Project acronym ACUITY
Project Algorithms for coping with uncertainty and intractability
Researcher (PI) Nikhil Bansal
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The two biggest challenges in solving practical optimization problems are computational intractability, and the presence
of uncertainty: most problems are either NP-hard, or have incomplete input data which
makes an exact computation impossible.
Recently, there has been a huge progress in our understanding of intractability, based on spectacular algorithmic and lower bound techniques. For several problems, especially those with only local constraints, we can design optimum
approximation algorithms that are provably the best possible.
However, typical optimization problems usually involve complex global constraints and are much less understood. The situation is even worse for coping with uncertainty. Most of the algorithms are based on ad-hoc techniques and there is no deeper understanding of what makes various problems easy or hard.
This proposal describes several new directions, together with concrete intermediate goals, that will break important new ground in the theory of approximation and online algorithms. The particular directions we consider are (i) extend the primal dual method to systematically design online algorithms, (ii) build a structural theory of online problems based on work functions, (iii) develop new tools to use the power of strong convex relaxations and (iv) design new algorithmic approaches based on non-constructive proof techniques.
The proposed research is at the
cutting edge of algorithm design, and builds upon the recent success of the PI in resolving several longstanding questions in these areas. Any progress is likely to be a significant contribution to theoretical
computer science and combinatorial optimization.
Summary
The two biggest challenges in solving practical optimization problems are computational intractability, and the presence
of uncertainty: most problems are either NP-hard, or have incomplete input data which
makes an exact computation impossible.
Recently, there has been a huge progress in our understanding of intractability, based on spectacular algorithmic and lower bound techniques. For several problems, especially those with only local constraints, we can design optimum
approximation algorithms that are provably the best possible.
However, typical optimization problems usually involve complex global constraints and are much less understood. The situation is even worse for coping with uncertainty. Most of the algorithms are based on ad-hoc techniques and there is no deeper understanding of what makes various problems easy or hard.
This proposal describes several new directions, together with concrete intermediate goals, that will break important new ground in the theory of approximation and online algorithms. The particular directions we consider are (i) extend the primal dual method to systematically design online algorithms, (ii) build a structural theory of online problems based on work functions, (iii) develop new tools to use the power of strong convex relaxations and (iv) design new algorithmic approaches based on non-constructive proof techniques.
The proposed research is at the
cutting edge of algorithm design, and builds upon the recent success of the PI in resolving several longstanding questions in these areas. Any progress is likely to be a significant contribution to theoretical
computer science and combinatorial optimization.
Max ERC Funding
1 519 285 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
Project acronym BABE
Project Bodies across borders: oral and visual memory in Europe and beyond
Researcher (PI) Luisella Passerini
Host Institution (HI) EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2011-ADG_20110406
Summary This project intends to study intercultural connections in contemporary Europe, engaging both native and ‘new’ Europeans. These connections are woven through the faculties of embodied subjects – memory, visuality and mobility – and concern the movement of people, ideas and images across the borders of European nation-states. These faculties are connected with that of affect, an increasingly important concept in history and the social sciences. Memory will be understood not only as oral or direct memory, but also as cultural memory, embodied in various cultural products. Our study aims to understand new forms of European identity, as these develop in an increasingly diasporic world. Europe today is not only a key site of immigration, after having been for centuries an area of emigration, but also a crucial point of arrival in a global network designed by mobile human beings.
Three parts will make up the project. The first will engage with bodies, their gendered dimension, performative capacities and connection to place. It will explore the ways certain bodies are ‘emplaced’ as ‘European’, while others are marked as alien, and contrast these discourses with the counter-narratives by visual artists. The second part will extend further the reflection on the role of the visual arts in challenging an emergent ‘Fortress Europe’ but also in re-imagining the memory of European colonialism. The work of some key artists will be shown to students in Italy and the Netherlands, both recent migrants and ‘natives’, creating an ‘induced reception’. The final part of the project will look at alternative imaginations of Europe, investigating the oral memories and ‘mental maps’ created by two migrant communities in Europe: from Peru and from the Horn of Africa.
Examining the heterogeneous micro-productions of mobility – whether ‘real’ or imagined/envisioned – will thus yield important lessons for the historical understanding of inclusion and exclusion in today’s Europe.
