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Description: I intend to travel to the University of Oxford and the lab of Dr. Moritz Riede and build a second generation version of the
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The stereoselective synthesis of small organic molecules depends on robust catalytic methods. Despite many advances in enantioselective synthesis, an unsolved challenge in catalysis is the translation of enantioselective catalytic reactions to diastereoselective reactions – where a chiral catalyst controls the outcome of reaction of a chiral substrate.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This proposal describes the 3D printing of hydrogel droplet networks to prepare artificial tissue-like materials that demonstrate stimulus-responsive chemo-mechanical actuation. A recent breakthrough by Prof. Bayley’s research group has enabled the 3D printing of self-supporting droplet networks which can be functionalised to allow rapid electrical and molecular communication along a specific path. As a result of this, an opportunity now exists to prepare tissue-like materials that can perform mechanical work in response to external stimuli. By printing biocompatible and responsive polymer hydrogels into droplet networks, artificial muscles will be prepared that display specific and well-defined motion. The resulting technology will be of great importance for a variety of biomaterial applications, with future European Union (EU) industrial growth as well as the public ultimately benefiting from progress in this area.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: In morpho-phonological alternations the shapes of morphemes differ between morphologically related word forms. In these alternations the morphological environment is also implicated (revére ~ réverence verb [iː] ~ noun [ɛ] and stress differ) unlike alternations which are conditioned only by the phonological environment.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: 'The importance of natural products and derivatives as sources of new drugs is undeniable. Newman has stated:
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Active liquid crystals are out-of-equilibrium systems that display intriguing dynamic phenomena, arising from the interplay This multidisciplinary research programme is focussed on the optical manipulation of interfaces, droplets and crystallites in colloidal model systems. In particular, we will use holographic optical tweezing and confocal microscopy to study interfacial phenomena in three different phase separated colloid-polymer mixtures, exhibiting colloidal liquid-gas, crystal-gas and nematic-isotropic phase coexistence, respectively. First, we will determine the full potential energy landscape of the optical traps using the relation between interface fluctuations and deformed liquid-gas interfaces. This will then be used to study the complex and anisotropic interfacial properties of crystal-gas and nematic-isotropic interfaces. In addition, we envisage quantitatively investigating the nucleation of colloidal liquid droplets, crystallites and liquid crystalline droplets in optical traps positioned at well-defined heights above the interface, which is a direct and quantitative measure for the undersaturation. This allows us to systematically study the relation between the quench depth, nucleus size and nucleation times. We will furthermore nucleate multiple droplets, crystallites and liquid crystalline droplets to study their optical trapping controlled coalescence and detachment, which will shed completely new light on for instance the single particle structure and dynamics upon coalescence and detachment. Finally, we will introduce large probe particles into the phase separated colloid-polymer mixtures, which enables the study of important phenomena such as heterogeneous nucleation and capillary condensation, crystallisation and nematisation. This ambitious project opens up a huge range of exciting possibilities to gain a deep and fundamental understanding of interfacial phenomena in complex fluids by actively manipulating and controlling colloidal interfaces, droplets and crystallites.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD , THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Active liquid crystals are out-of-equilibrium systems that display intriguing dynamic phenomena, arising from the interplay This multidisciplinary research programme is focussed on the optical manipulation of interfaces, droplets and crystallites in colloidal model systems. In particular, we will use holographic optical tweezing and confocal microscopy to study interfacial phenomena in three different phase separated colloid-polymer mixtures, exhibiting colloidal liquid-gas, crystal-gas and nematic-isotropic phase coexistence, respectively. First, we will determine the full potential energy landscape of the optical traps using the relation between interface fluctuations and deformed liquid-gas interfaces. This will then be used to study the complex and anisotropic interfacial properties of crystal-gas and nematic-isotropic interfaces. In addition, we envisage quantitatively investigating the nucleation of colloidal liquid droplets, crystallites and liquid crystalline droplets