decades including polarization of rewards shifting occupational boundaries and winding paths among women and other marginalized groups these findings had important policy implications but left questions about the unfolding of individual labor market experiences amid the more noticeable changes this project mobilizes new techniques and data sources and overcomes divisions in research on work to address those problems it will recover important complexity by 1 measuring the diversity of individual job trajectories in light of their economic returns costs and risks and by 2 grounding job trajectories in work activities and crucially workers interpretations of labor market structures these objectives integrate previously divided formal and constructionist thinking to explain the interplay of contexts practices and meaning around workthe project has three parts work package 1 wp1 uses nationallevel employment datasets of france germany and the us to survey job trajectories in relation to earnings across institutional contexts it advances analyses of occupational and other categorical effects by drawing attention to job change sequences standard and odd wp2 asks how workers organize concrete work it takes two strategic cases with detailed work records one involving technical expertise and the other practical tasks to study how workers do their jobs as they move between corporate and relational arrangements and to what effects both steps assume stable structures wp3 asks how workers question conventional job presentations in standard and nonstandard work trajectories it draws on a unique dataset of career descriptions in two areas of work and two countries to capture institutional and cultural effects on meaning construction
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mycoproteins for sustainable fish feeds nomyfeeds
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norwegian mycelium as nomy is an oslobased bioscience company established in 2020 our vision is to make our systems of production circular by nature our mission is to use the biointelligence of a billion years of fungal evolution to develop new sustainable alternative proteins from fungi nomy does this at three levels first we work at the value chain level with large processing industries to design out waste from their system by identifying highvolume low value nutrient rich side streams of the production ones that are costly to throw away thus we invest resources into waste utilisation rather than waste management at a considerable savings second nomy develops circular processes fermentation technology for utilising these sidestreams our aim is to be circular in the utilisation of infrastructure as well we invest in production systems that make use of existing infrastructure with our industrial sidestream partners third this provides us with raw materials that are cost effective where these sidestream producers give them to us or pay us to take them away to cocreate value as circular products in these production facilities we make fungalbased products that have a fraction of the environmental footprint of existing products and we can do it at scale 247 regardless of weather in industrial facilities that require no arable land better for people and the planet
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quantum control of ultracold molecules by electric fields
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the study of molecular collisions at the lowest possible energy has emerged as an exciting research frontier at low energies the wavecharacter of matter leads to exotic scattering phenomena that reveal the fundamental mechanisms of molecular collisions crossed beam methods are ideal to probe collisions with the highest detail but the lowest energy currently achievable is not sufficient to fully harvest these possibilities building upon my recent breakthrough in statetostate merged beam scattering at recordlow energies the aim of this project is to reduce the currently attainable collision energy by another 23 orders of magnitude by combining stark deceleration merged beams laser cooling and velocity map imaging using two distinct systems that are characteristic for a large class of molecular interactions i will measure hitherto unexplored quantum features in the statetostate integral and differential cross sections for atommolecule systems i will measure scattering resonances and image how the resonance region dominated by a few partial waves evolves into the pure quantum regime where only a single partial wave remains for collisions between dipolar molecules i will experimentally study a peculiar selfpolarizing effect probing fundamental features of the longrange dipoledipole interaction that can be steered from attractive to repulsive for both systems i will manipulate the cross sections using external electric fields and study how the partial waves transform during the collision the proposed research program will directly visualize how molecular collisions transform from hot into ultracold at the full quantum mechanical level providing excellent tests for quantum theories of molecular interactions it will bridge the gap between the ultracold quantum physics and physical chemistry communities and will lay the foundations for a new era in the rich history of elucidating molecular reaction dynamics using crossed molecular beams
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cryosphereocean effect on the microbial communities in the southern ocean
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the melting of the cryosphere is among the most conspicuous consequences of climate change and a significant source of freshwater to the southern ocean so as a crucial sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide co2 anticipated physical changes in the southern ocean will bring modifications to its biogeochemical processes and role in the earth climate predicted increases in iron and nutrient influx to the so surface waters are likely to impact its primary production and contribution to biological carbon export however there remains uncertainty about the significance and magnitude of these projections on primary producers with likely consequences on the rest of the marine ecosystem cryomics aims to characterise and quantify the fate of cryospheric exported bioavailable nutrients trace metals and carbon on phytoplankton utilisation pathways with broader implication on the functioning of the biological carbon pump in the khs we hypothesise that biogeochemical enrichment from melting ice shelves leads to a direct positive response of the phytoplankton and sea ice algae community enhancing its productivity and metabolic functions while favouring largercelled species such as diatoms focusing primarily on the understudied kong hkon vii sea khs in the eastern weddell gyre along a unique cryosphereocean continuum cryomics combines intensive sampling biogeochemical analyses and metagenomics to systematically understand the structure and function of microbiomes in marine ecosystems associated with the cryosphere and amidst contemporary changes through the support of the msca this project will provide a coordinated and comprehensive dataset of this region of the southern ocean shedding light on microbial interactions and their potential vulnerabilities to perturbations a dimension currently lacking in climate models this invaluable insight will enhance our understanding of future projections for the southern ocean including its impact on antarctic sea ice
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a small window to the future of our oceans genomic divergence plasticity and microbiome shifts in marine invertebrates along natural ph gradients
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ocean acidification oa is a global problem caused by the rapidly increased co2 emissions to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution ocean acidity is predicted to increase from 100 to 150 by 2100 which will affect half of the marine biodiversity the resilience adaptive and survival potential of marine organisms to oa can highly vary among species and the broader implications for ocean ecosystems are far from known in this sense marine co2 vents which generate ph gradients over short geographical distances provide a perfectly designed natural laboratory to study the longterm effects of oa and to look into the future of our oceans the project aims to understand the biological strategies of calcifying marine species to overcome the effects of oa using a keystone echinoderm widely distributed across a current natural gradient of ph we will use an innovative and multidisciplinary approach combining transcriptomics and metagenomics together with physiological and ecological data to provide a deeper understanding of the adaptation and plasticity of echinoderms this proposal will focus on different biological characteristics that determine the potential of the species to survive and adapt to changing environments and generate important knowledge about 1 intra and interspecific processes to cope with rapid environmental change 2 adaptative evolution versus phenotypic plasticity in the biological responses of organisms 3 larval microbiome to modulate responses to environmental stresses and 4 the vulnerability of the different life phases of organisms to climate change this information will allow us to understand the buffering systems and adaptation strategies used by the species predict the resilience of organisms to oa and finally fill a relevant knowledge gap in ecological genomics
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preclinical evaluation and investigation of laterocidamide a novel antibiotic from a new drug class to overcome polymyxin resistance
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the emergence of gramnegative bacterial resistance against antibiotics especially the lastlineofdefense polymyxins presents a societal threat with the potential to inflict higher healthcare costs and lifethreatening patient risks for decades physicians have relied on polymyxins as a last line of defense to treat resistant gramnegative bacterial infections that do not respond to standard antibiotic therapies however in 2016 a new polymyxin resistance mechanism surfaced mobilized colistin resistance mcr1 the global overuse of antibiotics including polymyxins and a persistent lack of novel antibiotics have made us vulnerable to increased bacterial resistance including the mcr1 strains seriously threatening our public health in project prevail our group will validate the effectiveness of a novel drug laterocidamide latero from a new class of antibiotics to deliver an innovative solution that can mitigate the alarming global surge of antibiotic resistance our novel synthetic antibiotic latero has bestinclass potential to address these challenges with i minimal antimicrobial resistance ii gramnegative bacterial efficacy against polymyxinresistant strains and iii the ability to be produced at low cost moreover our robust synthetic approach will allow us to generate additional analogs in the future in prevail we will explore lateros technical and commercial potential specifically we will validate latero as a novel antibiotic for multidrugresistant gramnegative bacterial infections by performing in vitro and in vivo efficacy and preclinical toxicity studies in parallel we will 1 analyze the ip position and develop an ip rights strategy to protect latero and new analogs developed in the project to secure future assets 2 evaluate lateros commercial feasibility and construct viable business cases to enter the market to support outreach and procuring future funding opportunities
