Associate professor Anna Grasskamp
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
Project: ECOART: An Ecological History of Eurasian Art: Natural Resources, Aesthetic Practices, and Early Modern Globalization
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2024-11-01, End date: 2029-10-30
Call: SH5, ERC-2023-CoG
Summary: Works of art are repositories of environmental knowledge. Paintings, sculptures, and artifacts preserve material evidence of the use of natural resources like mineral pigments, plant-based dyes, and precious metals, and contribute to a visual archive of human interaction with nature by providing pictorial records of mining and deforestation. ECOART aims to rewrite art history as a history of ecological interconnections and prove that aesthetic practices were conditioned by environmental circumstances by examining the artistic use and visual representation of geographical, geological, botanical, zoological, and climatic resources across Eurasia, a space dominated by European and Chinese economic spheres of influence, in an era of early modern globalization from 1500 to 1800. The project investigates six key artistic sites with a focus on the Global South, an area still affected by the colonial exploitation of resources – the Indian region of Gujarat and the port cities of Manila in the Philippines, Jakarta in Indonesia, Guangzhou in China, Yangon in Myanmar, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands – with three objectives: 1. to analyze works of art as early modern repositories of environmental knowledge; 2. to reconstruct local ecologies of art and artisanship in the Global South in relation to trade and colonial exploitation; and 3. to make visible transcultural models of sustainability and creative reuse across early modern Eurasia. Digital mapping will demonstrate linkages between sites of artistic activity, resource extraction, and trade via overland and maritime connections. Through a geographic focus on under-researched regions of the Global South, and its transcultural and comparative methodology, ECOART will contribute to the decolonization of art history, provide theoretical insights into circular economies and the ecology of art, and contribute key historical information to an interdisciplinary understanding of natural resource conflicts during the Anthropocene.
Professor No?lle Lynn Wenger Streeton
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archeology, Conservation and History
Project: POLYCHROME: The Survival of Damaged Medieval Polychromed Heritage in the Nordics
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2024-10-01, End date: 2029-09-31
Call: SH5, ERC-2023-CoG
Summary: POLYCHROME will study the shifting fortunes of richly painted and gilded (polychromed) Christian images that have survived in the Nordic countries since the Reformation. How have wooden sculptures, panel paintings, shrines, and winged altarpieces transformed from potent objects of devotion to cultural heritage? To what extent is this category of cultural heritage at risk? Values attached to Catholic devotional objects have fluctuated dramatically since Gustav I of Sweden and Christian III of Denmark-Norway declared a break with the church in Rome (1527 and 1537, respectively). However, documentary sources shed little light on changes in status, volatility, and repairs. POLYCHROME will take an ambitious leap that scholars concerned with polychromy in Denmark, Norway and Sweden have been reluctant to make: to determine the extent to which losses of noses, eyes and limbs are tied to iconoclastic acts. To date, historians and most conservators have attributed damage to accidents or unspecific vandalism, but not to targeted violence. This is due in part to a lack of archival evidence, but also because secondary paints often mask critical information on surfaces and in internal structures. POLYCHROME will harness technologies from the natural sciences to create, from the ground up, the first analytical overview of c. 150 polychromed objects that are (or potentially were) partially mutilated. The material data will offer essential foundations for determining whether damages and losses can be linked to violence, accidents or inherent weakness. The data will guide the mapping of restorations and repairs, and will establish foundations for multidisciplinary studies and cross-cultural debates about heritage values and the future care of religious heritage in the Nordics. The outcomes will complicate conversations about the preserving effects of Lutheranism on medieval devotional objects, and will influence training priorities for years to come.
Associate professor Victor Greiff
Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Clinical medicine
Project: AB-AG-INTERACT: Learning the interaction rules of antibody-antigen binding
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2024-01-01, End date: 2028-12-31
Call: LS9, ERC-2023-CoG
Summary: Antibody-antigen binding is the basis of two fundamental biotherapeutic pillars: monoclonal antibodies (1) and vaccines (2). To accelerate therapeutics discovery, we need to perform antibody (Ab) and antigen (Ag) design in silico. Specifically, we need to address a fundamental immuno-biotechnological challenge: understanding the interaction rules that predict Ab-Ag binding. Solving this challenge demands the convergence of biotechnology, computational structural biology, and machine learning (ML). My lab is one of the few worldwide to have this transdisciplinary expertise. Research problem: Currently, the predictive performance of Ab-Ag binding is poor, and an understanding of the underlying rules of Ab-Ag binding is mostly absent. We previously showed that both unprecedentedly large datasets (>10^5 Ab-Ag sequence pairs) and extensive structural information on the Ab-Ag binding interface (paratope, epitope) are needed to increase prediction accuracy and recover binding rules. Targeted breakthrough: To address the lack of large-scale Ab-Ag sequence and structural data, we will develop a method for high-throughput screening of >10^3 Ab paratope-mutated variants binding to >10^3 of Ag epitope-mutated variants, generating sequence data of Ab-Ag binding pairs at an unprecedented scale (>10^6 sequence Ab-Ag pairs). Structural information of the entirety of the sequence-based Ab-Ag binding data will be generated by building and innovating on recent breakthroughs in computational structural biology. To derive Ab-Ag interaction rules from the generated data, we will develop ML techniques for Ab-Ag binding prediction and rule recovery. We will demonstrate experimentally that we have begun to understand Ab-Ag interaction rules. Impact: The proposed research generates the exact data necessary to recover the rules of Ab-Ag binding and provides a first groundbreaking insight into those rules, moving us closer to in silico on-demand antibody and vaccine design.