in optical traps positioned at well-defined heights above the interface, which is a direct and quantitative measure for the undersaturation. This allows us to systematically study the relation between the quench depth, nucleus size and nucleation times. We will furthermore nucleate multiple droplets, crystallites and liquid crystalline droplets to study their optical trapping controlled coalescence and detachment, which will shed completely new light on for instance the single particle structure and dynamics upon coalescence and detachment. Finally, we will introduce large probe particles into the phase separated colloid-polymer mixtures, which enables the study of important phenomena such as heterogeneous nucleation and capillary condensation, crystallisation and nematisation. This ambitious project opens up a huge range of exciting possibilities to gain a deep and fundamental understanding of interfacial phenomena in complex fluids by actively manipulating and controlling colloidal interfaces, droplets and crystallites.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD , THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Lysine acetylation is a key protein post-translational modification (PTM) found throughout the cellular environment and across the range of species. This PTM is dynamic, with histone acetyl transferases (HATs) acetylating lysine, and histone deacetlyases (HDACs) reversing the modification. In addition, proteins modules bromodomains, have been identified that bind to acetylated lysine (KAc) and mediate protein-protein interactions. In humans, bromodomains exist as part of larger proteins, many of which are involved in transcriptional regulation. Bromodomains contain a KAc-binding pocket for which small molecule ligands have been identified. These ligands prevent the interaction of bromodomains with KAc and have been invaluable in dissecting the fundamental biology mediated by bromodomain-containing proteins (BCPs). We and others have developed potent ligands for the human bromodomain and extra C-terminal domain (BET) bromodomains. These compounds have antiproliferative effects in cancer cells lines and modulate inflammation and atherosclerosis. This work led to an explosion of interest in developing BET bromodomain inhibitors, resulting in 5 compounds in clinical trials. Despite rapid progress in understanding the role of human bromodomains, their function in other species is poorly understood. Given the fundamental role played by bromodomains in humans, we hypothesise that BCPs will play equally important roles in other organisms.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project provides the first comparative historical analysis – local, national and transnational - of the Central African copperbelt. This globally strategic mineral region is central to the history of two nation-states (Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)), as well as wider debates about the role of mineral wealth in development. The project has three interrelated and comparative objectives. First, it will examine the copperbelt as a single region divided by a (post-)colonial border, across which flowed minerals, peoples, and ideas about the relationship between them. Political economy created the circumstances in which distinct political cultures of mining communities developed, but this also involved a process of imagination, drawing on ‘modern’ notions such as national development, but also morally framed ideas about the societies and land from which minerals are extracted. The project will explain the relationship between minerals and African polities, economies, societies and ideas. Second, it will analyse how ‘top-down’ knowledge production processes of Anglo-American and Belgian academies shaped understanding of these societies. Explaining how social scientists imagined and constructed copperbelt society will enable a new understanding of the relationship between mining societies and academic knowledge production. Third, it will explore the interaction between these intellectual constructions and the copperbelt’s political culture, exploring the interchange between academic and popular perceptions. This project will investigate the hypothesis that the resultant understanding of this region is the result of a long unequal interaction of definition and determination between western observers and African participants that has only a partial relationship to the reality of mineral extraction, filtered as it has been through successive sedimentations of imagining and representation laid down over nearly a century of urban life in central Africa.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: DEEP TIME will unearth a record of geological time that is buried thousands of kilometres deep. The seafloor that covers two-thirds of the earth's surface is a tiny fraction of all seafloor created during its history – the rest has sunk back into the viscous mantle. Slabs of subducted seafloor carry a record of surface history: how continents and oceans were configured over time and where their tectonic plate boundaries lay. DEEP TIME will follow former surface oceans as far back in time as the convecting mantle system will permit, by imaging subducted slabs down to the core with cutting-edge seismological techniques. Current tectonic plate reconstructions incorporate little if any of this deep structural information, which probably reaches back 300\ million years; they are based on present-day seafloor, which constrains only the past 100-150 million years.