Summary
This project intends to study intercultural connections in contemporary Europe, engaging both native and ‘new’ Europeans. These connections are woven through the faculties of embodied subjects – memory, visuality and mobility – and concern the movement of people, ideas and images across the borders of European nation-states. These faculties are connected with that of affect, an increasingly important concept in history and the social sciences. Memory will be understood not only as oral or direct memory, but also as cultural memory, embodied in various cultural products. Our study aims to understand new forms of European identity, as these develop in an increasingly diasporic world. Europe today is not only a key site of immigration, after having been for centuries an area of emigration, but also a crucial point of arrival in a global network designed by mobile human beings.
Three parts will make up the project. The first will engage with bodies, their gendered dimension, performative capacities and connection to place. It will explore the ways certain bodies are ‘emplaced’ as ‘European’, while others are marked as alien, and contrast these discourses with the counter-narratives by visual artists. The second part will extend further the reflection on the role of the visual arts in challenging an emergent ‘Fortress Europe’ but also in re-imagining the memory of European colonialism. The work of some key artists will be shown to students in Italy and the Netherlands, both recent migrants and ‘natives’, creating an ‘induced reception’. The final part of the project will look at alternative imaginations of Europe, investigating the oral memories and ‘mental maps’ created by two migrant communities in Europe: from Peru and from the Horn of Africa.
Examining the heterogeneous micro-productions of mobility – whether ‘real’ or imagined/envisioned – will thus yield important lessons for the historical understanding of inclusion and exclusion in today’s Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 488 501 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31
Project acronym CHINESE EMPIRE
Project China and the Historical Sociology of Empire
Researcher (PI) Hilde Godelieve Dominique Ghislena De Weerdt
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2011-StG_20101124
Summary This project revisits a major question in world history: how can we explain the continuity of the Chinese Empire. Moving beyond the comparison of early world empires (China and Rome) to explain the different courses Chinese and European history have taken, this project aims to assess the importance of political communication in the maintenance of empire in the last millennium. The core questions are twofold: 1) How can the continuity of empire in the Chinese case be best explained? 2) Does the nature and extent of political communication networks, measured through the frequency and multiplexity of information exchange ties, play a critical role in the reconstitution and maintenance of empire? Its methodology is based on the conviction that an investigation of the nature and extent of political communication in imperial Chinese society should include a systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of the rich commentary on current affairs in correspondence and notebooks. By combining multi-faceted digital analyses of relatively large corpora of texts with an intellectually ambitious research agenda, this project will both radically transform our understanding of the history of Chinese political culture and inspire wide-ranging methodological innovation across the humanities.
Summary
This project revisits a major question in world history: how can we explain the continuity of the Chinese Empire. Moving beyond the comparison of early world empires (China and Rome) to explain the different courses Chinese and European history have taken, this project aims to assess the importance of political communication in the maintenance of empire in the last millennium. The core questions are twofold: 1) How can the continuity of empire in the Chinese case be best explained? 2) Does the nature and extent of political communication networks, measured through the frequency and multiplexity of information exchange ties, play a critical role in the reconstitution and maintenance of empire? Its methodology is based on the conviction that an investigation of the nature and extent of political communication in imperial Chinese society should include a systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of the rich commentary on current affairs in correspondence and notebooks. By combining multi-faceted digital analyses of relatively large corpora of texts with an intellectually ambitious research agenda, this project will both radically transform our understanding of the history of Chinese political culture and inspire wide-ranging methodological innovation across the humanities.
Max ERC Funding
1 432 797 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2017-08-31
Project acronym CME
Project Concurrency Made Easy
Researcher (PI) Bertrand Philippe Meyer
Host Institution (HI) POLITECNICO DI MILANO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2011-ADG_20110209
Summary The “Concurrency Made Easy” project is an attempt to achieve a conceptual breakthrough on the most daunting challenge in information technology today: mastering concurrency. Concurrency, once a specialized technique for experts, is forcing itself onto the entire IT community because of a disruptive phenomenon: the “end of Moore’s law as we know it”. Increases in performance can no longer happen through raw hardware speed, but only through concurrency, as in multicore architectures. Concurrency is also critical for networking, cloud computing and the progress of natural sciences. Software support for these advances lags, mired in concepts from the 1960s such as semaphores. Existing formal models are hard to apply in practice. Incremental progress is not sufficient; neither are techniques that place the burden on programmers, who cannot all be expected to become concurrency experts. The CME project attempts a major shift on the side of the supporting technology: languages, formal models, verification techniques. The core idea of the CME project is to make concurrency easy for programmers, by building on established ideas of modern programming methodology (object technology, Design by Contract) shifting the concurrency difficulties to the internals of the model and implementation.
