ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The centriole is the largest evolutionary conserved macromolecular structure responsible for building centrosomes and cilia or flagella in many eukaryotes. Centrioles are critical for the proper execution of important biological processes ranging from cell division to cell signaling. Moreover, centriolar defects have been associated to several human pathologies including ciliopathies and cancer. This state of facts emphasizes the importance of understanding centriole biogenesis. The study of centriole formation is a deep-rooted question, however our current knowledge on its molecular organization at high resolution remains fragmented and limited. In particular, exquisite details of the overall molecular architecture of the human centriole and in particular of its central core region are lacking to understand the basis of centriole organization and function. Resolving this important question represents a challenge that needs to be undertaken and will undoubtedly lead to groundbreaking advances. Another important question to tackle next is to develop innovative methods to enable the nanometric molecular mapping of centriolar proteins within distinct architectural elements of the centriole. This missing information will be key to unravel the molecular mechanisms behind centriolar organization. This research proposal aims at building a cartography of the human centriole by elucidating its molecular composition and architecture. To this end, we will combine the use of innovative and multidisciplinary techniques encompassing spatial proteomics, cryo-electron tomography, state-of-the-art microscopy and in vitro assays and to achieve a comprehensive molecular and structural view of the human centriole. All together, we expect that these advances will help understand basic principles underlying centriole and cilia formation as well as might have further relevance for human health.

1 498 965 €

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

Clouds play a key role in the climate system. Small anthropogenic perturbations of the cloud system potentially have large radiative effects. Aerosols perturb the global radiation budget directly, by scattering and absorption, as well as indirectly, by the modification of cloud properties and occurrence. The applicability of traditional conceptual models of indirect aerosol effects to convective clouds is disputed as cloud dynamics complicates the picture. Strong evidence for numerous aerosol effects on convection has been established in individual disciplines: through remote sensing and in-situ observations as well as by cloud resolving and global modelling. However, a coherent scientific view of the effects of aerosols on convection has yet to be established. The primary objective of ACCLAIM is to recast the effects of aerosols on convective clouds as basis for improved global estimates of anthropogenic climate effects. Specific objectives include: i) to unravel the governing principles of aerosol effects on convective clouds; ii) provide quantitative constraints on satellite-retrieved relationships between convective clouds and aerosols; and ultimately iii) to enable global climate models to represent the full range of anthropogenic climate perturbations and quantify the climate response to aerosol effects on convective clouds. I have developed the research strategy of ACCLAIM to overcome disciplinary barriers in this frontier research area and seek five years of funding to establish an interdisciplinary, physics focused, research group consisting of two PostDocs, two PhD students and myself. ACCLAIM will be centred around global aerosol-convection climate modelling studies, complemented by research constraining aerosol-convection interactions through remote sensing and a process focused research strand, advancing fundamental understanding and global model parameterisations through high resolution aerosol-cloud modelling in synergy with in-situ observations.

1 429 243 €

Start date: 2011-09-01, End date: 2017-02-28

The amazing rate of progress in the computer technologies and telecommunications presents many new challenges for Optimization Theory. New problems are usually very big in size, very special in structure and possibly have a distributed data support. This makes them unsolvable by the standard optimization methods. In these situations, old theoretical models, based on the hidden Black-Box information, cannot work. New theoretical and algorithmic solutions are urgently needed. In this project we will concentrate on development of fast optimization methods for problems of big and very big size. All the new methods will be endowed with provable efficiency guarantees for large classes of optimization problems, arising in practical applications. Our main tool is the acceleration technique developed for the standard Black-Box methods as applied to smooth convex functions. However, we will have to adapt it to deal with different situations. The first line of development will be based on the smoothing technique as applied to a non-smooth functions. We propose to substantially extend this approach to generate approximate solutions in relative scale. The second line of research will be related to applying acceleration techniques to the second-order methods minimizing functions with sparse Hessians. Finally, we aim to develop fast gradient methods for huge-scale problems. The size of these problems is so big that even the usual vector operations are extremely expensive. Thus, we propose to develop new methods with sublinear iteration costs. In our approach, the main source for achieving improvements will be the proper use of problem structure. Our overall aim is to be able to solve in a routine way many important problems, which currently look unsolvable. Moreover, the theoretical development of Convex Optimization will reach the state, when there is no gap between theory and practice: the theoretically most efficient methods will definitely outperform any homebred heuristics.

2 090 038 €

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

Formation of the Earth and the other terrestrial planets of our Solar System (Mercury, Venus and Mars) commenced 4.568 billion years ago and occurred on a time scale of about 100 million years. These planets grew by the process of accretion, which involved numerous collisions with smaller (Moon- to Mars-size) bodies. Impacts with such bodies released sufficient energy to cause large-scale melting and the formation of deep “magma oceans”. Such magma oceans enabled liquid metal to separate from liquid silicate, sink and accumulate to form the metallic cores of the planets. Thus core formation in terrestrial planets was a multistage process, intimately related to the major impacts during accretion, that determined the chemistry of planetary mantles. However, until now, accretion, as modelled by astrophysicists, and core formation, as modelled by geochemists, have been treated as completely independent processes. The fundamental and crucial aim of this ambitious interdisciplinary proposal is to integrate astrophysical models of planetary accretion with geochemical models of planetary differentiation together with cosmochemical constraints obtained from meteorites. The research will involve integrating new models of planetary accretion with core formation models based on the partitioning of a large number of elements between liquid metal and liquid silicate that we will determine experimentally at pressures up to about 100 gigapascals (equivalent to 2400 km deep in the Earth). By comparing our results with the known physical and chemical characteristics of the terrestrial planets, we will obtain a comprehensive understanding of how these planets formed, grew and evolved, both physically and chemically, with time. The integration of chemistry and planetary differentiation with accretion models is a new ground-breaking concept that will lead, through synergies and feedback, to major new advances in the Earth and planetary sciences.

1 826 200 €

Start date: 2012-05-01, End date: 2018-04-30