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: A new catalytic enantioselective cycloisomerisation reaction for the direct creation of the azabicyclic core of strychnos alkaloids is proposed. Strychnos alkaloids have been the subject of intensive investigation over the last decades. Recently, leuconicines A and B, which are new members of the Strychnos alkaloid family, have been isolated from extracts of the Malaysian plant Leuconotis maingayi. Leuconicines possess significant bioactivity and they potently reverse multidrug resistance in vincristine-resistant leukemia cells. However, further studies into the biological profile of these natural products are hindered due to insufficient quantities being available from the natural source. In order to secure sufficient quantities and fully determine the therapeutic potential of the leuconicines, a new source of these target molecules is required. A new synthetic route which develops and incorporates ‘state-of-the-art’ methodologies to rapidly forge the extremely complex 6,5,5,6,6,6 hexacyclic ring system and 4 stereocenters, will provide the material. Nevertheless, the synthetic routes toward complex natural products are usually long, contain many individual steps and involve manipulations after each step. For these reasons, new, simple and synthetically efficient organic transformations which reduce the drain of resources are desired. This Fellowship project combines total synthesis, new catalytic enantioselective methodology development, computational calculations and biological evaluation. It has been designed to augment and complement the research and transferable skills sets of the Marie Curie fellow and will greatly enhance his career prospects accordingly. Through the training and the research results arising, the Fellowship will be beneficial to the fellow, the host institution and European science.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, England’s population was again comparable to that of Roman Britain and included substantial urban centres. By 1200, England was more densely populated than ever before. Such population growth was mirrored across much of Europe. It drove the expansion of towns and markets and was fed, literally, by an increase in agricultural productivity that involved a fundamental reorganization of the countryside. The social, economic and demographic consequences of this reorganization were so far-reaching that it has often been described as an ‘agricultural revolution’. At the heart of this proposal is the question, how and when was this revolution achieved? FeedSax will effect a breakthrough in understanding this critically important period in Europe’s agricultural history by generating new, direct evidence for changing land-use from the excavated remains of crops, animals and farms.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: FLow of Ancient Metals across Eurasia (FLAME) is a new empirical and conceptual framework for understanding human interactions in Later Prehistory across all of Eurasia. Taking existing data on the chemical and isotopic composition of copper alloy objects and combining them with typological and chronological information within a GIS framework, FLAME aims to rewrite the history of human engagement with copper and its alloys across Eurasia, from Atlantic Iberia to the shores of the Pacific during approximately the 3rd to early 1st millennia BCE. It replaces the outdated concept of provenance with a completely new interpretative paradigm (‘form and flow’), which is built upon the expectation that copper may be recycled, re-alloyed and generally re-used, thus breaking the simple linear assumption of a direct chemical or isotopic link between the copper and the ore from which it came. In this new paradigm, small shifts in chemistry are interpreted not necessarily as changing ore sources but also as the natural consequence of high-temperature processing and mixing, thus putting the emphasis on human interaction with metal rather than on sourcing. We will address major questions at a range of scales, from assemblage to continental, to look at how metal flowed literally and metaphorically through the complex societies of Bronze Age Eurasia. Our reassessment of the metallurgy will also be underpinned by new GIS frameworks and the creation of regional Bayesian-modelled radiocarbon chronologies. Previous scientific assessments of early metal have too often isolated the chemical and isotopic evidence from both the immediate archaeological context and any sense of a real time and place. FLAME brings together a broad range of skills to examine for the first time the intertwined social, scientific, chronological and geographical aspects of Eurasian early metallurgy.