Project acronym CODAMODA
Project Controlling Data Movement in the Digital Age
Researcher (PI) Aggelos Kiayias
Host Institution (HI) ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Nowadays human intellectual product is increasingly produced and disseminated solely in digital form. The capability of digital data for effortless reproduction and transfer has lead to a true revolution that impacts every aspect of human creativity. Nevertheless, as with every technological revolution, this digital media revolution comes with a dark side that, if left unaddressed, it will limit its impact and may counter its potential advantages. In particular, the way we produce and disseminate digital content today does not lend itself to controlling the way data move and change. It turns out that the power of being digital can be a double-edged sword: the ease of production, dissemination and editing also implies the ease of misappropriation, plagiarism and improper modification.
To counter the above problems, the proposed research activity will focus on the development of a new generation of enabling cryptographic technologies that have the power to facilitate the appropriate controls for data movement. Using the techniques developed in this project it will be feasible to build digital content distribution systems where content producers will have the full possible control on the dissemination of their intellectual product, while at the same time the rights of the end-users in terms of privacy and fair use can be preserved. The PI is uniquely qualified to carry out the proposed research activity as he has extensive prior experience in making innovations in the area of digital content distribution as well as in the management of research projects. As part of the project activities, the PI will establish the CODAMODA laboratory in the University of Athens and will seek opportunities for technology transfer and interdisciplinary work with the legal science community.
Summary
Nowadays human intellectual product is increasingly produced and disseminated solely in digital form. The capability of digital data for effortless reproduction and transfer has lead to a true revolution that impacts every aspect of human creativity. Nevertheless, as with every technological revolution, this digital media revolution comes with a dark side that, if left unaddressed, it will limit its impact and may counter its potential advantages. In particular, the way we produce and disseminate digital content today does not lend itself to controlling the way data move and change. It turns out that the power of being digital can be a double-edged sword: the ease of production, dissemination and editing also implies the ease of misappropriation, plagiarism and improper modification.
To counter the above problems, the proposed research activity will focus on the development of a new generation of enabling cryptographic technologies that have the power to facilitate the appropriate controls for data movement. Using the techniques developed in this project it will be feasible to build digital content distribution systems where content producers will have the full possible control on the dissemination of their intellectual product, while at the same time the rights of the end-users in terms of privacy and fair use can be preserved. The PI is uniquely qualified to carry out the proposed research activity as he has extensive prior experience in making innovations in the area of digital content distribution as well as in the management of research projects. As part of the project activities, the PI will establish the CODAMODA laboratory in the University of Athens and will seek opportunities for technology transfer and interdisciplinary work with the legal science community.
Max ERC Funding
1 212 960 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2017-03-31
Project acronym MINATRAN
Project Probing the Micro-Nano Transition: Theoretical and Experimental Foundations, Simulations and Applications
Researcher (PI) Aikaterini Aifanti
Host Institution (HI) ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2007-StG
Summary The objective is to develop a robust multifunctional framework/probe for capturing the evolution of deformation and failure in a variety of processes at the micro-nano transition regime. An interdisciplinary approach will be pursued based on fundamental theory and experiment, in conjunction with multiscale simulations for micro/nanotechnology applications. The approach is unconventional as it ventures to extend continuum mechanics down to the micro/nano regime and verify this through nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy techniques. It is also unique as the new phenomenology introduced for establishing this extension (higher order gradients accounting for microscopic processes and interfacial energy terms accounting for nanoscopic phenomena) will be substantiated through hybrid (ab initio-atomistic-defect-finite element) simulations. The framework will be employed to consider fracture and size effects in a number of micro-nano scale transition configurations ranging from nanograined aggregates and nanolayered structures to nanotubes and micropillars, and from Li-ion battery electrodes to bioactive interfaces. Other micro/nano objects such as quantum dots, nanowires and NEMS/MEMS devices, as well as biomolecular microcrystalline membranes leading to living cell division will be considered. In a sense this “scale” transition theory is reminiscent in scope to Landau’s “phase” transition theory where a variety of different physical phenomena can be treated within a common framework. This optimism stems from the PI’s previous success with this approach, as well as Smalley’s remark that the “laws of continuum mechanics are amazingly robust for treating even intrinsically discrete objects only a few atoms in diameter”. A good mix of young researchers and mature scholars will be employed, thus connecting people and ideas through joint publications and scholarly activities in a critical area of fundamental and applied research.