Professor Eivind Valen
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Department of Biosciences
Project: MaDCap: Mapping and Direct Sequencing of the Non-Canonical Cap Code
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2024-01-01, End date: 2028-12-31
Call: LS2, ERC-2022-CoG
Summary: From their creation to their degradation, mRNAs are under extensive regulation. This regulation is directed not only by their nucleotide sequence and their promoter but also by post- and co-transcriptional modifications attached to the RNA. One of the most ubiquitous of these modifications in eukaryotes is the 5' cap — typically a methylated guanine (m7G) attached inversely to the first transcribed nucleotide. Several decades of research have revealed the m7G cap as an interface for regulating stability, splicing, polyadenylation, localization, and translation. The m7G cap was long presumed to be the only functional cap in eukaryotes, but this view was recently overturned by the discovery of the non-canonical nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) cap. Following this, several other eukaryotic cap structures were discovered: NADH, flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), uridine diphosphate glucose (UDP-Glc), and uridine diphosphate N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc). The function of most non-canonical caps is unknown, but their presence suggests the existence of a regulatory “cap code”. Currently, the complete cap structure can only be identified through bulk methods that cleave caps from their transcripts, thereby losing the link between mRNAs and their specific caps. For NAD-caps enrichment techniques exist that can be followed by sequencing, but no such method exists for other non-canonical caps, and no sequencing method exists that can identify more than one cap. This limitation is a significant obstacle in understanding the cap code and the function of its more enigmatic members. The objective of this project is to 1) develop a novel single-molecule method that can directly sequence native caps with their full-length RNA transcripts, 2) use this method to characterize the cap-ome across tissues and development, and 3) use the resulting temporal and spatial atlas of capped RNAs to determine the function of non-canonical caps and understand the non-canonical cap code
Professor Egil Nygaard
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology
Project: HeaLS: Effects of the implementation of the interdisciplinary topic “Health and Life Skills” in schools
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2023-10-01, End date: 2028-09-30
Call: SH3, ERC-2022-CoG
Summary: Mental illness is a major health burden worldwide and the health problems with the heaviest financial burden in Norway. Half of chronic mental disorders emerge before the age of 14, and mental health problems in youth are increasing. The Norwegian government has implemented the interdisciplinary topic "Health and life skills" (HLS) in primary and secondary education to provide pupils with competences to promote health and self-efficacy. School-based interventions may improve mental health and academic performance, but their effects depend on the quality of implementation. There are large variations in how HLS is implemented within and across schools due to lack of national guidelines and a reliance on teachers’ professional judgement. Delayed implementation for some grades and longitudinal nationwide registry linkages forms a natural experiment and rare opportunity to investigate the impact of diverse implementation methods of a politically determined, long-term and population-wide measure. The aim of this interdisciplinary study is to evaluate how variations in the implementation of HLS relate to the intervention’s effect on pupils' mental health, quality of life, school environment, academic performance and dropout. We will collect new HLS implementation data from 5,000 teachers/employees, 1,000 school principals and 180 school owners. Information from these key samples will be combined with prior linked data for 750 000 pupils from existing national registries and large surveys, including educational, health and background information. The research group includes researchers specialized in education, mental and public health, health promotion, classroom research, school surveys, register-based studies and advanced multi-level methods. The evaluation may affect further implementation and practice of HLS nationally and globally, and thereby promote pupils’ mental health and academic performance and thus also their future.
Senior lecturer Gry Oftedal
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
Project: AssemblingLife: Self-Assembly: Shifting our View of Life
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2023-11-01, End date: 2028-10-31
Call: SH4, ERC-2022-CoG
Summary: Biology invites us to understand life as “hard work”. Living beings are mainly viewed as systems requiring the constant input of energy and the detailed regulation by genetic material. These ideas of life very much influence the general understanding of living systems, and, particularly interesting for this project, it influences current philosophy of science accounts of the understanding and explanation of living processes. But what if life is much less “hard work” than often presented? And what if genes should be understood as “nudgers” rather than as “directing” living processes? Self-assembly is the spontaneous formation of complex patterns and structure. It can be visualized as a pile of lego bricks turning into a Ninjago fortress on its own. There are no lego-builders. The parts “self-assemble”, possibly as a result of chemical and physical processes working between and on the parts. Recent nanoscience research efforts at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and material science, increasingly utilize self-assembly processes in the development of new materials, technologies and understanding of living systems. AssemblingLife will, on an interdisciplinary basis, build a new theoretical framework withing the philosophy of science for understanding and explaining life, building on the increasing focus and knowledge about self-assembly processes that carry the potential to shift our view of life. The project will provide a new understanding of genetic causation starting from the idea of genes as “nudging” self-assembly processes rather than as providing detailed regulation, and it will develop new theory of scientific explanation that will account for the observation that self-assembly processes do not behave like classical mechanisms or interventions targets. AssemblingLife plan for contributing novel and needed theory and conceptual tools both to the philosophy of science and to the empirical life sciences.
Professor Karin Kukkonen
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages
Project: JEUX: Literary Games, Poetics and the Early-Modern Novel
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2024-01-01, End date: 2028-12-31
Call: SH5, ERC-2022-CoG
Summary: Literary games were a wide-spread practice in seventeenth-century France, and prominent novelists wrote fictions about a salon company playing the “game of the novel” (jeu du roman). While literary games were clearly defined, the novel was a genre that had yet to establish its standards. In order to enhance our understanding of a decisive period for the novel (1600-1700), this project proposes to study how authors model their own practice creatively through play. JEUX is the first comprehensive, systematic investigation of literary games and their impact on the development of the standards for the most prominent literary genre today – the novel. JEUX thereby takes a ground-breaking perspective on the novel in the making. The main objectives are to (1) analyse systematically the impact of early-modern literary games on the narrative standards for fictional worlds, formal coherence and narrators in the novel; (2) identify how literary games contribute to the self-theorising of a new genre; (3) re-evaluate the role of play and games in writing literary history. Using an innovative combination of literary theory, game studies, narratology and anthropological fieldwork, JEUX goes beyond traditional metaphors of literature as a kind of gameplay and investigates an actual literary game from theoretical, historical and empirical perspectives. To assess play as practice, JEUX will invite creative-writing students to play early-modern games and, thereby, pioneer a new methodological approach to explore cultural practices as a potential site for creativity, innovation and community also in the contemporary world. JEUX will sharpen current understanding of decisive developments in the form, poetics and history of the novel. It will enhance our grasp of the dynamics between games and narratives and contribute to the rediscovery of the cultural heritage of literary games. Through the investigation of the neglected corpus of evidence, JEUX will tell a new history of the novel.
