Project acronym ALUNIF
Project Algorithms and Lower Bounds: A Unified Approach
Researcher (PI) Rahul Santhanam
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary One of the fundamental goals of theoretical computer science is to
understand the possibilities and limits of efficient computation. This
quest has two dimensions. The
theory of algorithms focuses on finding efficient solutions to
problems, while computational complexity theory aims to understand when
and why problems are hard to solve. These two areas have different
philosophies and use different sets of techniques. However, in recent
years there have been indications of deep and mysterious connections
between them.
In this project, we propose to explore and develop the connections between
algorithmic analysis and complexity lower bounds in a systematic way.
On the one hand, we plan to use complexity lower bound techniques as inspiration
to design new and improved algorithms for Satisfiability and other
NP-complete problems, as well as to analyze existing algorithms better.
On the other hand, we plan to strengthen implications yielding circuit
lower bounds from non-trivial algorithms for Satisfiability, and to derive
new circuit lower bounds using these stronger implications.
This project has potential for massive impact in both the areas of algorithms
and computational complexity. Improved algorithms for Satisfiability could lead
to improved SAT solvers, and the new analytical tools would lead to a better
understanding of existing heuristics. Complexity lower bound questions are
fundamental
but notoriously difficult, and new lower bounds would open the way to
unconditionally secure cryptographic protocols and derandomization of
probabilistic algorithms. More broadly, this project aims to initiate greater
dialogue between the two areas, with an exchange of ideas and techniques
which leads to accelerated progress in both, as well as a deeper understanding
of the nature of efficient computation.
Summary
One of the fundamental goals of theoretical computer science is to
understand the possibilities and limits of efficient computation. This
quest has two dimensions. The
theory of algorithms focuses on finding efficient solutions to
problems, while computational complexity theory aims to understand when
and why problems are hard to solve. These two areas have different
philosophies and use different sets of techniques. However, in recent
years there have been indications of deep and mysterious connections
between them.
In this project, we propose to explore and develop the connections between
algorithmic analysis and complexity lower bounds in a systematic way.
On the one hand, we plan to use complexity lower bound techniques as inspiration
to design new and improved algorithms for Satisfiability and other
NP-complete problems, as well as to analyze existing algorithms better.
On the other hand, we plan to strengthen implications yielding circuit
lower bounds from non-trivial algorithms for Satisfiability, and to derive
new circuit lower bounds using these stronger implications.
This project has potential for massive impact in both the areas of algorithms
and computational complexity. Improved algorithms for Satisfiability could lead
to improved SAT solvers, and the new analytical tools would lead to a better
understanding of existing heuristics. Complexity lower bound questions are
fundamental
but notoriously difficult, and new lower bounds would open the way to
unconditionally secure cryptographic protocols and derandomization of
probabilistic algorithms. More broadly, this project aims to initiate greater
dialogue between the two areas, with an exchange of ideas and techniques
which leads to accelerated progress in both, as well as a deeper understanding
of the nature of efficient computation.
Max ERC Funding
1 274 496 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym BAYES-KNOWLEDGE
Project Effective Bayesian Modelling with Knowledge before Data
Researcher (PI) Norman Fenton
Host Institution (HI) QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary This project aims to improve evidence-based decision-making. What makes it radical is that it plans to do this in situations (common for critical risk assessment problems) where there is little or even no data, and hence where traditional statistics cannot be used. To address this problem Bayesian analysis, which enables domain experts to supplement observed data with subjective probabilities, is normally used. As real-world problems typically involve multiple uncertain variables, Bayesian analysis is extended using a technique called Bayesian networks (BNs). But, despite many great benefits, BNs have been under-exploited, especially in areas where they offer the greatest potential for improvements (law, medicine and systems engineering). This is mainly because of widespread resistance to relying on subjective knowledge. To address this problem much current research assumes sufficient data are available to make the expert’s input minimal or even redundant; with such data it may be possible to ‘learn’ the underlying BN model. But this approach offers nothing when there is limited or no data. Even when ‘big’ data are available the resulting models may be superficially objective but fundamentally flawed as they fail to capture the underlying causal structure that only expert knowledge can provide.
