ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Air pollution is the main urban-related environmental hazard. It appears to affect brain development, although current evidence is inadequate given the lack of studies during the most vulnerable stages of brain development and the lack of brain anatomical structure and regional connectivity data underlying these effects. Of particular interest is the prenatal period, when brain structures are forming and growing, and when the effect of in utero exposure to environmental factors may cause permanent brain injury. I and others have conducted studies focused on effects during school age which could be less profound. I postulate that: pre-natal exposure to urban air pollution during pregnancy impairs foetal and postnatal brain development, mainly by affecting myelination; these effects are at least partially mediated by translocation of airborne particulate matter to the placenta and by placental dysfunction; and prenatal exposure to air pollution impairs post-natal brain development independently of urban context and post-natal exposure to air pollution. I aim to evaluate the effect of pre-natal exposure to urban air pollution on pre- and post-natal brain structure and function by following 900 pregnant women and their neonates with contrasting levels of pre-natal exposure to air pollutants by: i) establishing a new pregnancy cohort and evaluating brain imaging (pre-natal and neo-natal brain structure, connectivity and function), and post-natal motor and cognitive development; ii) measuring total personal exposure and inhaled dose of air pollutants during specific time-windows of gestation, noise, paternal stress and other stressors, using personal samplers and sensors; iii) detecting nanoparticles in placenta and its vascular function; iv) modelling mathematical causality and mediation, including a replication study in an external cohort. The expected results will create an impulse to implement policy interventions that genuinely protect the health of urban citizens.

2 499 992 €

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

Traffic-related air pollution is an important environmental problem that may affect neurodevelopment. Ultrafine particles (UFP) translocate to the brains of experimental animals resulting in local proinflammatory overexpression. As the basic elements for thinking are acquired by developing brains during infancy and childhood, susceptibility may be elevated in early life. We postulate that traffic-related air pollution (particularly UFPs and metals/hydrocarbons content) impairs neurodevelopment in part via effects on frontal lobe maturation, likely increasing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). BREATHE objectives are to develop valid methods to measure children's personal UFP exposure and to develop valid neuroimaging methods to assess correlations between neurobehavior, neurostructural alterations and particle deposition in order to reveal how traffic pollution affects children¿s exposure to key contaminants and brain development, and identify susceptible subgroups. We have conducted general population birth cohort studies providing preliminary evidence of residential air pollution effects on prenatal growth and mental development. We aim to demonstrate short and long-term effects on neurodevelopment using innovative epidemiological methods interfaced with environmental chemistry and neuroimaging following 4000 children from 40 schools with contrasting high/low traffic exposure in six linked components involving: repeated psychometric tests, UFP exposure assessment using personal, school and home measurements, gene-environment interactions on inflammation, detoxification pathways and ADHD genome-wide-associated genes, neuroimaging (magnetic resonance imaging/spectroscopy) in ADHD/non-ADHD children, integrative causal modeling using mathematics, and replication in 2900 children with neurodevelopment followed from pregnancy. We believe the expected results will have worldwide global planning and policy implications.

2 499 230 €

Start date: 2011-08-01, End date: 2016-07-31

Collective behaviour is a widespread phenomenon in nature and technology making it a very important subject to study in various contexts. The main goal we intend to achieve in our multidisciplinary research is the identification and documentation of new unifying principles describing the essential aspects of collective motion, being one of the most relevant and spectacular manifestations of collective behaviour. We shall carry out novel type of experiments, design models that are both simple and realistic enough to reproduce the observations and develop concepts for a better interpretation of the complexity of systems consisting of many organisms and such non-living objects as interacting robots. We plan to study systems ranging from cultures of migrating tissue cells through flocks of birds to collectively moving devices. The interrelation of these systems will be considered in order to deepen the understanding of the main patterns of group motion in both living and non-living systems by learning about the similar phenomena in the two domains of nature. Thus, we plan to understand the essential ingredients of flocking of birds by building collectively moving unmanned aerial vehicles while, in turn, high resolution spatiotemporal GPS data of pigeon flocks will be used to make helpful conclusions for the best designs for swarms of robots. In particular, we shall construct and build a set of vehicles that will be capable, for the first time, to exhibit flocking behaviour in the three-dimensional space. The methods we shall adopt will range from approaches used in statistical physics and network theory to various new techniques in cell biology and collective robotics. All this will be based on numerous prior results (both ours and others) published in leading interdisciplinary journals. The planned research will have the potential of leading to ground breaking results with significant implications in various fields of science and technology.

1 248 000 €

Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28

With eNANO I will introduce a disruptive approach toward controlling and understanding the dynamical response of material nanostructures, expanding nanoscience and nanotechnology in unprecedented directions. Specifically, I intend to inaugurate the field of free-electron nanoelectronics, whereby electrons evolving in the vacuum regions defined by nanostructures will be generated, guided, and sampled at the nanoscale, thus acting as probes to excite, detect, image, and spectrally resolve polaritonic modes (e.g., plasmons, optical phonons, and excitons) with atomic precision over sub-femtosecond timescales. I will exploit the wave nature of electrons, extending the principles of nanophotonics from photons to electrons, therefore gaining in spatial resolution (by relying on the large reduction in wavelength) and strength of interaction (mediated by Coulomb fields, which in contrast to photons render nonlinear interactions ubiquitous when using free electrons). I will develop the theoretical and computational tools required to investigate this unexplored scenario, covering a wide range of free-electron energies, their elastic interactions with the material atomic structures, and their inelastic coupling to nanoscale dynamical excitations. Equipped with these techniques, I will further address four challenges of major scientific interest: (i) the fundamental limits to the space, time, and energy resolutions achievable with free electrons; (ii) the foundations and feasibility of pump-probe spectral microscopy at the single-electron level; (iii) the exploration of quantum-optics phenomena by means of free electrons; and (iv) the unique perspectives and potential offered by vertically confined free-electrons in 2D crystals. I will face these research frontiers by combining knowledge from different areas through a multidisciplinary theory group, in close collaboration with leading experimentalists, pursuing a radically new approach to study and control the nanoworld.

1 899 788 €

Start date: 2018-12-01, End date: 2023-11-30