The project includes the following elements.
1. Sound conceptual model for concurrency. The starting point is the influential previous work of the PI: concepts of object-oriented design, particularly Design by Contract, and the SCOOP concurrency model.
2. Reference implementation, integrated into an IDE.
3. Performance analysis.
4. Theory and formal basis, including full semantics.
5. Proof techniques, compatible with proof techniques for the sequential part.
6. Complementary verification techniques such as concurrent testing.
7. Library of concurrency components and examples.
8. Publication, including a major textbook on concurrency.
Summary
The “Concurrency Made Easy” project is an attempt to achieve a conceptual breakthrough on the most daunting challenge in information technology today: mastering concurrency. Concurrency, once a specialized technique for experts, is forcing itself onto the entire IT community because of a disruptive phenomenon: the “end of Moore’s law as we know it”. Increases in performance can no longer happen through raw hardware speed, but only through concurrency, as in multicore architectures. Concurrency is also critical for networking, cloud computing and the progress of natural sciences. Software support for these advances lags, mired in concepts from the 1960s such as semaphores. Existing formal models are hard to apply in practice. Incremental progress is not sufficient; neither are techniques that place the burden on programmers, who cannot all be expected to become concurrency experts. The CME project attempts a major shift on the side of the supporting technology: languages, formal models, verification techniques. The core idea of the CME project is to make concurrency easy for programmers, by building on established ideas of modern programming methodology (object technology, Design by Contract) shifting the concurrency difficulties to the internals of the model and implementation.
The project includes the following elements.
1. Sound conceptual model for concurrency. The starting point is the influential previous work of the PI: concepts of object-oriented design, particularly Design by Contract, and the SCOOP concurrency model.
2. Reference implementation, integrated into an IDE.
3. Performance analysis.
4. Theory and formal basis, including full semantics.
5. Proof techniques, compatible with proof techniques for the sequential part.
6. Complementary verification techniques such as concurrent testing.
7. Library of concurrency components and examples.
8. Publication, including a major textbook on concurrency.
Max ERC Funding
2 482 957 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2018-09-30
Project acronym CONSOLIDATING EMPIRE
Project Consolidating Empire: Reconstructing Hegemonic Practices of the Middle Assyrian Empire at the Late Bronze Age Fortified Estate of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, ca. 1230 – 1180 BC
Researcher (PI) Bleda Serge During
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2011-StG_20101124
Summary The origins of imperialism, a socio-military system in which hegemony is achieved over alien territories, are poorly investigated. This applies in particular to how imperial strategies affected local communities. This project will investigate the hegemonic practices of one of the earliest stable empires: that of the Assyrians, by focussing on the Late Bronze Age fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad, ca. 1230-1180 BC.
The Assyrians created a network of strongholds in conquered territories to consolidate their hegemony. The fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad is the only extensively investigated of these Assyrian settlements. This settlement is both small and well preserved and has been completely excavated. The complete plan facilitates a study of the spatial properties of this fortress and how it structured interactions. Further, the estate contained a wealth of in situ finds, which allow for a reconstruction of activity patterns in the settlement. Finally, over 400 cuneiform tablets were found which shed light on the local social and economic situation and the broader imperial context.
This project will provide a bottom up perspective on the Assyrian Empire. Elements of the Tell Sabi Abyad estate that will be investigated include: spatial characteristics; activity areas; the agricultural economy; and the surrounding landscape. Further, data from the Middle Assyrian Empire at large will be reconsidered, in order to achieve a better understanding of how this empire was constituted. This project is innovative because: it investigates a spatial continuum ranging from room to empire; brings together types of data usually investigated in isolation, such as texts and artifacts; will involve the use of novel techniques; and will investigate the short term normally beyond the scope of archaeology. The research will contribute to the cross-cultural issue of how hegemonic control is achieved in alien territories, and add to our understanding of early empires.
Summary
The origins of imperialism, a socio-military system in which hegemony is achieved over alien territories, are poorly investigated. This applies in particular to how imperial strategies affected local communities. This project will investigate the hegemonic practices of one of the earliest stable empires: that of the Assyrians, by focussing on the Late Bronze Age fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad, ca. 1230-1180 BC.