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surrogate measures for safe autonomous and connected mobility
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supersafe surrogate measures for safe autonomous and connected mobility will address the problem of the safety evaluation of the interaction between conventional vehicles and connected and automated vehicles cavs the project builds on the notion that vehicle automation is posing new risks that the traditional accidentbased and proactive safety analysis methods are unable to investigate in supersafe i will select the relevant variables drew on the newly identified risks posed by cavs and with these i will develop a new proactive method based on surrogate measures of safety for studying the effects of the physical and digital infrastructure on the interaction between road users in a mixedmobility environment also considering the benchmarks for cities liveability and transport sustainability that include road casualties as a primary factor the european white paper on transport calls to reach zero fatalities by 2050 following vision zeros policy zero serious casualties recent statistics indicate a reduction of traffic accidents but also that this development has slowed and additional efforts are required at the same time cavs are already a reality tendency towards vehicle automation is even more evident in the european policies which encourage member states to push with the introduction of vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems however the road towards full automation is still not open because there is a fear of crashesinjuries and low acceptance of potential cav accidents this is mainly because the cavs behaviour visavis the conventional vehicles on the road and the digital and physical infrastructure is still unknown to meet these rapidly approaching needs i propose supersafe which will contribute to attaining the aforementioned european goals by developing a scientifically rigorous method of estimating risk based on the road users real needs to improve traffic safety in the transition period to fully automated driving
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scalable parallel and distributed astrophysical codes for exascale
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in astrophysics and cosmology ac today high performance computing hpcbased numerical simulations are outstanding instruments for scientific discovery they represent essential tools and theoretical laboratories able to investigate interpret and understand the physical processes behind the observed sky for these laboratories the efficient and effective exploitation of exascale computing capabilities is essentialexascale systems however are expected to have a heterogeneous unprecedented architectural complexity with a significant impact on simulation codes consequently the proposed space coe aims to extensively reengineer the target codes to engage with new computational solutions and adopt innovative programming paradigms software solutions and libraries space aims to foster the reuse and sharing of algorithms and software components in the ac application domainthe proposed space coe will address this action through codesign activities that bring together scientists code developers hpc experts hw manufacturers and sw developers advancing lighthouse exascale ac applications codes services and knowhow promoting the use of upcoming exascale and postexascale computing capabilitiesin addition space will address the highperformance data analysis of the data torrent produced by exascale ac simulation applications also with machinelearning and visualization tools the deployment of applications running on different platforms will be facilitated by federating capabilities focusing on code repositories and data sharing and integrating european astrophysical communities around exascale computing by adopting software and data standards and interoperability protocols
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a new measure of socioeconomic inequalities for international comparison
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the overall objective of the incasi2 project is to establish a global crosssectoral network of experts working on a joint research programme aimed at building a new analytical model of socioeconomic inequalities in order to a to produce effective advances in the understanding of the complex phenomena of socioeconomic inequalities creating a fresh analytical framework at a comparative and interdisciplinary level in a context of societies in permanent crisisb to construct an innovative multidimensional measure dysic dynamics of socioeconomic inequality in comparison adapted to the new realities shaped in this context that is global more comprehensive and realistic in the comparative analysis of inequalities between europe and latin america the caribbean and to monitor the situation and evolution of inequalities we consider 3 dysic variants 1 including 3 main dimensions as a base education occupation and income 2 adding gender dimension and 3 adding dynamic trendsc to create the incasi living lab to elaborate diagnoses contribute to informed decisionmaking and the design of public policies it is designed to enhance the innovation process by embracing three core principles fostering a collaborative open innovation strategy utilizing a methodology centred on promoting the quality of life for individuals and creating an environment for interdisciplinary thinking and action that enables the participation of diverse socioeconomic political and scientific agentsthese objectives will be achieved with a collaborative work of an interdisciplinary intersectoral and international network for comparative analysis of socioeconomic inequalities incasi with 29 organizations 14 eu universities from 6 countries 11 universities and 4 nonacademic organizations from 7 lac countries and the usa in order to face one of the most relevant problem in our societies socioeconomic inequalities and promote european values of social justice
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utuesr programme solutions for green and digital transition
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utugredit is a unique international intersectoral and interdisciplinary doctoral programme hosted by the university of turku utu the objective of utugredit is to provide a topquality research training ecosystem for 25 esrs focusing on green and digital transition to strengthen transformative change it boosts transformative change towards sustainable societies and producing highdemand experts for the needs of publicprivate sectors and academia the call of the utugredit programme will be published internationally and applicants will be evaluated through an open meritbased process by external evaluators the appointed esrs will be full members of utu graduate school utugs with similar opportunities obligations and working conditions to other utugs members utugredit will integrate cuttingedge research infrastructures experienced supervisors and existing knowledge base of 14 research groups with 45 professors and experienced researchers this enables esrs to gain highquality training and perform novel research under interdisciplinary supervision that crosses research groups from utu and associated partners on topics related to green and digital transition and european green deal national or international 46 months secondments and other training activities are provided through 26 associated partners and utu utugredit will provide transferable skills for esrs including scientific writing project management culture of open science and entrepreneurial skills that are essential for widening their career prospects the training and secondments offered will actively involve all participants and thus contribute to bridging the gaps between research and private sector and boosting the sustainable socioeconomic growth from regional to eu level after training esrs will be capable of working in the private or public sector or academia especially in the area of green and digital transition and have skills to start their own business as well
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going viral music and emotions during pandemics 16791919
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within day of covid19 reaching europe in early 2020 music had emerged as one of the most prominent media for emotional engagement with the effects of lockdown sickness and grief its remarkable primacy for expressing navigating and shaping emotional pandemic experiences was quickly picked up by researchers and journalists who showed an immediate interest in finding evidence both for the role of music in past pandemics and for continuities across time it quickly transpired though that they lacked established categories shared methodologies and sufficient historical knowledge to describe and to compare the phenomenon adequatelythe study of music in pandemics and especially of its emotional significance is both underdeveloped and urgently needed and has the potential to constitute a major new field of research on music emotions and pandemics alike going viral will be the first study to provide a comparative history of the imbrication of music in the emotional experiences of pandemicsits major research aims areto develop an innovative conceptualisation and methodology for studying music and emotions across history building on the equally wellregarded approaches musicking as social practice and emotions as embodied practices
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implicit learning in addiction