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The formation of carbon-carbon bonds in an asymmetric fashion is a very useful process in synthetic chemistry, since it generates single enantiomers of chiral molecules at the same time as the molecular framework is being assembled. In this context, two strategies for the generation of single enantiomer compounds using enantioselective catalysis have been widely emabraced: on the one hand, the use of prochiral substrates, and on the other hand, the use of racemic substrates in enantiomer resolution processes, which limits the yields up to 50%. An efficient variation of this second strategy is to couple enantiomer differentiation with interconversion of enantiomers. However, these dynamic kinetic asymmetric transformations (DYKAT) have been limited to the use of stabilized nucleophiles. Very recently, the group of Fletcher reported that alkylzirconium reagents can be employed as non-stabilized nucleophiles in combination with a copper-based catalytic system for this class of processes. Subsequently, the same group demonstrated that arylboronic acids are also suitable substrates in rhodium-catalyzed DYKATs. The project presented in this application aims to expand the scope of this powerful transformation by using vinyl- and heteroarylboronic acids as non-stabilized nucleophiles in the rhodium-catalyzed DYKAT. Moreover, a thorough study of the reaction mechanism will be conducted, as well as the investigation on alternative procedures for this process (catalytic systems, nature of the substrates, etc) that might result in useful applications for organic synthesis.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: All of modern medicine is dependent on advances in chemistry and the healthcare goalposts have moved as the century has progressed. The pressing need to shorten cycle times and reduce the costs of drug discovery has led pharma and the clinicians that guide them to use scanning techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET), enabling them to increase disease understanding, study target engagement with therapeutics and improve decision making, so that only the best candidate molecules progress to the later stages of drug development. Overcoming these challenges requires multidisciplinary knowledge, and can be facilitated through stronger links between academia and Pharma. Chemical entities substituted with fluorine or fluorine-containing groups are frequently used to design drugs with improved pharmacological and pharmacokinetic profiles that provide important benefits over existing therapies, such as superior safety, efficacy, dosing, and patient compliance. Furthermore, 18F is often selected as the preferred positron-emitting isotope for the labeling of PET tracers due to its advantageous properties. The scientific objective of FLUDD is to develop novel late stage fluorination chemistry to populate the chemical and radiochemical space available for drug discovery with a focus on novel fluorine-containing fragments, molecules and biomolecules that are not directly accessible from commercial sources or the scientific literature. These novel methodologies will be applied to drugs and diagnostics discovery using both small molecules and proteins. The educational objective is to train the next generation of doctoral scientists in the practice of chemical synthesis and radiochemical methods with an in-depth appreciation of their applications in medicine. FLUDD objectives will be met with a novel Oxford-Janssen Alliance augmented with leading partners from academia, industry and the clinic.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: We address some of the major unsolved questions of galactic nuclei using methods of condensed matter physics. Galactic nuclei host a central supermassive black hole, a dense population of stars and compact objects, and in many cases a bright gaseous disk feeding the supermassive black hole. The observed stellar distribution exhibits both spherical and counterrotating disk-like structures. Existing theoretical models cannot convincingly explain the origin of the stellar disks. Is there also a “dark cusp” or “dark disk” of stellar mass black holes? Are there intermediate mass black holes in the Galactic center? We examine the statistical physics of galactic nuclei and their long term dynamical evolution. A star orbiting a supermassive black hole on an eccentric precessing orbit covers an axisymmetric annulus. The long-term gravitational interaction between such annuli is similar to the Coulomb interaction between axisymmetric molecules constituting a liquid crystal. We apply standard methods of condensed matter physics to examine these astrophysical systems. The observed disk and spherical structures represent isotropic-nematic phase transitions. We derive the phase space distribution and time-evolution of different stellar components including a population of black holes. Further, we investigate the interaction of a stellar cluster with a gaseous disk, if present. This leads to the formation of gaps, warps, and spiral waves in the disk, the redistribution of stellar objects, and possibly the formation of intermediate mass black holes. We explore the implications for electromagnetic and gravitational wave observatories. Dark disks of black holes could provide the most frequent source of gravitational waves for LIGO and VIRGO. These detectors will open a new window on the Universe; the proposed project will open a new field in gravitational wave astrophysics to interpret the sources. We also explore implications for electromagnetic observations.