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quantifying polygenic selection in realtime adaptation to climate change | understanding if and how species are able to rapidly adapt to climate change is a major and challenging problem of modern biology can evolution operate quickly enough theory suggests that the genetic basis of most phenotypic traits is polygenic and evolution can be rapid if it harnesses this reservoir of standing variation spread across the genome poly2adapt recent theoretical advances suggest that the signature of realtime polygenic selection can be identified using timeseries genomic data moreover a recent paradigmshift framed in the omnigenic model suggests that all genes which are broadly expressed or in general all genomic regions broadly available in euchromatin contribute to the heritability of complex traits how can we use these theoretical advances in concert benefiting from a unique genomic timeseries dataset comprising 1000 samples from 2000 to 2021 the aim of poly2adapt is to quantify the polygenic variation relevant to realtime adaptation to climate change in the king penguin a keystone species occupying one of the most climate changeimpacted ecosystems coupling genomic timeseries analysis with gene expression and chromatin accessibility data i will rigorously test the theories of the polygenic o1 and omnigenic o2 models using this information to develop metrics of adaptation potential o3 for the conservation of other atrisk species this will be the first study to detect the footprints of realtime adaptation proposed by the polygenic and omnigenic models in a wild species the objectives are directly relevant to the priorities of horizon europe to tackle climate change in particular mission 1 adaptation to climate change i will harness interdisciplinary expertise from the host secondment and collaborators to deepen my skills in evolutionary theory bioinformatics and population and conservation genetics together we are wellpositioned to employ powerful new approaches to pursue this timely research |
collaborative action coordinating and enhancing systemic actionable and transversal sustainability research and innovation | casri unites environment protection agencies epas and similar partners from 13 european countries to support national policy makers and societies to address the global challenges and sustainable development goals epas are direct or semigovernmental organisations responsible for monitoring and protecting the environment casri epas highly value environmental and sustainability research and innovation es ri ie ri that is systemic actionable and transversal these epas and the european environment agency have formed an interest group ig to enhance es ri collaboration in the epa network representing 37 countries this csa heuwidera topic proposal aims at facilitating the ig through collaborative action coordinating and enhancing systemic actionable and transversal sustainability research and innovation casri related to research policy and ri funding casri capitalises on the unique capacities of the epas and for the first time aligns them with the european research area casri aims to identify and coordinate es ri needs align national es ri programmes and facilitate and converge the application of es ri results at both the multilateral and european level while also complementing existing eu and member state programmes to achieve this casri addresses eight objectives 1 conduct a comprehensive review of national es ri funding exploitation programmes and knowledge needs 2 identify national and transnational gaps 3 derive transnational commons and develop a strategic ri agenda 4 identify opportunities for coimplementation of the sria 5 bring together funders to collaboratively invest and synergistically deliver the sria or parts thereof at regional national and transnational scales 6 prepare the implementation of multiannual joint calls 7 implement other joint supporting activities for es ri 8 improve the mid to long term capacities for the collaboration of epas and the european research area stakeholders |
actions required to secure the largescale deployment of the leading cdr approaches to meet eu climate targets | the rising concentration of co2 in the atmosphere currently about 420 ppm is already causing extensive damage globally thus theres an urgent need to deploy co2 removal cdr at very large scale to help to keep the temperature rise under 2c 15c would be better until recently apart from academic research into a wide portfolio of approaches little has been done to launch the necessary exponential growth of cdr over the next few decades the current selfregulated market relies on an unsatisfactory patchwork of thirdparty verification of the removals achieved at individual sites the sector has been negatively influenced by a lack of regulation and highquality standards this has allowed lowquality carbon credits to enter the market lowering credibility and prices to levels at which highquality permanent removals cannot compete the member states need the ec to intervene to kickstart a transparent and properly regulated market for highgrade cdr delivery the purpose of the csink project is to deliver to the ec a complete package of workedup proposals to support a new or amended european legalregulatory framework to bring high quality cdrs into the market that package will contain prestandards in cen format covering requirements and methodologies for sampling testing and qms iso9000 upon which to build monitoring reporting and verification systems it will also include proposals to cover a environmental socialimpact and governance issues and b the means of building trust in the market this will encourage entrepreneurs to demonstrate effective and safe cdr projects and to make large investments thus allowing the market to evolve to tackle the climate crisisthe csink consortium includes organizations from 11 countries with complementary skills and expertise in the different cdr technologies the writing of cen and iso standards climate law carbon trading and in all of the relevant environmental and social issues |
tuning of photonic resonators | silicon photonics has progressed enormously over the last 15 years large microelectronics manufacturers and small companies are now working on the subject with identified products the reproducibility of micro and nanophotonic devices remains a central technological barrier to be broken the dimension errors of cleanroom devices are 1 to 10 nanometers 1 limiting applications we have discovered a technique that makes it possible to absorb these errors at the end of manufacturing permanently we can tune photonic resonators with an accuracy of 104 and make them strictly identical when necessary in this poc project the patented technique will be transposed on silicon devices of interest in a simple configuration for manufacturers |
setting the optimal balance between metabolite supplementation and deprivation in cancer therapy | the goal of this proposal is to explore combinations of targeted metabolite supplementation and global nutrient restriction as a new strategy to reprogram tumor metabolism to halt tumor progression and to improve response to treatments preclinical and clinical studies published by our group and by others showed that global nutrient restriction in the form of cyclic fasting or fastingmimicking diets fmds produces desirable metabolic and immunologic effects that result in reduced tumor progression and in the prolongation of animalpatient survival of note our unpublished results indicate that the supplementation of specific amino acids or fatty acids has in vitro and in vivo antitumor effects which are strongly enhanced when metabolite supplementation is combined with nutrient starvation by employing canonical cell biology and biochemical experiments polysomeribosome profiling isotope tracing experiments and integrated omics transcriptomic proteomic metabolomic analyses in in vitro and in vivo murine and human tumor models here we propose toidentify the cellautonomous and immunemediated mechanisms at the basis of the antitumor effects of targeted metabolite supplementation in combination with global nutrient restrictionidentify the most effective metabolite supplementationrestriction strategy to be tested in a firstinhuman clinical trial in patients with advanced triplenegative breast cancer while the basic cancer research and medical oncology communities are engaged in a historical scientific and clinical diatribe on the use of nutrient deprivation vs supplementation approaches to halt tumor progression and to improve patient survival we will exploit our unprecedented ability to conduct parallel preclinical and clinical experimentation in the field of cancer metabolism to identify new and effective combinations of balanced metabolite supplementation and restriction with relevant scientific and translational implications |
investigating genderbased discrimination unveiling the underlying mechanisms | according to feminist theories that have approached gbv social changes related to globalization intersect with etiologies of violence against women vaw the causes of vaw no longer stop at national borders for more than 15 years the integrated socialecological theory has evolved as a theoretical model for exploring the factors associated with vaw the primary research will investigate the relationship between basic cognitive functions decisionmaking and emotion regulation need for cognitive closure sexist beliefs and acceptance of gender stereotypes taking into consideration the culture in mind theoretical framework on adherence to and perpetuation of genderbased discrimination gbd through its implicit stereotypical manifestations vaw is one of the major public health problems worldwide world health organization data reported that approximately one in three women worldwide has been a victim of violence the research project will be structured around four overarching objectives 1explore adherence to gender stereotypes in the reference sample 2identify the relationship between cognitive variables that lead to stereotypical thinking to understand which relationships are strongest 3investigate which models explain the relationships between cognitive variables and stereotypical thinking 4make a comparison between italy and lithuania to investigate possible cultural differences although the patterns of gbv differ across cultures the fact that it is a worldwide phenomenon leads to the hypothesis that there are factors that outweigh the cultural aspects that allow discriminatory stereotypes to persist therefore the project aims to integrate into a single theoretical and innovative model the factors that most seem to be related to adherence to gender stereotypes a policy recommendation will be prepared based on research findings the innovative aspect of the project lies in an inclusive approach to gender equality seeking prevention of gbd |
social sciences participatory researchaction for preparedness in risk management for disasters and health emergencies in europes cities | disasters including health emergencies pose enormous strains on response capacities of cities countries and the european union compounding existing climatic political economic and social challenges the risks and consequences of these emergencies reduce the health and wellbeing of europes inhabitants but their burdens are not evenly shouldered across all populations cities face huge challenges in preparing for and responding to disasters urban publics not only suffer higher morbidity and mortality during such emergencies but resulting instability and response measures can exacerbate social and health inequalities vulnerable urban inhabitants are at risk during such crises for exclusion and heightened health consequences with lower access to health information resources care and support they tend to experience higher mortality and morbidity and longerterm reductions in health the goal of sonarcities is to render europes cities more resilient in health emergencies and disasters through the cocreation and implementation of a communitybased adapted toolset for people facing vulnerabilities first responders and decisionmakers by strengthening inclusivity in risk management we will enhance preparedness and reduce risks posed by these emergencies we will analyze one health factors and consequences of past emergencies in 6 european cities notably from the perspectives of people experiencing vulnerabilities we use these analyses to cocreate with publics at risk first responders and authorities a citizencentered toolset which will generate inclusive preparedness improve health literacy and crisis communication strengthen capacity and decisionmaking and reduce risks of disastershealth emergencies in european cities we will disseminate the toolset through our interactive knowledge platform and offer a social sciences emergency support network for authorities seeking social sciences assistance during health emergencies and disasters |
biobased pyrazine monomers from second generation biomass for high performance polymers copolymers and blends | the sustainable product initiative sets a challenge for european industries to create sustainable products considering environmental impact durability recyclability and safety biopyrania introduces a groundbreaking approach using a new class of biobased pyrazine monomers they will be synthesized from glutamic acid and 5amino levulinic acid that are on their turn obtained via fermentative processes starting from european second generation woody biomass as already proven by the recent work on pyrazine based polyesters in the labs of maastricht university the incorporation of pyrazines gives unprecedented properties including the potential for added chemical functionality and improved material characteristics through nontraditional hydrogen bondingbiopyrania will use this knowledge to develop new classes of pyrazine based polyamide and polybenzimidazole polymers copolymers and blends in a safe and sustainable way from lab to pilot scale these pyrazinebased materials have the potential to revolutionize highperformance applications with a focus on the automotive and green hydrogen sectors with the electrification of the automotive industry lightweight highperformance materials are more and more crucial and biopyrania polyamides are promising candidates in the green energy market there is a growing demand for clean hydrogen production electrolyzers and fuel cells play a key role in this process and biopyrania aims to enhance the performance and sustainability of anion exchange membranes that are used therein with pyrazine based polybenzimidazoles recycling of these materials will enhance their circularity profilethe developments will be supported and accelerated by digital methodologies environmental toxicological technoeconomic and social impact studies the biopyrania consortium is a robust partnership of 2 acas 2 rtos 7 smes and 2 industrial partners |
novel light regimes and drought effects on temperate forest plant biodiversity | tree canopies are one of the most recognizable features of forests providing shelter from external influences to a myriad of species that live in the understorey canopy disturbances are now accelerating across european forests and climatechange induced drought is a key driver these disturbances are opening the canopy and exposing forest biodiversity to noanalog light regimes and drought light and drought levels they have never been exposed to before as the majority of forest plant species occur in the shade below tree canopies the combination of altered light regimes and intensifying droughts can strongly impact forest biodiversity however the interactive effects of novel light regimes and drought on temperate forest biodiversity have never been investigated before since recent european droughts are unprecedented in the last two millennia and this has initiated the largest pulse of forest disturbances in almost two centuries the time to assess impacts on biodiversity is now the overarching aim of canopychange is to quantify understand and predict the impacts of noanalog light regimes and drought on belowcanopy forest plant biodiversity to address this challenging goal crosscontinental resurveyed vegetation plots the first paneuropean forest disturbancedrought experiment and a pioneering canopy clipping mesocosm experiment will be combined with an interdisciplinary toolbox drawing from ecology forestry and climatology these data will then feed into cuttingedge joint species distribution models to project european forest plant biodiversity responses to future climate and canopy change canopychange will be the first integrative study of paneuropean forest plant biodiversity responses to noanalog light regimes and drought canopychange is at the heart of biodiversity conservation and forest management and will deliver muchneeded information for policy makers and managers to adapt to the future noanalog conditions in european forests |
evaluation of thermohydraulic characteristic of printed circuit heat exchangers in pseudocritical region for supercritical co2 cycle | currently 282 of the total eu28 greenhouse gas emissions come from the power sector a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions consequently the emphasis of the research in power generation has swung towards assessing highly efficient and greener power cycles in this reference the novel supercritical carbon dioxide brayton cycle sco2bc is an ideal choice that outstrips other formally wellknown power cycles brayton rankine cycles in sco2bc the role of the precooler is critical it serves as a sink to the power cycle and regulates the conditions at the compressors inlet the compressors inlet temperature is intended to be maintained close to the critical temperature of carbon dioxide co2 to achieve greater cycle efficiencies however exceptionally higher values of the specific heat capacity of co2 near its critical point up to 40 times higher than water require exceedingly high water flow rates on the cold side to achieve the desired exit temperatures of co2 consequently the precoolers pumping power requirements become high enough to deteriorate the cycles performance this problem can only be mitigated by exploring new channel geometries with enhanced thermohydraulic characteristics therefore the proposed study plan to characterize the complex thermohydraulic characteristics in the pseudocritical region of co2 using a multifaceted technique that includes experimental numerical and machine learning techniques the proposed work will provide a step forward to the success of sco2bc technologies that in turn will facilitate its integration with the green energy resources generationiv nuclear reactors and solar concentrated plants helping to meet the eus 2030 climate and energy framework goals of achieving at least 32 share for renewable energy |
interneurons gating of aversive or rewarding information from the basolateral amygdala to ventral hippocampus | the ability of neuronal networks to process and store information relies on the activity of diverse subclasses of inhibitory interneurons ins while the importance of inhibition in controlling key features of network function is being increasingly appreciated the understanding of the role of ins in neuronal networks function is limited by the incomplete knowledge of the connectivity between the different in subclasses and pyramidal cells such gap of knowledge is even more evident when considering the connectivity between ins and engram cells ie subgroups of pyramidal neurons encoding specific memories in this conceptual framework the ingate project will analyze specific amygdalohippocampal circuits involved in valence coding where memories of stimuli imbued with negative or positive valence segregate in different engram cells in the bla ingate will test the hypothesis that two broad ins subclasses the parvalbumin pv and somatostatin sst expressing ins differentially gate aversive or rewarding information from the bla to the ca1 region of the ventral hippocampus to this end i will analyze the functional connectivity between bla aversive or rewarding engram cells formed during fear or reward conditioning to pyramidal cells and pvsst interneurons in vca1 in parallel i will study vca3 schaffer collaterals converging on those vca1 pyramidal cells and pvsst interneurons that receive inputs from the bla aversive or rewarding engram cells thus the ultimate goal of ingate is to clarify how pv or sst interneurons shape engram cells in vca1 by integrating valencerelated information from bla and multisensory contextual information from the vca3 area ingate will combine several stateoftheart methodological approaches to generate identify and manipulate aversive or rewarding bla engrams and isolate their targets in vca1 in addition it will exploit an in vivo approach to measure population activity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in vca1 |
cocreativity and learning interactive opus generation for piano education | learning to play a musical instrument such as a piano requires many hours of exercises generally either suggested to the student by a teacher or taken from a method book these books are collections of progressive exercises meant to teach specific techniques and address the commonest mistakes and difficulties that players face while learning one downside of these books is that the exercises are not personalized to the students and thus cannot address specific difficulties and characteristics of each learner teachers could potentially write or find exercises that are tailored to the different needs of their students but this activity is very timeconsuming and given the number of students that many teachers have it becomes prohibitive given the many recent advances in the field of music generation we propose that it should be possible to generate exercises automatically to form a personalized method for each student the teacher would describe the characteristics of the student and their strength and weaknesses to a software system as well as the teaching goals that should be covered in the generated exercises in return the system would create a sequence of exercises that are specific to the needs of the student and to the concerns of the teacher this interactive opus would allow for a more effective and engaging learning experience since the learning difficulty curve would follow each student rather than enforcing a general curriculum in caliope i propose to study both a theoretical model for the description of piano learning students and a computational system to generate progressive exercises based on that model advancing knowledge in computational creativity and music generation to tackle longterm structure this project will aim to create an entire set of musical exercises that are coherent in style and difficulty leading research towards music generation that is useful to human musicians |