Our solution is to develop a method to systemize the way expert driven causal BN models can be built and used effectively either in the absence of data or as a means of determining what future data is really required. The method involves a new way of framing problems and extensions to BN theory, notation and tools. Working with relevant domain experts, along with cognitive psychologists, our methods will be developed and tested experimentally on real-world critical decision-problems in medicine, law, forensics, and transport. As the work complements current data-driven approaches, it will lead to improved BN modelling both when there is extensive data as well as none.
Summary
This project aims to improve evidence-based decision-making. What makes it radical is that it plans to do this in situations (common for critical risk assessment problems) where there is little or even no data, and hence where traditional statistics cannot be used. To address this problem Bayesian analysis, which enables domain experts to supplement observed data with subjective probabilities, is normally used. As real-world problems typically involve multiple uncertain variables, Bayesian analysis is extended using a technique called Bayesian networks (BNs). But, despite many great benefits, BNs have been under-exploited, especially in areas where they offer the greatest potential for improvements (law, medicine and systems engineering). This is mainly because of widespread resistance to relying on subjective knowledge. To address this problem much current research assumes sufficient data are available to make the expert’s input minimal or even redundant; with such data it may be possible to ‘learn’ the underlying BN model. But this approach offers nothing when there is limited or no data. Even when ‘big’ data are available the resulting models may be superficially objective but fundamentally flawed as they fail to capture the underlying causal structure that only expert knowledge can provide.
Our solution is to develop a method to systemize the way expert driven causal BN models can be built and used effectively either in the absence of data or as a means of determining what future data is really required. The method involves a new way of framing problems and extensions to BN theory, notation and tools. Working with relevant domain experts, along with cognitive psychologists, our methods will be developed and tested experimentally on real-world critical decision-problems in medicine, law, forensics, and transport. As the work complements current data-driven approaches, it will lead to improved BN modelling both when there is extensive data as well as none.
Max ERC Funding
1 572 562 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2018-03-31
Project acronym BENELEX
Project Benefit-sharing for an equitable transition to the green economy - the role of law
Researcher (PI) Elisa Morgera
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Can benefit-sharing address the equity deficit within the green economy? This project aims to investigate benefit-sharing as an under-theorised and little-implemented regulatory approach to the equity concerns (disregard for the special circumstances of developing countries and of indigenous peoples and local communities) in transitioning to the green economy.
Although benefit-sharing is increasingly deployed in a variety of international environmental agreements and also in human rights and corporate accountability instruments, no comprehensive account exists of its conceptual and practical relevance to equitably address global environmental challenges. This project will be the first systematic evaluation of the conceptualisations and operationalisations of benefit-sharing as a tool for equitable change through the allocation among different stakeholders of economic and also socio-cultural and environmental advantages arising from natural resource use.
The project will combine a comparative study of international law with empirical legal research, and include an inter-disciplinary study integrating political sociology in a legal enquiry on the role of “biocultural community protocols” that articulate and implement benefit-sharing at the intersection of international, transnational, national and indigenous communities’ customary law (global environmental law).
The project aims to: 1. develop a comprehensive understanding of benefit-sharing in international law; 2. clarify whether and how benefit-sharing supports equity and the protection of human rights across key sectors of international environmental regulation (biodiversity, climate change, oceans, food and agriculture) that are seen as inter-related in the transition to the green economy; 3. understand the development of benefit-sharing in the context of global environmental law; and
4. clarify the role of transnational legal advisors (NGOs and bilateral cooperation partners) in the green economy.
Summary
Can benefit-sharing address the equity deficit within the green economy? This project aims to investigate benefit-sharing as an under-theorised and little-implemented regulatory approach to the equity concerns (disregard for the special circumstances of developing countries and of indigenous peoples and local communities) in transitioning to the green economy.