The Assyrians created a network of strongholds in conquered territories to consolidate their hegemony. The fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad is the only extensively investigated of these Assyrian settlements. This settlement is both small and well preserved and has been completely excavated. The complete plan facilitates a study of the spatial properties of this fortress and how it structured interactions. Further, the estate contained a wealth of in situ finds, which allow for a reconstruction of activity patterns in the settlement. Finally, over 400 cuneiform tablets were found which shed light on the local social and economic situation and the broader imperial context.
This project will provide a bottom up perspective on the Assyrian Empire. Elements of the Tell Sabi Abyad estate that will be investigated include: spatial characteristics; activity areas; the agricultural economy; and the surrounding landscape. Further, data from the Middle Assyrian Empire at large will be reconsidered, in order to achieve a better understanding of how this empire was constituted. This project is innovative because: it investigates a spatial continuum ranging from room to empire; brings together types of data usually investigated in isolation, such as texts and artifacts; will involve the use of novel techniques; and will investigate the short term normally beyond the scope of archaeology. The research will contribute to the cross-cultural issue of how hegemonic control is achieved in alien territories, and add to our understanding of early empires.
Max ERC Funding
1 191 127 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31
Project acronym COORDINATINGforLIFE
Project Coordinating for life. Success and failure of Western European societies in coping with rural hazards and disasters, 1300-1800
Researcher (PI) Balthassar Jozef Paul (Bas) Van Bavel
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary Societies in past and present are regularly confronted with major hazards, which sometimes have disastrous effects. Some societies are successful in preventing these effects and buffering threats, or they recover quickly, while others prove highly vulnerable. Why is this?
Increasingly it is clear that disasters are not merely natural events, and also that wealth and technology alone are not adequate to prevent them. Rather, hazards and disasters are social occurrences as well, and they form a tough test for the organizational capacities of a society, both in mitigation and recovery. This project targets a main element of this capacity, namely: the way societies have organized the exchange, allocation and use of resources. It aims to explain why some societies do well in preventing or remedying disasters through these institutional arrangements and others not.
In order to do so, this project analyses four key variables: the mix of coordination systems available within that society, its degree of autarky, economic equity and political equality. The recent literature on historical and present-day disasters suggests these factors as possible causes of success or failure of institutional arrangements in their confrontation with hazards, but their discussion remains largely descriptive and they have never been systematically analyzed.
This research project offers such a systematic investigation, using rural societies in Western Europe in the period 1300-1800 - with their variety of socio-economic characteristics - as a testing ground. The historical perspective enables us to compare widely differing cases, also over the long run, and to test for the variables chosen, in order to isolate the determining factors in the resilience of different societies. By using the opportunities offered by history in this way, we will increase our insight into the relative performance of societies and gain a better understanding of a critical determinant of human wellbeing.
Summary
Societies in past and present are regularly confronted with major hazards, which sometimes have disastrous effects. Some societies are successful in preventing these effects and buffering threats, or they recover quickly, while others prove highly vulnerable. Why is this?
Increasingly it is clear that disasters are not merely natural events, and also that wealth and technology alone are not adequate to prevent them. Rather, hazards and disasters are social occurrences as well, and they form a tough test for the organizational capacities of a society, both in mitigation and recovery. This project targets a main element of this capacity, namely: the way societies have organized the exchange, allocation and use of resources. It aims to explain why some societies do well in preventing or remedying disasters through these institutional arrangements and others not.
In order to do so, this project analyses four key variables: the mix of coordination systems available within that society, its degree of autarky, economic equity and political equality. The recent literature on historical and present-day disasters suggests these factors as possible causes of success or failure of institutional arrangements in their confrontation with hazards, but their discussion remains largely descriptive and they have never been systematically analyzed.
This research project offers such a systematic investigation, using rural societies in Western Europe in the period 1300-1800 - with their variety of socio-economic characteristics - as a testing ground. The historical perspective enables us to compare widely differing cases, also over the long run, and to test for the variables chosen, in order to isolate the determining factors in the resilience of different societies. By using the opportunities offered by history in this way, we will increase our insight into the relative performance of societies and gain a better understanding of a critical determinant of human wellbeing.
Max ERC Funding
2 227 326 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym EINITE
Project "Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800"
Researcher (PI) Guido Alfani
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2011-StG_20101124
Summary "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."
Summary
"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."
