ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This proposal targets the emerging frontier research field of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems along with several innovative and somewhat unconventional applications of such systems. The use of arrays of transmitters and receivers will have a profound impact on future medical imaging/therapy systems, radar systems, and radio communication networks. Multiple transmitters provide a tremendous versatility and allow waveforms to be adapted temporally and spatially to environmental conditions. This is useful for individually tailored illumination of human tissue in biomedical imaging or ultrasound therapy. In radar systems, multiple transmit beams can be formed simultaneously via separate waveform designs allowing accurate target classification. In a wireless communication system, multiple communication signals can be directed to one or more users at the same time on the same frequency carrier. In addition, multiple receivers can be used in the above applications to provide increased detection performance, interference rejection, and improved estimation accuracy. The joint modelling, analysis, and design of these multidimensional transmit and receive schemes form the core of this research proposal. Ultimately, our research aims at developing the fundamental tools that will allow the design of wireless communication systems with an order-of-magnitude higher capacity at a lower cost than today; of ultrasound therapy systems maximizing delivered power while reducing treatment duration and unwanted illumination; and of distributed aperture multi-beam radars allowing more effective target location, identification, and classification. Europe has several successful industries that are active in biomedical imaging/therapy, radar systems, and wireless communications. The future success of these sectors critically depends on the ability to innovate and integrate new technology.

1 872 720 €

Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2013-12-31

Given the increasing scarcity of suitable land for development, soil strengthening technologies have emerged in the past decade and go hand-in-hand with the implementation of the majority of foundation solutions. The goal is to alter the soil structure and its mechanical properties for ultimately securing the integrity of structures. The BIOGEOS project puts the focus on bio-mediated soil improvement, which falls within the broader framework of multi-physical processes in geo-mechanics. The goal of the project is to engineer a novel, natural material under controlled processes, for ultimately providing solutions to real problems in the geo-engineering and geo-energy fields by advancing knowledge around complex multi-physical phenomena in porous media. The bio-cemented geo-material, which is produced by carefully integrating the metabolic activity of native soil bacteria, is produced through the bio-mineralization of calcite bonds, which act as natural cementation for endowing the subsurface with real cohesion and increased resistance. A principal characteristic of the project is its multi-scale approach through advanced experimentation to identify the main physical mechanisms involved in the formation of the bio-mineralized bonds and their behaviour under mechanical loading. The development of such a bio-mediated technology will lead to innovative applications in a series of engineering problems such as the restoration of weak foundations, seismic retrofitting, erosion protection, and the enhancement of heat transfer in thermo-active geo-structures. The project foresees to adopt multiple loading conditions for its laboratory characterization and ultimately pass to the large experimental scale. BIOGEOS further aims to provide new knowledge around the way we perceive materials in relation with their micro-structure by implementing state-of-the-art inspection of the material’s structure in 3D space and subsequent prediction of their behaviour through numerical tools.

2 497 115 €

Start date: 2018-11-01, End date: 2024-04-30

Early vertebrate evolution involved a series of drastic structural reorganisations as new features were added and elaborated. The fossil record illuminates this evolutionary history more directly than inferences from the diversity of living forms, but the fossils usually consist only of bones whereas many of the most important and interesting changes occurred in the soft anatomy. Traditional approaches to reconstructing the musculature and other soft tissues of fossil vertebrates rely on subjective tools, like the visual identification of rough bone textures thought to indicate muscle attachments, and generally leave a lot to be desired. Here I propose a wholly novel and radically more objective approach to the identification of soft-tissue contacts, using holotomographic synchrotron CT at sub-micron resolutions to identify these contacts by the three-dimensional micro-architecture of the bone. A pilot study has already shown that such scans (performed at the ESRF synchrotron facility in Grenoble) are capable of imaging key features such as arrested growth surfaces and probable Sharpey s fibres in 380 million year old fossils. We will undertake a systematic review of the three-dimensional bone micro-architectures associated with different soft-tissue contacts in living vertebrates, and the use this as a key to reconstruct the soft-tissue contacts on fossil bones with unprecedented accuracy. This will permit us to produce far more reliable reconstructions of the soft anatomy than has hitherto been possible. Our findings will inform other areas of palaentology, particularly functional morphology, and will also be of great importance to evolutionary developmental biology.

1 046 782 €

Start date: 2009-04-01, End date: 2014-03-31

How could networks of innovative cities contribute to the solution of humanity’s existential problems? Given the on-going digital revolution and our present-day sustainability challenges, we have to reinvent the way cities are operated. We propose that the requirement of organizing cities in a more resilient way implies the need for more decentralized solutions, based on digitally assisted self-organization, and that this concept is also compatible with sustainability requirements and stronger democratic participation. The CoCi proposal will investigate, whether such a decentralized, participatory approach could compete with a fully centralized approach in terms of efficiency and sustainability, or perform even better than that. This requires in particular to figure out, how distributed co-creation processes can be coordinated and lifted to a professional level in a scalable way. The main questions of the CoCi proposal are: How could more participatory smart cities work, and how can they meet the requirements of being more efficient, sustainable and resilient? What are their risks and benefits compared with centralized approaches? How could digital societies fitting our culture, for example, based on values such as freedom, equality and solidarity (liberté, égalité, fraternité) look like, and what performance can be expected from them? The CoCi proposal brings together two research directions: first, the automation of mobility solutions based on the Internet of Things and Machine Learning approaches, as they have been pursued within the “smart cities” paradigm and, second, novel collaborative approaches as they have been recently discussed under labels such as participatory resilience, digital democracy, City Olympics, open source urbanism, and the “socio-ecological finance system”.

2 499 500 €

Start date: 2020-10-01, End date: 2025-09-30