ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) are the most extreme, fascinating yet elusive astrophysical objects in the Universe. Establishing observationally their existence will be a milestone for contemporary astronomy, providing a fundamental missing piece in the puzzle of galaxy formation, piercing through the (hydro)dynamical physical processes shaping dense galactic nuclei from parsec scales down to the event horizon, and probing gravity in extreme conditions. We can both see and listen to MBHBs. Remarkably, besides arguably being among the brightest variable objects shining in the Cosmos, MBHBs are also the loudest gravitational wave (GW) sources in the Universe. As such, we shall take advantage of both the type of messengers – photons and gravitons – they are sending to us, which can now be probed by all-sky time-domain surveys and radio pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) respectively. B MASSIVE leverages on a unique comprehensive approach combining theoretical astrophysics, radio and gravitational-wave astronomy and time-domain surveys, with state of the art data analysis techniques to: i) observationally prove the existence of MBHBs, ii) understand and constrain their astrophysics and dynamics, iii) enable and bring closer in time the direct detection of GWs with PTA. As European PTA (EPTA) executive committee member and former I International PTA (IPTA) chair, I am a driving force in the development of pulsar timing science world-wide, and the project will build on the profound knowledge, broad vision and wide collaboration network that established me as a world leader in the field of MBHB and GW astrophysics. B MASSIVE is extremely timely; a pulsar timing data set of unprecedented quality is being assembled by EPTA/IPTA, and Time-Domain astronomy surveys are at their dawn. In the long term, B MASSIVE will be a fundamental milestone establishing European leadership in the cutting-edge field of MBHB astrophysics in the era of LSST, SKA and LISA.

1 532 750 €

Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31

Corruption is a global challenge that affects the lives of millions of citizens. In the past decade, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become indispensable tools in the fight to reduce corruption, especially when employed from the bottom-up by civil society organizations. While pioneering initiatives in this direction have flourished, to date we only have unsystematic and descriptive evidence regarding how they work and the associated consequences. With the objective of significantly advancing knowledge on this topic, BIT-ACT will open a new line of inquiry by investigating what I call anti-corruption technologies (ACTs) to: (1) assess how civil society organizations engage with ACTs to counter corruption, (2) appraise how ACTs enable intersections between bottom-up and top-down efforts against corruption, and (3) evaluate how ACTs blend with the transnational dimension in the struggle against corruption. Based on an interdisciplinary framework that combines corruption studies, science and technology studies and social movement studies, BIT-ACT will use the constructivist grounded theory method to analyze a combination of textual and visual data in a comparative and transnational research design including nine countries – Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, India, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay. BIT-ACT will be groundbreaking in three ways. At the theoretical level, it will expand the debate on anti-corruption providing grounded concepts and models to explain ACTs; at the empirical level, it will advance knowledge on how the usage of ACTs is changing the relationship between citizens and democratic institutions; at the methodological level, it will innovate in the use of grounded theory assessing a new standard for cross-national comparative grounded theory. Finally, BIT-ACT will produce sound and useful knowledge for the stakeholders involved in the fight against corruption worldwide by suggesting how to best employ ICTs from the bottom-up.

1 489 115 €

Start date: 2019-07-01, End date: 2024-06-30

The ClustersXCosmo ERC Starting Grant proposal has the goal of investigating the role of Galaxy Clusters as a cosmological probe and of exploiting the strong synergies between observational cosmology, galaxy formation and fundamental physics related to the tracers of the extreme peaks in the matter density field. In the last decade, astronomical data-sets have started to be widely and quantitatively used by the scientific community to address important physical questions such as: the nature of the dark matter and dark energy components and their evolution; the physical properties of the baryonic matter; the variation of fundamental constants over cosmic time; the sum of neutrino masses; the interplay between the galaxy population and the intergalactic medium; the nature of gravity over megaparsec scales and over cosmic times; the temperature evolution of the Universe. Most of these results are based on well-established geometrical cosmological probes (e.g., galaxies, supernovae, cosmic microwave background). Galaxy clusters provide a complementary and necessary approach, as their distribution as a function of time and observables is sensitive to both the geometrical and the dynamical evolution of the Universe, driven by the growth of structures. Among different cluster surveys, Sunyaev Zel'Dovich effect (SZE) detected catalogs have registered the most dramatic improvement over the last ~5 years, yielding samples extending up to the earliest times these systems appeared. This proposal aims at using a combination of the best available SZE cluster surveys and to interpret them by means of state-of-the-art computational facilities in order to firmly establish the yet controversial role of Galaxy Clusters as a probe for cosmology, fundamental physics and astrophysics. The timely convergence of current and next generation multi-wavelength surveys (DES/SPT/Planck/eRosita/Euclid) will be important to establish the role of Galaxy Clusters as a cosmological tool.

1 230 403 €

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

The European dimension of administrative law is the focus of a flurry of initiatives aiming to investigate similarities and differences, and to shape common legal scenarios. A codification of the administrative procedures of the EU has been envisaged by the European Parliament in its resolution of February 2013. A broader proposal of codification, including rule-making and contractual procedures, has been elaborated by ReNEUAL and has been discussed in a series of workshops in 2015. The issues that arise are both practical and theoretical: - it is important to understand whether the method traditionally followed by the European Court of Justice in order to identify the principles that are general and common to national legal systems, only applies when all those systems recognize such principles; - whether national systems of public law share the same idea of what an administrative procedure is is another question; whether the specific principles governing administrative procedures, such as the right to be heard and the duty to give reasons, are the same is still another question; - finally, if any commonality exists, the question that arises is whether it is limited to the level of general principles of law or it includes the which govern procedures. The research project is innovative on grounds of method, because: - it aims at ascertaining whether, and the extent to that, the well-established methodology developed under the ‘Common Core of European Private Law’ project can be applied to EU administrative law; - it permits to distinguish between ‘operative rules’, ‘descriptive formants’, and ‘meta-legal formants’; - it also allows to understand whether the specific nature of the interests recognized and protected by the rules of public law require legal methodologies that are distinct and distant from those of private law.

1 254 105 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31