On 30 November and 1st December, the G20 2018 Summit will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The leaders and Ministers of finances of the World's major economies, including the European Union, will address the pressing concerns and challenges related to the global economy and finances. In this high decision-making forum, Prof. Irma Mosquera Valderrama has managed to make a place for her independent expertise, raising the voices of developing countries.
The amount of currently available biomedical data is overwhelming. Large databases exist at different scales, from genes, to proteins, to patients' histories. But what do scientists do with all this information? Serbian-born Professor Nataša Pržulj, from University College London, works with Big Data to establish patterns and gain knowledge that could revolutionise how we treat diseases.
In the highlands of Asia, an area spanning the mountain regions between the Pamirs and the eastern Himalayas, livelihoods are shaped as much by remoteness as by connectivity. With ERC funding, Dr Martin Saxer intends to shed new light on these areas at the edge of nation-states yet in the centre of geopolitical concerns.
Travellers already benefit from applications harnessing data from sensor networks and smartphone users. They calculate alternative routes, help plan carpooling routes, or support the optimisation of public transport. With her ERC grant, Prof. Vana Kalogeraki works on a comprehensive software framework that will simplify the development of such mobile human-centred systems and make them more predictable and reliable.
In the current ‘refugee crisis’, the legal protection of refugees represents an important challenge all over Europe. Supported by the ERC, Dr Cathryn Costello questions the current refugee regime, legal framework and current practices to open up new research and policy trajectories.
The effect social media have on political discourse has been subject of intense discussion, especially since the UK referendum and US elections in 2016. A researcher funded by the European Research Council (ERC) is trying to shed light onto the ways politicians use online social networks and the murky world of political algorithms.
Regulating migration has become a key priority for European countries and, according to Prof. Katja Franko, crime control practices and penal cultures have evolved across the continent as a consequence. With ERC support, she has studied these new hybrid and intertwined forms of migration and crime control policies, a phenomenon she calls ‘Crimmigration control’.
Global migration flows show a profound diversification of migrants’ groups in recent years. Their patterns of nationality, ethnicity, language, age, gender and legal status are growing ever more complex and migrants with ‘new diversity’ traits live in cities alongside people from previous immigration waves. Prof. Steven Vertovec’s comparative study helps understand how old and new waves of migrants meet, mix, interact and get integrated into a given society.
Some school systems in Europe are highly segregated, the Belgian one especially. Poorer standards of education are seen in schools where pupils are predominantly of immigrant background. Researchers are compiling new datasets and information about school composition and teaching cohesion to ensure segregation does not have to mean a difference in education standards.
