ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

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: 2023-10-31

The introduction of minimally invasive surgery in the 1980’s created a paradigm shift in surgical procedures. Health care is now in a position to make a more dramatic leap by integrating newly developed wireless microrobotic technologies with nanomedicine to perform precisely targeted, localized endoluminal techniques. Devices capable of entering the human body through natural orifices or small incisions to deliver drugs, perform diagnostic procedures, and excise and repair tissue will be used. These new procedures will result in less trauma to the patient and faster recovery times, and will enable new therapies that have not yet been conceived. In order to realize this, many new technologies must be developed and synergistically integrated, and medical therapies for which the technology will prove successful must be aggressively pursued. This proposed project will result in the realization of animal trials in which wireless microrobotic devices will be used to investigate a variety of extremely delicate ophthalmic therapies. The therapies to be pursued include the delivery of tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) to blocked retinal veins, the peeling of epiretinal membranes from the retina, and the development of diagnostic procedures based on mapping oxygen concentration at the vitreous-retina interface. With successful animal trials, a path to human trials and commercialization will follow. Clearly, many systems in the body have the potential to benefit from the endoluminal technologies that this project considers, including the digestive system, the circulatory system, the urinary system, the central nervous system, the respiratory system, the female reproductive system and even the fetus. Microrobotic retinal therapies will greatly illuminate the potential that the integration of microrobotics and nanomedicine holds for society, and greatly accelerate this trend in Europe.

2 498 044 €

Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-03-31

My goal is to study several important open mathematical problems in non-equilibrium (NEQ) systems and to build a bridge between these problems and NEQ aspects of soft sciences, in particular biological questions. Traffic on this bridge is going to be two-way, the mathematics carrying a long history as a language of science towards the soft sciences, and the soft sciences fruitfully asking new questions and building new paradigms for mathematical research. Out-of-equilibrium systems pose several fascinating problems: The Fourier law which says that resistance of a wire is proportional to its length is still presenting hard problems for research, and even the existence and the convergence to a NEQ steady state are continuously posing new puzzles, as do questions of smoothness and correlations of such states. These will be addressed with stochastic differential equations, and with particlescatterer systems, both canonical and grand-canonical. The latter are extensions of the well-known Lorentz gas and the study of hyperbolic billiards. Another field where NEQ plays an important role is the study of glassy systems. They were studied with molecular dynamics (MD) but I have used a topological variant, which mimics astonishingly well what happens in MD simulations. The aim is to extend this to 3 dimensions, where new problems appear. Finally, I will apply the NEQ studies to biological systems: How a system copes with the varying environment,adapting in this way to a novel type of NEQ. I will study networks of communication among neurons,which are like random graphs with the additional property of being embedded, and the arrangement of genes on chromosomes in such a way as to optimize the adaptation to the different cell types which must be produced using the same genetic information. I will answer such questions with students and collaborators, who will specialize in the subprojects but will interact with my help across the common bridge.

2 135 385 €

Start date: 2012-04-01, End date: 2017-07-31

Elementary particle physics is entering a spectacular new era in which experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will soon start probing some of the deepest questions in physics, such as: Why is gravity so weak? Do elementary particles have substructure? What is the origin of mass? Are there new dimensions? Can we produce black holes in the lab? Could there be other universes with different physical laws? While the LHC pushes the energy frontier, the unprecedented precision of Atom Interferometry, has pointed me to a new tool for fundamental physics. These experiments based on the quantum interference of atoms can test General Relativity on the surface of the Earth, detect gravity waves, and test short-distance gravity, charge quantization, and quantum mechanics with unprecedented precision in the next decade. This ERC Advanced grant proposal is aimed at setting up a world-leading European center for development of a deeper theory of fundamental physics. The next 10 years is the optimal time for such studies to benefit from the wealth of new data that will emerge from the LHC, astrophysical observations and atom interferometry. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for making ground-breaking progress, and will open up many new research horizons.

2 200 000 €

Start date: 2009-05-01, End date: 2014-04-30