an aipowered visual assistive design iot pathway platform to implement fast and optimal automated patient pathways and healthcare demand planning projects | mysphera has rolled out a game changing iot location solution to track and manage patient pathways in real time it automates the surgical process by means of tailored applications that empower staff with live patientflow data and notifications as a result the solution has obtained references in several eu countries that note a significant capacity increasedeploying this solution takes few months of codesign work with the hospital which limits its scaleup potential we aim to reduce the effort and time by an order of magnitude falling from months to just a few days an aipowered visual assistive design iot pathway platform based on spatial process mining and machine learning technologies has been prototyped to complete this radical leap by streamlining the design tailoring and deployment of optimal pathways and elective care planning projects for any hospital unit and in a matter of days |
fluently the essence of humanrobot interaction | fluently leverages the latest advancements in aidriven decisionmaking process to achieve true social collaboration between humans and machines while matching extremely dynamic manufacturing contextsthe project results will be 1 fluently smart interface unit and 2 the robogymthe fluently smart interface unit features 1 interpretation of speech content speech tone and gestures automatically translated into robot instructions making industrial robots accessible to any skill profile 2 assessment of the operators state through a dedicated sensors infrastructure that complements a persistent context awareness to enrich an aibased behavioural framework in charge of triggering the generation of specific robot strategies 3 modelling products and production changes in a way they could be recognized interpreted and matched by robots in cooperation with humans robots equipped with fluently will constantly embrace humans physical and cognitive loads but will also learn and build experience with their human teammates to establish a manufacturing practise relying upon quality and wellbeing the bond between human and robot is personalized and it is established during a preliminary training at the robogym the first european hub for humanrobot interactive training where human and robot learn from each other a common work practice fluently will be validated by demonstration on three full scale pilots characterized by various level of automation production dynamism and complexity of the manufacturing decision making processthe total project value required to commercialize the fluently device and robogym concept is 188 m eur forecast for ebitda in 2028 is 163 m eur payback in 2028 with 13 gross profit and roi 91 in line with sectorial performances the new turnover generated requires at least 325 workers employed along the fluently supply chain fluently will bring together 21 key industrial and academic stakeholders from 13 countries |
clinical validation of nanopl a hydrogelbased formulation of a small molecule for a highly targeted therapy against glioblastoma multiforme gbm | glioblastoma gbm is considered the highest unmet need in oncology the average life expectancy of gbm patients is 1218 months and the 5year survival rates remain below 7 despite the efforts the available therapy today counts only with a few ineffective approved therapiesusing a machine learning algorithm we have discovered a correlation between a small molecule and an unexplored target in gbm we have developed a hydrogelbased formulation of the molecule with great safety and efficacy in vivo our formulation showed 40 longterm survival in a gbm rat model with complete tumour eradication after a single dose treatment nanopl is a onetime treatment applied locally during surgery which is effective even in gbm cells that are resistant to the standard of care or those involved in recurrence nanopl also showed a synergistic efficacy with temozolomide standardofcare the eic will enable the clinical validation of nanopl completely unlocking the gbm treatment |
cheaper better batteries from common safe and available raw materials | electrification of transport and transition to renewable energy generation are essential to cut our carbon emissions in half by 2030 batteries are a key component to allow this change but they also remain a major bottleneck in the scaling of green technologies battery production relies on raw materials like lithium cobalt and nickel all of which are already in short supply yet the green boom is just beginning to enable our green future the battery industry needs a revolutionbroadbit has developed fundamentally new sodiumbased battery technology for highperformance batteries made from low cost and widely available raw materials we have redesigned the entire battery chemistry and developed new safe and clean dry production processwith the help of eic we will finalize our cell chemistry finetune the production processes and strengthen partnerships to consistently reach commercial quality and cycle life targets required for successful market introduction and scale up |
the queens post the form function and power of early tudor queens correspondence | the queens post project provides the first largescale analysis of the form function and power of early tudor queens correspondence this project investigates the letters of nine important early tudor queens including the wife of henry vii d1509 elizabeth of york d1603 henry viis daughters margaret tudor d 1541 and mary tudor brandon d1533 and the wives of henry viii d1547 katherine of aragon d 1536 anne boleyn c1536 jane seymour d1537 katherine howard d1542 anne of cleeves d1557 and katherine parr d1548 using an innovative interdisciplinary methodology employing methods from linguistics literary studies archival studies material culture gender studies and diplomatic history the queens post will advance our understanding of the nature and power of royal womens voices and writings of the past and reconsider the power and position queens held in early modern politics and diplomacy the results of this project will have distinctive scientific and societal impact which will be disseminated via a range of outputs aimed at both academic and nonacademic audiences this includes a project monograph an edited collection a symposia a podcast and various other outreach activities the project will also provide a significant methodological contribution to letterwriting studies by developing a cuttingedge interdisciplinary framework of analysis to investigate the language materiality and delivery of historical correspondence across a network of writers |
resilient industry supply chain enhancement for smes | risesme aims at developing a model that can assist companies in detecting and anticipating disruptions in their supply chains the main outcome of risesme is to build a methodology for different industrial ecosystems that can identify disruptions and technological opportunities for the uptake of advanced technologies in smes so as to enable flexible agile and resilient supply chains that can easily be adapted in order to do so the following activities will be deployedmapping of existing industrial ecosystems and its associated supply chain models in order to identify critical dependencies and weaknesses in specific industrial ecosystemdeveloping a methodology for detecting and anticipating disruptions with long term effects on the supply chain to reduce strategic dependencies on critical products especially on advanced technologiesmapping and scouting advanced technologies and their associated solutions from technology suppliers that can help supply chain processes to be less uncertain and complexanalysing existing technology gaps in several industrial ecosystems leading to a matchmaking tool with techsavvy and traditional smesbuilding alliances among traditional and techsavvy smes through cluster organisations and dihs in the industrial ecosystem resulting into the launch of a pilot in each one of the ecosystemsthe project consortium will leverage their knowledge on supply chain and their reach to key supply chain actors traditional smes and technology suppliers the involvement of technology partners and entities representing techsavvy smes will ensure a thorough consideration of the following advanced technologies robotics ai iot blockchain edge computing arvr solutions b2b digital platforms big dataanalytics technology 3d printing advanced materials micro and nanoelectronics nanotechnologies and photonics among others |
circletech twinning partnership to deliver enhanced networking for circular technological and socioeconomic impact raising research excellence and strengthening management capacity | the present proposal is to respond to multiple programme priorities firstly to enhance the participation of underperforming member states in the framework programme together with contributing to solutions for the major challenges of the european union in research fields as defined in the horizon europe programme with a focus on challenges connected to the transition towards a sustainable circular economy and specifically technological and socioeconomic aspects of the transition of relevance are challenges under cluster 4 digital industry and space destination climate neutral circular and digitized cluster 5 destination crosssectoral solutions for the climate transition destination efficient sustainable and inclusive energy use the project proposes measures to offer practical responses to barriers for participation in horizon europe and achievement of excellent research results increasing scientific visibility of the university of miskolc um with the networked support of technische universiteit delft tudnl and lappeenrantalahti university of technology lutfi increasing scientific excellence in the traditional sense will be the aim of this joint exercise where um with its excellent partners will develop new promising research actions and test novel approaches in this research domain opening future perspectives in the field of research for sustainable circular economy the university of miskolc has a special interest in materials sciences and is focusing on excellence in research for a more sustainable circular economy our primary objective will be raising scientific excellence of the university of miskolc in the field of sustainable circular economy research forming a long lasting research hub circletech hub across northern hungary the creation of the operating framework of joint research will help setting up the basis of long lasting research cooperation in the field of sustainable circular economy for joint research ideas |
geometric algorithms for transport network graphs | graphs have been used to analyse transport networks for hundreds of years however graphs are general structures and many graph algorithms are very slow specialised algorithms are much more efficient but can only be applied to restricted graph classes transport network graphs suffer from a lack of efficient specialised algorithms since most graph classes are too restrictive and do not accurately represent realworld transport networks recent developments have led to geometric graph classes that are tailored to realworld transport networks one of these geometric graph classes philowdensity graphs captures the property that there are more connections between geographically nearby nodes than geographically distant ones unfortunately the fundamental properties of philowdensity graphs are not well understood which has prevented the development of a wide range of specialised algorithms my objective is to fill the acute need for a simple and versatile graph class that accurately represents realworld transport networks my research will allow experts to finally harness the power of specialised algorithms on a wide range of important transport network problems i will achieve my objectives through two subobjectives 1 to build fundamental structures for philowdensity graphs and 2 to design provably efficient specialised algorithms for philowdensity graphs i will be support by my host institution university of copenhagen my host group basic algorithms research copenhagen my primary supervisor mikkel abrahamsen and my secondary supervisor rasmus pagh |
futuring peace the politics of water conflict in a posttruth age | the international peace and security architecture is undergoing urgent change to accommodate a conflict environment that will be increasingly shaped by the quality of environmental governance in a context of climate change water problems with its associated drought wild fires and flooding are at the centre of changing conflict dynamics the 2021 report of the independent panel on climate change ipcc devoted 200 pages to this issue alone highlighting the vulnerability of weak states and agricultural communities within them to water conflict stemming from poor regulation of access to scarce resources in addition to a rise in water conflict peace and security policy and practice is also adjusting to a global context of rapid technological geopolitical and normative change climate change and advances in technoscience are intricately linked in the uns futuring peace initiative which explores the possibility of using big data machine learning and social media to inform climate conflict prevention activities the digital expansion of public space has also facilitated posttruth politics which denotes the use of digital technologies by rising illiberal authoritarian and populist powers to question or fabricate scientific facts about global issues including both climate change and military conflict climate conflict narratives have placed peacebuilding practice between the objective truth claims of big data and the ontological condition of ambiguity or multitude of truths regarding climateconflict risk this project will focus on how the interrelated issues of climate change technology rising illiberal global powers and posttruth politics cohere around water resources to influence conflict dynamics and the norms that underpin international peace and security intervention it will involve a qualitative case study of international intervention water governance and water conflict in the ferghana valley in central asia |
microscopic mesoscopic and macroscopic approaches to mitigate micro and nanoplastics in the food and environment | the proposal microscopic mesoscopic and macroscopic approaches to mitigate micro and nanoplastics in the food and environment 3m2mnpfe is an msca pf proposal to be hosted by the university of malta for 24 months wherein dr floirendo flores will be supervised by dr sophie marie briffa following the 24month fellowship a nonacademic placement nap has been secured with commitment from dr adrian c love acl from aquabiotech group abt dr flores conducts research on microencapsulation of bioactive compounds and simulated digestion whereas dr briffa specializes on nanoparticles chemistry synthesis characterization and environmental behavior the comentor dr melissa marie formosa has in vivo studies involving zebrafish larvae and currently has supply agreement with abt plastic packaging polymers are a necessary component of food products that are often discarded in municipal solid waste treatment plants and landfills resulting in varying levels of degradation products the degradation products are usually recalcitrant micro and nanoparticles mnps that enter aquatic environments and contaminate biota with potentially adverse health outcomes in view of the pressing need to mitigate the environmental risks upon exposure to mnps an interdisciplinary approach combining polymer chemistry food nutritional and animal sciences is being proposed to develop an environmentally sound enzymatic technology to treat mnps enzymatic treatment can change mnp size and enhance biodegradability new knowledge will be generated on in vitro and in vivo changes on enzymebased gastrointestinal and antioxidant systems following exposure to enzymatically treated mnps implementation of the work packages will help answer the research question does exposure to enzymatically treated mnps codigested with food reduce the toxicity risks of mnps results of this project can lead to a new sustainable pollution control strategy |
driving the future of water resource recovery facilities through data intelligence | the wastewater sector is going through a profound transformation with energy efficiency and resource recovery as key priorities in wastewater treatment plants wwtp and these installations started to be perceived as water resource recovery facilities wrrf under this context the exploitation of data through artificial intelligence tools with the objective of accelerating the transition of wwtp to wrrf has not been fully addressed yet when compared to treatment technologies the deployment of aipowered tools in production is much faster and therefore provides immediate benefits in that sense three main barriers have been identified in this domain i mechanistic mathematical models involve complex formulations and specific terminology that are difficult to understand for plant operators ii wrrf are harsh environments with strong impact on the quality of data iii essential information in wrrfs is limited and not continuously availablein particular to overcome these challenges darrow will build and demonstrate into an operational environment an innovative optimised modular and flexible datadriven ai solution to make existing wwtp more autonomous more energy efficient and better prepared for their transformation into wrrf darrow will take advantage of existing ai data analysis techniques with the final objective of contributing to a greener planet by i reducing energy consumption of wrrf ii reducing greenhouse gas emissions of wrrf iii increasing resource recovery iv improving water qualityto do so darrow gathers the necessary experience knowledge and resources through a multistakeholder approach that covers the whole value chain of the project it consists of a multidisciplinary team of 8 entities from 4 different eu countries spain belgium germany and netherlands among which 3 rtos 1 university1 npo and 3 smes to ensure market exploitation 2 industrial companies and 1 water company |
stedenabled superresolution multimodefibre based holographic endoscopy for deeptissue observations of neuronal connectivity | neurological disorders have emerged as a significant global societal burden exemplified by afflictions like alzheimers and parkinsons impacting over one billion individuals globally and surpassing the combined economic burden of cancer and diabetes this has spurred a concerted global effort with increased support for neuroscience research these disorders often target deep brain regions and profoundly influence the structural connectivity of neuronal cells within functional circuits synapses where neurons exchange information exhibit plasticity altering information transmission efficiency shape and position understanding the mechanisms underlying these structural changes especially in neuronal circuits remains limited in both healthy and affected individuals the erc poc project stedgate seeks to advance our understanding of neuronal connectivity and plasticity by developing stedenabled holographic endonanoscopy for neuroscience this groundbreaking technology promises atraumatic nanoscale invivo imaging of deep brain structures reaching depths up to 5 mm beneath the brains surface collaborating with the startup endeavour deepen the team aims to facilitate the commercial transition of this technology making deeptisue nanoscopy available globally will revolutionize our ability to monitor and understand neurological disorders and ultimately offer new avenues for intervention and treatment |
interconnecting 4 helix innovation ecosystems in european regions | focused on challengedriven promotion of healthy living integer will bring forward three important innovations for the development of more robust sustainable inclusive and integrative eu innovation ecosystems 1the integer 4 helix collaboratory model to implement the next generation of living labs the collaboratories 2a eu healthy living collaboratory a true network of networks community with capacity to work on real social tech and businessdriven projects and 3 a new professional profile the collaber or collaboratory manager as a multiplying agent of change of these integrated innovation ecosystems the 3 integer reinforcing innovations will push fivefold breakthrough capacities for the integration of social innovation in eu innovation ecosystems 1boost winwin games between business and social oriented innovations addressing common challenges 2transform cocreation dynamics into disruptive and tangible new products services or competencies 3codesign jointly public innovation policies 4develop capacity building of the new generation of sociodigital entrepreneurs and ecosystems enablers the collabers and 5devise funding and investment mechanisms for social innovation startups and smes to develop and scale up game changing innovations collaboratories and collabers aim to embrace economic and socialdriven innovation communities across eu as novel 3h and 4h socialbusiness innovation integration structures these labs without walls are becoming the common open house of all kinds of innovators and entrepreneurs interested in producing new products and services that come from business or social oriented innovation based on a peertopeer approach between businessdriven and socialdriven innovations integer seeks to accelerate transformative integration outcomes by creating new winwin games local missiondriven synergies groundbreaking coordination of actions governance implementation uptaking and exploitation dynamics |
social cognition in 22qll2 schizophrenia mouse model role of mpfc dysfunction and oxytocin | schizophrenia is associated with impairment of social cognition and social function medial prefrontal cortex mpfc is crucial for processing of social cues and regulation of social behaviour altered connectivity within mpfc in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls could explain patients poorer ability to differentiate between individuals and impairment to emotion recognition 22q112 deletion syndrome is one of the largest know genetic risk factors for developing schizophrenia and is associated with impairments to social recognition and emotion processing however the changes to mpfc neurocircuitry in 22q112 causing the social cognition deficits remain poorly understood oxytocin oxt is pivotal to social recognition and social function inactivation of mpfc oxt receptors impairs social recognition in mice comparable to social cognition deficits in schizophrenia the 22q112 deletion mouse model lgdel displays impairments to social memory and emotion recognition and mice display altered mpfc neuronal activity patterns during cognitive tests and brain oxt levels are lower in lgdel compared to wild type mice these findings suggest that social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia could be caused by disruption to mpfc neurocircuitry possibly mediated by altered oxt availability or by oxt modulation of dopamine within mpfc using a combination of cutting edge electrophysiological recordings and measurement of oxt and dopamine realtime dynamics during a battery of nonsocial and social cognitive tests i aim to deliver detailed information about neuronal activity and synchrony throughout the mpfc in during social cognition tests in wt and lgdel mice this will provide insight into the microcircuitry underlying changes to neurofunction and cognition in schizophrenia cause impairments which could aid the improvement of treatment of social cognition deficits in schizophrenia |