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alcohol use disorders aud affect more than 11 million people in europe 34 of the population basic research in the field is conducted in animal models using conditioning tasks and then translated to humans however this translation is limited by multiple factors and one reason is that animal research uses objective behavioral and physiological measures which is very different from human research based on conscious subjective reports ie craving a solution to this disconnect is to study human conditioned responses implicitly without participants conscious cognitive control in my previous research i have developed novel procedures to measure implicit pavlovian conditioning through 3 experiments i will use these techniques to study implicit reward and aversive sensitivity across the alcohol use spectrum the first objective is to study the implicit processes characterizing hazardous drinkers and students diagnosed with aud wp1 the second objective is to better understand the neural and behavioral correlates of implicit learning wp2 as part of this multidisciplinary project i will develop my skills as a scientist i will learn new experimental techniques ie eeg and obtain experience in longitudinal research i will also gain leadership and management skills as an independent researcher prof wiers the supervisor of this project is a leading expert in addiction and implicit processing under his mentorship i will increase my knowledge about addiction research and create academic relationships with his network of collaborators the findings and publications generated through this project can significantly impact the addiction field increasing theoretical understanding of aud and providing us with novel clinical and diagnostic tools with large societal and clinical impact i will use this project as foundation to gain the skills and experiences necessary to in the future lead my own laboratory on cognitive psychology and addiction
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boosting smart regional innovation ecosystems
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our vision is to cocreate europe through a 21st century mindset methodology skills and tools closing the innovation gap between innovation leaders and moderatemodest innovators we rely on inclusion and active participation of actors institutions and places that collaborate to maximize the value of innovation to society and ensure equitable diffusion of its benefits boost project proposes a systemic approach both inclusive and collaborative to strengthen innovation ecosystems in europe the main aim of boost project is to increase the scope and efficiency of interregional collaboration among project partners and their regional innovation ecosystems in the following thematic areas industry 40 cleantech and green transition health wellbeing and ict digital transformation by designing a structural multidimensional interregional collaboration framework icf develop tools and mechanisms that enable and support the operationalization and scale up of the icf among smart regions and contribute to the transition towards green and digital regional development models and policies in europeboost proposes a twophase implementation process 1 first the codesign and codevelopment of projects core concepts vision mission icf and unique selling proposition and initiating the boost community and collaboration corridor and 2 second to set up and mature the icf among smart regions by developing a joint 5year innovation action plan aligned with regionalnationaleu innovation policies and synchronized with innovation funding mechanisms across partner regions and euthe consortium brings together 4 partners tit nwrda bbf and cldi from 3 modest and moderate innovator countries bulgaria romania and spain and 2 partners vk and tsp from 2 lead innovator countries denmark and estonia enhancing exchange of innovation and boost best practices at the level of public and private stakeholders
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cultivate codesigning food sharing innovation for resilience
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cultivate uses a multiactor approach to build sustainability and resilience in urban and periurban areas through a groundbreaking online social innovation support platform the food sharing compass built with and for five key stakeholder groups food sharing initiatives policy makers food supply actors researchers and citizens the platform will make it possible to navigate diverse food sharing landscapes and cultures in order to understand develop replicate expand and strengthen sustainable food sharing in europe supporting the european green deals action plan food 2030 the farm to fork strategy and the eus climate change ambitions the open access food sharing compass will comprise five innovative tools the sharecity200 database an interactive automated mapping tracking and monitoring database of food sharing initiatives that will add more than 100 new locations to the sharecity100 database httpssharecityieresearchsharecity100database the food sharing calculator which enables comprehensive and holistic assessment of the costs benefits and impacts of food sharing for all stakeholders the menu of good governance which provides options for developing policy making which facilitates sustainable food sharing the library of citizen engagement which supports establishing expanding and maintaining inclusive participation in sustainable food sharing the sustainable food sharing community of practice which will be established through a bespoke amplification programme to optimise the potential for mutual learning and exploitation of the food sharing compass well beyond the project in essence cultivate will establish the eu as the global frontrunner in the development of resilient and inclusive food sharing economies identifying drivers and implementation gaps and challenging existing theories and practices which currently constrain sustainable food sharing
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from wild to crop unravelling the impact of root domestication on drought tolerance
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crop domestication revolutionised human life this process induced changes in plant traits that produced plants that grew faster and generated higher yields however remarkably little is known about how plant roots have changed throughout the domestication process climate change is causing increasing droughts in many parts of the world given that roots are the way that water enters the plant they are key for understanding drought tolerance root traits from crop ancestors could offer a route to increasing drought tolerance of modern crops to do this we need to focus our efforts on the impact of domestication on roots and the rhizosphere the zone around the root including microbes rather than only aboveground traits as traditionally done wildroots will therefore test the overall hypothesis that crop domestication led to changes in root and rhizosphere traits which decreased the drought tolerance of crops compared to their wild relatives wildroots will make a holistic study of the roots and rhizospheres of a wide range of crops from diverse origins there will be a focus on root exudation and volatile organic compound voc emission which are vital root processes that are crucial for many types of interactions with plants animals microbes and the soil itself changes in root exudates and vocs have been observed during drought conditions but their roles in the drought tolerance of plants remains unclear wildroots will 1 evaluate domestication effects on the roots and rhizosphere then 2 elucidate the mechanisms relating belowground traits to drought tolerance and finally 3 use this knowledge to modernise crop models and identify belowground traits to be exploited for droughtproofing current crops the results will reshape our fundamental knowledge of both the crop domestication process and how root exudation influences drought tolerance as well as offering new approaches to boost the food security of current and future agricultural systems
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liberation analysis for optimizing extraction and processing of crms
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the crm act together with other eu policies towards the green and digital objetives of the ce and the eu current context pose some challenges and needs to the extractive and processing industries improve and facilitate access to raw materials and reduce eu dependency increase circularity ensure recycling into secondary raw materials and recovery from extractive waste ann also the mining and processing industry must be sustainable thus competitive socially responsible and efficient in terms of cost reducing energy consumption and gas emissions bloom aims to develop and demonstrate extraction and processing technologies to facilitate exploitation of the primary raw critical raw materials for this th ecollaboration with both ukraine and canada is envisioned 2 and 3 partners from these countries respectively clustering activities are envisioned through key partners and a a business case and exploitation strategy bloom will tackle the challenges through its strategic objective which is to facilitate exploitation of the primary crm minerals and metals only for the eu to strengthen the eu supply chains by increasing the efficiency on extraction and processing with a smart and modular solids analysis system consisting on an online mineral liberation analysis which enables the integration on mining sites of advanced control loops in different stages of the processing based on ml and ai techniques or datadriven extraction operations based on accurate mineralogy information from the site these actions are oriented to lowering the costs of extraction and processing increasing the financial viability thus also contributing to making profitable lowgrade deposits giving access to new suppliesbloom consortium is composed of a multidisciplinary group of 15 partners from 4 european countries 2 from ukraine 3 from canada and 1 from brazil one of the resourcericher countries in the world and lead by upc
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scaleup of the europe startup nations alliance as a european digital infrastructure consortium and a catalyst for a startupfriendly reform in member states
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esna has been created in 2022 with the vision of becoming a leading entity for the eu agenda for entrepreneurship and contribute to bring europe to the lead of global startup ecosystem and the mission to support the signatory countries and provide concrete support to policy makers in implementing the best policy practices outlined in the eu startup nations standardtwo years on and the organisation is clearly on the path to achieve both its vision and mission a formal entity has been created in portugal to allow the start of activities as a firstofakind body which has grown in resources skills and specially in adhesion of member states counting today 19 countries as a strong and very representative majority of the signatory countries of the sns and with continued negotiations for the inclusion of further members in terms of activities esna has initiated its pivotal role of monitoring of sns adoption with the launch of the sns scoreboard first as a baseline in 2022 and then as a first annual report in 2023 and the start of a new policy lab to support countries accelerating sns implementation through best practice benchmarking sharing and exchangethese esna initial activities have been pivotal in helping eu member states moving beyond the aspirations of the political declaration and into concrete implementation and benefiting from a strong participation of esnas signatory members as demonstrated by the 91 response rate to the sns scoreboard 2023 inquiry but in spite of esnas significant advancements in terms of member state adhesion and activities there is still a need for an evolution in terms of a legal framework which is better aligned with its truly european role as well as consolidating the breadth of its activities namely in the area of the sns standards implementation monitoring and knowledge sharing which are the core objectives being pursued through the current application
