ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The applications of micro- and nanofluidics are now numerous, including lab-on-chip systems based upon micro-manipulation of discrete droplets, emulsions of interest in food and medical industries (drug delivery), analytical separation techniques of biomolecules, such as proteins and DNA, and facile handling of mass-limited samples. The problems involved contain diverse nano- and microstructures with a variety of lifetimes, touching atomistic scales (contact lines, thin films), mesoscopic collective behaviour (emulsions, glassy, soft-jammed systems) and hydrodynamical spatio-temporal evolutions (droplets and interface dynamics) with complex rheology and strong non-equilibrium properties. The interplay of the dynamics at the different scales involved still remains to be fully understood. The fundamental research I address in this project aims to set up the unified framework for the characterization and modelling of interfaces in confined geometries by means of an innovative micro- and nanofluidic numerical platform. The main challenging and ambitious questions I intend to address in my project are: How the stability of micro- and nanodroplets is affected by thermal gradients? Or by boundary corrugation and modulated wettability? Or by complex rheological properties of the dispersed and/or continuous phases? How these effects can be tuned to design new optimal devices for emulsions production? What are the rheological properties of these new soft materials? How confinement in small structures changes the bulk emulsion properties? What is the molecular-hydrodynamical mechanism at the origin of contact line slippage? How to realistically model the fluid-particle interactions on the molecular scale? The strength of the project lies in an innovative and state-of-the-art numerical approach, based on mesoscopic Lattice Boltzmann Models, coupled to microscopic molecular physics, supported by theoretical modelling, lubrication theory and experimental validation.

1 170 924 €

Start date: 2011-12-01, End date: 2016-11-30

"Strongly correlated materials exhibit some of the most remarkable phenonomena found in condensed matter systems. They typically involve many active degrees of freedom (spin, charge, orbital), which leads to numerous competing states and complicated phase diagrams. A new perspective on correlated many-body systems is provided by the nonequilibrium dynamics, which is being explored in transport studies on nanostructures, pump-probe experiments on correlated solids, and in quench experiments on ultra-cold atomic gases. An advanced theoretical framework for the study of correlated lattice models, which can be adapted to nonequilibrium situations, is dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). One aim of this proposal is to develop ""nonequilibrium DMFT"" into a powerful tool for the simulation of excitation and relaxation processes in interacting many-body systems. The big challenge in these simulations is the calculation of the real-time evolution of a quantum impurity model. Recently developed real-time impurity solvers have, however, opened the door to a wide range of applications. We will improve the efficiency and flexibility of these methods and develop complementary approaches, which will extend the accessible parameter regimes. This machinery will be used to study correlated lattice models under nonequilibrium conditions. The ultimate goal is to explore and qualitatively understand the nonequilibrium properties of ""real"" materials with active spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom. The ability to simulate the real-time dynamics of correlated many-body systems will be crucial for the interpretation of experiments and the discovery of correlation effects which manifest themselves only in the form of transient states. A proper understanding of the most basic nonequilibrium phenomena in correlated solids will help guide future experiments and hopefully lead to new technological applications such as ultra-fast switches or storage devices."

1 493 178 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31

"The aim of EINITE is to clarify the dynamics of economic inequality in Europe from the late Middle Ages up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Very little data about economic inequality during such an early period is available today. Apart from some studies focussed on single years and small areas (usually only one city or a village), the only European region which has been the object of a large research project is Holland. The project will collect an extensive database about economic inequality, mainly of wealth (for which better documentation exists), focussing on Italy from a wider European perspective. Archival research will be concentrated on Italy where particularly good sources exist, but the Italian case will be placed in the varying European context. Published data and existing databases from all over the continent will be collected as terms of comparison. The final version of the project database will be made public. The activity of ENITE will be organized around four main research questions: 1) What is the long-term relationship between economic growth and inequality? This is the main question to which the others are all connected. 2) What were the effects of plagues and other severe mortality crises on property structures? 3) What is the underlying relationship between immigration and urban inequality? 4) How was economic inequality perceived in the past, and how did its perception change over time? The project will also help to explain the origin of the property structures and inequality levels to be found on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Then, it will provide information relevant to the ‘Kuznets curve’ debate. Overall the project will lead to a better knowledge of economic inequality in the past, which is also expected to help understanding recent developments in inequality levels in Europe and elsewhere."

995 400 €

Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2016-12-31

The work laid out in this proposal aims to change our understanding of labor markets by viewing both the mobility as well as the frictions in the market as a consequence of long-term worker heterogeneity. Despite the advances in information technology which substantially reduce the costs of sending information (job advertisements, job applications) extracting the relevant information about worker quality remains hard. Long-term differences in ability coupled with screening frictions are proposed as the main reason for mismatch, for mobility, and for the presence of unemployment. The proposal is based on novel empirical observations on occupational mobility. Both low-paid workers as well as high-paid workers in an occupation tend to leave it. The former tend to move to occupations with lower average pay, while the opposite holds for the latter. This happens even within firms, and after excluding managerial positions. Most work on selection assumes that low-earners leave. This data suggest a novel angle: Workers have a long-term type that affects productivity in their current and in new occupations. They might accumulate human capital, but also their baseline ability is imperfectly known. Unexpectedly low performers (low-wage workers) have to leave towards less demanding tasks, while high performers change to more demanding tasks. This consistently accounts for the observed selection patterns. When workers know more about their ability than new firms, this also explains unemployment: firms spend efforts on screening, and impose costs on workers to induce them to self-select. The latter counteracts exogenous reductions in workers’ search costs. The aim is to develop a tractable model of screening unemployment that can serve as a building block in larger macro-labor models, and to assess the work of the government employment agency through the lens of a mechanism designer that facilitates match-making but relies on firms for additional screening of the unemployed.

1 170 000 €

Start date: 2012-09-01, End date: 2017-08-31