Professor Eivind Ystr?m
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology
Project: GeoGen: The PsychoGeography of Intergenerational Mobility: Early life socioeconomic position, mental health, and educational performance
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2022-09-01, End date: 2027-08-31
Call: SH3, ERC-2021-CoG
Summary: Surging inequality is a defining feature of the world children grow up in today. The neighborhood they live in stages a primary developmental context where this feature of our present time plays out. Children’s demographic and socio-economic status (SES) is given by the status of their parents. Parental and neighborhood SES is associated with child mental health and educational performance, and it appears that childhood is a vulnerable period. To understand how and why early life socioeconomic position is linked to mental health and educational performance, I propose a groundbreaking paradigm generalizing temporal, spatial, social, genetic, and individual levels of inference. I will do this by having genomically similar children growing up in different families at different places at different times. These multitudes of counterfactuals will allow me to jointly evaluate hypotheses on selection and causation and risk and protection factors for mental health and academic outcomes. The GeoGen study will render a new understanding of (a) how transmission of risk is transmitted across generations, (b) how early mental health is an antecedent of academic failure, (c) the interactions between genetic risk and protective contextual factors, and (c) characteristics of schools and neighborhoods that are optimal for children’s psychological development. I will use Norway since 1940 as a laboratory (n=8 400 000) with registries giving full genealogy and year-by-year event data on place of residence, indicators of SES, mental health, and educational performance. Within this, I will nest a population-based cohort study comprising genotyping of families (n=240 000 in 110 000 families) and a wide array of survey data, such as non-cognitive skills. The combination of having data on all people in all schools and neighborhoods over time allows me to do du an unprecedented study on the gene-environment interplay between risk and protective factors for mental health and academic outcomes
Professor Trude Storelvmo
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Department of Geosciences
Project: STEP-CHANGE: State-dependent cloud phase feedbacks: enhancing understanding and assessing global effects
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2023-03-01, End date: 2028-02-28
Call: PE10, ERC-2021-CoG
Summary: The ways in which clouds change with global warming remain elusive, as are the associated cloud-climate feedbacks that govern most of the spread in climate sensitivity simulated by current Earth System Models. This uncertainty in turn limits society’s ability to take necessary action to avoid dangerous climate change. Despite considerable research progress in recent decades, additional complexities have been uncovered that further add to the uncertainty. For example, the understanding that many cloud-climate feedbacks change with time, due to their dependence on warming levels or patterns, is relatively recent. Cloud thermodynamic phase changes are the root cause of some of this state-dependence, and new research has revealed that these feedbacks could shift Earth’s climate into a state that is more sensitive to greenhouse gas forcing than at present. Understanding and quantifying this state-dependence is therefore critically important, but such progress will require deep understanding of processes on a range of scales, from the microphysics that control cloud phase to large-scale impacts on climate. Furthermore, it has become evident that different cloud-climate feedback regimes are governed by different processes with their own unique state-dependence that must be investigated separately. Therefore, the overall objective of STEP-CHANGE is to understand and quantify feedbacks associated with cloud phase changes, including their state-dependence, for three distinct cloud regimes in the following regions: the Arctic, the Tropical deep convective region, and the Southern Hemisphere storm tracks. This will be achieved through a bold and innovative research strategy which includes aircraft measurements, lab experiments, space-borne remote sensing, and a hierarchy of numerical model simulations. STEP-CHANGE builds on recent discoveries and innovations within the PIs research group and is motivated by key knowledge gaps identified in recent IPCC assessment reports.
Researcher Mathew Michael Domeier
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Department of Geosciences/Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics
Project: EPIC: Untangling Ediacaran Paleomagnetism to Contextualize Immense Global Change
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2022-10-01, End date: 2027-09-30
Call: PE10, ERC-2021-CoG
Summary: The Ediacaran-early Cambrian (~635-520 Ma) was an interval of immense global change with fundamental state shifts occurring in the bio-cryo- and atmosphere. Such changes included the abrupt appearance and rapid diversification of modern metazoan life (the Ediacaran fauna and Cambrian ‘explosion’), the end of protracted, global-scale glaciations (Snowball Earth), the rise of atmospheric oxygen to present-day levels, and the perturbation of carbon isotopic records to extremes otherwise unknown to Earth history. Given the immensity and abruptness of those changes, they are clearly essential to an understanding of the development of life, the history of climatic change and the evolution of the oxygen and carbon cycles. Accordingly, great effort has been dedicated to acquiring detailed temporal records to investigate those changes through time, but we still lack a robust paleogeographic framework to study them in space. This is because paleomagnetic data—which are used to determine the ancient positions of continents—exhibit aberrant behaviour at this time, the meaning of which is unknown. Four alternative hypotheses have been formulated to explain them: 1) rapid rotations of the entire solid Earth (true polar wander), 2) an unstable magnetic field, 3) pervasive data corruption, or 4) ultra-fast plate motion. Each of these hypotheses has farreaching implications: Hypotheses 1, 2 & 4 reflect dramatic non-uniformitarian processes that would defy our understanding of geodynamics, whereas hypothesis 3 poses grave challenges to the interpretation of paleomagnetic data in Precambrian time. My vision with EPIC is to investigate and identify the origin(s) of the aberrant paleomagnetic data of this age, and to use that knowledge to directly reconstruct Ediacaran-early Cambrian paleogeography for the first time. EPIC will thus transform one of geophysics’ most outstanding enigmas into one of our greatest assets in understanding this critical time in Earth’s development.
Professor Jonas Hjort
Faculty Social Sciences, Department of Economics
Project: ACCESS: Market Access and Economic Development
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2022-10-01, End date: 2027-09-30
Call: SH1, ERC-2021-CoG
Summary: A huge challenge for research and policy efforts to accelerate economic development is that firms in poor countries grow surprisingly slowly, making job creation in the “Global South” difficult to achieve. We don’t know why: the existing literature has focused on internal (or “supply-side”) determinants of productivity that firms in poor countries are hypothesized to lack, but these appear to have modest explanatory power. A notable alternative explanation is that many latently productive firms are constrained by forces external to the firm. Recent studies indeed establish that access to input and output markets appear to be important for growth. However, the existing evidence focuses on access constraints arising from poor infrastructure and countries’ trade barriers: firms’ and individuals’ de facto ability to acquire production inputs and sell output is likely influenced by a much broader set of economic, political, and social factors. Similarly, the consequences of market access may extend to “subsequent” economic development outcomes like job creation and changes in inequality. ACCESS puts the causes and consequences of market access in poor countries at the center of inquiry for the first time. The research program is organized around the various stages of the production process: firms’ access to labor markets; firms’ access to suppliers and buyers in intermediate markets; and firms’ access to final product demand. In its last part, ACCESS returns to the origin of the production process to investigate how barriers to the most fundamental form of market access—individuals’ ability to own and operate firms—affects local economies. Novel forms of detailed microeconomic data from a wide range of developing countries—especially Colombia, Liberia, the Philippines, and Uganda; new economic theory; and varied empirical methods are used to begin to uncover the many overlooked barriers to and consequences of market access.