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highlyinnovative technology demonstration for biobased co2 capture and utilization for production of bulk plastic applications
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the hiccups project proposes a resource efficient solution to convert biogenic co2 emissions from wastewater treatment plants into biobased plastics for packaging at the heart of the hiccups concept lie innovative technologies for the capture conversion to monomers and polymerization of co2 to produce plga these polymers with excellent water gas barrier properties are fully biodegradable and 100 made from renewable feedstock which makes them a promising candidate for the replacement of fossil polyethylene to demonstrate the potential of plga packaging materials will be produced from plga film coated paper and molded plastic examples of these types of packaging are paper cups take out boxes and sealed plastic trays for perishable food from the supermarket the hiccups technology results in a ghg reduction based on co2 utilization replacement of fossil feedstock and by industrial electrification in the hiccups project the complete value chain from biogenic co2 to polymer end use will be demonstrated including downstream processing and end of life studies recycling and marine biodegradability tests will show this sustainable plastic will not accumulate in nature to maximize impact of the hiccups technology digital modelling lifecycle assessments and a full business case analysis are initiated in the early stage of the project to provide targets for technology development besides the reduction of ghg emissions hiccups will have societal impact by creating awareness through interaction with policy makers and civil society and the creation of new jobs in innovative fields by targeting an industry as essential as wastewater treatment hiccups aims to create a concept that can impact society and contribute to climate change mitigation assessed by an integrated monitoring system of the carbon removal potential on a big scale and serves as a crucial first step in upscaling this new solution to a flagshipscale commercial plant
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eit crosskic strategic access to finance
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developing synergies of the eit community with eic and eif to facilitate investments access to finance for the kics supported ventures startups scaleups innovation projects and that also contribute to the kics financial sustainability and diversification of revenues from roi mechanisms equity
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genomic and singlecell approaches to establish the molecular basis of stony coral resilience to climate changerelated stressors
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scleractinian corals are the main builders of the marine reefs that provide a home to roughly a quarter of all marine species in addition their photosynthetic symbionts contribute to earths oxygen absorb co2 from the atmosphere and provide the coral host with most of its metabolic needs global changes drastically affecting ocean acidification and temperatures cause the breakdown of this symbiosis this process is also known as coral bleaching and it results in a mass decline in coral reefs despite the continuous efforts to study this phenomenon our understanding of the bleaching process is so far limited it is important to emphasize that different coral species display distinct responses to stressors with varying mortality rates following bleaching hence in this action i will utilize these differences in coral resilience i to characterize the cellular and molecular responses to stressors of three corals with different levels of bleaching resilience stylophora pistillata acropora millepora and oculina patagonica ii to identify specific genes that might be key players in coral resilience and iii to design and test pharmacological interventions to modulate coral resilience to thermal and acidification stress to do so i will expose corals to thermal and acidification stressors and use singlecell genomics approaches to measure and compare cell typespecific gene expression responses to stressors within and between species these analyses will highlight candidate molecular pathways and cellular processes responsible for the high resilience of some of these species together this project will provide a highresolution molecular map of stony coral responses to climate changerelated stressors and it will help me and others advance towards targeted interventions to ameliorate these effects
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blue energy offshore installation accelerator
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key principles of the green deal are to prioritise energy efficiency develop a power sector based largely on renewable resources to secure an affordable eu energy supply and to have a fully integrated interconnected digitalised eu energy market however renewable energy scale up in europe faces increasing resistance due to limitations in applicable land area and the willingness of local communities to have wind or solar parks close by one possibility to resolve this issue is the usage of offshore space blue renewable energy sources such as offshore floating wind floating solar fpv waves tides and currents have a high and still unused potential to be explored this is of particular importance in view of the current energy crisis and changing energy policy for all offshore technologies lengthy and expensive metocean geophysical and environmental campaigns are needed which slow down the upscaling of offshore renewables the proposed blue energy offshore installation accelerator bluex will contribute to the green deal objectives and its related policies in particular with regard to increasing the eus climate ambition for 2030 and 2050 supplying clean affordable and secure energy mitigating natural hazards and preserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity bluex is an innovative copernicus based solution for optimising and accelerating decision making for blue renewable energy projects in all phases from planning to construction operation and decommissioning the heart of this solution is a cloudbased it network of relevant earth observation and metocean data streams that are combined in decision support tools for each phase as a result the planning and construction phase can be significantly optimised thereby reducing costs and required time to full operation bluex will be available and showcased for all key offshore energy domains for some of the most important european offshore projects to date but can be applied anywhere
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advanced magnetic probes for minimally invasive endovascular surgery
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endovascular interventions in minimally invasive surgery mis are vital for treating cardiovascular diseases through small incisions however current manual and tendondriven instruments lack precision magnetic actuation offers a groundbreaking solution providing exceptional dexterity the apollo project aims to develop a flexible probe capable of generating internal magnetic fields revolutionizing mis with advanced diagnosis and treatment options integrated sensors and biocompatible materials ensure precise control meeting clinicians needs in challenging anatomical regions apollos pursuit of commercial success involves strategic partnerships and dedicated business development efforts in essence apollo signifies a significant advancement in minimally invasive surgery offering unparalleled precision and accessibility in treatment
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moving bodies and memories of african slavery in south america
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the moving project is aimed at developing an ethnographic and multidisciplinary methodology to study the bodily traces of africaoriginated slavery enduring in postslavery and diasporic contexts the project is rooted in an anthropology of the memories of slavery that the pi has been conducting mainly in colombia for the past fifteen years and in her previous work on bodies senses emotions and nationalism in india as importantly the pi is a certified practitioner of a conscious embodied movement methodology which she has been integrating into her academic practice as field researcher and in teaching and supervision taking research into new theoretical and methodological directions the project focuses on peoples bodies and moves and the individual and social transformative potential of the movement of emotions and memories through that of bodies the project seeks to explore conditions of possibility for people who do not necessarily selfidentify as afrodescendants despite their african heritage to reclaim their history and transform their relation to it through bodybased and artistic practices the project also investigates whether the chronology of events pertaining to the abolition of slavery may account for significant differences in the ways the latters legacy has been acknowledged or not moving will adopt a comparative focus on three countries ie brazil chile and colombia while pioneering a methodology combining three types of research classic academic documenting the legacy and contemporary memories and experiences of africaoriginated slavery and the renewal of africarelated modes of reconnecting with this african legacy through everyday bodily ways experimental and artsbased creative with scholars of bodybased practices somatic practitioners and artists and actionoriented involving social participation of citizen scientists and wider society
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ioo a novel assay to predict patient response to immune checkpoint inhibitors optimising patient stratification to these therapies and tripling solid tumour patient outcomes in immunooncology