Summary
The objective is to develop a robust multifunctional framework/probe for capturing the evolution of deformation and failure in a variety of processes at the micro-nano transition regime. An interdisciplinary approach will be pursued based on fundamental theory and experiment, in conjunction with multiscale simulations for micro/nanotechnology applications. The approach is unconventional as it ventures to extend continuum mechanics down to the micro/nano regime and verify this through nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy techniques. It is also unique as the new phenomenology introduced for establishing this extension (higher order gradients accounting for microscopic processes and interfacial energy terms accounting for nanoscopic phenomena) will be substantiated through hybrid (ab initio-atomistic-defect-finite element) simulations. The framework will be employed to consider fracture and size effects in a number of micro-nano scale transition configurations ranging from nanograined aggregates and nanolayered structures to nanotubes and micropillars, and from Li-ion battery electrodes to bioactive interfaces. Other micro/nano objects such as quantum dots, nanowires and NEMS/MEMS devices, as well as biomolecular microcrystalline membranes leading to living cell division will be considered. In a sense this “scale” transition theory is reminiscent in scope to Landau’s “phase” transition theory where a variety of different physical phenomena can be treated within a common framework. This optimism stems from the PI’s previous success with this approach, as well as Smalley’s remark that the “laws of continuum mechanics are amazingly robust for treating even intrinsically discrete objects only a few atoms in diameter”. A good mix of young researchers and mature scholars will be employed, thus connecting people and ideas through joint publications and scholarly activities in a critical area of fundamental and applied research.
Max ERC Funding
1 128 400 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-10-01, End date: 2013-09-30
Project acronym NGHCS
Project NGHCS: Creating the Next-Generation Mobile Human-Centered Systems
Researcher (PI) Vasiliki (Vana) Kalogeraki
Host Institution (HI) ATHENS UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS - RESEARCH CENTER
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2012-StG_20111012
Summary Advances in sensor networking and the availability of every day, low-cost sensor enabled devices has led to integrating sensors to instrument the physical world in a variety of economically vital sectors of agriculture, transportation, healthcare, critical infrastructures and emergency response. At the same time, social computing is now undergoing a major revolution: social networks, as exemplified by Twitter or Facebook, have significantly changed the way humans interact with one another. We are now entering a new era where people and systems are becoming increasingly integrated and this development is effectively leading us to large-scale mobile human-centered systems. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive framework to simplify the development of mobile human-centered systems, as well as make them predictable and reliable. Our work has the following research thrusts: First, we develop techniques for dealing efficiently with dynamic unpredictable factors that such complex systems face, including dynamic workloads, unpredictable occurrence of events, real-time demands of applications, as well as user changes and urban dynamics. To achieve this, we will investigate the use of mathematical models to control the behavior of the applications in the absence of perfect system models and a priori information on load and human usage patterns. Second, we will develop the foundations needed to meet the end-to-end timeliness and reliability demands for the range of distributed systems that we will consider by developing novel techniques at different layers of the distributed environment and studying the tradeoffs involved. Third, we will develop general techniques to push computation and data storage as much as possible to the mobile devices, and to integrate participatory sensing and crowdsourcing techniques. The outcome of the proposed work is expected to have significant impact on a wide variety of distributed systems application domains.
Summary
Advances in sensor networking and the availability of every day, low-cost sensor enabled devices has led to integrating sensors to instrument the physical world in a variety of economically vital sectors of agriculture, transportation, healthcare, critical infrastructures and emergency response. At the same time, social computing is now undergoing a major revolution: social networks, as exemplified by Twitter or Facebook, have significantly changed the way humans interact with one another. We are now entering a new era where people and systems are becoming increasingly integrated and this development is effectively leading us to large-scale mobile human-centered systems. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive framework to simplify the development of mobile human-centered systems, as well as make them predictable and reliable. Our work has the following research thrusts: First, we develop techniques for dealing efficiently with dynamic unpredictable factors that such complex systems face, including dynamic workloads, unpredictable occurrence of events, real-time demands of applications, as well as user changes and urban dynamics. To achieve this, we will investigate the use of mathematical models to control the behavior of the applications in the absence of perfect system models and a priori information on load and human usage patterns. Second, we will develop the foundations needed to meet the end-to-end timeliness and reliability demands for the range of distributed systems that we will consider by developing novel techniques at different layers of the distributed environment and studying the tradeoffs involved. Third, we will develop general techniques to push computation and data storage as much as possible to the mobile devices, and to integrate participatory sensing and crowdsourcing techniques. The outcome of the proposed work is expected to have significant impact on a wide variety of distributed systems application domains.
Max ERC Funding
960 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym OPN-IMMUNOREGULATION
Project Immune mechanisms of osteopontin-mediated protection in allergic airway disease
Researcher (PI) Vasiliki Panoutsakopoulou
Host Institution (HI) IDRYMA IATROVIOLOGIKON EREUNON AKADEMIAS ATHINON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS6, ERC-2009-StG
Summary In allergic asthma, an important health problem, disease is driven by allergen-specific Th2 immune responses. Differentiation of Th2 cells depends on their early interactions with antigen presenting cells, such as dendritic cells (DCs), and cytokines are crucial for this process. Osteopontin (Opn) was originally identified as an important cytokine for Th1 immunity and autoimmunity. Our group recently demonstrated that Opn is highly expressed in the lungs of asthmatic patients and of mice with Th2-mediated allergic airway inflammation. Our work revealed anti-allergic effects of Opn on airway disease during secondary pulmonary antigenic challenge mediated by regulation of DC subsets. In addition, intranasal administration of recombinant Opn during pulmonary exposure to the allergen protected mice from allergic airway disease suppressing all features of disease, recruitment of Th2 cells and allergen-specific Th2 responses. Our previous experiments, as well as preliminary studies presented in this proposal, point to an important novel immunoregulatory role for Opn in the Th2 setting. However, most aspects of the Opn-mediated immune mechanism of protection remain unclear. With this proposal, we aim at elucidating the immunoregulatory/protective mechanisms of Opn utilizing immunologic, molecular and genomic approaches as well as in vivo mouse models of allergic airway inflammation. We propose to investigate the mechanisms mediating Opn-effects on: (1) DC subsets and Treg cells that confer protection during pulmonary allergen challenge (2) recruitment and function of allergen-specific Th2 (generated during sensitization) as well as of newly-activated Th effector cells and their interactions during pulmonary allergen challenge and (3) antigenic tolerance induction in the Th2 setting. The studies proposed here will provide new insight into the biology of Opn-dependent regulation of DC subsets, Th2 responses and DC-T cell interactions opening new important questions in im
Summary
In allergic asthma, an important health problem, disease is driven by allergen-specific Th2 immune responses. Differentiation of Th2 cells depends on their early interactions with antigen presenting cells, such as dendritic cells (DCs), and cytokines are crucial for this process. Osteopontin (Opn) was originally identified as an important cytokine for Th1 immunity and autoimmunity. Our group recently demonstrated that Opn is highly expressed in the lungs of asthmatic patients and of mice with Th2-mediated allergic airway inflammation. Our work revealed anti-allergic effects of Opn on airway disease during secondary pulmonary antigenic challenge mediated by regulation of DC subsets. In addition, intranasal administration of recombinant Opn during pulmonary exposure to the allergen protected mice from allergic airway disease suppressing all features of disease, recruitment of Th2 cells and allergen-specific Th2 responses. Our previous experiments, as well as preliminary studies presented in this proposal, point to an important novel immunoregulatory role for Opn in the Th2 setting. However, most aspects of the Opn-mediated immune mechanism of protection remain unclear. With this proposal, we aim at elucidating the immunoregulatory/protective mechanisms of Opn utilizing immunologic, molecular and genomic approaches as well as in vivo mouse models of allergic airway inflammation. We propose to investigate the mechanisms mediating Opn-effects on: (1) DC subsets and Treg cells that confer protection during pulmonary allergen challenge (2) recruitment and function of allergen-specific Th2 (generated during sensitization) as well as of newly-activated Th effector cells and their interactions during pulmonary allergen challenge and (3) antigenic tolerance induction in the Th2 setting. The studies proposed here will provide new insight into the biology of Opn-dependent regulation of DC subsets, Th2 responses and DC-T cell interactions opening new important questions in im
Max ERC Funding
1 511 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-12-01, End date: 2015-11-30
Project acronym PPP
Project Protecting and Preserving Human Knowledge for Posterity
Researcher (PI) Dimitra-Isidora Mema Roussopoulou
Host Institution (HI) ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2011-StG_20101014
Summary "The amount and variety of content being published online is growing at an exceptional rate. Online publishing enables content to reach a much larger audience than paper publishing but offers no guarantee of long-term access to the content. This work investigates techniques for building a large, reliable peer-to-peer system for the preservation of online published material. The system consists of a large number of low-cost, persistent web caches (peers) that cooperate to detect and repair damage by voting in ""opinion polls"" on the content of their cached documents. The peers are autonomous and mutually suspicious. Project activities include 1) investigating defenses against adversaries whose goal is to attack the preservation process; 2) performing a foundational study of the interconnections between identity, trust, and reputation models in peer-to-peer systems; 3) investigating the use of estimates of peer diversity to increase the fault and attack tolerance of peer-to-peer systems; and 4) developing, analyzing, implementing, and testing new protocols that address the high frequency of updates of online government documents, the large volumes of scientific data, and the privacy concerns of sensitive medical data.
This work is being evaluated using a real testbed of over 200 libraries around the world with the support of publishers representing over 2000 titles. The broader impact of the work is that all electronic material preserved through the system including academic journals, government documents and web articles, and scientific and medical data will remain accessible to generations of citizens for both research and education purposes."
Summary
"The amount and variety of content being published online is growing at an exceptional rate. Online publishing enables content to reach a much larger audience than paper publishing but offers no guarantee of long-term access to the content. This work investigates techniques for building a large, reliable peer-to-peer system for the preservation of online published material. The system consists of a large number of low-cost, persistent web caches (peers) that cooperate to detect and repair damage by voting in ""opinion polls"" on the content of their cached documents. The peers are autonomous and mutually suspicious. Project activities include 1) investigating defenses against adversaries whose goal is to attack the preservation process; 2) performing a foundational study of the interconnections between identity, trust, and reputation models in peer-to-peer systems; 3) investigating the use of estimates of peer diversity to increase the fault and attack tolerance of peer-to-peer systems; and 4) developing, analyzing, implementing, and testing new protocols that address the high frequency of updates of online government documents, the large volumes of scientific data, and the privacy concerns of sensitive medical data.
This work is being evaluated using a real testbed of over 200 libraries around the world with the support of publishers representing over 2000 titles. The broader impact of the work is that all electronic material preserved through the system including academic journals, government documents and web articles, and scientific and medical data will remain accessible to generations of citizens for both research and education purposes."
Max ERC Funding
1 032 916 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-10-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym SPADE
Project Sophisticated Program Analysis, Declaratively
Researcher (PI) Ioannis Smaragdakis
Host Institution (HI) ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2012-StG_20111012
Summary Static program analysis is a fundamental computing challenge. We have recently demonstrated significant advantages from expressing analyses for Java declaratively, in the Datalog language. This means that the algorithm is in a form that resembles a pure logical specification, rather than a step-by-step definition of the execution. The declarative specification does not merely cover the main logic of the algorithm, but its entire implementation, including the handling of complex semantic features (such as native methods, reflection, threads) of the Java language. Surprisingly, the declarative specification can be made to execute up to an order of magnitude faster than the dominant pre-existing implementations of the same algorithms. Armed with this past experience, the SPADE project aims to develop a next-generation approach to the design and declarative implementation of static program analyses. This will include a) a substantially more flexible notion of context-sensitive analysis, which allows context to vary according to introspective observations; b) a flow-sensitive analysis framework that can be used as the basis for dataflow analysis; c) an approach to producing parallel implementations of analyses by exploiting the parallelism inherent in the declarative specification; d) an exploration of adapting analysis logic to multiple languages and paradigms, including C (using the LLVM infrastructure), functional languages (e.g., Scheme), and dynamic languages (notably, Javascript); e) client analyses algorithms (e.g., may-happen-in-parallel, bug finding analyses such as race and atomicity-violation detectors, etc.) expressed modularly over the underlying substrate of points-to analysis.
The work will have applications to multiple languages and a variety of analyses. Concretely, our precise and scalable analysis algorithms will enhance optimizing compilers, program analyzers for error detection, and program understanding tools.
Summary
Static program analysis is a fundamental computing challenge. We have recently demonstrated significant advantages from expressing analyses for Java declaratively, in the Datalog language. This means that the algorithm is in a form that resembles a pure logical specification, rather than a step-by-step definition of the execution. The declarative specification does not merely cover the main logic of the algorithm, but its entire implementation, including the handling of complex semantic features (such as native methods, reflection, threads) of the Java language. Surprisingly, the declarative specification can be made to execute up to an order of magnitude faster than the dominant pre-existing implementations of the same algorithms. Armed with this past experience, the SPADE project aims to develop a next-generation approach to the design and declarative implementation of static program analyses. This will include a) a substantially more flexible notion of context-sensitive analysis, which allows context to vary according to introspective observations; b) a flow-sensitive analysis framework that can be used as the basis for dataflow analysis; c) an approach to producing parallel implementations of analyses by exploiting the parallelism inherent in the declarative specification; d) an exploration of adapting analysis logic to multiple languages and paradigms, including C (using the LLVM infrastructure), functional languages (e.g., Scheme), and dynamic languages (notably, Javascript); e) client analyses algorithms (e.g., may-happen-in-parallel, bug finding analyses such as race and atomicity-violation detectors, etc.) expressed modularly over the underlying substrate of points-to analysis.
The work will have applications to multiple languages and a variety of analyses. Concretely, our precise and scalable analysis algorithms will enhance optimizing compilers, program analyzers for error detection, and program understanding tools.
Max ERC Funding
1 042 616 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2019-03-31
Project acronym TRICEPS
Project Time-resolved Ring-Cavity-Enhanced Polarization Spectroscopy: Breakthroughs in measurements of a) Atomic Parity Violation, b) Protein conformation and biosensing and c) surface and thin film dynamics
Researcher (PI) Theodore Peter Rakitzis
Host Institution (HI) FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE2, ERC-2007-StG
Summary Polarimetry is a crucial tool in both fundamental and applied physics, ranging from the measurement of parity nonconservation (PNC) in atoms, to the determination of biomolecule structure, and the probing of interfaces. These measurements tend to be extremely challenging as the change of the polarization of light is usually extremely small; typical differences in polarization states are of the order of 10^-5 to 10^-8. Current experimental techniques often require acquisition times of the order of seconds or, in the case of PNC, even many days, limiting the possibilities of time-resolved measurements. Here, I propose to develop optical-cavity-based techniques which will enhance measurements of the polarization sensitivity and/or the time-resolution by 3-6 orders of magnitude. Preliminary data from prototypes and feasibility studies are presented. I propose to demonstrate how these breakthroughs will revolutionize polarimetry, by addressing some of the most important multidisciplinary problems in fundamental physics, biophysics, and material science: a) Testing the limits of the Standard Model with atomic PNC measurements. Current PNC experiments, and more importantly theory, for cesium atoms are limited to precision of about 0.5%. The novel and robust experimental technique I am proposing here affords 4 orders-of-magnitude higher sensitivity, thus giving access to lighter atoms, where the theory can be better than 0.1%, for the most stringent test of the Standard Model, while seeking new physics. b) The measurement of protein folding dynamics. Highly sensitive time-resolved spectroscopic ellipsometry, providing novel dynamical information on protein folding: nanosecond resolved, position measurements of functional groups of surface proteins, which map out the time-dependent protein structure. c) Determination of thin film thickness and surface density with nanosecond resolution, for the study of processes such as laser ablation and polymer growth.
Summary
Polarimetry is a crucial tool in both fundamental and applied physics, ranging from the measurement of parity nonconservation (PNC) in atoms, to the determination of biomolecule structure, and the probing of interfaces. These measurements tend to be extremely challenging as the change of the polarization of light is usually extremely small; typical differences in polarization states are of the order of 10^-5 to 10^-8. Current experimental techniques often require acquisition times of the order of seconds or, in the case of PNC, even many days, limiting the possibilities of time-resolved measurements. Here, I propose to develop optical-cavity-based techniques which will enhance measurements of the polarization sensitivity and/or the time-resolution by 3-6 orders of magnitude. Preliminary data from prototypes and feasibility studies are presented. I propose to demonstrate how these breakthroughs will revolutionize polarimetry, by addressing some of the most important multidisciplinary problems in fundamental physics, biophysics, and material science: a) Testing the limits of the Standard Model with atomic PNC measurements. Current PNC experiments, and more importantly theory, for cesium atoms are limited to precision of about 0.5%. The novel and robust experimental technique I am proposing here affords 4 orders-of-magnitude higher sensitivity, thus giving access to lighter atoms, where the theory can be better than 0.1%, for the most stringent test of the Standard Model, while seeking new physics. b) The measurement of protein folding dynamics. Highly sensitive time-resolved spectroscopic ellipsometry, providing novel dynamical information on protein folding: nanosecond resolved, position measurements of functional groups of surface proteins, which map out the time-dependent protein structure. c) Determination of thin film thickness and surface density with nanosecond resolution, for the study of processes such as laser ablation and polymer growth.
Max ERC Funding
909 999 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2014-12-31