Researcher Andrew Foote
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Department of Biosciences
Project: EXPLOAD: EXamining how Past demography affects genetic LOad using Ancient DNA
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2022-06-01, End date: 2026-05-31
Call: LS8, ERC-2021-CoG
Summary: DNA can survive millennia post-mortem, spanning ecological and evolutionary transitions and providing a unique window into the processes underlying biodiversity. As such sequencing ancient DNA from temporally spaced samples can allow the testing of hypotheses related to evolutionary responses to ecological change and novel selection pressures through direct quantification of ecological and genetic parameters collected before, during and after genetic changes in selection pressures. Here, I propose to do just this, taking advantage of a natural experiment of an emblematic study system in evolutionary biology: parallel independent adaptation to freshwater by marine-adapted threespine sticklebacks through the rise in frequency of freshwater-associated alleles. Utilising palaeogenomics to sample genomes along this evolutionary continuum and the project will address a key and long-standing question: is there a mutational cost to natural selection? This is a timely question, as ongoing rapid global climatic change is a major source of novel selection pressures, therefore, understanding the dynamics of natural selection will provide key insights into potential outcomes for biodiversity. The methods developed in this project will not only benefit the growing field of paleogenomics but also other fields where data is collected in a temporal manner, such as experimental evolution and epidemiology. Ultimately, achievement of these goals requires the formation of a dedicated, closely knit team, focusing on both the methodological challenges as well as their bigger picture application to high-risk high-gain ventures. With ERC funding this can become a reality, enabling the interface of palaeogenomics and evolutionary biology to be pushed to the new limits of the modern sequencing era.
Associate professor Sebastian Watzl
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
Project: GOODATTENTION: Attention norms and their role in practical reason, epistemology, and ethics
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2021-09-01, End date: 2026-08-31
Call: SH4, ERC-2020-CoG
Summary: What is good attention? Much public discussion about social media, public health, and political debates is focused on versions of this question. What deserves our attention and how we should regulate attention in the face of distraction occupies the debate. What is missing is a philosophical investigation of attention norms and a framework for thinking about them. This is what GOODATTENTION provides. While entire fields of philosophy investigate the normative assessment of other aspects of the mind, the normative structure of attention remains largely unstudied. In its ground-breaking and interdisciplinary approach GOODATTENTION connects the study of the nature and the causal role of attention in psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics with the philosophical fields of decision theory, epistemology, and ethics. It develops a unified foundation for the study of attention norms by using a novel conceptual framework based on priority structures that organize the mind. It aims, first, to understand how attention norms emerge within our individual psychology and in the social domain. And it aims, second, to evaluate attention norms by integrating them into normative philosophy. The project's hypothesis is that the fundamental norms of attention concern relevance. GOODATTENTION investigates the biological function of relevance processing and the role of social relevance for how attention is guided by social norms. Building on this investigation, GOODATTENTION considers the role of attention norms for relevance in decision making, and in epistemic and ethical considerations. GOODATTENTION will impact these philosophical fields by showing how they can integrate norms of attention. It unifies research in evolutionary biology, cognitive and social psychology, linguistics, economics, and political theory. Its investigation of the epistemic role of attention and ethical rights and duties regarding attention will provide an analytical framework as input for policy making.
Professor Inger Skjelsb?k
Centre of Gender Research
Project: EuroWARCHILD: Innocent Children or Security Threats? European Children Born of War
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2021-06-01, End date: 2026-05-31
Call: SH2, ERC-2020-CoG
Summary: How can we ensure that children born of war do not pay for the sins of their parents? Political debates about how to address the plight of children born of foreign fighters to ISIS/Daesh make this an acute concern in Europe today. The European debates are polarized; some argue that socialization of these children will transform them into the next generation of terrorists, while others argue that they must be assumed innocent with rights to citizenship in European countries and state protection. How might we understand, respond, and address the needs and rights of these children raises the fundamental question of how we understand children of the enemy, as innocent individuals or security threats? Further, it is important not to repeat previous historical mistakes. By learning from the past, we can ensure that we will not need to issue apologies for wrongdoings in the future. After World War II, children conceived by enemy soldiers experienced shaming, harassment and isolation. We know that some of the children conceived through conflict related sexual violence during the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, were rejected and adopted, whereas some remained with their mothers under difficult circumstances. These war children were long silenced, but with time, they have formed vocal groups who argue for the right to be seen, heard, and recognized. Their core message is that the sins of their parents are not theirs to bear; they are not the enemy. EuroWARCHILD develops methodological innovation and combines theory development, life history interviews and text analyses to investigate how a child born of war can become a security concern, and what it entails for the child who does. This project is the first to comprehensively examine different groups of war children in the European context; across different conflicts, security settings and generations. EuroWARCHILD will affect policy development and increase attention to children born of war in many European countries, and beyond.
Professor Carl Henrik Knutsen
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science
Project: ELDAR: The Emergence, Life, and Demise of Autocratic Regimes
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2020-06-01, End date: 2025-05-31
Call: SH2, ERC-2019-CoG
Summary: ELDAR will investigate three aspects of autocratic politics: 1) the emergence of autocratic regimes; 2) policy-making (“life”) in autocracies in the areas of education, infrastructure, pensions and media regulation; 3) autocratic regime breakdown. ELDAR offers a comprehensive perspective, highlighting the interconnections between these three aspects – for example, the particular policies chosen may mitigate or exacerbate specific risks to the regime – and studying them jointly in one framework. ELDAR will address the preferences and capacities of vital actors in autocratic politics – the leader, regime support groups, and mobilized opposition groups. Special attention will be directed towards identifying and linking the different actors entering support and opposition coalitions to constituent social groups (e.g., industrial workers and landowners). Team members will also study the specific, and diverse, institutions that underpin autocracies, such as characteristics of regime parties or legislative elections. In extension, ELDAR will explicitly model – theoretically and empirically – how support- and opposition groups and institutions interact in affecting regime change and policy making in autocracies. Examples of more specific questions include: Are autocracies less willing to use the education system for ideological
indoctrination if the regime tightly controls the media environment? Are autocracies less likely to break down if they provide generous special pensions to military officers? To investigate such questions empirically, ELDAR will collect data, with global coverage and long time-series, on the numbers, social identity and other features of groups that support and oppose
regimes. These efforts yield unprecedented opportunities for large-n studies of autocratic emergence and demise. Three other datasets, on education systems, buildings, and pensions, will also enable pioneering empirical studies on core policy areas in autocracies.