phagosomal lc3s alternative role | the opportunistic fungus aspergillus fumigatus is an emerging cause of lifethreatening respiratory infections in an expanding group of patients with acquired innate immune defects dissecting the molecular dynamics of fungalhost interplay mediating sterilizing immunity against a fumigatus is crucial to gain insight in disease pathogenesis and develop novel immunomodulatory therapies physiologically aspergillus fumigatus conidia are eliminated inside alveolar macrophages ams via activation of the lc3 associated phagocytosis lap pathway a fumigatus cell wall melanin blocks lap to promote pathogenicity intracellular germination of a fumigatus conidia results in exposure of immunostimulatory fungal molecules concomitantly with melanin removal and triggers nadph oxidasedependent activation of lap the molecular mechanism of lc3 conjugation on a fumigatus phagosome membrane and the physiological function of lap on am biology and antifungal host defense remain elusive of interest pilot studies in the host lab demonstrate that infection of ams and other types of macrophages with live conidia of a fumigatus results in a unique pattern of pulsatile lc3 recruitment on the phagosome membrane which is accompanied by waves of increased phagosome permeability these findings imply for a novel mechanism of lc3 phagosome laposome formation via cytosolic sensing of fungal vitapamps and suggests for an unconventional function of laposomes in regulation of membrane repair mechanisms in response to damage induced by aspergillus infection this research project aims to understand the precise host and pathogen molecular determinants of laposome formation and exploit the intriguing role of lc3 on regulation of phagosomal membrane repair during a fumigatus infection using a fumigatus as a model pathogen this project with provide fundamental insights on the role of lap in macrophage biology paving the way for new hostdirected strategies |
extremely highspeed laser processes for sustainable and flexible manufacturing | recent events such as the covid pandemic and the ukraine war have increased global uncertainty and prompted european companies to rethink their global supply chain and production methods given the unpredictable nature of potential shocks it is crucial for european industry to maintain a high degree of flexibility and adaptability in order to swiftly respond to sudden changes whenever they may occurthe laserway project aims to revolutionize the manufacturing industry by replacing conventional inefficient and environmentally harmful methods with highly flexible production lines based on highspeed laser technology laser blanking laser microdrilling and extreme highspeed laser material deposition ehla are the three laser manufacturing technologies selected for their potential to create more sustainable manufacturing processes and productsthe project focuses on developing wayfaster machines to improve the performance of the laser technologies through lightweight designs vibration control techniques and program optimizations tailored for highspeed laser applications wayfaster photonics aims to ensure precise delivery of the laser beam at extreme speeds targeting three laser technologies with unique demands the waystronger integration concept aims to enhance the sustainability resilience and flexibility of current manufacturing processes by integrating new technologies mechanically and digitallythe projects success will provide a competitive edge for industries such as automotive and aerospace by reducing processing times improving material usage and enhancing endproduct quality the advancements made through the laserway project will drive innovation in highspeed laser processing solidifying europes position as a global leader in advanced manufacturing technologies |
accelerate the design and insertion of noncrm hard materials for next generation extreme applications aimnext | the aimnext project arises from the common need of european academy and industry to educate and train the next generation of experts in the field of sustainable design of material solutions for engineering applications in this regard the need to accelerate the design and insertion of hard material tools and components manufactured using noncritical raw materials for next generation extreme applications has been identified as an area of strategic economic and environmental importance for the european union where accordingly the skills developed by the doctoral students are adapted to the current and future industrial needs and the ongoing transformation towards more sustainable production processes to address this need a coherent international interdisciplinary and intersectoral training and research programme has been developed involving a selection of some of the best european universities in the field together with worldwide leading industrial organisations covering fundamental elements of the product value chain in key industrial sectors ie mining manufacturing and construction engineering by participating in the aimnext project the 10 doctoral candidates will receive i top level interdisciplinary training through a defined scheme where each fellow is exposed to all three technical environments ii intersectorial training articulated through a wide variety of strategic research themes and the different application areas represented in the consortium and iii international training through a portfolio of mandatory networkwide training events and secondments at academic and industrial partners thus the combination of technical and transferrable skills acquired by the fellows through technical training interdisciplinary research and industrial exposure will enhance their employability and open up solid career opportunities to them particularly within a field where skilled phd engineers are currently an extremely scarce resource |
clinical validation of a novel nonopioid analgesic derived from the portuguese sea for treating chronic pain | sea4us is a worldclass biotechnology company with a focus on translating marinederived compounds with therapeutic potential for unmet medical needs into pharmaceutical assets sea4us has developed a platform focused on drug discovery and development of novel pharmaceuticals based on its core expertise in ion channels and marine biology sea4us is particularly focussed on developing and commercialising therapies for chronic painsea4us has developed a groundbreaking therapeutic drug to treat chronic pain in patients chronic pain affects 100 million people across europe 16bn globally and has a devastating impact on quality of life pain is the most common reason people visit their doctors and a leading cause of disability it is a source of enormous social and economic burden costing europe alone over 500 billion euros a year there are many medications on the market for treating chronic pain but they are either ineffective for most types of chronic pain andor have adverse sideeffects opioid drugs are the most effective treatment but also inflict drug addiction habituation and other noxious sideeffects our novel analgesic molecule sea4pain has a novel mechanism of action meaning it is highly effective at treating chronic pain and without any known side effects unlike current drugs on the market sea4pain is a firstinclass drug and has the potential to ease the suffering of billions of people globallythis eic accelerator project called sea4market will enable us to clinically validate our novel analgesic through completion of firstinhuman trials and outlicense our technology to make a rapid entry into the multibillion euro chronic pain market eic support is essential to deliver this highrisk high reward project and will enable the sustainable growth of our business we will reinvest revenues from our licencing deal back into our project pipeline to solve other unmet medical needs and ensure the sustainable growth of our company |
capacitation of quantumentangled nvcenter sensing | cquens is an innovative research project aimed at advancing the field of quantum sensing by developing the next generation of nvcentrebased quantum sensors with quantum entanglementenhanced performances to achieve this goal cquens brings together six worldleading experts from four european countries who have made pioneering contributions to this research field that are essential for the realisation of the cquens research visionthe project will focus on developing novel sensing protocols based on engineered correlated quantum spin states such as entangled states and dynamical phase transitions these protocols will outperform current quantum sensing scenarios based on independent spins in terms of sensitivity and precision the development of these protocols will build on strong theoretical support with the development of quantum control methods advanced signal processing protocols and experiment modelling optimisation and analysiscquens will conduct laboratory demonstrations of these protocols using multiqubit quantum registers undergoing magnetic dipolar interaction to create multiqubit entanglement and manybody dynamics in addition the project aims to bridge the knowledge and technical gaps to implement laboratory prototypes of nvbased quantum devices that can find application in a wide range of fields as diverse as semiconductor testing or medicine these objectives will leverage pivotal advances in diamond quantumcapable materials including nv growth control and surface treatmentsthe outcomes of cquens will be disseminated to the scientific community industry and society to promote the adoption of these technologies and maximize their impact in basic science material manufacturing microelectronics healthcare and metrology the project will also contribute to training quantumliterate physicists and engineers and to consolidate the european supply chain on diamond quantum sensors crucial to maintain europes competitiveness |
glycoprotein nglycosylation from nonlife to eukaryotes a doctoral network to expand the knowledge on a ubiquitous posttranslational modification of proteins | the glycon training network aims at training doctoral candidates dcs to acquire the skills to develop different innovative strategies to 1 understand the diversity and structural complexity of archaeal microalgal and viral nglycosylation and 2 harness this knowledge for new solutions in biomedicine and biotechnologyprotein nglycosylation or the attachment of oligo and polysaccharides at specific asparagine residues is conserved throughout life and is now observed even in the viral world in contrast to eukaryotes whose wellstudied nglycosylation machineries are relatively simple archaea microalgae and bacteria utilize a wide variety of monosaccharides to create a wealth of structurally diverse nglycans and the same holds true for some recently discovered viruses because protein glycosylation occurs far downstream of protein synthesis the complexity and diversity in nglycan structures are poorly understood in detail this holds true specifically for nglycosylation events that are the subject of the glycon program those in archaea microalgae and viruses understanding of the how and why of nglycosylation in archaea microalgae and viruses will open up many possibilities ranging from drug discovery antivirals to biotechnology glycoprotein and glycoprocessing enzyme engineering for materials and life sciences the glycon network brings together a diverse group of glycobiology researchers with worldleading expertise in microbiology bioorganic chemistry computational and structural biology bioinformatics and chemical biology the glycon dcs will have their own individual project with one glycon expert and will through research internships be exposed to complementary glycoscience all individual phd projects while rooted in fundamental science have a practical application either in biotechnology or in biomedicine as will be explored through secondments with our associated partners |
sunerc sunergy community and ecosystem for accelerating the development of solar fuels and chemicals | sunerc csa overarching objective is to aggregate fragmented knowledge and develop the framework conditions to overcome scientific technological organizational and socioeconomic challenges to accelerate innovation and enable the transition of technologies for solar fuels and chemicals from laboratory and demonstrator level to largescale industrial and broad societal application through a holistic approach sunerc will contribute to circular economy by replacing fossilderived fuels and chemicals by renewables and carbon recycling as key element towards the eu netzero emissions target by 2050 sunerc will build upon the work of sunergy a paneuropean initiative on fossilfree fuels and chemicals from renewable power and solar energy with to date over 300 supporting organisations across and beyond europe sunerc specific outcomes during the csa will be to develop an inclusive paneuropean innovation community and ecosystem on solar fuels and chemicals with global outreach linked to political and societal needs gathering stakeholders from different fields sectors and disciplines around a shared vision and coordinating with existing initiatives to ensure complementarity develop a roadmap and a blueprint to implement it as main drivers to identify and tackle longterm research and innovation challenges to defossilize society with solar fuels and chemicals prepare the foundations for a largescale research and innovation initiative lsri ready to be launched at the end of the csa through an instrument to be agreed upon with the european commission and the member states the lsri will continue developing the ecosystem and supporting the implementation of the roadmap speeding up industrial and societal uptake of technologies for solar fuels and chemicals in the eu and contributing to wider longerterm impacts including those on increased autonomy in key strategic value chains for resilient industry outlined in the horizon europe work programme |
regenerated cotton for electronic textiles | the main objective of the retex msca se project is to form a world class international and intersectoral network of organizations working on a joint research programme in the field of novel sustainable electronic textile materials by replacing conventional textile materials with sustainable environmentally friendly and advanced materials such as regenerated fibres from cotton fabrics this can only be achieved by bringing together worldclass experts in materials polmers environmentalists chemists software engineers and designers with stateoftheart innovations and processes in their respective fields of expertise the participants will exchange skills and knowledge to create sustainable textile materials strengthening collaborative research between different countries and sectors retex will also refine and produce potential commercial market opportunities for nonacademic participants in the project our goal is to train next generation of researchers and innovators in sustainable textiles through crosssectoral and training modules the staff members will develop new skills be exposed tonew research and innovation environments international networks new industrial processes and techniques whilst widening and enriching career development through crosssectoral knowledge transfer and international mobility |
overcoming mechanicallyinduced resistance to chemoimmunotherapy in pancreatic cancer | cancer progression is closely associated with generation of mechanical stresses that cause the compression of tumor vessels drastically reducing delivery of drugs my coworkers and i found that host cells and extracellular matrix in tumors generate these stresses furthermore we identified the antihypertensive losartan to alleviate intratumoral stresses and decompress vessels allowing drugs to enter the tumor my colleagues tested losartan in pancreatic cancer patients and found improved responses to chemoradiation nonetheless losartan cannot alleviate all stresses and my preliminary data indicate that they induce chemotherapy resistance mechanoresistance thus even though vessel decompression facilitates drugs entering the tumor mechanoresistance renders cancer cells insensitive to drugs alleviating mechanoresistance is an urgent clinical need but this mechanism has not been well studied and strategies to overcome it have not been developed successfully to address this challenge i will employ a mixture of cuttingedge bioengineering and biology methods to identify the intracellular mechanisms that promote mechanoresistance using in vitro and mouse models of pancreatic cancer i will then employ inhibitorsdrugs of the identified mechanisms to overcome mechanoresistance in vitro and in vivo to determine if they increase the efficacy of chemotherapy i will also confirm whether these drugs work more effectively with losartan or alone using the best performing regimen i will assess the immunological effects and efficacy in combination with immunotherapy which has yet to induce a benefit in pancreatic cancer trials in parallel in order to take this groundbreaking goal of improving pancreatic cancer therapy to the clinic i will examine the existence of the same mechanoresistance mechanisms in human tumors the project will introduce novel patientspecific therapeutic strategies to directly boost clinical trials in pancreatic cancer patients |
molecular and genetic determinants of plant tolerance to viruses | viral diseases cause severe damage to cultivated plants resulting in global crop losses in the wild however plants are typically free of viral disease symptoms despite recurrent infection naturally tolerant plants have a significant viral load but their growth development and reproduction are only minimally affected the aim of the tolgreen project is to identify viral and host determinants of tolerance by using arabidopsisinfecting rna viruses such as tobacco mosaic virus tmv and the related oilseed rape mosaic virus ormv as models certain natural accessions of a thaliana col0 are tolerant to tmv whereas other ecotypes sha show disease by contrast col0 plants infected with ormv are initially symptomatic but develop tolerance in the new leaves the host laboratory demonstrated that this latter tolerance phenotype depends on genes required for the production of primary and secondary sirnas and also correlates with the loss of the activity of the viral rna silencing suppressor vsr the tobamoviral vsr proteins inhibit antiviral rna silencing by sequestration of small interfering rnas sirnas which inhibits the assembly of the antiviral rnainduced silencing complex risc therefore tolerance may occur when the vsr sirna binding activity is saturated by host or virusderived sirnas using the latest tools of molecular genetics and proteomics tolgreen will determine arabidopsis genes viral and hostderived sirnas as well as vsrinteracting proteins that control vsr activity and are involved in tolerance understanding the molecular mechanism of tolerance will provide important tools for the breeding of resilient virustolerant crops for a more sustainable agriculture |
universal interoperative sustainable agriwater management platform | water quality and quantity are under arising pressure from agricultural activities that may cause overexploitation of natural waters and pollutants runoffs eg nutrients pesticides these stresses are also compounded by climate change effects to address the complex challenges of agriwater management the universwater consortium will adopt a system of systems approach by developing and improving technologies designed to optimise water resources uses in a fully integrated way a dedicated interdisciplinary and intersectoral consortium of 15 partners from six european countries will a develop innovative portable and insitu sensors for a number of parameters and pollutants salinity nutrients cec microbiological indicators and b couple them with earth observation imaging and advanced explainable and robust artificial intelligence techniques as well as c develop costeffective sustainable methods based on naturebased and technologybased solutions for water remediation at the point of need and d promote the adoption of the developed methods through pricing incentive provision these technologies will be integrated into decision support systems dsss that will be tested at three case studies tackling onfarm treatment of dairy soiled water mitigation of soil salination through water reuse and optimisation of fertiliserpesticide application for freshwater preservation going beyond universwater will upscale these local dsss into a common platform where a suite of dss tools can be adapted to different situations after being tailored to the local factors thereby developing a modular extensible and holistic universal dss |
ultrafast floquet polaritonics metasurfaces | electromagnetic waves interacting with materials give rise to polaritons hybrid excitations of light and matter among these hyperbolic phonon polaritons hphps in polar crystals stand out for their low loss and anisotropic behavior concurrently floquet theory has gained prominence in nanophotonics enabling the engineering of topological properties in periodically driven systems the utopia project aims to merge these domains establishing ultrafast floquet polaritonics as a cuttingedge field it seeks to demonstrate this concept in natural van der waals materials and synthetic metasurfaces polariton research has evolved from plasmon polaritons to encompass phonons excitons and cooper pairs phonon polaritons with their anisotropic response have opened avenues for nanophotonics recent discoveries in twodimensional van der waals materials like hexagonal boron nitride have unveiled hyperbolic polaritons in natural crystals utopia bridges phonon polaritons and floquet theory aiming to pioneer tailored lightmatter interactions floquet systems endow physical systems with synthetic dimensions via periodic potentials enabling nonreciprocal systems topological phases and 4 dimensional physics while floquet quasienergy states have been demonstrated in graphene the field of floquet polaritonics remains underexplored lacking a demonstration of temporally driven changes in phonon polariton dispersionutopias objectives include 1 demonstrating floquetdriven topological polaritonic transitions via grating coupling in natural materials mapping nearfield observables to the farfield and enabling dynamical phase transitions 2 designing metasurfaces supporting synthetic hyperbolic polaritons expanding floquet polaritonics to optical frequencies and various temporal modulations3 achieving infrared light amplification via polaritonassisted anisotropic parametric amplification harnessing polaritonic excitations for efficient amplification |