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immunotherapy is a beacon of hope in cancers battle but with a 1020 response rate in solid tumors its potential is untapped predicting patient responses to treatment which current methods are illequipped for is an urgent unmet medical need our project stands for industrializing our analytically validated multiplexed proteinfunction based biomarker assay ioo currently trl6 which is based on our proprietary bioimaging technology whilst scientifically validated we need further clinical validation to obtain increased datasets required for regulatory certification for clinical deployment this assay could triple the efficacy of currently available immuneoncology treatments by accurately predicting patient response to immune checkpoint inhibitors the basis of 90 of current immunooncology therapies if successful we will bring this transformative solution to hospitals worldwide the upshot could be gamechanging doubling survival rates for highprevalence lethal tumors like lung cancer
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governance by data infrastructure in the postpandemic democracy
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facial recognition cameras digital identity systems and health dashboards have become a staple of daily life by generating data aimed at monitoring or decisionmaking these regulatory data infrastructures take up functions that were once performed by humans inside state entities and public administrations regulatory data infrastructures are at the core of a new mode of governance normalized in the postpandemic society termed governance by data infrastructure with the pandemic and generative ai accelerating the digital transition of society regulatory data infrastructures are creeping further into public and private spaceat high societal costsdatagov explores the dynamics of governance by data infrastructure in the postpandemic democracy in the european union and nonwestern countries brazil india and south africa it focuses on three consumer technologies disciplining the socialbiometrics digital identity and health technologyas living laboratories to explore how regulatory data infrastructures become agents of governance contributing to critical data studies the project deploys qualitative and participatory methods to examine how governance by data infrastructure transforms three key areas of concern to the modern state citizenship state sovereignty and inequalitydatagov breaks new ground in four areas i by mobilizing the notion of regulatory data infrastructure it evaluates emerging datacentric assemblages and exposes the growing influence of the private sector on the welfare state ii by extending the gaze to nonwestern democracies it breaks with western universalistic assumptions on the dynamics of datafication iii by developing participatory methods rooted in citizen science it contributes to methodological innovation for the study of the datafied society iv by unmasking the impact of regulatory data infrastructure in the governance of the social it charts the future of democracy amidst pervasive datafication
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energy system modelling for green development of africa
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the emerge project seeks to provide african policy makers academics investors and citizens with the tools and knowledge required to increase the production of clean energy and the sustainable use of resources while bridging cultural and socioeconomic divides in order to simulate scenarios that optimize the use of current resources while taking into account social climatic economic and technical constraints emerge will codesign and test a toolbox by integrating and building upon existing tools methodologies and approaches additionally a knowledge base with a collection of initiatives materials and knowledgeexchange activities will be created the north western africa morocco niger river region malinigeria and mozambique are three african ecosystems where emerge will develop knowledge communities through a participatory approach
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ondemand bioresorbable optoelectronic system for invivo and insitu monitoring of chemotherapeutic drugs
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we envision a radically new technology for invivo bioresorbable chemical sensing where optical devices power and light sources synthetic receptors made out of materials that completely dissolve with biologically benign byproducts in biofluids will be developed and integrated together the sensing system the size of 1 eurocent will be coated by a longlived biocompatible polymer designed with ondemand degradation then implanted in the body to monitor invivo insitu and in realtime a chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin commonly used to treat cancer the system is then fully and safely resorbed once no more needed using an external temperaturetrigger that initiates the dissolution of the protecting coating and in turn of the system avoiding deviceretrieval surgery that may cause tissue lesioninfection the general objective is to demonstrate fabrication operation 2 months invivo and in realtime then dissolution of such a bioresorbable chemical sensing system for the detection of doxorubicin in an animal model this will break a new ground in insitu monitoring of chemotherapeutic drug enabling for the first time a fine tuning of the drug dose at the tumor site increasing patient survival rate being aware of the project risks we have broken down the general into different specific objectives identified a set of key performance indicators alternative material synthesisdevice fabrication techniques mitigation measures to tackle major risks the resorb technology truly represents the foundation of a future technology for personalized medicine enabling to address a number of medical issues for which continuous and localized monitoring of specific analytes ie biomarkers and drugs invivo for a prescribed time is of chief importance eg acute trauma treatment postsurgery sepsis drug therapeutic profiling and other all examples for which exsitu analysis of biofluids has proved to be not fully adequate for clinical needs
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advanced lightweight materials for energyefficient structures
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the transport sector has always been the focus of decarbonization in europe forest project proposes to combine the reduce recovery and reshape drivers to face the decarbonization issues in the transport sector reduce on the one hand the greenhouse gas emissions of fuel vehicles and the energy consumption of electric vehicles reduction is one of the major dares of the global mobility sector forest will reduce the structural weight of the vehicles by providing light components made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic in this way less fuel and energy consumption will be necessary to cover the same distance on the other hand fossil sources are being run out more and more besides their use at the endoflife eol has a negative impact on the carbon footprint forest will develop new chemistries based on highbiobased content for polymers bioacrylic biobenxozaxine biopolyamide and additives bio fireretardant in this regard the fossil sources dependency will be reduced recovery the cfrp market is expected to increase more and more in the transport sector aerospace automotive and heavyduty however an important issue which has not totally overcome is the recovery of the large volume the carbon fibre waste to provide added value materials forest will implement efficient methods to recover 100 of cf waste to develop highquality semifinished materials nonwoven organosheetsmc lft for valuable transport applications reshape the use of biobased and recycled materials is a real opportunity for mobility decarbonization but a detriment on the stability and safety properties of the performance could occur forest will research the influence of the multifunctional properties on the biocomposite mechanical fireretardant and emishielding therefore forest will combine the biobased recycled and multifunctionality material nature to obtain sustainable solutions for the bus aeronautic and automotive sectors
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things that matter mobility and agency of everyday objects in late medieval italy
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thima challenges the assumption that action is a human prerogative by examining how everyday objects served as agents of transformation in late medieval societies investigating the boundary between material and human agency is particularly critical for the present where new artificial intelligences call into question the very essence of being human thima reflects on these matters from another watershed moment in the redefinition of european material culture between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries everyday goods diversified and there was a significant increase of objects in circulation this period can thus serve as a crucial laboratory to explore the impact of ordinary things on peoples social behavior and emotional life for the first time thima examines objects as agents that interacted with individuals mediating social relationships and moving emotions ways of thinking and perceptions through their peculiar material language to investigate these questions this project employs a bold new comparative framework in the richly documented but diverse environments of tuscany and sicily this critical move away from siloed approaches to material culture allows us to better understand how socioeconomic institutional and legal contexts influenced the complex relationship between human and things the project interrogates a broad range of textual and material sources using quantitative and qualitative methods cuttingedge digital tools and drawing on a groundbreaking theoretical framework on material agency thanks to this novel approach thima will profoundly advance our understanding of how humans perceive and interact with their material environment from the medieval past to the present day
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eo4foodsecurity using earth observation enabled land cover classification for characterizing global food security on regional scales