Associate professor Catherine Anne Bradley
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Musicology
Project: BENEDICAMUS: Musical and Poetic Creativity for A Unique Moment in the Western Christian Liturgy, c.1000-1500
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2020-09-01, End date: 2025-08-31
Call: SH5, ERC-2019-CoG
Summary: BENEDICAMUS pursues a transformative focus on creative practices surrounding a particular moment in the Western Christian liturgy: the exclamation Benedicamus Domino (“Let us Bless the Lord”), which sounded in song several times a day
from c.1000 to 1500. This moment was granted special musical licence c.1000: singers of plainchant melodies could choose to reprise a favourite tune from the Church music for the day, re-texting it with the words Benedicamus Domino. In consequence, Benedicamus Domino enjoyed unprecedented longevity and significance as a focus of compositional interest, prompting some of the earliest experiments in multi-voiced polyphonic composition c.1100, as well as a lasting tradition of popular, devotional carols in the 1300s and 1400s. Histories of music have principally told the stories of particular composers, genres, institutions, or geographical centres. BENEDICAMUS undertakes the first longue durée study of musical and poetic responses to an exceptional liturgical moment, using this innovative perspective to work productively across established historiographical and disciplinary boundaries. Encompassing half a millennium of musical and ritual activity, hundreds of musical compositions, poetic texts, and manuscript sources, it offers pan-European perspectives on a chronologically and geographically diverse range of musical and poetic genres never before considered in conjunction. It develops new methods of music analysis to uncover traces of ad hoc or improvisatory performative practices that were not explicitly recorded in writing, forging interdisciplinary contexts for thinking about artistic creativity and experimentation in a time-period where these concepts have been little studied. BENEDICAMUS engages with the beginnings of musical and poetic genres and techniques that were crucial in shaping practices still current today, and reflects on music’s enduringly
complex relationship with spirituality, ritual, and the sacred.
Adjunct professor Johanna Olweus
Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Clinical Medicine
Project: OUTSOURCE: Outsourcing cancer immunity to healthy donors
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2020-09-01, End date: 2025-08-31
Call: LS7, ERC-2019-CoG
Summary: Despite recent advances in cancer immunotherapy, most patients with metastatic cancer are not cured. Major reasons are lack of homogeneously and highly expressed molecules that can be safely targeted and evoke efficient T-cell responses. I propose that the strong T-cell responses leading to rejection of transplanted organs can be exploited to “reject” cancer by specific recognition of tissue-restricted targets. To this end, I recently demonstrated that healthy donor blood provides a rich source of T cells expressing TCRs that specifically and strongly react to peptides from tissue-restricted self-proteins, when
presented on mismatched, foreign Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). I propose that patient T cells genetically equipped with such donor TCRs (dTCR T cell therapy) may “reject” cancer-affected organs, including metastases. A high and homogeneous expression of tissue-specific antigens is often maintained on both primary tumor and metastatic cancer cells. Here, I will identify peptides from tissue-restricted proteins as novel candidate TCR targets. Next, I will identify donor T cells that recognize such self-peptides in complex with foreign HLA by use of my patented method, and sequence reactive TCRs.
Finally, I will establish a preclinical pipeline to characterize safety and efficacy of TCRs in vitro and in vivo in innovative mouse models. Outsourcing cancer immunity to dTCR T cells may bypass major limitations in current immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibition and T cells gene-modified with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). Thus, dTCRs can recognize i) intracellular targets and thus manifold more targets than CARs, ii) tumor-associated self-antigens with high affinity in contrast to patient-derived TCRs, and iii) self-antigens, which are more homogeneously expressed than mutations. dTCR T cell therapy could treat malignancies in organs that are non-essential for survival, such as prostate, or that can be
replaced by a transplant, such as bone marrow.
Professor Hugo Lundhaug
Faculty of Theology
Project: APOCRYPHA: Storyworlds in Transition: Coptic Apocrypha in Changing Contexts in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2020-08-01, End date: 2025-07-31
Call: SH5, ERC-2019-CoG
Summary: This project proposes the first systematic study of Coptic apocrypha covering the entire timespan of Coptic literary production, and it aims to do so with unprecedented methodological sophistication. Apocrypha is here defined as (1) texts and traditions that develop or expand upon characters and events of the biblical storyworld; (2) and/or contain a claim to authorship by a character from that storyworld or a direct witness to it. A great number of such apocryphal texts and traditions has been preserved in Coptic manuscripts from the fourth to the twelfth centuries. Most of these texts are attributed to apostles or other important early Christian figures, and over time such materials were also increasingly embedded in pseudepigraphical frames, such as in homilies attributed to later, but still early, heroes of the Church. The manuscripts in which this literature has been preserved were almost exclusively produced and used in Egyptian monasteries. Although the use of such apocrypha were at times controversial, the evidence clearly indicates the widespread use of such literature in Coptic monasteries over centuries, and this project will investigate the contents, development, and functions of apocrypha over time, as they were copied, adapted, and used in changing socio-religious contexts over time. The period covered by the project saw drastic changes in the religious landscape of Egypt, from its Christianity having a dominant position in the fourth century, through the marginalization of Egyptian Christianity in relation to the imperial Chalcedonian Church after 451, to a period of increasing marginalization in relation to Islam following the Arab conquest of Egypt in the mid-seventh century. The project will investigate how these changing contexts are reflected in the Coptic apocrypha that were copied and used in Egyptian monasteries, and what functions they had for their users throughout the period under investigation.
Professor Wojciech J. Miloch
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Department of Physics
Project: POLAR-4DSpace: 4DSpace: integrated study for space weather at high latitudes
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2020-09-01, End date: 2025-08-31
Call: PE10, ERC-2019-CoG
Summary: Ionosphere is the partially ionized, outermost part of the Earth’s atmosphere. Its dynamics is inherently complex and affected by dynamic conditions in the solar wind. In the polar regions, it is directly coupled to the Earth’s magnetosphere and space plasma. The polar ionosphere is subject to the auroral particle precipitation, instabilities and turbulence, which all influence the energy transfer through the ionosphere and lead to plasma density irregularities which lead to scintillations of transionospheric radio signals. Irregularities span over a large range of scales, from thousands of kilometers down to centimeters, making their investigation a highly challenging task. The state of ionosphere at high latitudes is a crucial aspect of the space weather, which has important impact on today’s society, in particular in the context of increasing shipping, aviation, and other operations in the Arctic. Understanding processes in the polar ionosphere, their technological impacts, and laying foundations for robust models for forecasting space weather effects are one of the major goals in space science. This project will determine the role of auroral particle precipitations and geomagnetic activity for the development of plasma irregularities at high latitudes, and their impacts on the global navigation satellite systems. Through an integrated approach, combining insitu
measurements by sounding rockets with novel multi-payloads, cutting-edge numerical simulations, and statistical studies with ground- and satellite-based observations at both hemispheres, it will provide groundbreaking understanding of plasma irregularities in the polar ionosphere, give insight into the energy transfer in the ionosphere, and lay foundations for the space weather models that will improve security of operations in the polar regions. The project is across scientific domains: it deals with the Earth’s Ionosphere, the near-Earth space environment, and fundamental processes in plasma physics.
