ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

“Program-Nano” aims at establishing unconventional and versatile strategies towards organic architectures whose size, composition, internal structure, and function can be rationally predesigned and controlled. In a bio-inspired manner, we will “program” functional molecules with the required information to self-assemble into unique, well-defined nanofibers or nanotubes. We want to focus on two main ambitious objectives for the application of such organic nanostructured materials. 1) The design and preparation of optoelectronic devices, such as plastic solar cells, where nanostructured fibers are integrated within the active layers. The major goal is to determine the influence of the molecular organization and the morphology at the nanoscale on the performance of the device, and to try in this way to set new records in device efficiency. 2) The fabrication of plastic nanoporous materials for the separation, storage or catalytic transformation of (bio)molecules in which the size, the shape ratio, and the internal functionalization of the nanopores can be custom-tailored.

1 300 932 €

Start date: 2011-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31

Modern Internet services store data in novel cloud databases, which partition and replicate the data across a large number of machines and a wide geographical span. To achieve high availability and scalability, cloud databases need to maximise the parallelism of data processing. Unfortunately, this leads them to weaken the guarantees they provide about data consistency to applications. The resulting programming models are very challenging to use correctly, and we currently do not have advanced methods and tools that would help programmers in this task. The goal of the project is to develop a synergy of novel reasoning methods, static analysis tools and database implementation techniques that maximally exploit parallelism inside cloud databases, while enabling application programmers to ensure correctness. We intend to achieve this by first developing methods for reasoning formally about how weakening the consistency guarantees provided by cloud databases affects application correctness and the parallelism allowed inside the databases. This will build on techniques from the areas of programming languages and software verification. The resulting theory will then serve as a basis for practical implementation techniques and tools that harness database parallelism, but only to the extent such that its side effects do not compromise application correctness. The proposed project is high-risk, because it aims not only to develop a rigorous theory of consistency in cloud databases, but also to apply it to practical systems design. The project is also high-gain, since it will push the envelope in availability, scalability and cost-effectiveness of cloud databases.

1 498 312 €

Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31

Most countries in the world are facing reform pressures to make their education systems more effective and responsive to the new challenges generated by the global economy. In this scenario, managerial policy ideas such as school autonomy and accountability, which aim to modernize public education and strengthen its performance, are spreading broadly. To date, a wide range of countries with different administrative traditions and levels of development have adopted school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) policies, whilst the most active international organizations in the education sector, like the OECD, are strongly promoting them globally. Constituting SAWA as a global model of education reform generates two main questions. First, why and how are SAWA policies disseminating globally, and to what extent does this reform model generate international policy convergence in education? Secondly, how and under what particular contextual and institutional circumstances do SAWA policies work and for whom? The fact that existing scholarly research has achieved inconclusive and mixed findings concerning the SAWA effects on learning outcomes and equity makes this second question especially relevant. To address these gaps in existing literature, REFORMED develops a comprehensive research approach that scrutinizes the different, but mutually constitutive stages of global education policy, from the inception in global agendas stage to their operationalization and effects in multiple contexts. Specifically, the project analyzes how and why SAWA policies are being adopted and re-formulated by policy actors operating at different scales (from international bureaucrats to teachers), and inquires into the institutional frameworks and policy enactment processes that explain the different effects of SAWA at the school level. A robust and multi-scalar methodological strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative methods will contribute to advancing such an innovative approach.

1 002 307 €

Start date: 2016-07-01, End date: 2021-06-30

RIVERS’s main challenge is to produce ground-breaking knowledge, from an empirical, interdisciplinary and dialoguing perspective, about the contentions and challenges intrinsic to reconceptualising human rights with different ways of understanding and relating to water. Worldwide, indigenous peoples are mobilising against the neoliberalisation of nature, demonstrating radically different ways of knowing, being and living. At the same time, in 2010 the UN acknowledged water as a human right, while in 2017 New Zealand, India and Colombia established ground-breaking legal precedents by granting rivers human rights. RIVERS’s overarching research question is: To what extent can international human rights law come to grips with plurilegal water realities? This project engages with one of the most pressing questions of this century: the relationship between humans and nature. RIVERS tackles two intertwined core objectives: 1) analysing different ways of knowing and relating to water and life among indigenous peoples and their understanding of its (potential) violation by extractive projects; 2) discussing the contributions, challenges and pitfalls of interlegal translation of differing water natures in plurilegal encounters at domestic and international levels. RIVERS will develop a multi-sited analysis and empirical case-studies in three contexts: Colombia, Nepal and the UN human rights protection system. Through the lens of legal pluralism, this will foreground competing political and legal water realities that interrogate dominant understandings of the modern world. RIVERS will address two interrelated research challenges: 1) indigenous visions/practices: beyond water as a natural resource and human right; 2) the UN human rights system: towards counter-hegemonic water knowledge production. This project will pioneer new ways of thinking about water beyond the modern divides of nature/culture, providing clues about future paths towards reconceptualising human rights.

1 498 446 €

Start date: 2019-05-01, End date: 2024-04-30