charting cell typespecific nucleic acid immunity | metabolic and immune pathways form an intricate network that maintains homeostasis we recently unveiled that the stimulator of interferon genes sting central to triggering cytosolic dsdnadependent type i interferon ifn responses inhibits the desaturation of essential dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids pufas sting thereby controls the generation of longchain pufas lcpufas that in turn inhibit sting activation this double negative regulatory feedback loop operates as a key rheostat of homeostasisinterestingly we found that metabolic tissues such adipose tissues express low levels of sting and that in vitro adipocyte differentiation leads to sting downregulation although they retain their ability to produce type i ifns in respond to nucleic acid challenge this suggests that alleviating the stingdependent inhibition of pufa metabolism may result from or be required for adipocyte differentiation or functionality further this also suggests that adipocytes may possess specific stingindependent cytosolic nucleic acid detection pathways thus nucleic acid detection pathways and pufa metabolism should be interrogated concertedly at the cellular levels within metabolic tissues to uncover how they define tissuespecific immune responses and regulate tissue homeostasis in particular in pathologies presenting with chronic sting activationwithin sentinel we will combine stateofthe art biochemistry and molecular biology approaches and cuttingedge omics tools in vitro and in vivo to identify nucleic acid detection machineries and question the role of sting downregulation in metabolic cells finally we will explore the impact of stingdependent metabolic alterations in pathologies presenting with chronic sting activation sentinel will thus chart an unexplored area of nucleic acid immunity metabolic cell immunity and reveal its impact on homeostasis and pathologies |
crimeancongo haemorrhagic fever vaccine and immunotherapy | the cchfvacim project is an ambitious collaborative effort aimed at developing both prophylactic and therapeutic effective countermeasures against crimean congo haemorrhagic fever virus cchfv one of the most threatening vectorborne pathogens widely distributed including in the european continent deep structural biology studies on viral glycoproteins and investigation of the immunogenicity of the viral antigens will be combined with optimisation of an mrna vaccine candidate against the virus and characterisation of the resulting protective immunity as well as with the development of immunotherapeutic monoclonal antibodies mabs based on cchfvs antigenic targetsto achieve the overarching goals the cchfvacim project will build on the success of previous projects such as cchfever fp7 cchfvaccine h2020 and go the extra mile by initiating a unique onehealth platform strategy to address different aspects of this severe public health threat on one hand the project will use several advanced animal models mice sheep and nonhuman primate to assess and compare the efficacy of mrna vaccine candidates mabs and therapeutic mrna on the other hand it will establish a biobank from cchf patients to build up a pipeline for the production of mabs against cchfv from their b cellsimportantly the project will also contribute to capacity building of european infrastructures with the establishment of a platform on mrnabased vaccine at one of the partner institutions ultimately cchfvacim will permit to develop a road map to bring the most efficacious vaccine candidates and immunotherapy tools to clinical trial phase i in humans the project results will be widely disseminated among the scientific community public health authorities nongovernmental organisations outbreak management teams and hospitals with the final scope of both contributing to contain the burden of cchf disease and increasing preparedness to new outbreaks |
mechanisms linking earlylife stress and resilience to climate change in amphibians | climate change imposes a myriad of environmental stressors to wildlife that are particularly challenging to early lifestages in animals with complex life histories such as amphibians poor developmental conditions have been shown to impact survival later in life as amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class identifying mechanisms that shape their capacity to cope with environmental stress is vital for predicting population responses in amphistress i aim to investigate how earlylife stress can affect resilience to climate change in amphibians by exploring the underlying neuroendocrine and physiological mechanisms mediating the interplay between environmental change behaviour and stress physiology hereto i will employ an interdisciplinary approach exposing amphibian larvae to suboptimal developmental conditions elevated temperature pond drying hypoxia and first assess the resulting impact on glucocorticoid stress hormone levels oxidative stress animal personalitycoping style growth and shortterm stress responsiveness before and after metamorphosis then i will assess the movement behaviour of juveniles toads under seminatural conditions to understand if earlylife stressinduced altered growth trajectories interact with dispersal capacity lastly i will build heuristic models to identify how individual stressresponses to climate change can scale up to affect population dynamics amphistress will provide novel information on the effects of climate changeinduced habitat alterations on amphibians and the importance of habitat connectivity for amphibian dispersal survival and population persistence thereby generating knowledge with direct conservation value finally this project will be the cornerstone of my longterm research goals to link developmental conditions and lifehistory trajectories in an ecoevolutionary framework and would provide me with a unique opportunity to strengthen my scientific profile to advance my career |
endothelial metabolism dictates the bone marrow niche and the plaque microenvironment | inflammation is an important driver of atherosclerosis the primary cause of global morbidity and mortality in emerging and developed countries new strategies to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease cvd risk are therefore eagerly needed i recently found that atherogenic inflammatory stimuli rewire cellular metabolism in endothelial cells ecs and thereby contribute to atherosclerosis progression defining the intricate link between ec inflammation metabolic rewiring and functional consequences for the vasculature will open new avenues for therapeutic strategies in cvd my recent work shows that cvdassociated metabolic changes in ecs can affect their secretome in turn the endothelial secretome disrupts both stem cell function in the bone marrow niche and macrophage activation in the plaque microenvironment two highly vascularized tissue compartments that drive atherosclerosis progression based on these findings i hypothesize that cvdassociated ec metabolic changes impact the micromilieu in both tissue compartments propagating the proinflammatory state in cvd patientswith this erc project i aim to define 1 how ec metabolism is affected in atherosclerosis 2 3 what the impact of altered ec metabolism is for stem cell function in the bone marrow niche and for macrophage activation in the plaque and ultimately 4 to define how interventions in ec metabolism improve tissue function and halt cvd developmenti will apply innovative 3d organonchip models that accurately reflects the human bone marrow and plaque microenvironment by combining this with a unique collection of human exvivo atherosclerotic plaques human bone marrow cells and novel transgenic invivo models i will generate essential new insights that help to understand the development of atherosclerotic cvdhereby this erc will yield important insights that the field urgently awaits to develop novel therapeutic strategies for the reduction of the burden of cvd |
electrocatalytic production of liquid organic hydrogen carrier and chemicals from lignin | epoch proposes to develop a novel approach in linking green hydrogen production with the direct loading of liquid organic hydrogen carriers lohc enabling a transformative logistic of green hydrogen distribution and storage lignin derivatives are used to be selectively oxidized compared to water electrolysis epoch will advance the field by 1 using the nascent hydrogen at the cathode directly to load lohcs allowing economic h2 storage and transport and 2 converting at the anode waste lignin and its derivatives via selective oxidation epoch is beyond the stateoftheart solutions as it does not form molecular h2 at the cathode nor generates oxygen at the anode by modifying both cathodic and anodic reactions epoch reduces the energy intensity epoch will enable better cell performance and enhanced addedvalue device operations by i improving energy efficiency ii allowing cost reductions and iii intensifying the process the epoch device will be designed for flexible integration with biorefineries and pulp paper industries to valorize their lignin waste streams thus linking these industrial sectors and h2 economy epoch will allow the production of green h2 in areas where renewable energy production in the energy mix is higher therefore epoch will offer a new path to effectively decrease the carbon footprint of energyintensive industriesdevelopment of the novel epoch electrocatalytic device requires a advanced components electrocatalysts electrodes electrolytes and ionic liquid promoters membranes and b validation of the full module cell operation at laboratory scale thus our project integrates multidisciplinary topexperts in areas such as electrocatalysis lignin chemistry and materials synthesis with a large engineering company and a spinoff company on energy transition and a sme worldleading the lohc technology development and logistic |
postrepatriation collaborative methodologies to enhance multivocality | the research project postrepatriation collaborative methodologies to enhance multivocality acronym collab4multi speaks to the indigenous research methodologies and partnerships in communitybased research in academia and beyond it strives to explore the recently recovered archaeological material from the nunalleq site 14001675 ad in southwest alaska in close collaboration with nonacademic research partners including indigenous artists and young culture bearers the precolonial history of the yupik is poorly known from the archaeological point of view most of what we know about it comes from the nunalleq site it is therefore important that the interpretations of the nunalleq collection be multivocal and produced combining the strengths of western archaeological science with indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews advocating for multivocality and decolonisation of academic research this project will critically analyse the resocialisation of cultural heritage in and by the living community the research programme of the project rests on a series of artsbased workshops to study this worldclass collection of yupik people and recreate the lifestories of its artefacts together with indigenous research partners the project will also explore the collaborative ways of knowledge coproduction and dissemination by developing and piloting cowriting methods informed by indigenous epistemologies the practical outcomes will contribute to the advancement of collaborative methodologies in archaeological and museological research with and for indigenous communities across the arctic region |
innovative algorithms for applications on european exascale supercomputers | new architectures for exascale and postexascale computers will have massively parallel and heterogeneous processing capabilities that will require the complete redesign and reimplementation of the used algorithms to fully exploit the possibilities of these supercomputers the objective of the inno4scale project is to promote the efficient use of european hpc systems by identifying and funding the most promising novel algorithms for applications through this action the project will facilitate the design and development of highly efficient application software for european exascale computers the most successful of which should later be taken up by science and industry resulting in important performance gains the project will design and implement a call for proposals based on the cascade funding mechanism financing the most promising ideas on novel algorithms for applications to fully exploit and benefit from these valuable european exascale resources proposals received will be evaluated by external experts based on their potential innovation and impact on the upcoming exascale era and the castieleurocc2 and prace networks will be used to ensure the widest possible reach of the call the inno4scale consortium made up of two major european hpc research centres and two experienced partners in managing hpcrelated programmes is in the ideal position to carry out the project in an effective and efficient manner the results of the selected innovation studies that will receive more than 4 million euros in total include the development and publication of the novel algorithms to reduce the timetosolution or energytosolution of existing computing problems as well as to provide novel approaches for largescale projects in this way the inno4scale project will contribute to the realisation of the eurohpc ju overall objectives and those specific for this call as well as enable an optimal exploitation of european exascale and postexascale hpc systems |
green valorization of co2 and nitrogen compounds for making fertilizers | confeti project proposes the development of a labscale validated innovative technology that is able to utilise and electrochemically convert co2 and n2 directly from air or flue gases without the use of critical raw materials and using renewable energy sources by the production of urea from n n2 andor no3 and co2 the project aims to ensure a circular and renewable carbon and nitrogen economy by recycling and converting the no3 not consume by the plant into ammonia or urea using photocatalytic technologies based on sunlight the technology proposed in the current project to synthetize and deliver urea fertilizer to plants will follow sustainable agriculture models by promoting the efficiency of available resources the sustainability of the agricultural sector the preservation of the environment and the safety and quality of products for many countries agriculture is the dominant sector in developing the economy increasing productivity and the modernization of agricultural production systems are the primary drivers of global poverty reduction and energy |
sustainable powder materials for zinc rechargeable batteries | easyls patented technology provides green processes to locally produce critical powder materials used in zincbased batteries we use a mechanical process to create calcium zincate powder active material that can store electricity with only water as solvent and have the knowhow for the green production of titanium nitride essential conductive additive these innovations are combined to produce 3 readytouse composite powders zincatin znni batteries zincatair znair batteries zincatem znmno2 batteries easyls production processes for these powder materials and composite powders will be licensed to industrial powder producers and battery manufacturers respectively our current technology has been tested with our team specialized in prototype cells allows for the production of batteries with a capacity of 1000 chargedischarge cycles while retaining 70 of the cells capacity we intend to reach 3600 cycles by the end of this project of 5000 in later generations |
rewiring transcriptional regulation by the prc2 complex using proximity inducing pharmacology | polycomb repressive complex 2 prc2 which incorporates repressive methyllysine marks on histone h3 to facilitate global transcriptional repression is an integral epigenetic modifier in normal development components of this complex especially ezh2 are hyperactive or overexpressed in a broad range of cancers resulting in excessive silencing of tumor suppressor genes tsgs moreover cancers with defects in the swisnf complex the most frequently mutated chromatin regulatory complex in cancer are dependent on prc2 function for survival while inhibition or degradation of prc2 components have become extremely attractive approaches to cancer therapy they still suffer from suboptimal kinetics and perturbation because they must rely on opposing epigenetic modifiers and transcriptional regulators to derepress expression of silenced tsgs thus i aim to overcome this issue by leveraging the cancer driver itself to derepress silenced tsgs in this regard i will utilize a highthroughput protein recruitment screen coupled to nextgeneration sequencing to identify proteins effectors that when recruited to prc2 can rewire its function to directly derepress a prc2silenced locus this screen will be used a base to develop novel proximity inducing compounds which can rewire the function of prc2 the compound that produces the strongest transcriptional derepression and antiproliferative effects in cancer cells will then be characterized via transcriptomics and chromatin profiling to determine its effects on endogenous gene expression ultimately this study will establish a new class of prc2 targeting compounds that will pave the way for improved cancer therapies which both inhibit prc2 methyltransferase activity and directly derepress prc2silenced tsgs |
robust control strategy for dynamic lane change of intelligent articulated heavy vehicle in complex traffic environment | the complex traffic environment with dynamic changes of speed and acceleration of multisurrounding vehicles and adhesion coefficient and curve radius of the road results in that the optimal and precise control of lane change for intelligent articulated heavy vehicle iahv is difficult to be achieved according to the realtime states of multisurrounding vehicles and road parameters the realtime safe optimal trajectory of lane change is obtained by setting the multiobjective function considering efficiency jackknife yaw and roll stability the dynamic thresholds of each control mode which are modified by realtime trajectory and road parameters are obtained and then the multimode switching mechanism is established by deep neural network the vehicle parameters and states are accurately estimated by using an estimator with multiestimation algorithms combining steady state with dynamic state considering the parameter uncertainty a robust control strategy based on a linear parametervarying model is designed to realtime achieve precise and optimal tracking control of dynamic trajectory and maintain vehicle stability by optimizing weight coefficients and multimode switching thus the safe and optimal lane change of iahv under normal and extreme conditions with different velocities and loads is realized the proposed control strategy is verified on hil bench the research results will provide theoretical basis for iahv control in complex traffic environmentthis project provides a unique knowledge exchange from leading experts in different fields vehicle control mechanical transportation optimization motor pneumatic to solve the challenges in iahv the fellow will benefit from not only the scientific impact of the work but also exposure to new techniques and collaborative networks in different disciplines the dedicated training and high scientific value will help the fellow to become an independent researcher in a worldleading institution |
circulating light on any photonic platform | the new technology envisioned in circulight will establish a breakthrough in photonic integrated circuit pic capabilities with impact across a wide range of applications of high economic and societal value it will lay the foundations of a new class of pics which are highly functional miniaturized and low powerconsuming as well as being manufacturable at low cost thereby contributing significantly to environmental protection and related quality of life the essential building block that will be created in this project is a truly integrated optical circulator which protects active and passive integrated functions from each other distributes light between them and finally allows very large scale integration of photonic components within diversified pic architectures the practical realization of such a structure will be a worldfirst and a breakthrough in pic technologycirculight technological decisive progress is based on magnetooptical mo nanoparticlecomposite solgel material and on magnetobiplasmonic mbp effect which will enable the monolithic insertion of circulators on any photonic platform within the project a demonstration will be made on two of them based on inp and si respectively operating at 13 or 15 m while pic foundries rely on specific and independent technologies our solution will bypass these specificities thanks to a universal integration of functional materials in addition our interdisciplinary approach is based on the analysis of real world needs feeding the cocreation of an exploitation roadmap together with end users industrial and societal stakeholders in preparation for the scaling up of our technology developments to transform society for the betterto reach these objectives our consortium of nine partners encompasses competencies in material sciences photonics plasmonics pics technology and social science and includes two smes |
green science at the service of healthy society | the greensci project aims to increase the public recognition of science promote young researchers and researchers with sustainable innovations and show the impact that research and innovation have on daily life and social welfarein this context the 2022 and 2023 editions of european researchers night aim to increase the public recognition of science promote young researchers and experienced scientists with sustainable innovations and show the opportunities in research and steam for young people and pupilsthe main idea of greensci project is to bring together researchers innovators children young people adults from different regions of moldova who have and who do not have a background in research in order to show the impact of rdi and steam disciplines on everyday lifethe specific objectives of the greensci project arecontribute to increased visibility and promotion of research and researchers among the general publicenhance communication between researchers and the general public mainly young people by encouraging citizens engagementincrease the public recognition of eu programmes and opportunities including eu funded researchers from moldova as well as moldovan scientific diaspora promote innovations with social and business applicability via open science practicesemphasize the impact of research and innovation on daily life and social welfare |