Associate professor Ingunn Kathrine Wehus
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics
Project: Cosmoglobe -- mapping the universe from the Milky Way to the Big Bang
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31
Call: PE9, ERC-2018-CoG
Summary: In the aftermath of the high-precision Planck and BICEP2 experiments, cosmology has undergone a critical transition. Before 2014, most breakthroughs came as direct results of improved detector technology and increased noise sensitivity. After 2014, the main source of uncertainty will be due to astrophysical foregrounds, typically in the form of dust or synchrotron emission from the Milky Way. Indeed, this holds as true for the study of reionization and the cosmic dawn as it does for the hunt for inflationary gravitational waves. To break through this obscuring veil, it is of utmost importance to optimally exploit every piece of available information, merging the world's best observational data with the world's most advanced theoretical models. A first step toward this ultimate goal was recently published as the Planck 2015 Astrophysical Baseline Model, an effort led and conducted by myself. Here I propose to build Cosmoglobe, a comprehensive model of the radio, microwave and sub-mm sky, covering 100 MHz to 10 THz in both intensity and polarization, extending existing models by three orders of magnitude in frequency and a factor of five in angular resolution. I will leverage a recent algorithmic breakthrough in multi-resolution component
separation to jointly analyze some of the world's best data sets, including C-BASS, COMAP, PASIPHAE, Planck, SPIDER, WMAP and many more. This will result in the best cosmological (CMB, SZ, CIB etc.) and astrophysical (thermal and spinning dust, synchrotron and free-free emission etc.) component maps published to date. I will then use this model to
derive the world's strongest limits on, and potentially detect, inflationary gravity waves using SPIDER observations; forecast, optimize and analyze observations from the leading next-generation CMB experiments, including LiteBIRD and S4; and derive the first 3D large-scale structure maps from CO intensity mapping from COMAP, potentially opening up a new window on the cosmic dawn.
Professor Torkild Hovde Lyngstad
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology and Human Geography
Project: OPENFLUX: Societal openness, normative flux, and the social modification of heritability
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2019-07-01, End date: 2024-06-30
Call: SH3, ERC-2018-CoG
Summary: In this project, we will use social modifications of heritability as measurement devices for assessing how social conditions shape opportunity structures, and how human potential is either constrained or enabled. Major themes in family demography and social stratification such as equality of opportunity in the age of mass education, changing family
structures in the 20th century, development of life courses and careers, and intergenerational transmission processes all motivate an important role for human genetics. Up to recently, little of these efforts have directly engaged with genetic research. A common criticism of genetic methods is that they are silent on social context and environmental interactions.
We turn these criticisms into tools, by assessing how genetic effects vary across contexts and environments. First, we study social change across cohorts, as influential theory suggests heritable dispositions will increase in importance when opportunity structures expand or social norms are in flux. We will test these ideas on the recent decades of family and fertility changes, and the expanding opportunity structures in education and labor markets. Second, we ask whether genetic and environmental influences on social stratification and family demographic outcomes change over the life course as the
consequences of individual choice and social structures accumulate. Third, we will examine the similarity in outcomes of parents and their offspring from a genetically informed standpoint. A synergy combining state-of-the-art techniques from molecular and behavior genetics with high-quality population register data and strong theorization and measurement of socio-environmental factors from the social sciences is highly innovative cross-fertilization of research that will yield major new Insights.
Professor Veronique Pouillard
Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archeology, Conservation and History
Project: CREATIVE IPR: The History of Intellectual Property Rights in the Creative Industries
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31
Call: SH6, ERC-2018-CoG
Summary: CREATIVE IPR aims to study the rise of intellectual property rights in the creative industries, from the international treaties of the late nineteenth century to the present day, with a focus on Europe in the global world. CREATIVE IPR examines the consequences of this development for the creators. What did intellectual property rights mean to a musician, or to a fashion designer in twentieth century Europe? Who captured economic value or failed to do so? In order to answer these questions, CREATIVE IPR proposes an original bottom-up approach, examining from the ground the macro and the micro aspects of the rise of intellectual property rights in the creative industries. CREATIVE IPR pursues the questions in three arenas. The first arena is the formation and impact of national and international institutions and organizations for intellectual property. The second and third arenas are the role of authors’ rights societies in the music industries, and the management of creativity in the fashion industries. For each arena, crosscutting themes are pursued: authorship and creativity, firms, technological change, legal frameworks, and the role of the commons – the public domain. In recent years, intellectual property rights have, due to technological and economic change, attracted significant scholarly interest. Yet attention has not been paid to their impact on creators in a historical perspective. By analyzing the micro histories of the creators who negotiated the growing legal regime in the light of a transnational context CREATIVE IPR will fill a significant knowledge gap, help refine our ideas about the impact of intellectual property rights on creators, and open paths for future research. Ultimately it will help us understand how societies can foster rich and diverse creative industries.
Professor Henrik Daae Zachrisson
Faculty of Educational Sciences, Department of Special Needs Education
Project: EQOP: Socioeconomic gaps in language development and school achievement: Mechanisms of inequality and opportunity
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31
Call: SH3, ERC-2018-CoG
Summary: As inequality increases in most developed countries, children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are at exceptional risk for academic underachievement with lasting consequences for individuals, their communities, and society
at large. Among policy makes, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is considered a key to remedy this risk. Yet the science on ECEC effectiveness at a national scale lags behind the excitement. Exploiting unique Norwegian data, we first seek to identify how and why socioeconomic disadvantage undermines children’s language skills and school achievement. Second, we will investigate whether ECEC can improve opportunities for disadvantaged children to excel. Third, to clarify the policy relevance of these inquiries, we will estimate costs of socioeconomic achievement gaps and the economic benefits of ECEC at scale. We take an investigative approach that is unprecedented in scope—from population level trends down to nuanced assessments of individual children’s growth. Throughout the 2000s, Norway’s child poverty rates increased from about 4% to 10%, while the coverage of public ECEC for toddlers increased from 30% to 80%. Across this unique window of time, we have access to rich survey data on language skills and home environment for 100,000 children, and genetically informative data, linked with administrative records on community- and family level socioeconomic risks and opportunities, and on national achievement test scores. These data allow us powerful analytic opportunities, combining state-of-the-art statistical, econometric, psychometric, and genetic epidemiological Methods.