Although benefit-sharing is increasingly deployed in a variety of international environmental agreements and also in human rights and corporate accountability instruments, no comprehensive account exists of its conceptual and practical relevance to equitably address global environmental challenges. This project will be the first systematic evaluation of the conceptualisations and operationalisations of benefit-sharing as a tool for equitable change through the allocation among different stakeholders of economic and also socio-cultural and environmental advantages arising from natural resource use.
The project will combine a comparative study of international law with empirical legal research, and include an inter-disciplinary study integrating political sociology in a legal enquiry on the role of “biocultural community protocols” that articulate and implement benefit-sharing at the intersection of international, transnational, national and indigenous communities’ customary law (global environmental law).
The project aims to: 1. develop a comprehensive understanding of benefit-sharing in international law; 2. clarify whether and how benefit-sharing supports equity and the protection of human rights across key sectors of international environmental regulation (biodiversity, climate change, oceans, food and agriculture) that are seen as inter-related in the transition to the green economy; 3. understand the development of benefit-sharing in the context of global environmental law; and
4. clarify the role of transnational legal advisors (NGOs and bilateral cooperation partners) in the green economy.
Max ERC Funding
1 481 708 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-11-01, End date: 2018-10-31
Project acronym BIGBAYES
Project Rich, Structured and Efficient Learning of Big Bayesian Models
Researcher (PI) Yee Whye Teh
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary As datasets grow ever larger in scale, complexity and variety, there is an increasing need for powerful machine learning and statistical techniques that are capable of learning from such data. Bayesian nonparametrics is a promising approach to data analysis that is increasingly popular in machine learning and statistics. Bayesian nonparametric models are highly flexible models with infinite-dimensional parameter spaces that can be used to directly parameterise and learn about functions, densities, conditional distributions etc, and have been successfully applied to regression, survival analysis, language modelling, time series analysis, and visual scene analysis among others. However, to successfully use Bayesian nonparametric models to analyse the high-dimensional and structured datasets now commonly encountered in the age of Big Data, we will have to overcome a number of challenges. Namely, we need to develop Bayesian nonparametric models that can learn rich representations from structured data, and we need computational methodologies that can scale effectively to the large and complex models of the future. We will ground our developments in relevant applications, particularly to natural language processing (learning distributed representations for language modelling and compositional semantics) and genetics (modelling genetic variations arising from population, genealogical and spatial structures).
Summary
As datasets grow ever larger in scale, complexity and variety, there is an increasing need for powerful machine learning and statistical techniques that are capable of learning from such data. Bayesian nonparametrics is a promising approach to data analysis that is increasingly popular in machine learning and statistics. Bayesian nonparametric models are highly flexible models with infinite-dimensional parameter spaces that can be used to directly parameterise and learn about functions, densities, conditional distributions etc, and have been successfully applied to regression, survival analysis, language modelling, time series analysis, and visual scene analysis among others. However, to successfully use Bayesian nonparametric models to analyse the high-dimensional and structured datasets now commonly encountered in the age of Big Data, we will have to overcome a number of challenges. Namely, we need to develop Bayesian nonparametric models that can learn rich representations from structured data, and we need computational methodologies that can scale effectively to the large and complex models of the future. We will ground our developments in relevant applications, particularly to natural language processing (learning distributed representations for language modelling and compositional semantics) and genetics (modelling genetic variations arising from population, genealogical and spatial structures).