strict protection restoration and comanagement of marine protected areas to ensure effective ecosystem conservation and improved connectivity of blue corridors | the blue connect project addresses the urgent need to protect and restore marine habitats and ecosystems and to reach ambitious eu and global protection and restoration targets by 2030 together with marine protected area mpa managers authorities industries and local communities from 12 demonstration sites and beyond blue connect is codeveloping promoting and demonstrating a systematic approach to marine conservation planning and management this collaborative effort will result in the creation of a powerful blueprint directly supporting 1 setting sciencebased conservation objectives 2 codefining conservation actions for effective mpa comanagement 3 ensuring conservation effectiveness and 4 demonstrating the high potential of these tools for replicability and broader use this will be made possible by establishing a holistic modelling framework that integrates various elements of biodiversity ecological functioning ecosystem services and connectivity while also considering inputs from stakeholders and local communities regarding social economic and cultural aspects when defining mpas and ecological corridors the project will contribute to a more comprehensive sciencebased and inclusive approach to designating new mpas or expanding existing ones transitioning to strict protection restoring ecosystems enhancing ecological connectivity and facilitating mpa comanagement by fostering just and fair stakeholder cooperation and citizen science initiatives blue connect will build a greater feeling of coownership of protected and restored marine ecosystems and mpa networks and empower communities to play a crucial role in safeguarding our seas |
deciphering systemic diurnal metabolism and endocrine signaling in heart failure | heart failure hf the ultimate outcome of many cardiovascular pathologies imposes a significant global health and economic burden while remaining associated with high mortality rates there is therefore an urgent need for innovative approaches to comprehensively understand and treat hf most hf research has thus far focused on the pathophysiology of the heart only partially covering the role of noncardiac organs despite hf being a complex multiorgan syndrome the extent to which extracardiac organs particularly those playing a key role in metabolism control contribute to hf remains largely unknown codeheart aims to bridge this knowledge gap by focusing on metabolic interorgan mechanisms of disease our metabolism is temporally coordinated across tissues by the circadian clock system which orchestrates myriad of physiological and metabolic processes my recent work has highlighted the significance of peripheral tissuetissue communication for daily metabolic homeostasis notably my preliminary findings suggest that when the heart is under stress systemic glucose and lipid diurnal metabolism is rewired in this project i will test the hypothesis that the failing heart can alter systemic diurnal metabolic rhythms via the release of specific cardiacsecreted factors to do so i will first determine the impact of hf on systemic metabolic rhythms and on the diurnal transcriptional landscape of liver skeletal muscle and white adipose tissue using specific knockout animal models i will investigate the consequences of systemic metabolic rewiring on cardiac function in hf finally i will pinpoint the metabolic communication network between the heart liver and other metabolic tissues by labelling cardiomyocytespecific secreted proteins and screening their functions in vitro and in vivo in summary codeheart will significantly advance our understanding of the metabolic and molecular adaptation occurring in hf |
neoc neuroenergeticsonchip disease modeling of impaired brain glucose metabolism using human ipscderived neurovascular units nvuonchip systems | neurological conditions conquer the world they are the leading cause of disability and second leading cause of death worldwide although there is growing evidence for the immense impact of disturbances in neurometabolism for overall brain function only little is known about the underlying mechanisms knowledge gap especially human insights are sparse due to a paucity of physiologically relevant model systems research gap to address these challenges within the scope of the neuroenergeticsonchip neoc project i am proposing the development of a novel human ipscbased organonchip model of the neurovascular unit nvu that integrates all neurometabolically active nvu cell types and specifically enables the inspection of neurometabolic coupling mechanisms to categorically cast light onto the mechanisms behind impaired metabolism of glucose the brains principal energy supplier i will build an nvuonchip disease model of glucose transporter 1 deficiency syndrome glut1ds since glut1ds is monogenic it presents an excellent paradigm to study cellular and molecular consequences of disturbed neuroenergetics even beyond the disease itselffor implementation of the neoc project i will i generate all neurometabolically relevant nvu cell types endothelial cells perivascular cells astrocytes microglia and neurons from human ipsc lines derived from glut1ds patients ii develop a novel nvu microfluidic platform addressing the shortcomings of existing nvuonchip systems and iii build glut1dsnvuonchip models to specifically study perturbations in energy metabolism bloodbrain barrier integrity and neuroinflammation as a consequence of glut1ds in vitrothe neoc project will provide novel knowledge on the underlying mechanisms and pathophysiology of glut1ds and thereby not only benefit those afflicted by the orphan disease but impact our understanding of a variety of other cns and metabolically linked disorders |
nanowire device for single virus delivery and sensing in vacuum | airborne viruses causing respiratory diseases represent a mayor global health threat being viruses with rnagenomes from animal reservoirs highly likely to cause further public health emergencies in the future virquantify aims to provide proof of concept for a technology capable of highly sensitive fast and untargeted airborne virus detection with infectivity assessment providing a comparative advantage in the competitive landscape virquantify builds upon an unprecedented application of nms sensors to the field of airborne viral particles detection methodology developed and patented by the pi in the framework of a previous erc cog virquantify proposes the use of ionic liquids to preserve the virus structure together nanowire sensors that allow mass and stiffness measurements for identification and infectivity studies of the pathogens the innovative solution lies in two fronts 1 an unprecedented capability to measure with high throughput 30 particlesminute the stiffness of intact viruses to infer their infectivity potential not at reach to other techniques 2 the capability to count and characterize all the viral particles present in the liquid sample without loss of bioanalytes during the measurementsvirquantify aims to exploit the novel technology for onsite identification and quantification of airbone viral particles and validate the innovation potential of such technological tool for commercialization by developing a market entry strategy built upon ipr consolidation and spinoff setup this will lead to highgain disruptive outcomes in the form of unprecedented mechanistic understanding for detecting the quick spread of airbone viral particles with great socioeconomic benefits visible at three levels 1 fuelling industrial innovation and economic growth in a gamechanging sector preventive medicine 2 reducing healthcare costs worldwide thus enabling more resilient and efficient health systems 3 improving human welfare |
faradaic miniaturising gas sensors to enable new sensing possibilities in iot devices | faradaic is bringing to the market the first miniaturised electrochemical o2 gas sensor to enable new sensing opportunities across different industries where a small chipbased sensor is demanded breathing devices fitness medical hydrogen economy etc gas sensors today are too large and expensive for the iot devices that device manufacturers want to build this problem is particularly painful when o2 gas sensing is needed since no miniaturised costeffective chipbased o2 gas sensor is available commercially we are combining the world of cuttingedge synthetic chemistry and advanced materials with the world of semiconductor manufacturing and microfabrication to achieve smaller costeffective and powerefficient gas sensor technology we are the first company worldwide that has successfully miniaturised the electrochemical variety and our goal is to lead the next sensor revolution with our gas sensing platform untapping all the potential of gas sensing in multiple markets |
unravelling novel mechanisms of defense gene activation a gateway to elevate disease resistance in plants | plant diseases are widespread and constitute a major threat to food production understanding the molecular mechanisms by which plants resist pathogens is essential to design better strategies for protecting crops from diseases strict regulation of plant defense gene expression plays a critical role in establishing an effective and finetuned immune response their insufficient expression leads to diseases while their overexpression can result in autoimmunity and severe fitness penalties my own recent work using systems biology approaches reveals hidden components inferred by defense gene regulatory networks as essential players in plant immunity the next challenge lies in establishing how the recognition of pathogens by plant immune receptors is converted to changes in defense gene expression and results in effective immunity in particular it is unknown how defense gene regulatory mechanisms are dynamically regulated whether the mechanisms are shared by different plant species and how different types of plant cells respond to pathogen attacks my longterm goal is to develop robust tools to control plant pathogens to tackle these challenging questions the relevation program addresses three core objectives1 determine how master transcription factors regulate the expression of defense genes2 identify and characterize new and conserved regulatory components during immune activation3 elucidate and compare celltypespecific gene regulatory networks between resistant and susceptible plantswith my team i aim to advance the fundamental understanding of dynamic gene regulatory mechanisms during plant immune activation that are conserved in different plant species i additionally aim to revolutionize plant protection strategies at the celltypespecific level translating our results into crop plants will enable the development of management strategies including selectable traits for plant breeding for more durable and finetunable resistance |
investigating the contribution of vanadium nitrogen fixation in ombrotrophic peatlands and their drivers in the present and in the past | ombrotrophic peatlands are important carbon sinks and sources of greenhouse gases the evolution of peatlands with global environmental change will depend on the availability of new nitrogen n which enters these ecosystems mainly through biological nitrogen fixation bnf recent research has demonstrated the emerging role of vanadium vbased bnf in complementing the canonical molybdenumrequiring process it supports n input in high latitude areas questioning our estimates of n input fluxes and our understanding of the interaction between macro and micronutrients in terrestrial biomes the role of vbased n fixation and its control in the present and past of peatland ecosystems has yet to be unveiledvanapeat will address these critical questions by using peat cores as an archive of the interaction between essential trace metal molybdenum and vanadium and nitrogen cycling in the anthropocene last 400 years and the holocene we will first investigate modernday contributions and trace metal controls over n cycling in ombrotrophic peatland environments using isotopic geochemical methodologies i helped develop we will then determine past fluctuations in mo and v availability to peatlands and their human geological and climatic origins using peat cores spanning periods up to the last glacial maximum last 30000 years finally we will investigate new isotopic proxies to track the contribution of v to bnf and link the fluctuations in metal deposition with vsupported n input along the holocenevanapeat will transform our understanding of the n cycle in present and past peatland ecosystems and ameliorate our projection for the terrestrial carbon sink during global environmental change it will investigate the earliest impact of human civilization and industry on natural ecosystems and inform policy decisions related to peatland conservation vanapeat will diversify the applicants research and help him reintegrate into european institutions |
unveiling dynamics of rapid erosion through advanced seismic techniques | floods and landslides are an intensifying hazard in the context of climate change that affected over 2 billion people worldwide between 19982017 in mountainous catchments these processes play a significant role in rapid erosion contributing to landscape evolution yet multiple barriers limit our current understanding of rapid erosion dynamics such as the applicability of theoretical transport laws to complex realworld systems poor understanding of the mechanism behind the initiation of rapid erosion processes and sparsely distributed observations in time and spacethe unrest project will cut this gordian knot by pioneering an interdisciplinary observational framework that integrates several stateoftheart seismic techniques spatially dense arrays seismic interferometry and machine learning with physical and numerical models on a previously unexplored spatiotemporal scale this will be done through three main objectives 1 identify precursors and magnitude indicators of impending landslides 2 link seismic signals to complex landslide dynamics and 3 develop new tools to track unstable flood flow across multiple scales the project will be conducted in four active alpine catchments in france and switzerland with the developed methods tested in an entirely different geomorphic geologic and climatic setting of new caledonia a south pacific island unrest will unveil critical thresholds in damage development on unstable slopes and previously unobserved patterns and behaviors in complex flow dynamics these findings augmented by the development of nearreal time data processing workflows will have a transformative impact on the understanding of rapid erosion dynamics paving the way to enhanced warning systems in mountainous catchments |
western images of the steppe empresses literary and film portraits of genghisid women between fascination and fear 20th21st centuries | since the middle ages the name of genghis khan has been associated in the west with the idea of the apocalypse in accordance with this negative representation the women who contributed to the rise of his empire have long been described as sinister witches and warriors indistinguishable from the men of their horde however studies carried out starting in the last century thanks to the opening of mongolia to the west and the rediscovery of new local sources have led western scholars to a profound revaluation of genghis khan now seen as one of the makers of the modern world this revaluation has also affected our view of mongol princesses who enjoyed a freedom and a consideration unknown to their sedentary neighbors wise and resilient they took part like men in war politics and trade and could choose whether and with whom to marry western images of the steppe empresses wise is the first research in the field of comparative literature aiming to understand whether the new anthropological archaeological historical and philological studies carried out by the mongolists have triggered a change in the perception of genghisid female royalty in 20th and 21st century western culture it analyses their representation in american and anglophone francophone and italophone european literature and cinema wise seeks to understand the cultural reasons for the metamorphosis of the image in question and whether it is connected to the changed role of women in the west as a result of feminist claims moreover it explores the possibility of an oriental influence linked to the steppe culture on the model of emancipated and combative women prevalent in the west today the training at sorbonne nouvelle university and the cole pratique des hautes tudes will give me the opportunity to deepen my knowledge of mongolian civilization and to acquire expertise in orientalism gender and film studies to be added to my existing skills in comparative literature |
preclinical validation and demonstration of peptichip an immunopurification microfluidic device and software for neoantigen identification and prioritization | clinical translation of cancer immunotherapies remains very challenging since 6080 of patients fail to respondthe challenge stands in identifying specific tumourfingerprints the neoantigens that are peptides expressed uniquely by cancer cells and that are capable of triggering an efficient immune response against cancer currently there is no standard method to identify antigens and the few methods available have significant limitations by being quite long complicated and resource demanding in response to this clear technological and market gap valo therapeutics valotx an immunotherapy development company is introducing peptichip ie an innovative microfluidic immunopurification device and a peptide prioritisation algorithm to identify the most relevant neoantigens to stimulate the immune system and thus increase the chance of success of the immunotherapy peptichip can be adapted and used to identify antigens related to any disease the proof of concept poc was successfully demonstrated at university of helsinki the ip was protected and valotx has full rights to further develop exploit and commercialize peptichip this eic transition project will allow further technology development testing validating and demonstrating it preclinically generating evidence to convince investors and stakeholders as well as to prepare an extensive and solid transitiontomarket plan t2mp by being accurate fast lowcost easy to use and working with very small amounts of samples peptichip will have great impact in 1 research for discovery new therapies development since identification of antigens allows the understanding of diseases immune response mechanisms 2 industry for therapy development translation into clinical use since the antigens identification prioritization is a critical step to produce therapies tailored for each patient to ensure responsiveness 3 clinic for patient assessment immunotherapy tailoring |
innovative business models for soil health | the general objective of novasoil project is highlight the benefits for the society and the environment from the investment in soil health the main expected outcome of the project is a toolbox for the analysis of suitability of different business cases that promote soil health this toolbox will be based on a set of good examples from europe and other countries and the needs and demands from the society the toolbox will include a categorisation of the models and business cases taking into account a sustainable soil management under different land uses and climatic conditions b products based on practices promoting soil health c consumption and certification practices conductive d the reuse of land and e sustainable soil management in the context of the eu taxonomy regulationfor that novasoil is composed by a multidisciplinary team with a large experience on european and national projects focus on soil health and business models as well as novasoil will built a community of practice around project objectives in order to codevelop soil health business models and the toolbox for incentives taking into account their needs and demandsnovasoil is organised in 5 wps plus coordination following the expected objectives and impacts of the call the first step is to develop a conceptual framework of soil health and business this framework will nurture other wps in order to develop in the same way all the expected objectives the soil health business models will analyse current successful experiences in europe and outside europe in order to categorise them taking into account their variability in addition novasoil includes 13 case studies with business models that promote soil quality and products based on sustainable crop and soil management on the other hand an analysis of current policies related will be carried out in order to provide suggestions and improvement that facilitate the implementation of these soil health business |
unrevealing the mechanisms involved when producing biodiesel from waste oil using a combined experimental and theoretical methodology | 40 reduction on emissions should be achieved by 2030 within eu with the outstanding goal for europe to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050 these goals need to be reached without jeopardizing economic development and growth and simultaneously fulfilling the un goals for sustainabilityone of the main contributors to climate change and global warming is emissions from our vehicles as these mainly use petroleumbased fuels to address this new approaches methodologies and technologies must be developedbiodiesel is one option to substitute diesel however its production has been controversial since it requires the use of edible oils and thus creates conflicts with the production of food crops making it less attractive because of this problem newer technologies are being developed to treat lower quality nonedible oils however as yet these are not economically viableto address these problems unprecedented will focus on the use of waste oil this new raw material has been tested experimentally with promising results however how the reaction is taking place and the steps involved is far from being understood this lack of knowledge has a negative effect when selecting new technologies or testing new feedstocks unprecedented will use a combine methodology of experimental data and theoretical modelling dft based calculations to study and fully comprehend the biodiesel production reaction this methodology will permit a full understanding of the reactive steps involved the reaction pathway that is followed as well as the energies involved in each reactive step this methodology will assess for the conversion of waste oil in the presence of renewable alcohols to produce biodiesel when using new catalytic materials that are biobased produce from renewable sources and enriched with glycerol |