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characterizing the state of global food security is essential in devising and evaluating policies and programs for effective decision making the concept of food security is multidimensional and dynamic and is often compounded by the challenge of obtaining relevant data moreover finding appropriate indicators that specifically encompass the four dimensions of food security including physical availability of food economic and physical access to food food utilization and sustainability as specified by un fao remains a challenging task there exist variety of different measures for assessing the food security situation but they merely focus on nutrition and physical aspects and thus provide incomplete assessments related to the problemin this poc project i aim to extend the unique ai algorithms and the big eo data management features developed in the erc stg so2sat to characterize the state of global food security on regional scales using multimodal data derived from satellite imagery and auxiliary open data and offer our software as a commercial integrated service within the poc a comprehensive business case that will assist us in designing an exploitation strategy will be developed achieving these objectives will augment the capability of our existing ai solution for land coverland use mapping to infer the crucial aspects of food security and sustainabilityour value proposition in eo4foodsecurity is a set of professional solutions to extract relevant indicators for characterizing food security by retrieving them from big eo data and other open sources using ai eg generating land use map and using it along with other information extraction modules of so2sat such as population density road and building footprints and other open data eg meteorological nutrition to generate food security map at unprecedented finer spatial and temporal scales we aim to support these solutions in an easytouse interactive big eo data analysis platform
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neuromorphic energyefficient secure accelerators based on phase change materials augmented silicon photonics
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the growing need to transfer massive amounts of data among multitudes of interconnected devices for eg selfdriving vehicles iot or industry 40 has led to a quest towards lowpower and secure approaches to locally processing data neuromorphic computing a braininspired approach addresses this need by radically changing the processing of information although neuromorphic electrical computing systems offer advantages in terms of cmos implementations and scalability they inherit limitations of conventional electronics such as low energyefficiency high latency and low bandwidth density besides such systems often require robust security layers for eg safetycritical applications security layers based on memorystored secret keys are prone to several types of memoryaccessing attacks therefore silicon hardware approaches for security primitives such as physical unclonable functions pufs are currently investigated because of their absence of longterm digital memory storage although electronic pufs have received major attention thanks to their native cmos implementation for secure authentication they are prone to machine learning and sidechannel attacks due to their cmos technologythe neuropuls project aims to build nextgeneration lowpower and secure edgecomputing systems by developing novel photonic computing architectures and security layers based on photonic pufs in augmented silicon photonics cmoscompatible platforms the integration of emerging nonvolatile phase change materials for synapsesneurons and iiiv materials for onchip spiking sources for the first time will allow to build novel neuromorphic accelerators featuring riscv compliant interfaces for smooth adoption and programmability optimal performance will be achieved thanks to a novel fullsystem simulation platform for design space exploration three relevant usecases will be considered for benchmarking to demonstrate 2 orders of magnitude energy efficiency improvement
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controlled irrigation technology scaleup in high potential farming segments
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agurotech bv is an amsterdam based deeptech startup that focuses on smart farming solutions for the global agriculture industrythe company was founded in november 2020 as a spinoff from the dutch institute of subatomic physics and is founded operated and owned by 2 females with majority share 85 of the company agurotech bv develops iotbased hardware sensors and aipowered software solutions to perform measurements in farmers fields and uses advanced algorithms to translate these measurements into meaningful insights and actionable recommendations these solutions help farmers to increase their yield while using their resources more effectively it has been shown that over 20 of yield can be increased and resources can be reduced anywhere between 3080 this is important because the farming industry has a significant role in todays societal sustainability challenges such as carbon emissions water scarcity and soil health it is recognized that precision farming technology will play a key role in addressing these challengesgiven that agurotech is a deeptech startup until now significant focus has been on rd and product development the company has just started commercialization and is increasing the customer base and preparing for scale up agurotech identified target segments who benefit most from agurotechs products and services these include flower bulbs potatoes onions carrots and sugar beets agurotechs strategy is to offer products and services in selected niche segments before expanding to other segments the goal of the project that is presented in this proposal is to start penetrating the flower bulbs and onions segment in order to 1 validate the potential of these segments 2 realize a better productmarket fit and 3 start realizing sales in these segments if granted this project will be used to realize a controlled and factdriven scale up of sales of agurotechs products and services in selected segments
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silicon optoelectromechanics for bridging the gap between photonics and microwaves
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conversion between electrical and optical signals enabled the use of nearinfrared nearir photons for high data rate transmission through optical fibre networks likewise coherent conversion between microwave and optical photons stands as a promising solution to transfer quantum states between remote quantum processors thus enabling the development of largescale quantum networks however the vast frequency difference between microwave ghz and nearir 200 thz optical photons hampers direct coherent conversion this limitation could be circumvented by phononmediated transduction which is a coherent twostep process comprising electromechanical and optomechanical conversions onchip microwaveoptical conversion mediated by ghz phonons has the potential to be extremely efficient due to the large optomechanical response of common materials and the similar wavelength of ghz phonons and nearir photons yet it is an open challenge to achieve efficient electromechanical and optomechanical conversion simultaneously in a single integrated circuit stateoftheart demonstrations show that surface acoustic waves saws allow efficient electromechanical conversion while cavity optomechanics utilize tightly confined optical and mechanical modes to yield strong optomechanical coupling however combining these two approaches is still considered challenging if not impossible the spring project will overcome these limitations by developing a fundamentally new optomechanical coupling approach to bridge saw electromechanics and cavity optomechanics the original idea is to use subwavelength nanostructuration of silicon cavities to couple tightly confined optical modes and saws the spring strategy will be used to demonstrate coherent microwaveoptical conversion of single photons and quantum state transfer between superconducting qubits monolithically integrated in a silicon chip opening a new path for applications in communications sensing and computing
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3ptec threeparent breeding technology for plants of the future
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background there is an urgent need for an agricultural revolution to generate climateresilient cultivars which combine proven traits with novel qualities adapting crop plants to climate extremes including heat and drought novel breeding technologies can make the difference to enable farmers to achieve high yields with climaterobust crops to secure food supplies for the worlds population breakthrough technology in the framework of the erc consolidator grant biblock we discovered that plant egg cells can fuse with two sperm producing offspring with three parents instead of two one mother and two fathers bypassing a hybridization barrier that is a major limitation for conventional plant breeding approaches the threeparent breeding technology 3ptec literally opens the way for exploiting beneficial traits of previously incompatible climateadapted wild species in the framework of the erc proof of concept grant trivolve we teamed up with one of the worlds leading plant breeding companies kws saat se co kgaa and successfully transferred the strategy to sugar beet as an experimental crop prototype objectives the development of the 3ptec technology for further crop plants including potato the establishment of technologies that enhance the efficiency of obtaining three parent plants and the commercial exploitation of 3ptec are aims of this project the project capitalizes on the breeding knowhow worldwide networks and commercialization expertise of the breeders aardevo and kwsimpact 3ptec will revolutionize the ability of breeders to develop improved crops in providing a tool to mine beneficial gene variants of currently incompatible species and to substantially shorten time to market of climateadapted seed varieties it provides a novel breeding strategy with economic benefits expected to positively affect the social welfare of farmers as well as upstream and downstream industries related to the agricultural value chain
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integrating spectral and geometric data on moduli space
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each physical object possesses specific frequencies of vibrations called its eigenfrequencies at which it enters in resonance under an external stimulus in mathematical terms these frequencies are the eigenvalues of a linear operator they form the spectrum of the object spectral geometry is concerned with understanding how the spectrum of an object as well as the modes of vibration eigenfunctions associated to each eigenfrequency are related to its geometric shape this is a wide area of research with applied and interdisciplinary aspects electromagnetic waves vibrating solids seismic waves wave functions in quantum mechanics but also involving very theoretical mathematics with many natural questions still open what can we learn about the topology or geometry of an object by observing its spectrum can we predict if the vibrations will be localized in a small part of the object or on the contrary if they will take place everywhere can we construct an object and be sure that certain frequencies are in the spectrum or on the opposite be sure to avoid certain sets of frequencies can there be objects of arbitrarily large size with no small eigenfrequencies project inspegmos deals with a specific mathematical model hyperbolic surfaces the moduli space is a space of parameters of these surfaces that we can tune and observe how the geometry and the spectrum vary in the semiclassical regime when the wavelength is small compared to the size of the object it is expected that certain spectral features are universal we will adopt a probabilistic point of view try to exhibit spectral and geometric phenomena that happen in 99 of cases the project is focussed on developing new integration techniques on moduli space we shall look for new coordinates generalize mirzakhanis study of volume functions and seek inspiration in random graph theory to develop new probabilistic methods in the spectral theory of random surfaces