Max ERC Funding
1 918 092 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
Project acronym CARP
Project "Making Selves, Making Revolutions: Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics"
Researcher (PI) Martin Holbraad
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "What kinds of self does it take to make a revolution? And how does revolutionary politics, understood as a project of personal as much as political transformation, articulate with other processes of self-making, such as religious practices? Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics (CARP) seeks fundamentally to recast our understanding of revolutions, using their relationship to religious practices in diverse social and cultural settings as a lens through which to reveal revolutions’ varied capacities for self-making. Developing a comparative matrix of revolutionary settings in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, CARP’s core objective is to investigate the differing permutations and dynamics of revolutionary ‘anthropologies’ in the original theological sense of the term, i.e. charting revolutionary politics in relation to varying conceptions of what it is to be human, and of how the horizons of people’s lives are to be understood in relation to divine orders of different kinds, in order to reveal how revolutions come to define what persons may be, deliberately setting the social, political, cultural and ultimately ontological coordinates within which people are made who they are. Bringing close ethnographic investigation to bear on conceptions of revolution, statecraft, and subjectivity in political theory, CARP will produce comprehensive political ethnographies of nine major case-studies, comparing systematically the relationship between revolution and religion in a selection of countries in the Middle East and Latin America. Four smaller-scale case-studies from Europe and Asia will add complementary dimensions to this comparative matrix. Providing much-needed empirical materials and analytical insight into the dynamic comingling of political and religious forms in the making of revolutionary selves, CARP’s ultimate ambition is to launch the comparative study of revolutionary politics as a major new departure for anthropological research."
Summary
"What kinds of self does it take to make a revolution? And how does revolutionary politics, understood as a project of personal as much as political transformation, articulate with other processes of self-making, such as religious practices? Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics (CARP) seeks fundamentally to recast our understanding of revolutions, using their relationship to religious practices in diverse social and cultural settings as a lens through which to reveal revolutions’ varied capacities for self-making. Developing a comparative matrix of revolutionary settings in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, CARP’s core objective is to investigate the differing permutations and dynamics of revolutionary ‘anthropologies’ in the original theological sense of the term, i.e. charting revolutionary politics in relation to varying conceptions of what it is to be human, and of how the horizons of people’s lives are to be understood in relation to divine orders of different kinds, in order to reveal how revolutions come to define what persons may be, deliberately setting the social, political, cultural and ultimately ontological coordinates within which people are made who they are. Bringing close ethnographic investigation to bear on conceptions of revolution, statecraft, and subjectivity in political theory, CARP will produce comprehensive political ethnographies of nine major case-studies, comparing systematically the relationship between revolution and religion in a selection of countries in the Middle East and Latin America. Four smaller-scale case-studies from Europe and Asia will add complementary dimensions to this comparative matrix. Providing much-needed empirical materials and analytical insight into the dynamic comingling of political and religious forms in the making of revolutionary selves, CARP’s ultimate ambition is to launch the comparative study of revolutionary politics as a major new departure for anthropological research."
Max ERC Funding
1 854 472 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31
Project acronym COMPASS
Project Colloids with complex interactions: from model atoms to colloidal recognition and bio-inspired self assembly
Researcher (PI) Peter Schurtenberger
Host Institution (HI) LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE3, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary Self-assembly is the key construction principle that nature uses so successfully to fabricate its molecular machinery and highly elaborate structures. In this project we will follow nature’s strategies and make a concerted experimental and theoretical effort to study, understand and control self-assembly for a new generation of colloidal building blocks. Starting point will be recent advances in colloid synthesis strategies that have led to a spectacular array of colloids of different shapes, compositions, patterns and functionalities. These allow us to investigate the influence of anisotropy in shape and interactions on aggregation and self-assembly in colloidal suspensions and mixtures. Using responsive particles we will implement colloidal lock-and-key mechanisms and then assemble a library of “colloidal molecules” with well-defined and externally tunable binding sites using microfluidics-based and externally controlled fabrication and sorting principles. We will use them to explore the equilibrium phase behavior of particle systems interacting through a finite number of binding sites. In parallel, we will exploit them and investigate colloid self-assembly into well-defined nanostructures. Here we aim at achieving much more refined control than currently possible by implementing a protein-inspired approach to controlled self-assembly. We combine molecule-like colloidal building blocks that possess directional interactions and externally triggerable specific recognition sites with directed self-assembly where external fields not only facilitate assembly, but also allow fabricating novel structures. We will use the tunable combination of different contributions to the interaction potential between the colloidal building blocks and the ability to create chirality in the assembly to establish the requirements for the controlled formation of tubular shells and thus create a colloid-based minimal model of synthetic virus capsid proteins.
