ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Dysregulation of capillary permeability is a severe problem in critically ill patients, but the mechanisms involved are poorly understood. Further, there are no targeted therapies to stabilize leaky vessels in various common, potentially fatal diseases, such as systemic inflammation and sepsis, which affect millions of people annually. Although a multitude of signals that stimulate opening of endothelial cell-cell junctions leading to permeability have been characterized using cellular and in vivo models, approaches to reverse the harmful process of capillary leakage in disease conditions are yet to be identified. I propose to explore a novel autocrine endothelial permeability regulatory system as a potentially universal mechanism that antagonizes vascular stabilizing ques and sustains vascular leakage in inflammation. My group has identified inflammation-induced mechanisms that switch vascular stabilizing factors into molecules that destabilize vascular barriers, and identified tools to prevent the barrier disruption. Building on these discoveries, my group will use mouse genetics, structural biology and innovative, systematic antibody development coupled with gene editing and gene silencing technology, in order to elucidate mechanisms of vascular barrier breakdown and repair in systemic inflammation. The expected outcomes include insights into endothelial cell signaling and permeability regulation, and preclinical proof-of-concept antibodies to control endothelial activation and vascular leakage in systemic inflammation and sepsis models. Ultimately, the new knowledge and preclinical tools developed in this project may facilitate future development of targeted approaches against vascular leakage.

1 999 770 €

Start date: 2018-05-01, End date: 2023-04-30

"Large bodies usually follow the classical equations of motion. Deviations from this can be called macroscopic quantum behavior. These phenomena have been experimentally verified with cavity Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED), trapped ions, and superconducting Josephson junction systems. Recently, evidence was obtained that also moving objects can display such behavior. These objects are micromechanical resonators (MR), which can measure tens of microns in size and are hence quite macroscopic. The degree of freedom is their vibrations: phonons. I propose experimental research in order to push quantum mechanics closer to the classical world than ever before. I will try find quantum behavior in the most classical objects, that is, slowly moving bodies. I will use MR's, accessed via electrical resonators. Part of it will be in analogy to the previously studied macroscopic systems, but with photons replaced by phonons. The experiments are done in a cryogenic temperature mostly in dilution refrigerator. The work will open up new perspectives on how nature works, and can have technological implications. The first basic setup is the coupling of MR to microwave cavity resonators. This is a direct analogy to optomechanics, and can be called circuit optomechanics. The goals will be phonon state transfer via a cavity bus, construction of squeezed states and of phonon-cavity entanglement. The second setup is to boost the optomechanical coupling with a Josephson junction system, and reach the single-phonon strong-coupling for the first time. The third setup is the coupling of MR to a Josephson junction artificial atom. Here we will access the MR same way as the motion of a trapped ions is coupled to their internal transitions. In this setup, I am proposing to construct exotic quantum states of motion, and finally entangle and transfer phonons over mm-distance via cavity-coupled qubits. I believe within the project it is possible to perform rudimentary Bell measurement with phonons."

2 004 283 €

Start date: 2015-01-01, End date: 2019-12-31

CIPHER will launch the global research initiative, Hip Hop Interpellation, pilot a new semantic digital/ethnographic web methodology, and codify the emergent discipline of global hip hop studies. It addresses the central question: why has this highly localized and authenticizing African American music translated so easily to far-flung communities and contexts around the globe? Through this specific question the project attempts to understand the foundational and broadly transferable question: how are globalization and localization related? To answer these questions CIPHER posits the Hip Hop Interpellation thesis, that hip hop spreads not as a copy of an African American original, but, through its performance of knowledge, emerges as an always already constituent part of local knowledge and practice. The theorization thus moves beyond the “hailing practices” described by Althusser’s theory of interpellation—the discursive webs that coerce ideological incorporation—to describing an interpolation that locates other histories within and through hip hop’s performed knowledges. CIPHER’s semantic web methodology tests this thesis, tracking how hip hop memes—slogans, anthems, and icons—are simultaneously produced by people and produce people. This research clears the conceptual impasse of structural “cultural imperialism” vs. agentic “cultural appropriation” debates and instrumentalizes the methodological distance between ethnographic specificity and big data generality. It does so by creating a feedback loop between digital humanities methods (crowd sourcing, semantic tagging, computational stylometry) and ethnographic fieldwork techniques (interviews, musical analysis, participant observation). The result will be an iterative map of Hip Hop Interpellation/Interpolation created by stakeholders that is transformational of our understanding of culture and/as cultural production and transferable to pressing questions about globalization and l’exception culturelle.

1 990 526 €

Start date: 2019-08-01, End date: 2024-07-31

The traditional formulation of relativistic quantum theory is ill-equipped to handle the range of difficult computations needed to describe particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) within a suitable time frame. Yet, recent work shows that probability amplitudes in quantum gauge field theories, such as those describing the Standard Model and its extensions, take surprisingly simple forms. The simplicity indicates deep structure in gauge theory that has already led to dramatic computational improvements, but remains to be fully understood. For precision calculations and investigations of the deep structure of gauge theory, a comprehensive method for computing multi-loop amplitudes systematically and efficiently must be found. The goal of this proposal is to construct a new and complete approach to computing amplitudes from a detailed understanding of their singularities, based on prior successes of so-called on-shell methods combined with the latest developments in the mathematics of Feynman integrals. Scattering processes relevant to the LHC and to formal investigations of quantum field theory will be computed within the new framework.

1 954 065 €

Start date: 2015-10-01, End date: 2021-08-31