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dynamic magnetosphere ionosphere thermosphere coupling
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dynamit addresses a fundamental misunderstanding of how earth is coupled to space in the polar ionosphere here the neutral atmosphere collides with charged particles influenced by electromagnetic fields profoundly impacting the dynamics of the atmosphere and its surroundings despite being the best instrumented region of space our understanding of earths ionosphere is severely limited the current paradigm contains two crippling assumptions that the ionosphere is 1 only 2d and 2 in a steady state this conceptualisation obscures the complex interplay of forces that change the fluids and electromagnetic fields in both regions this prevents us from accurately understanding phenomena such as the aurora polaris that have been observed and studied from ground for centuries to advance beyond the state of the art we must transition to a dynamic view of spaceatmosphere coupling this project will apply first principles to model how the neutral atmosphere plasma and electromagnetic fields interact to do this we will build and combine the dynamit model with novel measurements using an innovative data assimilation technique developed inhouse this groundbreaking combination of multiinstrument data with full 3d numerical simulations will create a radical new platform from which we will interrogate fundamental outstanding issues in space physics 1 how ionospheric dynamics disturbs earths magnetic field 2 how energy flows between regions and how it dissipates in the atmosphere and 3 how spaceatmosphere coupling shapes nearearth space these questions are critical for understanding how earth interacts with space and the influence on technology climate and circulation in the lower atmosphere if successful dynamit will be a paradigm change that transforms our conceptual understanding of how the atmosphere is coupled with space provides language to explain ionospheric observations and paves the way for improvements in space weather predictions
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collective adaptation
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human collectives adapt their cognitive strategies and social networks flexibly in response to multiple changing problems for example we as scientists continuously revise our teams and the way we integrate information depending on the topics we study as citizens we participate in diverse collectives that use different strategies to address challenges ranging from economic development to climate change this ability for collective adaptation contributed to our species spectacular success but sometimes our collectives seem stuck and unable to adapt to the problems they face we currently do not have a solid scientific paradigm for studying collective adaptation and its cognitive and social aspects have been studied largely independently in different disciplines i will develop such a paradigm by building computational models to integrate research on cognition and sociality and by collecting diverse empirical data on the interaction of cognitive and social processes including group experiments natural language processing of large textual corpora and longitudinal surveys this will allow me to investigate i the interplay of social learning strategies networks and problems that collectives face ii the formation and persistence of peoples beliefs about what the important problems are and iii the effect on collective adaptation of individual differences in these beliefs i am well positioned for this task because of my experience in building computational models grounded in theories and data on human cognition and sociality and the support from the complexity science hub vienna that has been designed for this kind of research this project will enable us to understand why collectives can be stuck in deadlocks about important problems and why they sometimes appear incapable of finding seemingly obvious solutions ultimately helping us to avoid undesirable societal trajectories such as those leading to extremism and violence
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transcription factors and regulation of aqp expression in maize stomatal guard cells and subsidiary cells
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the stomata are openings formed on the epidermis formed by two guard cells gc surrounded by subsidiary cells sc allowing gaseous exchange for photosynthesis at the expense of water via transpiration stomata are tightly regulated by the influx and efflux of water and small solutes across gc or sc membranes the diffusion of these solutes and water through the membranes can be facilitated by aquaporins aqps while there is insufficient knowledge on the precise role of aqps in stomata specific microdissection of the mechanism of aqp action in gcs and scs affecting stomata is further limited the superiority of grass stomata owing to their quick response make them apt for studying the role of aqps in stomatal response especially under abiotic stress condition since climate change has made crops worldwide extremely vulnerable in this regard maize is an appropriate grass crop to use as a model because of its economic importance the overall goal of this project is to study the role of different aqps and their transcriptional regulation in stomatal complexes that can be used to produce stressresilient crops we will be using transactivation assays protoplast engineering maize suspension cells and crisprcas to achieve the objectives the mechanisms uncovered here can be monumental to extrapolate the grass stress resilience mechanisms into other vital crops this project will help add the experience required for my goal of being an independent group leader i will gain from the scientific environment and the infrastructure and support system at libstuclouvain as well as from the vast experience of prof chaumont in research and project management in turn the host will benefit from the technical skills and creativity that i can offer
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exploring the therapeutic potential of perinatal cell secretomes
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over the past two decades cells isolated from human perinatal or birthassociated tissues amniotic membrane umbilical cord tissue and cells from amniotic fluid have been shown to provide tremendous proregenerative activities amongst others the application of these cells or of components of their secretome including extracellular vesicles evs have been found to improve myocardial infarction mi ischemic stroke is and multiple sclerosis ms symptoms in various animal models currently cellfree therapies represent a frontier for innovation in regenerative medicine for clinical unmet needs however very few scientists are trained for their clinical translation exploring the therapeutic potential of perinatal cell secretomes secret sets out with the ambition to train 10 doctoral candidates dcs to disentangle the inherent therapeutic potential of perinatal cell secretomes either as a whole or as fractionated small evs in order to possibile translate novel biologics into the clinic their specific focus will be the characterisation the delivery and the preclinical evaluation of these perinatal secretomes as an innovative therapeutic approaches for mi is and ms to achieve this goal universit cattolica del sacro cuore prof ornella parolini italy unites internationallyrenowned academic and nonacademic institutions from italy the netherlands germany belgium portugal and switzerland to deliver an interdisciplinary programme that goes beyond current stateoftheart research in next generation medicinal product development and validation these include the development and use of ipscderived organoids and organonachip models to identify the most efficient perinatal cell secretome in terms of immunomodulation angiogenesis antifibrotic cardioprotective and neurotrophic properties as well as the assessment of their in vivo cardiac reparative and neuroregenerative potential using novel delivery methods
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lumen empowering the blind
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there are over 40 m blind and over 238 m visually impaired people in the world struggling with everyday mobility who cant be employed or educated because of it while technology advanced and solutions appeared for multiple challenges that they face the area of mobility has not seen much change most of the technological solutions available are expensive they dont help to navigate and work only with some eyesight lumen has tackled these problems and created a solution which has a system able to understand the world like a vision capable individual the device understands the environment computes navigation paths for the users and transmits information through the sound and impulses on the forehead moreover it is affordable and easy to use lumen already made an incredible progress with its patents research and product iterations now the team is applying for the eic accelerator to finalise the product pilot it and enter the market thus requests eur 55 m of funding
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biocarbon based polymers for sustainable material development
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dcarbonizes approach targets biocarbon recycling into valuable starting materials for the chemicalpolymer industries and will primarily provide innovative lowcarb catalysis solutions the use of biocarbon is advantageous in many respects as it is renewable generally abundant and nontoxic and it represents easytohandle carbon reagents even on larger scale despite the lack of universal catalytic strategies available for biocarbon valorization into monomers and polymers recent advances in catalysis science have demonstrated the engineering and use of new promising metal and organocatalysts with high potential to overcome these limitations thereby creating the necessary feasibility to transform biocarbon into 1 fine chemicals such as carbonates carbamates carboxylic acids and esters 2 pharmaceutical synthons and 3 biomassco2based polymers thus catalysis has already been shown to be a useful technology for biocarbon valorization but has been rarely used in the wider context of new and functional biocarbon based monomerpolymer development the use of the latter helps to shape the future of functionalized polyesterscarbonatesamides and their subsequent utilization in novel tailormade and commercially relevant materials furthermore this project will also explore depolymerization pathways to recycle the synthesized polymers obtaining new monomers andor other addedvalue molecules that could reenter the loop and be used in new polymers and materials the network will recruit 12 doctoral candidates who will be awarded double doctoral degrees by two universities in two different countries at the end of the training program dcarbonize brings together leading higheducation institutions research centers and companies to form an innovation community able to offer excellent research and training both in rd and entrepreneurship
