ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

"This project explores the concept of agricultural spread as analogous to enforced climate change and asks how cereals adapted to new environments when agriculture was introduced into Europe. Archaeologists have long recognized that the ecological pressures placed on crops would have had an impact on the spread and subsequent development of agriculture, but previously there has been no means of directly assessing the scale and nature of this impact. Recent work that I have directed has shown how such a study could be carried out, and the purpose of this project is to exploit these breakthroughs with the goal of assessing the influence of environmental adaptation on the spread of agriculture, its adoption as the primary subsistence strategy, and the subsequent establishment of farming in different parts of Europe. This will correct the current imbalance between our understanding of the human and environmental dimensions to the domestication of Europe. I will use methods from population genomics to identify loci within the barley and wheat genomes that have undergone selection since the beginning of cereal cultivation in Europe. I will then use ecological modelling to identify those loci whose patterns of selection are associated with ecogeographical variables and hence represent adaptations to local environmental conditions. I will assign dates to the periods when adaptations occurred by sequencing ancient DNA from archaeobotanical assemblages and by computer methods that enable the temporal order of adaptations to be deduced. I will then synthesise the information on environmental adaptations with dating evidence for the spread of agriculture in Europe, which reveals pauses that might be linked to environmental adaptation, with demographic data that indicate regions where Neolithic populations declined, possibly due to inadequate crop productivity, and with an archaeobotanical database showing changes in the prevalence of individual cereals in different regions."

2 492 964 €

Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31

The numerical simulation of complex compressible flow problem is still a challenge nowaday even for simple models. In our opinion, the most important hard points that need currently to be tackled and solved is how to obtain stable, scalable, very accurate, easy to code and to maintain schemes on complex geometries. The method should easily handle mesh refinement, even near the boundary where the most interesting engineering quantities have to be evaluated. Unsteady uncertainties in the model, for example in the geometry or the boundary conditions should represented efficiently.This proposal goal is to design, develop and evaluate solutions to each of the above problems. Our work program will lead to significant breakthroughs for flow simulations. More specifically, we propose to work on 3 connected problems: 1-A class of very high order numerical schemes able to easily deal with the geometry of boundaries and still can solve steep problems. The geometry is generally defined by CAD tools. The output is used to generate a mesh which is then used by the scheme. Hence, any mesh refinement process is disconnected from the CAD, a situation that prevents the spread of mesh adaptation techniques in industry! 2-A class of very high order numerical schemes which can utilize possibly solution dependant basis functions in order to lower the number of degrees of freedom, for example to compute accurately boundary layers with low resolutions. 3-A general non intrusive technique for handling uncertainties in order to deal with irregular probability density functions (pdf) and also to handle pdf that may evolve in time, for example thanks to an optimisation loop. The curse of dimensionality will be dealt thanks Harten's multiresolution method combined with sparse grid methods. Currently, and up to our knowledge, no scheme has each of these properties. This research program will have an impact on numerical schemes and industrial applications.

1 432 769 €

Start date: 2008-12-01, End date: 2013-11-30

Fault-tolerant topological quantum computation has become one of the most exciting research directions in modern condensed matter physics. As a key operation the braiding of non-Abelian anyons has been proposed theoretically. Such exotic quasiparticles can be realized as zero-energy Majorana bound states at the ends of one-dimensional magnetic nanowires in proximity to s-wave superconductors in the presence of high spin-orbit coupling. In contrast to previous attempts to realize such systems experimentally, based on the growth of semiconducting nanowires or the self-assembly of ferromagnetic nanowires on s-wave superconductors, we propose to design Majorana bound states in artificially constructed single-atom chains with non-collinear spin-textures on elemental superconducting substrates using scanning tunnelling microscope (STM)-based atom manipulation techniques. We would like to study at the atomic level the formation of Shiba bands as a result of hybridization of individual Shiba impurity states as well as the emergence of zero-energy Majorana bound states as a function of chain structure, length, and composition. Moreover, we will construct model-type platforms, such as T-junctions, rings, and more complex network structures with atomic-scale precision as a basis for demonstrating the manipulation and braiding of Majorana bound states. We will make use of sophisticated experimental techniques, such as spin-resolved scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) at micro-eV energy resolution, scanning Josephson tunnelling spectroscopy, and multi-probe STS under well-defined ultra-high vacuum conditions, in order to directly probe the nature of the magnetic state of the atomic wires, the spin-polarization of the emergent Majorana states, as well as the spatial nature of the superconducting order parameter in real space. Finally, we will try to directly probe the quantum exchange statistics of non-Abelian anyons in these atomically precise fabricated model-type systems.

2 499 750 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Microporous materials are an important class of solid; the two main members of this family are zeolites and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Zeolites are industrial solids whose applications range from catalysis, through ion exchange and adsorption technologies to medicine. MOFs are some of the most exciting new materials to have been developed over the last two decades, and they are just beginning to be applied commercially. Over recent years the applicant’s group has developed new synthetic strategies to prepare microporous materials, called the Assembly-Disassembly-Organisation-Reassembly (ADOR) process. In significant preliminary work the ADOR process has shown to be an extremely important new synthetic methodology that differs fundamentally from traditional solvothermal methods. In this project I will look to overturn the conventional thinking in materials science by developing methodologies that can target both zeolites and MOF materials that are difficult to prepare using traditional methods – the so-called ‘unfeasible’ materials. The importance of such a new methodology is that it will open up routes to materials that have different properties (both chemical and topological) to those we currently have. Since zeolites and MOFs have so many actual and potential uses, the preparation of materials with different properties has a high chance of leading to new technologies in the medium/long term. To complete the major objective I will look to complete four closely linked activities covering the development of design strategies for zeolites and MOFs (activities 1 & 2), mechanistic studies to understand the process at the molecular level using in situ characterisation techniques (activity 3) and an exploration of potential applied science for the prepared materials (activity 4).

2 489 220 €

Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30