Summary
Self-assembly is the key construction principle that nature uses so successfully to fabricate its molecular machinery and highly elaborate structures. In this project we will follow nature’s strategies and make a concerted experimental and theoretical effort to study, understand and control self-assembly for a new generation of colloidal building blocks. Starting point will be recent advances in colloid synthesis strategies that have led to a spectacular array of colloids of different shapes, compositions, patterns and functionalities. These allow us to investigate the influence of anisotropy in shape and interactions on aggregation and self-assembly in colloidal suspensions and mixtures. Using responsive particles we will implement colloidal lock-and-key mechanisms and then assemble a library of “colloidal molecules” with well-defined and externally tunable binding sites using microfluidics-based and externally controlled fabrication and sorting principles. We will use them to explore the equilibrium phase behavior of particle systems interacting through a finite number of binding sites. In parallel, we will exploit them and investigate colloid self-assembly into well-defined nanostructures. Here we aim at achieving much more refined control than currently possible by implementing a protein-inspired approach to controlled self-assembly. We combine molecule-like colloidal building blocks that possess directional interactions and externally triggerable specific recognition sites with directed self-assembly where external fields not only facilitate assembly, but also allow fabricating novel structures. We will use the tunable combination of different contributions to the interaction potential between the colloidal building blocks and the ability to create chirality in the assembly to establish the requirements for the controlled formation of tubular shells and thus create a colloid-based minimal model of synthetic virus capsid proteins.
Max ERC Funding
2 498 040 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31
Project acronym CONNECTORS
Project Connectors – an international study into the development of children’s everyday practices of participation in circuits of social action
Researcher (PI) Sevasti Melissa Nolas
Host Institution (HI) GOLDSMITHS' COLLEGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Participation – defined in this project as the social practice of engaging in personal and social change – links private and public life, biography and history, and forms a mechanism for social action. Twenty years after the ratification of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child (1989) the international community is no closer to identifying what constitutes a ‘good enough’ model for understanding and supporting the development of children’s participation in public life. The project asks game changing questions about the emergence of children’s orientation towards social action through qualitative, longitudinal and cross-national research. Building on biographical interviews with children, relational and geographical mapping techniques, selective participant-observation with children, and children social research workshops in three cities (London, Athens, Mumbai), the project examines the meaning of personal and social change in middle childhood (6-11 year olds), the circuits of social action that children tap into in an attempt to make changes real, the extent to which privilege, marginalization and economic crisis shape children’s practices of participation, and the ways in which encounters with difference (gender, ethnicity, race, religion) challenge children’s orientation towards social action. By sampling children from a diverse cross-section of each city the project will collect and follow a total of 100 children over a five-year period. The project will provide a rich data sources for making within and between country comparisons and in doing so enable the development a theoretical paradigm for understanding children’s participation that is derived from the bottom-up, that is generated in diverse settings, including non-Western, and that takes advantage of the current rupture to established socio-economic realities to ask questions about the future of social action.
Summary
Participation – defined in this project as the social practice of engaging in personal and social change – links private and public life, biography and history, and forms a mechanism for social action. Twenty years after the ratification of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child (1989) the international community is no closer to identifying what constitutes a ‘good enough’ model for understanding and supporting the development of children’s participation in public life. The project asks game changing questions about the emergence of children’s orientation towards social action through qualitative, longitudinal and cross-national research. Building on biographical interviews with children, relational and geographical mapping techniques, selective participant-observation with children, and children social research workshops in three cities (London, Athens, Mumbai), the project examines the meaning of personal and social change in middle childhood (6-11 year olds), the circuits of social action that children tap into in an attempt to make changes real, the extent to which privilege, marginalization and economic crisis shape children’s practices of participation, and the ways in which encounters with difference (gender, ethnicity, race, religion) challenge children’s orientation towards social action. By sampling children from a diverse cross-section of each city the project will collect and follow a total of 100 children over a five-year period. The project will provide a rich data sources for making within and between country comparisons and in doing so enable the development a theoretical paradigm for understanding children’s participation that is derived from the bottom-up, that is generated in diverse settings, including non-Western, and that takes advantage of the current rupture to established socio-economic realities to ask questions about the future of social action.