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organic upconversion device for swir imaging
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shortwave infrared swir imaging is a powerful tool to access and visualize the composition of biomaterials contactfree and in real time it can be used for example for invivo deeptissue bioimaging as well as for the inspection and quality assurance of manufacturing processes including agriculture pharmaceutics chemicals photovoltaics wafers metals and glasses the global swir market is estimated to 213 million usd for 2022 and predicted to increase by 72 until 2028 however the complex and costly manufacturing of commercial swir imaging prohibits consumers and lowend applications from benefiting from its vast application potential within orgup we propose organic upconversion devices as an attractive lowcost alternative they convert the invisible infrared image into a visible image being then captured by a lowcost commercial camera or sensor however so far such devices have failed to provide the relevant swir sensitivity above 1100nm ie the silicon cutoff the goal of orgup is to develop and showcase for the first time highquality organic swir imaging with a sensitivity up to 1500nm and an upconversion yield of 30 at a low cost while avoiding the use of toxic elements two industrially relevant demonstrators will prove reliable and durable mono and multispectral vision at high resolution and contrast we will combine inhouse recently developed ultralow gap organic semiconductors with unique knowhow in organic nearinfrared optoelectronics and stacked stateoftheart organic light emitting diodes selectivity for specific swir wavelengths will be achieved by embedding the organic stack into optically amplifying and spectrally selective microcavity structures as research and development of the proposed type of organic upconversion devices is relatively new yet with confirmed interest of market leaders for optical solutions we expect to create strategic ip and develop a path to marketing and commercialisation
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unleashing cellulose potential laserdriven structural modulation
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lasercell envisions an innovative approach to reshape and rearrange cellulose at the molecular level by disrupting cohesive interactions through resonant excitation of specific bonds it will revolutionize the field of biopolymer processing beyond cellulose and yield fundamental insights into supramolecular structure and dynamics in biomaterials although cellulose is biodegradable and mechanically strong it cannot be processed by conventional thermoplastic polymer methods which limits its use as highvolume material cellulose decomposes before it melts because of cooperative intermolecular hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions to plasticise cellulose i propose to disrupt these intermolecular bonds with photon energy delivered by infrared ir laserpulses employing wavelengths matching specific vibrational modes the photon energy will be resonantly absorbed thus effectively plasticising cellulose i envision that the rapid energy dissipation in short pulses will deliver enough peak power to disrupt the intermolecular bonds yet avoiding thermal damage i plan to systematically investigate how laser parameters influence the supramolecular structure of cellulose and establish analytical tools to characterize its structural transitions under mechanical load additionally to allow processability in different setups i aim to prolong the time window of plasticization and adjust the flowability by using the laser irradiation in synergy with the hydrogen disrupting molecules as a proof of concept i will implement this novel photoplasticization technique into a cellulose fibre spinning process and posttreatment to modulate the cellulose fibre crystallinity i have worked for 10 years on cellulosebased materials and have a strong background in fibre spinning and material science my research group will engage 1 phd student and 2 postdocs with background in polymer science and laser physics and technology
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african literary metadata
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recent years have seen something of a renaissance in african literature with african novelists becoming global bestsellers and achieving the worlds highest literary accolades but published novels are restrictively expensive in africa itself and the novel form is illsuited to african everyday life where people are more likely to spend their leisure time engaging with informal ephemeral and notforprofit literary and oratory cultural forms such as spokenword poetry street theatre and a variety of online genres these informal african literatures are rarely catalogued and therefore exist outside of any structured metadata system the consequence is that formally published english and french african novels are hypervisible globally while the rich literary and oratory cultures of the continent itself are caught in a perpetual state of structural ephemerality the almeda project addresses this problem in three ways first by providing the first history of literary metadata on the african continent the project will provide a diachronic understanding of how colonial cataloguing systems came to construct the idea of the literary work as bookbased and thus dismissive of africas oral cultures secondly almeda aims to develop and publish a metadata scheme specifically designed for these informal literary materials this scheme will be multilingual which will enable a unique descriptive model that allows africanlanguage genres to inhabit their own categories rather than having to be forced into european literary ontologies thirdly the project will develop a linked open metadata repository populated via an interface that allows nonspecialist entry of metadata on literary materials by creating and linking metadata on this body of work this repository will constitute a major intervention in african literature by making these literatures searchable and their records enduring thereby opening up entirely new possibilities for scholarship
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unraveling amocco2 feedbacks during the warmerthanpresent last interglacial
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the world ocean currently absorbs about 30 of anthropogenic carbon dioxide co2 emissions and is therefore an important source of solutions to fight the climate crisis however the development of oceanbased mitigation strategies requires improved representation of climate processes in earth system models in particular modelling the effects of atlantic meridional overturning circulation amoc weakening on the oceans ability to absorb co2 remains a challenge primarily due to a lack of understanding of climate feedback mechanisms this project draws on highresolution paleoarchives from the north atlantic and a novel combination of geochemical tracers to determine how the amoc varied during the last interglacial period 129 to 115 thousand years ago which is considered the best historic analog of the global climate state projected for the end of this century the project will not only provide crucial constraints on magnitude of natural amoc variability but will allow for the first time a systematic investigation of amocco2 feedbacks in a warm climate helping quantify the mechanisms that influence the oceans effectiveness in sequestering co2 from the atmosphere the results will move us forward in unraveling the oceanclimate nexus and help reduce uncertainties in climate projections which will benefit the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc the multifaceted public engagement activities will maximize the projects contribution to the climate emergency and daily climate action contributing to the eu adaptation strategy the eu green deal and the un sustainable development goals
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mechanisms of liver regeneration and disease across scales from molecules to cells and tissue
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despite recent advances the principles that regulate liver regeneration and how their deregulation leads to disease remain largely unknown the main goal of this application is to uncover molecular and cellular principles that govern liver regeneration and disease and exploit this knowledge to develop more complex multicellular organoid systems capable of reconstructing liver tissue in a dish we will adopt a multiscale from molecule to tissue and multidisciplinary approach addressing the interplay between cellintrinsic and cellextrinsic mechanisms in damage paradigms that result in repair vs diseasein aim 1 we will identify the genomic loci eg transcription factors signalling pathways or epigenetic regulators involved in regeneration and disease to gain a systemslevel understanding of the gene regulatory mechanisms driving liver regeneration and disease in aim 2 we will investigate the biochemical signals mediated through cellcell interactions between ductal cells and mesenchymal to gain mechanistic understanding on how epithelial mesenchymal cellular interactions regulate regeneration and their role in disease particularly fibrosisin aim 3 we will build complex multicellular organoids to reconstruct the liver lobule cellular interactions and architecturean indepth understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms driving tissue regeneration and their deregulation in disease holds the potential to uncover new principles of liver biology the generation of complex multicellular organoids that recapitulate liver cellular interactions and architecture will provide valuable tools for future mechanistic studies aiming at investigating molecular and cellular principles of tissue maintenance repair and disease transferring these to human tissues will facilitate future studies addressing the longstanding question as to which principles of repair are conserved in humans and which are human specific
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