Professor Kristine Beate Walhovd 
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology
Project: Set to change: early life factors restricting and promoting neurocognitive plasticity through life
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-31
Call: SH4, ERC-2017-CoG
Summary: Cognitive function in old age can be predicted from how you functioned when you were young. This is remarkable, as there are substantial cognitive age changes. Are we neurodevelopmentally set to change through life in certain ways? The objective of Set-to-change is to test whether and how early life environmental factors and genetic makeup interact to regulate neurocognitive plasticity through the lifespan. Neurocognitive plasticity; i.e. changes in brain and cognition in response to environmental demands over time, shows huge individual variability, for unknown reasons. Neurodevelopmental origins of functional variation through the lifespan are acknowledged, but the pathways need to be identified. As individual constitution and environment are intrinsically correlated, to make progress beyond state of the art, this can only be tested in an experimental setting.
The novelty and ground-breaking nature of the project lies in the synthesis of a targeted experimental approach testing differences in neurocognitive plasticity by training of younger and older adult mono- (MZ) and dizygotic twins (total n = 400 individuals), with varying degrees of prenatal environmental variance, as indexed by their extent of discordance in birth weight (BW). BW discordance in MZ twins enables me to disentangle early environmental and genetic influences on neurocognitive plasticity. I will employ a novel ecologically valid memory intervention utilizing navigation with true locomotion and prospective memory in virtual reality. Twins will be assessed with brain MRI, cognitive, health and epigenetic measures at multiple time points spread across 2.5 years pre- and post- 3 months intervention in a AB/BA crossover design, to investigate neurocognitive plasticity and age change longitudinally, as well as possible lifestyle and epigenetic mediators. I hypothesize that early life environmental influences will interact with genetic makeup in determining neurocognitive plasticity in adulthood.
Professor Hans Kristian Kamfjord Eriksen
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute of Teoretical Astrophysics
Project: Bits2Cosmology: Time-domain Gibbs sampling: From bits to inflationary gravitational waves
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2018-04-01, End date: 2023-03-31
Call: PE9, ERC-2017-CoG
Summary: The detection of primordial gravity waves created during the Big Bang ranks among the greatest potential intellectual achievements in modern science. During the last few decades, the instrumental progress necessary to achieve this has been nothing short of breathtaking, and we today are able to measure the microwave sky with better than one-in-a-million precision. However, from the latest ultra-sensitive experiments such as BICEP2 and Planck, it is clear that instrumental sensitivity alone will not be sufficient to make a robust detection of gravitational waves. Contamination in the form of astrophysical radiation from the Milky Way, for instance thermal dust and synchrotron radiation, obscures the cosmological signal by orders of magnitude. Even more critically, though, are second-order interactions between this radiation and the instrument characterization itself that lead to a highly non-linear and complicated problem. I propose a ground-breaking solution to this problem that allows for joint estimation of cosmological parameters, astrophysical components, and instrument specifications. The engine of this method is called Gibbs sampling, which I have already applied extremely successfully to basic CMB component separation. The new and ciritical step is to apply this method to raw time-ordered observations observed directly by the instrument, as opposed to pre-processed frequency maps. While representing a ~100-fold increase in input data volume, this step is unavoidable in order to break through the current foreground-induced systematics floor. I will apply this method to the best currently available and future data sets (WMAP, Planck, SPIDER and LiteBIRD), and thereby derive the world's tightest constraint on the amplitude of inflationary gravitational waves. Additionally, the resulting ancillary science in the form of robust cosmological parameters and astrophysical component maps will represent the state-of-the-art in observational cosmology in years to come.
Associate professor Lee Hsiang Liow.png)
Natural History Museum/Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis
Project: macroevolution.abc: Abiota, Biota, Constraints in Macroevolutionary Processes
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31
Call: LS8, ERC-2016-CoG
Summary: To what degree do microevolutionary processes that happen on a generational time scale matter for macroevolutionary patterns recorded on time scales of millions of years in the fossil record? To answer this fundamental question in evolutionary biology, we need a model system in which we can overcome the conceptual and empirical boundaries imposed by disparate timescales. macroevolution.abc will develop bryozoans as the Drosophila of macroevolution, integrating molecular, fossil, phenotypic, ecological and environmental data to shed light on the currently inaccessible “Dark Time Scale” (thousands, to tens of thousands of years), spanning the chasm between microevolution studied by population geneticists and evolutionary ecologists and macroevolution studied by paleontologists and comparative phylogeneticists. Using bryozoans, a little-known but uniquely ideal study group for evolutionary questions, I will generate, then crossintegrate, (i) empirical time series of intra- and interspecific biotic interactions; (ii) phenotypic data describing variation within genetic individuals, variation among contemporaneous individuals in both extinct and living populations; (iii) robust estimates
of abundance shifts in fossil populations; and (iv) speciation and extinction rate estimates from molecular phylogenies and the fossil record. The new bryozoan model evolutionary system will provide answers to previously intractable questions such as “do ecological interactions crucial for individual survival matter for group diversification patterns observed on geological time scales” and “why do we have to wait a million years for bursts of phenotypic change”?
Professor Anders Martin Fjell 
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2012-04-30
Call: SH4, ERC-2016-CoG
Summary: Which brain mechanisms are responsible for the faith of the memories we make with age, whether they wither or stay, and in what form? Episodic memory function does decline with age. While this decline can have multiple causes, research has focused almost entirely on encoding and retrieval processes, largely ignoring a third critical process– consolidation. The objective of AgeConsolidate is to provide this missing link, by combining novel experimental cognitive paradigms With neuroimaging in a longitudinal large-scale attempt to directly test how age-related changes in consolidation processes in the brain impact episodic memory decline. The ambitious aims of the present proposal are two-fold: (1) Use recent advances in memory consolidation theory to achieve an elaborate model of episodic memory deficits in aging (2) Use aging as a model to uncover how structural and functional brain changes affect episodic memory consolidation in general The novelty of the project lies in the synthesis of recent methodological advances and theoretical models for episodic memory consolidation to explain age-related decline, by employing a unique combination of a range of different techniques and approaches. This is ground-breaking, in that it aims at taking our understanding of the brain processes underlying episodic memory decline in aging to a new level, while at the same time advancing our theoretical understanding of how episodic memories are consolidated in the human brain. To obtain this outcome, I will test the main hypothesis of the project:
Brain processes of episodic memory consolidation are less effective in older adults, and this can account for a significant portion of the episodic memory decline in aging. This will be answered by six secondary hypotheses, with 1-3 experiments or tasks designated to address each hypothesis, focusing on functional and structural MRI, positron emission tomography data and sleep experiments to target consolidation from different angles.