Max ERC Funding
1 469 296 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym CSIASC
Project Changing Structures of Islamic Authority and Consequences for Social Change: A Transnational Review
Researcher (PI) Masooda Bano
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Research on Muslims in Europe or in the Muslim majority countries has since September 11, mainly focused on understanding the causes of religious radicalization. Largely ignored in the public debates, as well as in academic scholarship, is recognition of the rapid growth in a number of prominent initiatives emerging within Muslims in the west that are aimed at initiating intellectual revival within Islam. Drawing inspiration from the thinkers such as Al-Ghazali or Ibn-Rushd (associated with the ‘rationalist tradition’ in Islam), the Muslim intellectuals and scholars at the center of this movement for intellectual revival in Islam are arguing for ‘indigenizing Islam in the West.’ This project is aimed at understanding the emergence and growth of this movement, the methodology different actors within this movement adopt to initiate reform while remaining loyal to the Islamic ethical spirit, and the implications of these attempts at intellectual reform for individual behavior and social change within Muslims in the west as well as in Muslim majority countries. The project will situate the emergence of this movement within the broader shifts being witnessed in the traditional structures of Islamic authority— such as Al-Azhar University, Dar-ul Uloom, Deoband, Diyanat, and Al-Medina University— that dominate the teaching and interpretation of Islam globally but are under pressure to reform. By developing detailed ethnographic accounts of these new and old institutions of Islamic authority, examining the intellectual discourse of their scholars, observing the argumentations through which they socially advance their conception of Islam, and analyzing how these discourses impact real life choices, this project will shed light on the complexity of Islamic thought and changes in contemporary Muslim societies. It will also highlight the spaces that are emerging for engagement between the Islamic and western tradition and inform theory of religious behavior.
Summary
Research on Muslims in Europe or in the Muslim majority countries has since September 11, mainly focused on understanding the causes of religious radicalization. Largely ignored in the public debates, as well as in academic scholarship, is recognition of the rapid growth in a number of prominent initiatives emerging within Muslims in the west that are aimed at initiating intellectual revival within Islam. Drawing inspiration from the thinkers such as Al-Ghazali or Ibn-Rushd (associated with the ‘rationalist tradition’ in Islam), the Muslim intellectuals and scholars at the center of this movement for intellectual revival in Islam are arguing for ‘indigenizing Islam in the West.’ This project is aimed at understanding the emergence and growth of this movement, the methodology different actors within this movement adopt to initiate reform while remaining loyal to the Islamic ethical spirit, and the implications of these attempts at intellectual reform for individual behavior and social change within Muslims in the west as well as in Muslim majority countries. The project will situate the emergence of this movement within the broader shifts being witnessed in the traditional structures of Islamic authority— such as Al-Azhar University, Dar-ul Uloom, Deoband, Diyanat, and Al-Medina University— that dominate the teaching and interpretation of Islam globally but are under pressure to reform. By developing detailed ethnographic accounts of these new and old institutions of Islamic authority, examining the intellectual discourse of their scholars, observing the argumentations through which they socially advance their conception of Islam, and analyzing how these discourses impact real life choices, this project will shed light on the complexity of Islamic thought and changes in contemporary Muslim societies. It will also highlight the spaces that are emerging for engagement between the Islamic and western tradition and inform theory of religious behavior.
Max ERC Funding
1 376 704 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-12-31
Project acronym DYNAMO
Project Dynamics and assemblies of colloidal particles
under Magnetic and Optical forces
Researcher (PI) Pietro Tierno
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE3, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Control of microscale matter through selective manipulation of colloidal building blocks will unveil novel scientific and technological avenues expanding current frontiers of knowledge in Soft Matter systems. I propose to combine state-of-the-art micromanipulation techniques based on magnetic and optical forces to transport, probe and assemble colloidal matter with single particle resolution in real time/space and otherwise unreachable capabilities. In the first part of the project, I will use paramagnetic colloids as externally controllable magnetic inclusions to probe the structural and rheological properties of optically assembled colloid crystals and glasses. In the second part, I will realize a new class of anisotropy patchy magnetic colloids, characterized by selective, directional and reversible interactions and employ these remotely addressable units to realize gels and frustrated crystals (static case), active jamming and synchronization via hydrodynamic coupling (dynamic case).
