ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Plants typically release large quantities of volatiles in response to attack by herbivores or pathogens. I may claim to have contributed to various breakthroughs in this research field, including the discovery that the volatile blends induced by different attackers are astonishingly specific, resulting in characteristic, readily distinguishable odour blends. Using maize as our model plant, I wish to take several leaps forward in our understanding of this signal specificity and use this knowledge to develop sensors for the real-time detection of crop pests and diseases. For this, three interconnected work-packages will aim to: • Develop chemical analytical techniques and statistical models to decipher the odorous vocabulary of plants, and to create a complete inventory of “odour-prints” for a wide range of herbivore-plant and pathogen-plant combinations, including simultaneous infestations. • Develop and optimize nano-mechanical sensors for the detection of specific plant volatile mixtures. For this, we will initially adapt a prototype sensor that has been successfully developed for the detection of cancer-related volatiles in human breath. • Genetically manipulate maize plants to release a unique blend of root-produced volatiles upon herbivory. For this, we will engineer gene cassettes that combine recently identified P450 (CYP) genes from poplar with inducible, root-specific promoters from maize. This will result in maize plants that, in response to pest attack, release easy-to-detect aldoximes and nitriles from their roots. In short, by investigating and manipulating the specificity of inducible odour blends we will generate the necessary knowhow to develop a novel odour-detection device. The envisioned sensor technology will permit real-time monitoring of the pests and enable farmers to apply crop protection treatments at the right time and in the right place.

2 498 086 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

What makes for a valuable and good life is a question that many people in the contemporary world ask themselves, yet it is one that social science research has seldom addressed. Only recently have scholars started undertaking inductive comparative research on different notions of the ‘good life’, highlighting socio-cultural variations and calling for a better understanding of the different imaginaries, aspirations and values that guide people in their quest for better living conditions. Research is still lacking, however, on how people themselves evaluate, compare, and put into perspective different visions of good living and their socio-cultural anchorage. This project addresses such questions from an anthropological perspective, proposing an innovative study of how ideals of the good life are articulated, (re)assessed, and related to specific places and contexts as a result of the experience of crisis and migration. The case studies chosen to operationalize these lines of enquiry focus on the phenomenon of return migration, and consist in an analysis of the imaginaries and experience of return by Ecuadorian and Cuban men and women who migrated to Spain, are dissatisfied with their life there, and envisage/carry out the project of going back to their countries of origin (Ecuador and Cuba respectively). The project’s ambition is to bring together and contribute to three main scholarly areas of enquiry: 1) the study of morality, ethics and what counts as ‘good life’, 2) the study of the field of economic practice, its definition, value regimes, and ‘crises’, and 3) the study of migratory aspirations, projects, and trajectories. A multi-sited endeavour, the research is designed in three subprojects carried out in Spain (PhD student), Ecuador (Post-Doc), and Cuba (PI), in which ethnographic methods will be used to provide the first empirically grounded study of the links between notions and experiences of crisis, return migration, and the (re)assessment of good living.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31

Uncertainty is everywhere, as the saying goes, but rarely considered in ethical reflections. This project aims to reinterpret ethical discussions on current advances in biomedicine: instead of understanding bioethical positions as extensions of classical normative views in ethics (consequentialism, deontologism, contractualism etc.), my project interprets them more accurately as involving various normative approaches to decision making under uncertainty. The following hard cases in bioethics provide the motivation for research: 1) Regulating scientific research under uncertainty about the ontological/moral status (e.g. parthenogenetic stem cells derived from human parthenotes) in the context of meta-reasoning under normative uncertainty. 2) The value of preventive medicine in healthcare (e.g. vaccinations) in the context of decision-making under metaphysical indeterminacy. 3) Population or reproductive decisions (e.g. preimplantation genetic diagnosis) in the context of valuing mere existence. The main drive behind this project is the rapid progress in biomedical research combined with new kinds of uncertainties. These new and “deep” uncertainties trigger specific forms of emotions and cognitions that influence normative judgments and decisions. The main research questions that will be addressed by conceptual analysis, new psychological experiments, and case studies are the following: how do the heuristics and biases (H&B) documented by behavioral scientists influence the formation of normative judgments in bioethical contexts; how to demarcate between distorted and undistorted value judgments; to what extent is it permissible for individuals or policy makers to yield to H&B. The hypothesis is that many existing bioethical rules, regulations, practices seem to have emerged from unreliable reactions, rather than by means of deliberation on the possible justifications for alternative ways to decide about them under several layers and types of uncertainty.

1 499 625 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31

Successful social interactions require social decision making, the ability to guide our actions in line with the goals and expectations of the people around us. Disordered social decision making – e.g., associated with criminal activity or psychiatric illnesses – poses significant financial and personal challenges to society. However, the brain mechanisms that enable us to control our social behavior are far from being understood. Here I will take decisive steps towards a causal understanding of these mechanisms by elucidating the role of functional interactions in the brain networks responsible for steering strategic, prosocial, and norm-compliant behavior. I will employ a unique multi-method approach that integrates computational modeling of social decisions with new combinations of multimodal neuroimaging and brain stimulation methods. Using EEG-fMRI, I will first identify spatio-temporal patterns of functional interactions between brain areas that correlate with social decision processes as identified by computational modeling of behavior in different economic games. In combined brain stimulation-fMRI studies, I will then attempt to affect – and in fact enhance – these social decision-making processes by modulating the identified brain network patterns with novel, targeted brain stimulation protocols and measuring the resulting effects on behavior and brain activity. Finally, I will examine whether the identified brain network mechanisms are indeed related to disturbed social decisions in two psychiatric illnesses characterized by maladaptive social behavior (post-traumatic stress disorder and autism spectrum disorder). My proposed work plan will generate a causal understanding of the brain network mechanisms that allow humans to control their social decisions, thereby elucidating a biological basis for individual differences in social behavior and paving the way for new perspectives on how disordered social behavior may be identified and hopefully remedied.

1 999 991 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31