Max ERC Funding
995 400 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2016-12-31
Project acronym MULTITHERMAN
Project Multiscale Thermal Management of Computing Systems
Researcher (PI) Luca Benini
Host Institution (HI) ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2011-ADG_20110209
Summary As computing platforms evolve into heterogeneous, 3D-integrated many-cores, increasing performance per unit area (or volume) comes unavoidably with growing power density, which becomes heat, leading to degradation, acceleration of chip aging and increase in cooling costs. Thermal dissipation is difficult to control at the micro-scale, where typically spatial and temporal power gradients are orders-of-magnitude higher than at the macro-scale.
MultiThermMan will move beyond the unsustainable worst-case design practices adopted in traditional thermal planning and reactive thermal management. We propose to integrate thermal-aware platform design, thermal control with workload management and shaping in a distributed, multi-scale strategy. This would enable to dynamically adjust the operating mode and active cooling control of each component in complex computing platforms to achieve the highest performance compatible with temperature constraints. The development of a synergistic performance, power and thermal management strategy requires major breakthroughs in several areas, namely architectures, run-time systems, resource management middleware, code optimization tools and programming models. To meet this challenge, MultiThermMan will bring together concepts and techniques from several disciplines: computer architecture and circuits, control theory, combinatorial and continuous optimization. statistical model-building and artificial intelligence. Results will be demonstrated on physical and virtual prototypes, proving practical applicability and relevance for industrial applications.
Summary
As computing platforms evolve into heterogeneous, 3D-integrated many-cores, increasing performance per unit area (or volume) comes unavoidably with growing power density, which becomes heat, leading to degradation, acceleration of chip aging and increase in cooling costs. Thermal dissipation is difficult to control at the micro-scale, where typically spatial and temporal power gradients are orders-of-magnitude higher than at the macro-scale.
MultiThermMan will move beyond the unsustainable worst-case design practices adopted in traditional thermal planning and reactive thermal management. We propose to integrate thermal-aware platform design, thermal control with workload management and shaping in a distributed, multi-scale strategy. This would enable to dynamically adjust the operating mode and active cooling control of each component in complex computing platforms to achieve the highest performance compatible with temperature constraints. The development of a synergistic performance, power and thermal management strategy requires major breakthroughs in several areas, namely architectures, run-time systems, resource management middleware, code optimization tools and programming models. To meet this challenge, MultiThermMan will bring together concepts and techniques from several disciplines: computer architecture and circuits, control theory, combinatorial and continuous optimization. statistical model-building and artificial intelligence. Results will be demonstrated on physical and virtual prototypes, proving practical applicability and relevance for industrial applications.
Max ERC Funding
2 483 397 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2018-03-31
Project acronym QPROGRESS
Project "Progress in quantum computing: Algorithms, communication, and applications"
Researcher (PI) Ronald De Wolf
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING CENTRUM VOOR WISKUNDE EN INFORMATICA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "Quantum computing combines computer science, physics and mathematics to fundamentally speed up computation using effects from quantum physics. Starting in the early 1980s with Feynman and Deutsch, and gaining momentum in the 1990s with the algorithms of Shor and Grover, this very interdisciplinary area has potentially far reaching consequences. While a large-scale quantum computer has not been built yet, experimenters are getting more optimistic: a recent prediction is that it will take another 10-15 years.
However, the tasks where such a quantum computer would be able to significantly outperform classical computers are still quite limited, which lends urgency to finding new applications. This proposal will find more such tasks, and produce new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of quantum computing. It is divided into three workpackages:
1. Algorithms & complexity. Find new quantum algorithms that are more efficient than the best classical algorithms, for example for matrix multiplication and graph problems. Extend our knowledge of the ultimate limitations of quantum algorithms, and possible parallelization (which has barely been studied so far).
2. Quantum communication. Communication complexity analyzes the amount of communication needed to solve distributed computational tasks, where separate parties each hold part of the input. Find new
distributed problems where quantum communication outperforms classical communication, and explore links with fundamental physics issues like the role of entanglement and Bell-inequality violations.
3. Classical applications. Apply the newly developed mathematical tools of quantum computing to analyze problems in other areas, as we recently did for linear programs for the traveling salesman problem. This
third workpackage will have impact regardless of progress in building a quantum computer.
The PI is one of the world’s top researchers in each of these three areas."
Summary
"Quantum computing combines computer science, physics and mathematics to fundamentally speed up computation using effects from quantum physics. Starting in the early 1980s with Feynman and Deutsch, and gaining momentum in the 1990s with the algorithms of Shor and Grover, this very interdisciplinary area has potentially far reaching consequences. While a large-scale quantum computer has not been built yet, experimenters are getting more optimistic: a recent prediction is that it will take another 10-15 years.