Researcher Sven Wedemeyer
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics
Project: SolarALMA: ALMA – The key to the Sun’s coronal heating problem.
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Call: PE9, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary:How are the outer layers of the Sun heated to temperatures in excess of a million kelvin? A large number of heating mechanisms have been proposed to explain this so-called coronal heating problem, one of the fundamental questions in contemporary solar physics. It is clear that the required energy is transported from the solar interior through the chromosphere into the outer layers but it remains open by which physical mechanisms and how the provided energy is eventually dissipated. The key to solving the chromospheric/coronal heating problem lies in accurate observations at high spatial, temporal and spectral resolution, facilitating the identification of the mechanisms responsible for the transport and dissipation of energy. This has so far been impeded by the small number of accessible diagnostics and the challenges with their interpretation. The interferometric Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) now offers impressive capabilities. Due to the properties of the solar radiation at millimeter wavelengths, ALMA serves as a linear thermometer, mapping narrow layers at different heights. It can measure the thermal structure and dynamics of the solar chromosphere and thus sources and sinks of atmospheric heating. Radio recombination and molecular lines (e.g., CO) potentially provide complementary kinetic and thermal diagnostics, while the polarisation of the continuum intensity and the Zeeman effect can be exploited for valuable chromospheric magnetic field measurements. I will develop the necessary diagnostic tools and use them for solar observations with ALMA. The preparation, optimisation and interpretation of these observations will be supported by state-of-the-art numerical simulations. A key objective is the identification of the dominant physical processes and their contributions to the transport and dissipation of energy. The results will be a major step towards solving the coronal heating problem with general implications for stellar activity.
Professor B?rd Harstad
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics
Project: CONSERVATION: The Economics and Politics of Conservation
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2016-08-01, End date: 2021-07-31
Call: SH1, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary: The UN’s approach to climate policy is to focus on national emission caps for greenhouse gases. Most of the economic theory on environmental agreements is also studying such a demand-side approach, even though it is well known that such an approach has several flaws, including carbon leakage and the incentive to free ride. Recent theory has suggested that a better approach may be to focus on the supply-side of the equation, rather than the demand-side. While this recent theory is promising, it is only indicative and has several shortcomings that must be analysed. The goal of this project is to investigate in depth how to best use conservation as an environmental policy tool. The project aims at integrating the theory of emissions and pollution with a model of extraction and thus the supply of exhaustible resources in a coherent and dynamic game-theoretic framework. I will apply this framework to analyse negotiations, agreements, and contracts on extraction levels, and how such policies can interact, complement or substitute for agreements focusing on consumption/emissions. It will also be important to develop and apply the tools of political economics to investigate which (second-best) agreement one may expect to be feasible as equilibria of the game. For highly asymmetric settings, where the possessors of the Resource are few (such as for tropical forests), side transfers are necessary and contract theory will be the natural analytical tool when searching for the best agreement. However, also standard contract theory needs to be developed further once one
recognizes that the “agent” in the principal-agent relationship is an organization or a government, rather than an individual.
Associate professor William E. Louch
Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Clinical medicine
Project: CARDYADS: Controlling Cardiomyocyte Dyadic Structure
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2015-07-01, End date: 2020-06-30
Call: LS4, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary: Contraction and relaxation of cardiac myocytes, and thus the whole heart, are critically dependent on dyads. These functional junctions between t-tubules, which are invaginations of the surface membrane, and the sarcoplasmic reticulum allow efficient control of calcium release into the cytosol, and also its removal. Dyads are formed gradually during development and break down during disease. However, the precise nature of dyadic structure is unclear, even in healthy adult cardiac myocytes, as are the triggers and consequences of altering dyadic integrity. In this proposal, my group will investigate the precise 3-dimensional arrangement of dyads and their proteins during development, adulthood, and heart failure by employing CLEM imaging (PALM and EM tomography). This will be accomplished by developing transgenic mice with fluorescent labels on four dyadic proteins (L-type calcium channel, ryanodine receptor, sodium-calcium exchanger, SERCA), and by imaging tissue from explanted normal and failing human hearts. The signals responsible for controlling dyadic formation, maintenance, and disruption will be determined by performing high-throughput sequencing to identify novel genes involved with these processes in several established model systems. Particular focus will be given to investigating left ventricular wall stress and stretch-dependent gene regulation as controllers of dyadic integrity. Candidate genes will be manipulated in cell models and transgenic animals to promote dyadic formation and maintenance, and reverse dyadic disruption in heart failure. The consequences of dyadic structure for function will be tested experimentally and with mathematical modelling to examine effects on cardiac myocyte Calcium homeostasis and whole-heart function. The results of this project are anticipated to yield unprecedented insight into dyadic structure, regulation, and function, and to identify novel therapeutic targets for heart disease patients.
Walter Salzburger
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis
Summary
Duration: Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Call: LS8, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary: More than 150 years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, the identification of the processes that govern the emergence of novel species remains a fundamental problem to biology. Why is it that some groups have diversified in a seemingly explosive manner, while others have lingered unvaried over millions of years? What are the external factors and environmental conditions that promote organismal diversity? And what is the molecular basis of adaptation and diversification? A key to these and related questions is the comparative study of exceptionally diverse yet relatively recent species assemblages such as Darwin’s finches, the Caribbean anole lizards, or the hundreds of endemic species of cichlid fishes in the East African Great Lakes, which are at the center of this proposal. More specifically, I intend to conduct the so far most thorough examination of a large adaptive radiation, combining in-depth eco-morphological assessments and whole genome sequencing of all members of a cichlid species flock. To this end, I plan to (i) sequence the genomes and transcriptomes of several specimens of each cichlid species from Lake Tanganyika to examine genetic and transcriptional diversity; (ii) apply stable-isotope and stomach-content analyses in combination with underwater transplant experiments and transect surveys to quantitate feeding performances, habitat preferences and natural-history parameters; (iii) use X-ray computed tomography to study phenotypic variation in 3D; and (iv) examine fossils from existing and forthcoming drilling cores to implement a time line of diversification in a cichlid adaptive radiation. This project, thus, offers the unique opportunity to test recent theory- and data-based predictions on speciation and adaptive radiation within an entire biological system – in this case the adaptive radiation of cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika.