ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

With the prevalence of mobile computing devices and the increasing availability of pervasive services, ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) is a reality for many people. This reality is generating opportunities for people to interact socially in new and richer ways, and to work more effectively in a variety of new environments. More generally, Ubicomp infrastructures – controlled by software – will determine users’ access to critical services. With these opportunities come higher risks of misuse by malicious agents. Therefore, the role and design of software for managing use and protecting against misuse is critical, and the engineering of software that is both functionally effective while safe guarding user assets from harm is a key challenge. Indeed the very nature of Ubicomp means that software must adapt to the changing needs of users and their environment, and, more critically, to the different threats to users’ security and privacy. ASAP proposes to radically re-conceptualise software engineering for Ubicomp in ways that are cognisant of the changing functional needs of users, of the changing threats to user assets, and of the changing relationships between them. We propose to deliver adaptive software capabilities for supporting users in managing their privacy requirements, and adaptive software capabilities to deliver secure software that underpin those requirements. A key novelty of our approach is its holistic treatment of security and human behaviour. To achieve this, it draws upon contributions from requirements engineering, security & privacy engineering, and human-computer interaction. Our aim is to contribute to software engineering that empowers and protects Ubicomp users. Underpinning our approach will be the development of representations of security and privacy problem structures that capture user requirements, the context in which those requirements arise, and the adaptive software that aims to meet those requirements.

2 499 041 €

Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30

Recent trends in computing have prompted users and organizations to store an increasingly large amount of sensitive data at third party locations in the cloud outside of their direct control. Storing data remotely poses an acute security threat as these data are outside our control and could potentially be accessed by untrusted parties. Indeed, the reality of these threats have been borne out by the Snowden leaks and hundreds of data breaches each year. In order to protect our data, we will need to encrypt it. Functional encryption is a novel paradigm for public-key encryption that enables both fine-grained access control and selective computation on encrypted data, as is necessary to protect big, complex data in the cloud. Functional encryption also enables searches on encrypted travel records and surveillance video as well as medical studies on encrypted medical records in a privacy-preserving manner; we can give out restricted secret keys that reveal only the outcome of specific searches and tests. These mechanisms allow us to maintain public safety without compromising on civil liberties, and to facilitate medical break-throughs without compromising on individual privacy. The goals of the aSCEND project are (i) to design pairing and lattice-based functional encryption that are more efficient and ultimately viable in practice; and (ii) to obtain a richer understanding of expressive functional encryption schemes and to push the boundaries from encrypting data to encrypting software. My long-term vision is the ubiquitous use of functional encryption to secure our data and our computation, just as public-key encryption is widely used today to secure our communication. Realizing this vision requires new advances in the foundations of functional encryption, which is the target of this project.

1 253 893 €

Start date: 2015-06-01, End date: 2020-05-31

Supramolecular assemblies – formed by the self-assembly of hundreds of protein subunits – are part of bacterial nanomachines involved in key cellular processes. Important examples in pathogenic bacteria are pili and type 3 secretion systems (T3SS) that mediate adhesion to host cells and injection of virulence proteins. Structure determination at atomic resolution of such assemblies by standard techniques such as X-ray crystallography or solution NMR is severely limited: Intact T3SSs or pili cannot be crystallized and are also inherently insoluble. Cryo-electron microscopy techniques have recently made it possible to obtain low- and medium-resolution models, but atomic details have not been accessible at the resolution obtained in these studies, leading sometimes to inaccurate models. I propose to use solid-state NMR (ssNMR) to fill this knowledge-gap. I could recently show that ssNMR on in vitro preparations of Salmonella T3SS needles constitutes a powerful approach to study the structure of this virulence factor. Our integrated approach also included results from electron microscopy and modeling as well as in vivo assays (Loquet et al., Nature 2012). This is the foundation of this application. I propose to extend ssNMR methodology to tackle the structures of even larger or more complex homo-oligomeric assemblies with up to 200 residues per monomeric subunit. We will apply such techniques to address the currently unknown 3D structures of type I pili and cytoskeletal bactofilin filaments. Furthermore, I want to develop strategies to directly study assemblies in a native-like setting. As a first application, I will study the 3D structure of T3SS needles when they are complemented with intact T3SSs purified from Salmonella or Shigella. The ultimate goal of this proposal is to establish ssNMR as a generally applicable method that allows solving the currently unknown structures of bacterial supramolecular assemblies at atomic resolution.

1 456 000 €

Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30

The goal of the research program, ASTROROT, is to significantly advance the knowledge of astrochemistry by exploring its molecular complexity and by discovering new molecule classes and key chemical processes in space. So far, mostly physical reasons were investigated for the observed variations in molecular abundances. We here propose to study the influence of chemistry on the molecular composition of the universe by combining unprecedentedly high-quality laboratory spectroscopy and pioneering telescope observations. Array telescopes provide new observations of rotational molecular emission, leading to an urgent need for microwave spectroscopic data of exotic molecules. We will use newly developed, unique broadband microwave spectrometers with the cold conditions of a molecular jet and the higher temperatures of a waveguide to mimic different interstellar conditions. Their key advantages are accurate transition intensities, tremendously reduced measurement times, and unique mixture compatibility. Our laboratory experiments will motivate and guide astronomic observations, and enable their interpretation. The expected results are • the exploration of molecular complexity by discovering new classes of molecules in space, • the detection of isotopologues that provide information about the stage of chemical evolution, • the generation of abundance maps of highly excited molecules to learn about their environment, • the identification of key intermediates in astrochemical reactions. The results will significantly foster and likely revolutionize our understanding of astrochemistry. The proposed research will go far beyond the state-of-the-art: We will use cutting-edge techniques both in the laboratory and at the telescope to greatly improve and speed the process of identifying molecular fingerprints. These techniques now enable studies at this important frontier of physics and chemistry that previously would have been prohibitively time-consuming or even impossible.

1 499 904 €

Start date: 2015-05-01, End date: 2020-04-30