empowering a fair and responsible european foodregister fostering citizen sovereignty and creating a datadriven food system | the overall goal of our project is to achieve trust in a datadriven food system by implementing digital responsibility goals for the food sector this will enable new levels of innovation for example in food safety sustainability personalized nutrtion reduction of food waste and fair conditions throughout the entire food chain the programme works on a clear strategic roadmap a new virtual food system a set technological enablers demonstration of solutions a structured funding programme with open calls and measures to guide and support the food ecosystem of third party beneficiaries citizens stakeholdersas a consortium we maintain the perspective that technology is not a means to an end but acts merely as an empowering enabler providing the means to achieve a wide variety of innovative and valuable use cases use cases that promise to serve a broader audience provided that adequate access also is considered as a prerequisite currently however technology is primarily developed from the perspective and needs of corporations and or authorities a limitation that risks perpetuating or further exacerbating the abovementioned lack of trust within the markets that they serve with a more diverse and humancentric driven perspective we believe the new use cases that will emerge and the technology development required to realise them will contribute to a more sustainable ecosystem that is trustworthy by default to truly design for trust the entire chain of activities and underlying assumptions towards developing technology has to be based on fundamental values like responsibility privacy and user control especially when dealing with valuable and sensitive food data the starting point of all assumptions needs to be the user and their values not a business model or legitimate state interests |
research data alliance facilitation of targeted international working groups for eoscrelated research solutions | the rda tiger aims to provide services to facilitate and support welldefined working groups between key european and international initiatives resulting in concrete alignment harmonisation and standardisation of open science developments and technologies globally in particular the project will directly contribute to the european open science cloud partnership by supporting via the working groups the international engagement and alignment of policies technologies methodologies practices and other outputs of eoscrelated and other european open science developments and develop and offer a service platform for these working groups effectively identifying key partners for the groups and increasing their work efficiency by facilitation and other support actions and ultimately maximising the impact wg results have on the eosc global open science and societyrda tiger leverages the demonstrably effective instrument of communitydriven rda working groups and the foundations of eosc rda codata research software alliance resa and the open science movement in general and provides a way to efficiently use the rda platform for internationalisation and standardisation of research outputs that allow science to be reproducible and scrutinisedrda tiger service platform includes planning engagement communication facilitation and finalisation services to the working groups maximising the wg outputs and their impact most of the rda tiger services have been tested in one form or another in earlier rdarelated projects both in europe and internationally demonstrating that they are realistic and achievable rda tigers ambition stems from the concentrated use of these services together with systematic quality control and improvement mechanisms and via the careful selection of working groups which will maximize the impacts relevant to the work programme |
direct in utero engineering of mouse models | mouse models are a gold standard for life sciences research spanning developmental biology cancer studies and preclinical testing but they also have important limitations mouse colony maintenance is expensive and the large colonies needed are ethically problematic approaches aiming for celltype specific manipulations can be confounded by leaky promoters offtargetunknown promoter expression endogenous cre sites and cre toxicity finally mouse strains generated in different inbred genetic backgrounds yield confounding results when interbred or necessitate extensive backcrossing and again large usage of mice an alternative strategy to generate mouse models circumventing these issues is direly needed to solve this problem for the mouse nervous system we previously developed neural plate targeting with in utero nanoinjection neptune neptune targets 95 of cells in the brain can recapitulate established mouse models and can be used flexibly for celltype specific manipulations in limitless my lab will leverage our expertise in ultrahigh titer viral production developmental biology and technology development to go beyond the state of the art and develop a technology for wholeembryo editing in utero we will combine this technology with next generation single cell lineage tracing to resolve the family tree of all cell types in developing embryos providing both fundamental new knowledge and information that is leverageable for further development of the technique in sum my lab will go develop a muchneeded technology for whole embryo genetic manipulation opening the door to limitless new types of experiments direct in utero wholeembryo gene editing would accelerate life sciences research reduce the financial and ethical costs of animal work and enable experiments currently beyond reach with existing technology |
europes rail flagship project 3 holistic and integrated asset management for europes rail system | the iam4rail project focuses on seven 7 different integrated demonstrators for rail assets which are key for research and innovation ri in the rail sector integrating asset condition information obtained via advanced monitoring with decisionmaking tools and into the traffic management system tms combining available information with artificial intelligence ai and digital twins are covered as key topics for ri in iam4rail other topics such as interventions using cuttingedge technologies as robotics or additive manufacturing are seen as relevant for improving asset management in the rail sector an european crossborder interoperable and holistic integrated approach is needed for those topics and others in the asset management framework that are to be transferred once developed crucial to harmonise european rail systemtherefore iam4rail aims to reinforce the next generation of intelligent and integrated rail asset management providing and demonstrating innovative solutions covering fixed and rolling stock assets minimizing the life cycle costs of assets and extend their lifetime while meeting safety requirements and improving the reliability availability and maintainability of the rail system iam4rail will pave the way for the integration of asset condition information and tms enabling optimization of train routing decisions and improving the overall lifecycle of monitored assetsiam4rail ensures an increased volume of rail traffic in existing lines with improved cost efficiency and lower co2 emissions from their maintenance and operations furthermore construction time and cost of new assets and lines are reduced the durability and reliability of their assets increased and their life cycle costs are optimized competitiveness of the european railway industry is strengthened through the obtention of more qualified products and its application improves the performance capacity flexibility and punctuality of the whole railway system |
large area uniform industry compatible perovskite solar cell technology | luminosity is an industry driven project aimed at leveraging the flexible perovskite solar cells psc technology to commercially relevant production scales using established industrial processes the objective of the project is to demonstrate rolltoroll r2r processed photovoltaic pv module with power conversion efficiency pce of 20 at an area of 900 cm2 and thus overcome the efficiency gap between labscale and fabscale processed devices elevating the trl up to 7 one of the unique selling points of this work is the commercial substrate foil based on aluminum with fluorinatedtinoxide fto electrode layer which is an intellectual property of hyet solar the end user in the consortium by using this substrate foil luminosity will alleviate the bottlenecks related to limited process window of typical polymer substrate foils such as high quality nickel oxide charge transport layer deposition requires 300c thermal process to reach high stability efficiency and lower environmental impact while keeping the flexibility the consortium encompasses the full value chain from research and technology developers equipment manufacturers suppliers and industrial endusers together we are wellequipped to surmount the existing challenges that have hindered the widespread adoption of psc technology specifically luminosity will achieve operational stability exceeding 20 years that rivals the lifetime of current commercial thin film pv technologies while ensuring economic 014 usdw at r2r production scale and environmental feasibility 50 lower co2 footprint in comparison to csi pv substantiated by comprehensive life cycle and technoeconomic analysisluminosity will fasttrack the market uptake of flexible perovskite pv technology and thus enable rapid increase of pv installation capacity in eu to reach the goals set by repowereu plan |
tertiary education redefined aidriven upskilling reskilling platform for industryrelevant digital skills | the global skills gap estimated at 787tr and 85m unfilled vacancies by 2030 has been accelerated by the pandemic and the digitization of various sectors the demand for highincome tech jobs is growing with estimated 149m new technology jobs by 2025 as highincome jobs particularly in technology continue to grow there is a pressing need for education solutions that can provide relevant and uptodate training to meet the evolving skills demands of tech companies to address this turing college offers an innovative and scalable solution as the worlds first accredited aidriven online tech college with flexible personalized industryrelevant education handson training unlimited mentorship and a talent marketplace turing college aims to bridge the talent shortage in the tech sector we offer a unique pedagogy approach empowering senior students to tech junior students and reducing the demand for instructors by up to 10x our solution targets the 2 trillion higher education market catering to the growing demand for upskilling and reskilling in the tech industry we aim to help millions get ai and tech skills needed to foster society to a more productive peaceful futuresuccessful commercialization is projected to reach over 49000 students by 2028 generating 148 million in annual revenue and creating up to 1050 new jobs |
membranes as enablers for future biorefineries from fabrication to advanced separation technologies | the doctoral network memfast membranes as enablers for future biorefineries from fabrication to advanced separation technologies aims to educate 10 future professionals who have the needed understanding to facilitate the utilisation of membranes in the growing biorefining industry the research and training activities implemented in the memfast network form a first of its kind novel and unique doctoral training program this reflects changing research priorities and emerging disciplines related to improving biorefinery processes to grow the circular economy the network structures training at the european level in beneficiaries cnritm lut lu ulanc umk unl ut and associated partners alfa laval aquaporin fibenol deltamem domsjö b4c asp membrain nx filtration raiznavigator unical upm across 11 countries giving the doctoral students a highly applied understanding on both membrane manufacturing and membrane processes and biorefinery processes that are critical to the future of eus chemical sector and circular economy the individual projects of the doctoral candidates aim to push forward the use of membranes in biorefineries through the development of advanced membranes novel tools for monitoring and controlling of fouling and novel continuous processes for simultaneous bioconversion and recovery of products the network program leads to a new approach to training for the sector and will provide a first cohort of highly skilled future research leaders and managers by combining this network knowledge furthermore it creates a basis for a european doctoral education focused on membranes in biorefineries that will be continued in the future |
flash federated learning supporting efficient and reliable inference over vehicular networks | the flash project aims to establish the theoretical foundations of machine learning and wireless communications that will enable the vision of assisted and selfdriving systems unfortunately current systems cannot provide safe and reliable driving because they lack distributed and realtime learning algorithms meeting the critical latency and reliability requirements in highly dynamic and fastvarying wireless channels although the fifth generation of cellular systems supports the communication demands for assisted and selfdriving and machine learning proposes federated learning for distributed scenarios the wireless communications and machine learning domains are not sufficiently integrated for realtime critical applications yet it is only by their integration that the vision of assisted and selfdriving will become real to this end we will establish a theoretical and algorithmic integration of federated learning and cellular networks that serve vehicles which we refer to as federated learning supporting efficient and reliable inference over vehicular networks flash flash builds on the codesign of a fundamentally new ecosystem in which federated learning algorithms address critical constraints from vehicular applications while resource allocation algorithms adapt wireless communication resources to the inference tasks the project will implement flash by establishing and validating theoretical and algorithmic foundations for assisted and selfdriving systems thus we not only expect to have an academic impact but also a great societal impact by enabling the fulfilment of sustainable development goals through reduced fuel consumption traffic emissions and fatalities ultimately the project provides outstanding training for a talented young researcher dr mairton barros at princeton university for 24 months with prof h vincent poor and kth royal institute of technology for 12 months with prof carlo fischione |
gammasecretase allosteric modulation as preventive therapy in alzheimers disease | the recent advent of therapeutic aantibodies has validated amyloid plaques as drug targets in alzheimers disease ad they remain expensive prone to side effects and clinical benefit is limited the field needs a safe and cheap drug preferably a small compound that can be taken orally and in a preventative way before brain damage has occurred despite strong theoretical potential further clinical development of gammasecretase allosteric modulators gam is currently hampered by the lack of strong experimental evidence that they are safe and can effectively prevent ad in this poc we will exploit findings of our erc grant cellphasead to generate such evidence we developed an innovative xenotransplantation model beyond the classical mouse models as it shows not only amyloid plaques but also the induction of neuroinflammation real taupathology granulovacuolar neurodegeneration and secretion of tau biomarkers in the blood all characteristic of ad pmid37708272 we will treat this model in collaboration with a contractor with a newly developed compound to demonstrate that this gam can prevent in a safe and effective way this ad pathology using an innovative unbiased secretase assay we will provide direct evidence that this gam in contrast to the previously failed gammasecretase inhibitor semagacestat maintains normal processing and signalling and does not show mechanistic driven side effects the experiments aim to support the concept that gam can be developed as preventative medication in both sporadic and familial ad and to bring the compound forward to clinical trialing |
immersive digitisation upcycling cultural heritage towards new reviving strategies | digital technologies are also playing a key role in the sustainability transformation therefore impulse applies a comprehensive approach to tackling some of the major pressing gaps in the european cultural heritage digitization processes in doing so impulse will develop groundbreaking comprehensive solutions and methods for digitization processes and accessibility of digital cultural heritage collections that will enable their innovative reuse solve challenges related to the interoperability of platforms and facilitate the availability of existing digitized cultural heritage content in novel contexts like the metaverse while creating innovative standardization procedures and adapting legal frameworks to contemporary transformations and creative processes in and for education arts and ccsi impulse will foster solutions that extend the range and consequently the quantity of artifacts and objects that can be displayed through using xr to recreate objects making collections more virtually accessible in order to enable original uses of digital cultural heritage archives to create diverse and layered narratives for the wider demographic audience and underrepresented communities empowering them to engage more deeply with the topics and themes on display also through artistic visual artists and dancers performance through impulses pilots and prototypes impulse will also enable connections and encounters among researchers artists cultural heritage practitioners ccsis entrepreneurs local institutions companies and other relevant stakeholders through effective engagement such as impulse community of practice and appropriate tools and channels such as impulse hackathon and acceleration mentoring hub in order to facilitate effective dialogue cocreation and capacity building in immersive digitization |
energy efficiency and electrification technologies for heat flow optimization in process industries | industrial process heating accounts for 16 of total final energy demand and 13 of the greenhouse gas emissions in the eu decarbonizing industrial process heating through electrification and increased energy efficiency is a key measure for reaching the climate targets in 2030 reducing the dependency on fossil fuels strengthening the exploitation of local renewable energy sources and increasing the competitiveness of the european industry while there are highly efficient technologies such as industrial heat pumps available for temperatures below 150 c there is a clear demand for novel technologies for processes with heat demands at higher temperatures eeethos will fill this technology gap by developing keyenabling technologies for energy efficient flexible and decarbonized process heating and demonstrating them in five installations at industrial endusers at a trl of 7 the technologies comprise among others two hightemperature heat pump solutions for steam supply at up to 200 c a reversed brayton heat pump with supply temperatures up to 300 c an innovative technology for heat pumpbased drying and heating of minerals a highly integrated steam compressionbased solution for superheated steam drying and a heat capturing device for radiative waste heat recovery these keyenabling technologies will be demonstrated in 5 demonstrators at industrial endusers representing eus energy intensive process industries asphalt ceramics pulp paper bricks and steel these technologies are scalable for plantwide implementation allow a complete decarbonization at energy savings between 43 to 86 based on local renewable energy sources the development implementation operation and scaling of these technologies is optimized by use of digital twinbased solutions the project will be a cornerstone for enabling a decarbonized efficient and competitive european industry by developing and demonstrating keyenabling technologies at large scale |
introducing safe to european deep tech industry | a safe a simple agreement for future equity is a financial instrument which has been developed by y combinator one visible accelerator in the us more than 10 years ago currently in the us and in canada more than 80 of the investments in startups are realized as safe investments in europe this financial instrument is not as widely diffused the reasons for developing the safes lie among others in a higher transaction speed and a lower level of bureaucracy in all periods of the investment lifecycle both mentioned reasons might also toughen up the european financial ecosystem since such an instrument can not be transferred in a blind copy mode into another cultural ecosystem with different policies and mentalities the objective of deepsafe is to design validate disseminate and finally establish an europeanized instantiation of core safe building and deliver it into the european startup ecosystem 40 startups from emergingmoderate regions negotiating safe agreements with investorscorporates as outcome deepsafe will be providing a validated deepsafe legal framework tailored to ec law a deepsafe curriculum used for training all stakeholders a deepsafe white paper deepsafe crossborder use cases and best practices for dissemination and awareness creation in order to increase the competitiveness of our startup ecosystem in europe |
msca fostering balanced mobility flows in europe | the conference will aim to strengthen the impact of the msca programme in achieving the goals of the new era and will address the unbalanced mobility flows that still represents a major challenge for member states and contributes to the research and innovation divide within the eu return migration and reintegration processes of msca researchers after the end of their project to the countries of origin will be the main topic of the conference at the conference we will discuss and elaborate the multidimensional msca talents mobility flows among various msca stakeholders including researchers we will focus on the diversity of mobility flows and the different aspects and effects of msca return mobility and reintegration processes in countries of origin to achieve wellbalanced mobility flows the first objective is to raise awareness of the importance of return mobility and reintegration processes in order to strengthen the balanced mobility flows of msca researchers the second objective is to show the examples of existing good practices as well as barriers instruments and policies to promote the return migration and reintegration processes of msca fellows after the end of their project the conference will be a venue for msca researchers and stakeholders to share discuss and elaborate on their experiences challenges and proposals the third objective is to provide recommendations for the implementation of msca return migration and reintegration tools and policies at eu member state research organisation and individual levels in line with the conference programme our discussions will focus on the importance of additional measures taken by member states to create targeted training and career opportunities for researchers to improve working conditions and the working environment to support investment in human capital scientific and technological infrastructures to attract researchers back after their fellowships |