However, the tasks where such a quantum computer would be able to significantly outperform classical computers are still quite limited, which lends urgency to finding new applications. This proposal will find more such tasks, and produce new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of quantum computing. It is divided into three workpackages:
1. Algorithms & complexity. Find new quantum algorithms that are more efficient than the best classical algorithms, for example for matrix multiplication and graph problems. Extend our knowledge of the ultimate limitations of quantum algorithms, and possible parallelization (which has barely been studied so far).
2. Quantum communication. Communication complexity analyzes the amount of communication needed to solve distributed computational tasks, where separate parties each hold part of the input. Find new
distributed problems where quantum communication outperforms classical communication, and explore links with fundamental physics issues like the role of entanglement and Bell-inequality violations.
3. Classical applications. Apply the newly developed mathematical tools of quantum computing to analyze problems in other areas, as we recently did for linear programs for the traveling salesman problem. This
third workpackage will have impact regardless of progress in building a quantum computer.
The PI is one of the world’s top researchers in each of these three areas."
Max ERC Funding
1 453 700 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym REDHIS
Project Rediscovering the hidden structure. A new appreciation of Juristic texts and Patterns of thought in Late Antiquity
Researcher (PI) Dario Giuseppe Mantovani
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PAVIA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary The aim of REDHIS is to write a new history of the Roman legal culture in Late Antiquity. The project will focus on the elements which display the persistence of a legal culture of high level. Two are the main aspects that will be researched. First, a comprehensive understanding of legal culture has to include the study of the legal texts’ manuscript transmission. Although in Late Antiquity few works were composed anew, the books of the main classical jurists of previous centuries were copied, read and studied in the school and in the courts. A full appreciation of the remains of such copies in papyri and parchment – which has been neglected here so far – will explain how the lawyers of the 4th and 5th centuries AD kept in touch with the achievements of previous jurists. Secondly, Late Antiquity is considered to be the epoch of the emperors’ legislation, in opposition to the previous epoch dominated by private jurists. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the motivations of the emperors’ decisions will show the mental proceeding of the lawgivers and, at the same time, will show a deep relationship with the works of the roman jurists.
The project will be developed, under the direction of the PI, by three research teams, with a strong cross-disciplinary composition. A wide collection of papyri and parchments will be edited, as a basis for a new interpretation, which will be the second part of the project. REDHIS will organize a series of workshops with the participation of scholars from different European countries. A final international conference on the legal culture in Late Antiquity will disseminate into the scientific community the results of the research.
Four publications will be produced: a collection of the jurists' writings that have come down to us in direct tradition, i.e. outside the Digest; a monograph on the history and geography of Late Antique legal literature; a book on Justinian as a lawgiver; the proceedings of the international conference.
Summary
The aim of REDHIS is to write a new history of the Roman legal culture in Late Antiquity. The project will focus on the elements which display the persistence of a legal culture of high level. Two are the main aspects that will be researched. First, a comprehensive understanding of legal culture has to include the study of the legal texts’ manuscript transmission. Although in Late Antiquity few works were composed anew, the books of the main classical jurists of previous centuries were copied, read and studied in the school and in the courts. A full appreciation of the remains of such copies in papyri and parchment – which has been neglected here so far – will explain how the lawyers of the 4th and 5th centuries AD kept in touch with the achievements of previous jurists. Secondly, Late Antiquity is considered to be the epoch of the emperors’ legislation, in opposition to the previous epoch dominated by private jurists. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the motivations of the emperors’ decisions will show the mental proceeding of the lawgivers and, at the same time, will show a deep relationship with the works of the roman jurists.
The project will be developed, under the direction of the PI, by three research teams, with a strong cross-disciplinary composition. A wide collection of papyri and parchments will be edited, as a basis for a new interpretation, which will be the second part of the project. REDHIS will organize a series of workshops with the participation of scholars from different European countries. A final international conference on the legal culture in Late Antiquity will disseminate into the scientific community the results of the research.
Four publications will be produced: a collection of the jurists' writings that have come down to us in direct tradition, i.e. outside the Digest; a monograph on the history and geography of Late Antique legal literature; a book on Justinian as a lawgiver; the proceedings of the international conference.
Max ERC Funding
1 396 980 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2020-01-31