DynaMO project will power a basic experimental research embracing a variety of apparently different systems ranging from deterministic ratchets, viscoelastic crystals, glasses, patchy colloidal gels, frustrated crystals, active jamming, and hydrodynamic waves. The ERC grant will allow me to establish a young and dynamic research group of interdisciplinary nature focused on these issues and aimed at performing high quality research and training/inspiring talented researchers in innovative and challenging scientific projects.
Summary
Control of microscale matter through selective manipulation of colloidal building blocks will unveil novel scientific and technological avenues expanding current frontiers of knowledge in Soft Matter systems. I propose to combine state-of-the-art micromanipulation techniques based on magnetic and optical forces to transport, probe and assemble colloidal matter with single particle resolution in real time/space and otherwise unreachable capabilities. In the first part of the project, I will use paramagnetic colloids as externally controllable magnetic inclusions to probe the structural and rheological properties of optically assembled colloid crystals and glasses. In the second part, I will realize a new class of anisotropy patchy magnetic colloids, characterized by selective, directional and reversible interactions and employ these remotely addressable units to realize gels and frustrated crystals (static case), active jamming and synchronization via hydrodynamic coupling (dynamic case).
DynaMO project will power a basic experimental research embracing a variety of apparently different systems ranging from deterministic ratchets, viscoelastic crystals, glasses, patchy colloidal gels, frustrated crystals, active jamming, and hydrodynamic waves. The ERC grant will allow me to establish a young and dynamic research group of interdisciplinary nature focused on these issues and aimed at performing high quality research and training/inspiring talented researchers in innovative and challenging scientific projects.
Max ERC Funding
1 309 320 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym EMERGING SUBJECTS
Project Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia
Researcher (PI) Rebecca Anna Empson Mannerfelt
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary This project examines how predicted economic growth is experienced by people in Mongolia with the advent of large-scale mining operations. Our project will generate new insight into two areas of concern for economic anthropology and beyond. First we will examine the way that the economy is unfolding in a distinct way in East Asia through different kinds of predictive narratives that come to have an effect on the way people act. Second we will explore how individual subjects also shape the economy in their everyday relations through various forms of exchange and the accumulation of wealth.
This dual focus provides the basis for a nuanced and powerful critique of our understanding of the way in which economic realities are shaped through predictive narratives as well as formed, from the ground-up, by local actors who carve out new forms of subjectivity through such actions. Indeed it is our suggestion that these new subjects of the growing economy are distinctly different from the post-socialist selves described in previous literature on the region. Instead they are powerful and hopeful subjects who demand a different kind of engagement and entitlement. The form such engagement takes and the kind of economic realities produced out of such forms is the focus of our study.
Summary
This project examines how predicted economic growth is experienced by people in Mongolia with the advent of large-scale mining operations. Our project will generate new insight into two areas of concern for economic anthropology and beyond. First we will examine the way that the economy is unfolding in a distinct way in East Asia through different kinds of predictive narratives that come to have an effect on the way people act. Second we will explore how individual subjects also shape the economy in their everyday relations through various forms of exchange and the accumulation of wealth.
This dual focus provides the basis for a nuanced and powerful critique of our understanding of the way in which economic realities are shaped through predictive narratives as well as formed, from the ground-up, by local actors who carve out new forms of subjectivity through such actions. Indeed it is our suggestion that these new subjects of the growing economy are distinctly different from the post-socialist selves described in previous literature on the region. Instead they are powerful and hopeful subjects who demand a different kind of engagement and entitlement. The form such engagement takes and the kind of economic realities produced out of such forms is the focus of our study.
Max ERC Funding
1 658 373 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-06-30