untangling population representations of objects a closed loop approach to link neural activity to mouse behavior | a paramount component of intelligence is our ability to extract useful information in the world through our sensory observations object recognition is a fundamental problem in visual perception every day we depend on our ability to identify objects in our visual environment and our brain is capable of accomplishing it effortlessly and in a fraction of a second in spite of immense variation in the sensory information that arrives in our retinas understanding the algorithm that the brain uses to do this complex task is a decisive conquest in neuroscience but in order to understand ethologically relevant visual processing we need to understand how it drives behavior despite significant progress characterizing visual processing we do not understand how the visual system solves visual inference problems in natural environments and we are still far from having a complete understanding of how the brain creates untangled transformationinvariant object representations in the perceptualvisual domain that can subsequently be used to guide behavior the proposed research effort aims to i create a stateoftheart behavioral virtual navigation system for mice ii combine it with recent advanced functional brain recording techniques and sophisticated neural data analysis to study how objects are represented in the activity of large populations of neurons across the visual hierarchy and beyond and iii causally relate these representations to the behavior of the animal the outcomes of this project will provide significant insights into the computations used by the mouse visual cortex to extract relevant features from the environment identify how distinct features are represented across the mouse visual areas and how in turn these representations guide the behavior of the animals |
adsorbate motors tricking microscopic reversibility on surfaces | amos represents a groundbreaking approach to achieve unidirectional motion on welldefined surfaces realize cooperative motor activity control flow processes and transport cargo at the atomic scale it is based on moleculesurface motors that overcome microscopic reversibility via controlled potential energy surface modulation with high potential impact in various fields light will be used to excite molecular motion offering great versatility hence the stimulus is given remotely to many molecules while characterization is done at the singlemolecule level allowing for statistical analysis of trajectories in two dimensionsdifferent motor concepts will be used to controllably modulate the potential energy surfaces and address the key challenges in the field of molecular machines at surfaces a variety of highly defined surfaces will be employed and novel adsorbate motors molecules that achieve motor functionality only when joint together with a surface will be studied advanced control of motion will be achieved by multiple motors complementary methods in microscopy spectroscopy and interferometry with extremely high resolution in space energy and time will be used a key aspect of this projectamos addresses both fundamental research and technological aspects it will yield elementary understanding of molecular motors with extremely high spatial pm and temporal fs resolution and investigate model systems for future applications with insight at the singlemolecule level it will explore collectivity to amplify motor activity by cooperative effects in precisely defined assemblies and will study these systems also under environmental conditions in view of steered flow processes at the solidliquid interface specific chemical interaction will realize transport and delivery of single or few atoms cargo with individual motor molecules a fundamental step towards bottomup construction of matter by molecular machines |
strategies for breeding climate change resilient barley genetically equipped to optimized rootmicrobiome interactions | barleymicrobreed builds on the paradigm that crop resource efficiency and stress resilience can be significantly improved by optimizing the capacity of plant roots to efficiently interact with the existing soil microbiota we therefore propose to advance our mechanistic understanding of interactions between the crop plant genome root phenotypic traits and the rootassociated microbiota to identify novel breeding strategies for crops tailored to harness the benefits of the indigenous soil microbial diversitya holoomics analysis of functionally annotated barley genomes together with a catalogue of root microbiota assemblages and phenotypic data including drought responses of 600 barley varieties determined in field trials in austria lebanon and morocco will enable the identification of barley genome components microbiota members and root traits important for drought resilience barley genome regions putatively important for microbiota assembly and drought resistance will be validated by gene knockouts and causative effects will be explored using a combination of metabolomics metagenomics and root phenotyping in pot and rhizobox experimentsto improve root phenotyping we will develop tools including core break imaging systems software developments for gap filling in rhizobox phenotyping and models to infer seedling to mature root system architecturefinally with the knowledge of the genetic regulation of phenotypic root plasticity of barley lines we will implement strategies to create drought adaptive barley varieties with improved root systems and microbiomes a selection of lines based on drought responses microbiome assembly and root systems will be backcrossed into elite european lines and tested in field trialswe argue that breeding for crops tailored to harness the benefits of the indigenous soil microbial diversity rather than inoculating crops with plantbeneficial microorganisms will be a much more feasible and longlasting strategy |
rbd dimer recombinant protein vaccine against sarscov2 | the main objective of rbdcov project is to test the efficacy tolerability and safety of a new vaccine against different variants of covid19 based on the outstanding data generated using a recombinant protein developed by the consortium partners two different clinical trials will be run during the project duration to test the variants recombinant rbd protein vaccine codifying for beta and alpha sarscov2 variants in paediatric population and in immunocompromised adults the aim of the project is to focus not only on the current sarscov2 variants but also in the emerging ones as beta and alpha variants thus a continuous monitoring of the new emerging variants will be performed throughout the project to ensure that the platform is prepared to cope with the disease the platform used for the generation of the vaccines is adaptable to variants and will be ready to include in the design any other potential variant that could appear in short medium and large term preclinical data are already availablethe core of rbdcov consortium has been in close contact to the corresponding agencies and considering reflection paper on the regulatory requirements for vaccines intended to provide protection against variant strains of sarscov2 preclinical data supporting the first vaccine candidate can be extrapolated for the vaccines against the new emerging variants this create a unique opportunity for rbdcov consortium to generate the first rbd recombinant vaccine to be approved in europe this vaccine will be manufactured by an european technological company that will change actual paradigms and allow the really change to one health concept based on the close relationship between the animal world and the onset of certain infections in humans |
sst sensors and processing horizon europe top4 | this horizon europe grant is to be understood within a wider context on eusst where other grants are being executed simultaneously with the common objective of improving the eu autonomy on space surveillance and trackingin particular this top focuses on ri activities are necessary in the sensor domain both for radiofrequency ie radars etc and optical sensors ie telescopes and innovative wide field optical sensors contribution to a consolidated and efficient eusst sensor function improve coverage area geographical location and performance they can offer ensure an optimum evolution of the configuration and use of the eusst sensors network improved integration and connectivity of value added sensors ensuring their compliance to the minimum quality requirements including protocols procedures formats and calibration statusbased on the architecture and added value analysis carried out by eusst the following assets will be upgraded czshot tracking telescope in europe ess3tsr surveillance radar in europe frgraves surveillance radar in europe frgravesng surveillance radar in europe frtarot surveytracking telescope grkryoneri2 tracking telescope in europe grbakernunn survey telescope in europe ptradar tracking radar in europe ptsurv survey telescope in ocenania |
stakeholdersdriven pathways for blockchain implementation in the agrifood sector | 13 participants 11 beneficiaries and two affiliated entities from 7 eu and 1 third countries join forces for supporting the strategic research agenda of the future joint research program on the subject of blockchain by shedding light on the current partial and fragmented picture of block chain technology bct applications in the agrifood domain and by clarifying the benefits and opportunities which bct can concretely to stakeholders throughout the food chain offer the project intends to prepare the way for ri activities for the decade to come basing its assumptions on systematic monitoring and reviews of national european and international ri pilotsuse cases experiences and best practices and on consolidated and balanced stakeholder views the active involvement of users is required from the very beginning for the identification of needs and use cases which will be subsequently translated into operational requirements for services the goal of the project is to understand why communities ie users acceptreject blockchainbased projects the mistakes done by others for not repeating them the best and innovative practices in blockchain development in agrifood sector considering its complexity for arriving to shape different possible futures for bc application the project will investigate and discuss both technical aspects as well as nontechnical barriers to bcts deployment but also other issues fostering bcts deployment such as interoperability innovative business models standardisation and regulatory issues and will be at the base of white papers addressed to ec at the same time the project intends to provide to users some a framework of services and guidelines for empowering them in future bct implementation |
removal of microplastics from the environment using autochthonous wastewaterderived microbial consortia | the accumulation of microplastics mps in the environment poses a great threat to the biosphere known and demonstrated conventional methodologies used in the treatment of mps in wastewater have several limitations therefore there is the need to develop new ecofriendly costeffective biobased mps polyethylene terephthalatepet removal strategies microorganisms can transform organic matter as well as remove pollutants through a chain of different catabolic reactions energized by the induction of nonstereoselective enzymes hence this project will be the first attempt to deploy microbial autochthonous consortia as an ecofriendly remediation technique and strategy in the removal of mps in the wastewaters however to overcome the limitations associated with cultivation and identification of mp degraders i propose the use of a natural microbial consortium that harbours a plasticdegrading microbial community in wastewater after an enrichment process thus in this project an enhancement of microorganisms with catabolic capacity to transform mps will be used for the development of a biobased tailored technology which represents the promising potential of this project the overall objectives of this project are to 1 characterize mps in wastewater 2 isolate autochthonous consortium of mps pet degraders in a short term enrichment experiment study the microbial communities participating in mps removal and identification of key genes in the catabolic process 3 select a microbial consortium with the ability to remove mps and study of the fate of mps in batch experiments 4 scaleup the process into a benchscale bioreactor to develop a bioaugmentation technology with a microbial native consortium based on their ability to degrade mps 5 assess the toxicity of the resulting effluent after mps process 6 verify the implementation and validate the design of the bioreactor calculating the effectiveness of the equipment through a predictive model |
fostering agroecology transition in north africa through multiactor evaluation and networking | transforming agriculture in the context of climate change is a central challenge in northafrica the most foodimportdependent region worldwide and a climate change hotspot tackling these issues agroecology ae appears as an answer to meet both the challenges of global sustainability and local resilience in this context natae consortium brings together highlevel research institutions international organisations and ngos with strong experience on ae approaches and exceptional capacity to induce transformational change by informing policies and education natae project aims to foster the adoption of sciencebased locallytailored and codesigned ae strategies in north africa by creating a comprehensive and quantitative baseline on ae providing a shared understanding multidimensional performance measures and analyses of ae potential for meeting consumers demand on the market to achieve this goal natae will setup and inform a unique multiactor community of knowledge and capacity building on ae in the mediterranean with ground breaking findings on the performances of aepractices aep in north africa an original multidimensional multiscale evaluation framework covering dimensions currently overlooked and a replicable methodological guidebook will be designed an integrated modelling approach combining a biophysical a householdregional bioeconomic indicator modelling chain will be used to develop a unique integrated assessment of agricultural systems to assess the resilience of aepbased farming systems participatory approaches via living labs will be elaborated to develop test and capitalize alternative public policies and foster ae transitions an integrated group of dissemination activities will further test advance and communicate a range of existing ae innovations from farm to fork including innovative farm practices valuechain innovations and innovations in food system governance advancing their respective readiness level |
digital innovation and data technology network for rangeland livestock farming systems | rangeland livestock farming systems rlfs despite facing challenges play a significant role in achieving the sustainable development goals in europe although rlfs have an important role in the transition towards the european green deal with the provision of crucial ecosystem services they still require support including extension services farmer to farmer network and participatory monitoring and evaluation the use of innovative technologies has an important role to play and take part of a wider bundle of measures required to improve the future viability of such farming systems digirangeland network aims to create and expand an innovative network about digital innovations and data technologies with actors farmers and other landusers facing challenges in rangeland territories at regional national and european levels based on a multiactor approach the project aims to increase knowledge sharing and mutual understanding between eu stakeholders and foster crossfertilization between rangeland areas actors around the use of digital technologies and innovations dti to achieve this partners in 10 countries will be involved in a setting up an eu network with farmers groups landusers 10 innovation and demonstration hubs and important stakeholders in the 10 ruralakis b identifying prioritising and analysing needs obstacles and expectations from farmers and landusers c identifying and analysing dti solutions matching the needs of the rlfs farmers and other landusers d evaluating and assessing solutions and barriers to foster dti adoption within rfls e improving knowledge level with a range of scaling activities demonstrations and training for farmers advisors students landusers partners will prepare and implement communication and dissemination activities through trusted channels to maximise the impact of the projects outputs |
music as an invitation liveness in digital piano performances through participating audiences | this research investigates participation in digital musical performances as a way to enhance a sense of liveness ie the feeling of being connected to other people for the last 18 months digital concerts have become the norm due to the restrictions on social interaction during the pandemic yet such digital events often challenge the relationship between performer and audience by compromising the experience of liveness using participatory action research methods i will work with women and girls to collaboratively create online piano performances where i am the main performer audience feedback and my own reflections as the performer supported by literature review will inform knowledge about the intensification of the relational and affective aspects of the music experience and its impact on the sense of liveness my dual expertise as a musician pianist and qualitative researcher are essential here as they allow me to undertake research both on and through the topic by focusing research on audiences of women and girls i aim to address the specific lack of opportunities for these groups and challenge the traditional obstacles to participation in classical music in this way the project will contribute to positive change towards more inclusive music practices for the postpandemic and digitalised world research outputs will be a series of digital concerts which will be streamed via youtube and music festivals reflective short essays two articles to be published in peerreviewed journals a technical handbook and a book of personal reflections integrating researcher and audience perspectives this research aims to innovate through applying ideas and methods from areas such as music performance digital technologies participatory arts and gender studies this project will enable me with skills and competencies to become an innovative and socially engaged performer and academic who is a leader in my field and an inspiration for future generations |
subject or object sinoamerican competition and european strategic autonomy | the intensifying great power competition between the united states and china has arguably become the structuring vector in international politics this project examines to what extent the european union eu is able to autonomously make decisions regarding its relations with the united states and china the key innovation is to present a comprehensive theory to explain to what extent and under what circumstances external or internal actors have the upper hand in informing european policy choices in sinoamerican competition assuming the existence of a correlation between the eus degree of unity and autonomy the latter is depicted as a relative and contingent conceptthe main hypothesis is that the eus degree of autonomy visvis china and the united states will be high in those policy areas where it enjoys exclusive competences moderate where it has shared competences and low where the competences rest with the member states i expect this to happen despite the high degree of issue linkage haas 1980 mcginnis 1986 between the different areas of eu external policy despite the fact that the united states and china will try to exploit europes dependence in some areas to extract concessions in others and despite the fact that the eu itself will try to build on its competences in some areas eg trade to expand its clout in others eg foreign and security policy sinatra pushes back against the conventional wisdom that the eu is either poised to become an autonomous subject or condemned to the status of mere object or battleground in sinoamerican competition by arguing that the eu will be subject and object at the same time and unpacking the mechanics of that tensionthe project draws on mixed methods research combining quantitative analysis of european american and chinese voting patterns and public discourse ie through the use of content analysis software and manual coding in a variety of international organisations and debates |
spatial transcriptomics through the lenses of statistical modeling and ai | in recent years technological advances have made it possible to quantify the mrna expression of large numbers of genes while preserving the spatial context of tissues and cells these techniques collectively known as spatial transcriptomics are important because key biological processes depend on the physical proximity of cells and the spatial organization of tissues furthermore several diseases are characterized by abnormal spatial organization within tissuesdespite its early age spatial transcriptomics is rapidly becoming a widely used tool complementing singlecell rnaseq as the tool of choice to study gene expression in complex tissues eg in cancer research and neurobiology in addition to the gene expression measurements and the spatial localization of transcripts available data include images collected from the samples that can be used to learn celllevel and tissuelevel morphological features the main objective of this proposal is to combine transcriptomics spatial structure and morphology data to better inform key spatial transcriptomics analytical stepsspecifically we will enhance the comprehension of imagingbased spatial transcriptomics data by a characterization of the statistical properties of the data and a mechanistic modeling of the in situ transcriptional measurements combine imaging and tabular data to better define cell types and states through the use of statistical models and artificial intelligence develop an inferential framework to model the localization of transcripts within and across cells and of cells within and across samplesoverall this proposal will combine machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches with rigorous statistical modeling of transcriptomics data in a spatial subcellular context this will ultimately serve the biomedical community and provide a suite of tools that will help pave the way towards personalized medicine and computerassisted pathology |
a robust realtime and 3d human motion capture system through multicameras and ai | the ability to reliably track 3d human motion in realtime is crucial for a wide range of applications across various fields such as healthcare entertainment industry and sports occupational ergonomics as the intersection of industry and healthcare could particularly benefit from such a solution as recent reports indicate that physical and cognitive ergonomics issues at work contribute to major economic losses in europe however the existing commercial human motion capture mocap systems often exploit multiple markers or inertial measurement units imus which in addition to their high costs suffer from many technical and usability issues these include lengthy setup times compromised user comfort and bothersome wearability needs and in case of imu based mocap systems large drifts and inaccuracies over time some of these issues can be dealt with by using visionbased human skeletal trackers however high vulnerability to occlusions and often the missing or inaccurate 3d tracking capacity have severely depreciated their reliabilityofuse for realworld applications these leave us with no existing market solutions for markerless comfortable robust economic and realtime 3d human motion tracking realmove aims to create such a solution by exploiting multicamera views and ai algorithms the system will be capable of tracking multiple people in the scene with high accuracy and in addition to motion tracking data be able to provide applicationdriven data services such as human factors realmove has the highest innovation potential to become a key player in the multibillion euros mocap and workplace safety markets in addition by providing quick and easy access to visionbased risk monitoring tools it can make a huge socioeconomic impact by improving the quality of life of the individuals at work while saving a large amount of money by cutting waste |
general eigenstate thermalization in quantum circuits | understanding the dynamics of typical manybody quantum systems and the emergence of their universal thermodynamic description is both challenging and of paramount importance in various areas of physics including condensedmatter and quantuminformation theory as well as statistical and highenergy physics combining methods of those fields into novel interdisciplinary approaches getquantum general eigenstate thermalization in quantum circuits aims for establishing a general eigenstate thermalization hypothesis general eth and its connection to the mathematical field of free probability through the lens of multipoint correlation functions the project focuses on local quantum circuits which while native to quantum computing applications have emerged as minimal models for manybody quantum dynamics and have let to unique analytical insights in recent years within this setting the first scientific objective of this project is to identify universal properties of multipoint correlation functions and their dynamics this includes deriving exact results obtained via novel analytical tools as well as by numerical investigations based on new efficient numerical algorithms the second objective of getquantum is to establish the recently introduced general eth formulated in the language of free probability and its consequences in interacting manybody quantum systems modeled by local quantum circuits beyond the current paradigm of standard eth it aims at pinpointing correlations between matrix elements of physical observables and at confirming predictions of free probability by relating free cumulants a central concept of free probability with the dynamics of multipoint correlation functions hence general eth provides an intricate link between dynamical and statistical properties of manybody quantum systems getquantum will deepen our understanding of universal aspects of their dynamics and vastly impact the fields mentioned above |
ecoshipyard | ecoshipyard is a research and innovation project aimed at promoting sustainable shipbuilding practices and material circularity in the european union the project is focused on developing solutions to reduce the environmental impact of shipyards increase energy efficiency and optimize operations and also measure and reduce the nonoperational impacts the project team consists of shipyards research organizations and technology providers from different eu member statesecoshipyard will explore innovative ways to manage materials circularity by developing and implementing an eumaterial passport for ships this passport will track the origin and use of materials in shipbuilding maintenance repair and disassembly providing valuable information for the circular management of materials the project will also examine technologies and processes to reduce the environmental impact and improve energy efficiency in shipbuilding and operation these include the use of renewable energy sources electrification of ports and optimization of logistics and operations ecoshipyard will also develop digital tools to support sustainable shipbuilding practices these tools will enable shipyards to monitor and manage their environmental impact assess their carbon footprint and identify opportunities for improvementthe project aims to contribute to the eus environmental and climate goals by effective monitoring of shipyard environmental performance reduce emissions from processes and promote a circular economy in the shipbuilding sector the outcomes of the project will provide valuable insights and best practices for sustainable shipbuilding benefitting both the industry and the environment |
the fleet of autonomous robots and fleet management software | advoard robotics produces fully autonomous mobile robots that are aware of each others location and route information and develops software to prevent inefficient picking and labor losses in logistics and ecommerce warehouses these robots can be monitored through an advanced web interface remote accident support and data analysis can be done at the same time data can be exchanged with the warehouse management system this solution includes mapping positioning path planning autonomous driving capability of each robot and sharing this information robots moving in fleets work with maximum efficiency at minimum route length thanks to algorithms based on artificial intelligencethe technology we have developed includes mapping positioning path planning autonomous driving capability of each robot and sharing this information robots that move in fleets work with maximum efficiency at minimum route length thanks to algorithms based on artificial intelligence the most important technologies used are slam simultaneous positioning and mapping and fms fleet management system the slam process uses a complex set of calculations algorithms and sensor inputs to navigate a previously unknown environment or to revise the map of a previously known environment and find a location fleet management system fms is applied to manage and control more than one robot working within the units fms provides complete centralized and decentralized management of the robot fleet allowing users to manage different mobile robotic systems from a variety of devices via standard communication protocols in fms robots share route and location information with each other in the light of this information our algorithms determine the routes in which the robots will perform their tasks without colliding according to our traffic rule sets |
lightdriven molecular motors to trigger transmembrane transport of anions | anion transport through membranes mediated by transport proteins is one of the most important processes in living cells recently a number of synthetic transmembrane anion transporters have been developed however unlike proteins they usually do not display responsive behaviour making their function unspecific there are only a few methods known for controlling the transport function of these receptors by physiochemical stimuli with using light being one of the most wellknown these stimuliresponsive receptors however only alternate between distinct on and off states while biomolecular systems are able to use the motion of motor proteins to regulate the passage of ions two first studies have shown that rotating molecular motors can enhance cation transport through membranespanning channels possibly by influencing conformational dynamics however there have been no detailed studies that take advantage of subtle changes in membrane characteristics it would be very promising to enhance and regulate anion transport across the membrane by integrating molecular machinelike entities into lipid bilayers and synthetic transport systems mototrans is a multidisciplinary project that aims to develop transmembrane anion transport systems containing lightdriven molecular motors the outofequilibrium rotational dynamics of lightdriven molecular motors could influence either membrane carrier or channel properties resulting in enhanced transport activity which will be investigated in work packages 13 respectively the project will have three major impacts an innovative approach with profound implications in molecular machines and transmembrane anion transport |
controlled transport of water and ions in nanoconfinement | a new technology is emerging based on controlled transport of matter through channels with dimensions from ngströms to nanometres on these scales the macroscopic description of transport phenomena breaks down and it is necessary to integrate experiments with fully atomistic model calculations and control nonequilibrium dynamics recent exciting developments in experimental and theoretical methods mean that we arefinally at a stage where exploration of key processes is viable for this focus it is essential to train a new generation of earlystage researchers in diverse multidisciplinary and intersectorial skills required this in a few words is the aim of fluxionic network which spans four european countries and brings together europes and worlds leading scientists and entrepreneurs precisely because the topic of fluxionic bridges physics chemistry and materials science and necessitates close collaboration with emerging nanoscale industries our major objective is to offer integrated supradisciplinary training and a strong program of secondments with seamless crosssectoral interactions the dn program provides an ideal framework for creating such collaborative researchtraining platform the impact of fluxionic will be broad we will train young researchers with unique and diverse profiles who might become future leaders in the rapidly growing fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology our research willimpact core challenges of modern society clean water disease treatment sustainable energy productionstorageusage investing in training the new generation of researchers in this emerging field of science and technology is determinant for europes future position as the worldleading power promoting sustainable development |
ai enabled artistic solutions for sustainable food systems | agriculture has been a nursery for practical solutions to global challenges for a long time eu agriculture is the only major system in the world that reduced greenhouse gas chc emissions by 20 since 1990 nonetheless even though the eus transition to sustainable food systems has started in many areas food systems remain one of the key drivers of climate change and environmental degradation and there is an urgent need to transition to sustainable food systems to realize this ambition actors of the food chain must play their part in achieving sustainability within their food chains to obtain a new quality of sustainable innovation and transform we need another approach including a more diverse and multidisciplinary perspective that enables barriers between science technology industry and the arts to be removed and enabling synergies along the value chain hungry ecocities takes inspiration from the 2008 book by carolyn steel where a core question of civilization social phycological and sustainability impact is put forward how do we feed a city to answer this question in this project growers and agricultural specialists team up with artists designers and creative thinkers to come up with new ideas for the future food system hereby we start from a european approach centered on human needs and values hungry ecocities puts forward a highlevel alliance between science technology and the arts to effectively explore how digital technologies applications can lead in turn to reduced food waste more sustainable value chains ecofriendly attitudes and a more ethical food consumption hungry ecocities brings together some of the worlds most renowned art studios with leading ai and agricultural experts and a network of over 40 leading european agricultural companies to develop ways of creating a more healthy sustainable and affordable agrifood system for all |
the next generation ms spidocs | spidocs dn stems from the need to prepare for emerging viruses enabling a fast response as became evident lately basically better knowledge of the dynamic nature of viral structures is required and fundamental to combat with appropriate treatments in this perspective several technologies were developed for structural biology including a cuttingedge approach combining mass spectrometry ms and xrays for single particle imaging spi in ms spidoc despite these advances a major bottleneck that the scientific community will face in coming years will be the lack of expertise with a broad knowledge from theory instrument development and application relevant to structural biology with msspidocs therefore aims to train the next generation of scientists with such expertise by a dedicated intersectoral training programme spidocs projects are highly interlinked and the proposed training programme aims to provide the doctoral candidates with the basic and advanced knowledge to build a common interdisciplinary language to work in teams and to acquire deep knowledge by a combination of lectures and practical sessions an important aspect will be given to data management and the establishment of currently lacking standards for native ms metadatathe research training is complemented by transferrable skills courses setting the basis for progressing through the doctoral studies as well as for future career progression within these modules training on equal opportunities and unconscious bias are included shaping the future generation towards creating fair workplaces special attention will be paid to greenpractice measures from the everyday practice in laboratories and offices up to the institutional level by including developments from computational theory to instrumentation the spidocs beneficiaries and associated partners will closely work together to advance cuttingedge technologies and apply them towards fast response |
human skeletal muscle platform for disease modelling and highthroughput drug screening | neuromuscular disorders nmds are a collection of pathologies that affect the skeletal muscle skm function and lead to reduced mobility breathing issues and death most nmds are incurable and existing therapies are generally ineffective the major contributor for the lack of nmd therapies is the absence of human nmd research models applicable for the screening and validation of therapeutic candidates our goal for this project is to develop an in vitro platform containing highly biomimetic and functional skm analogues where nmds can be modelled with the aim of testing drug candidates in a reliable highthroughput ht and quick manner the platform will consist of 96 individual 3d tissue units generated from the myogenic differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells hipscs to induce biomimetic and mature tissue formation the platform will combine a unique topographical design with a lightstimulation system for optogenetic control of skm contraction using imagebased assays and computational algorithms we will be able to automatically extract and quantify the skm phenotypical eg intracellular structure and functional eg contraction speedforce parameters to show nmd modelling ability within the platform we will knockout bin1 a gene whose mutated form is involved in the onset of centronuclear myopathy cnm a fatal and incurable nmd the validity of the nmd model as a drug discovery platform will be demonstrated by testing compounds with known therapeutic activity this proof of concept project will lay the ground work for a spinoff company devoted to ht drug screening for nmdsthe successful development of this platform will provide an invaluable tool for pharmaceutical research allowing accurate convenient and costeffective identification of novel drugs and therapeutic targets for nmds and ultimately contributing to the acceleration of novel therapies for nmd patients |
comprehensive platform for the functional characterization of cancer epigenetics and diagnosis | epigenetic regulation of gene expression the mechanism responsible for establishing and maintaining cellular identities during development is frequently deregulated in cancer our working hypothesis is that this deregulation confers upon cells phenotypic plasticity resulting in intratumor heterogeneity which is key to tumor development metastasis and drug resistance in epicancer we seek to provide the technological means to address fundamental issues concerning epigenetics in cancer namely we intend to develop apply and validate singlecell and singlemolecule epigenetic analysis methods that can parse the function of this network and its heterogeneity in human cancer and utilize it for cancer diagnosis we will build a rich arsenal of tools to profile the combinatorial epigenetic network in primary tumors and blood taken from cancer patients at multiple scales of resolution aims 1 2 we will apply these systems to elucidate the function and connectivity between epigenetic modifications in breast cancer and lymphoma and link epigenetic heterogeneity to tumor biology and clinical outcome aim 3 we will also establish revolutionary systems for cancer diagnostics and monitoring leveraging the unique advantages of our singlemolecule tools for multimodal analysis of epigenetic protein biomarkers and micrornas originating from both the tumor and its microenvironment in patients blood aims 1 3the epigenetic technologies we intend to provide the scientific community are set to profoundly impact our understanding of the epigenetic determinants of cancer as well as our ability to detect cancer at early stage from a routine blood test and identify early disease recurrence the analysis of a large cohort of tumor and blood samples from the same patients will generate novel datasets that are expected to reveal cancerspecific and patientspecific epigenetic modules and shed light on the contribution of epigenetic plasticity to tumor biology |
womens health tech scaleup in europe | there is a gender gap in healthcare and womens health suffers from lack of prioritization preforma as is a deep tech company wanting to close this gap and improve womens health our short term objective is to introduce our product in europe develop our platform further and position ourselves for scaling up with europe as our home market preforma as has a female founder and a majority of women in managementpreforma as is founded by maria rder a researcher and gynecologist who over a number of years has systematized best practices and developed tools to improve gynecological examination diagnosis and treatment in interaction with more than 40 000 patients and healthcare personnel weve developed a dynamic medical history collector and started conceptualizing a deep tech platform for a wider range of servicesour main challenges are limited international network market acceptance international commercialization experience people management business plan and market entry strategy and investor relationswe propose a work plan with a duration of 12 months with two work packages 1 a business work package focusing on product market technology and funding and a 2 people package focusing on talent and network the work packages will go in parallel and will have common administrative processes the main participants from our company are maria rder founder and ceo and madeleine andresen ctoeven if weve come a long way already we are certain that the women techeu programme will enrich our project to include activities that gives us a better insight in the european market a better understanding of legal and customer requirements and also of possible competitors and partners we also need help to improve our internal competences and enhance our network |
new medical cybersecurity assessment and design solutions | the european health care system is moving toward personalised distributed and homebased services this is made possible via new and improved connected medical devices mds and in vitro diagnostic devices connected to the internet together cmds and will benefit health care providers in terms of reduced cost fewer hospital beds and improved service patients will see improved quality of life in terms of reduced travel time and reduced stress via treatment at home or where they want it however for these benefits to be fully realised the cybersecurity of cmds needs to be ensurednemecys will benefit practitioners such as cybersecurity communities md manufacturers cmd scenario system integrators and cmd scenario operators eg health care providers with downstream benefits to patients and the wider public through more costeffective and efficient care enabled via effective and streamlined cybersecuritynemecys helps practitioners to 1 comply with md regulations 2 to be able to apply proportionate md cybersecurity too little security risks exposure too much is costly and can obstruct clinical care and 3 build in cybersecurity by design for both mds and the connected scenarios they operate in this is achieved by 1 providing recommendations for best practice and guidelines for md cybersecurity by design along with compliance assurance tooling 2 providing a riskbenefit scheme to address cybersecurity risk balanced with clinical benefit and 3 providing a set of specific tools to address md cybersecurity by design and their deployment in connected scenariosthe nemecys team has cybersecurity risk experts two hospitals who are already implementing iot and remote carebased scenarios three medical device manufacturers major computer science research players and experienced systems integrators this team is ideally placed to ensure that nemecys can enable practitioners to apply the right security at the right place at low cost |
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