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers receive a tremendous amount of attention because of their extraordinary properties and application potential. Electron-phonon interactions, which couple the electronic and lattice vibrational degrees of freedom in solids, affect a wide range of material properties, for example lattice stability and carrier mobility. Importantly, the strength of electron-phonon interactions in 2D materials can be tuned to a significant extent by electric field doping and elastic deformation, opening up the possibility of rational engineering of electron-phonon interactions in 2D materials.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: In this project I plan to investigate by means of numerical simulations the dynamics and rheology of low-density
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: 'World Bank, EC Joint Research Centre, and other bodies have recently highlighted the potential of online labour markets to boost employment and economic growth. While national job markets have stagnated, online labour markets that connect firms with knowledge and service workers around the world have grown up to 60% a year.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Assemblies of tau and α-synuclein were shown to spread along interconnected neuronal networks suggesting broadly relevant therapeutic directions for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. This requires a pre-clinical stage of development that has yet to be met. The scale of neurodegenerative disease burden in Europe calls for an unprecedented research effort that can only be achieved through collaboration between leading European laboratories and the pharmaceutical industry. To meet this ambition the IMPRiND consortium will synergistically accelerate progress to map and target critical steps in the propagation, proteostatic response and protection against misfolded α-synuclein and tau. Specifically we aim to (1) identify disease-relevant assemblies, imprint their biological properties in vitro and generate homogeneous populations to assay and interfere with their pathogenic effects; (2) develop and miniaturise assays to monitor secretion, uptake, clearance and oligomerisation using bimolecular fluorescence complementation of oligomeric species or transfer of untagged assemblies to fluorescently labelled fibril-naïve cells and measure markers of early proteotoxicity that are suitable for live imaging high content screens; (3) deliver robust validation assays for these molecular events in complex cellular systems with greater functional resemblance to the native milieu of the brain such as iPSC-based and organotypic cultures (4) standardise pathological readouts in animal models for in vivo validation of modifiers, correlate them with novel peripheral or in situ markers using microdialysis to accelerate the assessment of therapeutic interventions and relevance to humans, e.g. by transplantation of human iPSC neurons in animals; (5) assess toxicity and druggability of potential targets. IMPRiND will construct this entire pipeline to examine the prion-like properties of α-synuclein and tau and test their tractability against disease progression.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: (ADP-ribosyl)ation is a dynamic post-translational modification synthesised by PARPs/ARTDs and regulates a diverse array of cellular processes, including the DNA damage response (DDR). The last decade has significantly improved our understanding of the key enzymes involved in (ADP-ribosyl)ation and the cellular pathways they function within. However, our understanding of how these enzymes are regulated is lacking and demands further investigation. In this proposal I seek to redress this.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: We propose to apply a cutting-edge optical microscopy based on interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) to directly study the dynamics of the fundamental system of nanoparticles at fluid interfaces. Nanoparticles at interfaces are a central research topic in colloidal science. They have various technological applications, related to, for example, emulsification, optical devices, and chemical catalysis. In addition, nanoparticles at interfaces make an ideal experimental model system for investigating topics in condensed matter physics, such as the dynamics of partially confined fluids and the phase behavior of 2D fluids. While many experimental studies have characterized the self-assembly, structure, and motion of such particles, important questions relating to adsorption/desorption dynamics and inertial effects, remain unanswered due to technical limitations of temporal and spatial resolution. iSCAT offers exclusive accessibility to answer these questions, through unprecedented capabilities of nanoparticle tracking in three dimensions with simultaneous nanometre spatial and microsecond temporal precision. Specifically, we aim at achieving two objectives for the first time; (i) observing and quantifying inertial effects at fluid-fluid interfaces, and (ii) characterizing the three-dimensional interfacial behavior of nanoparticles at interfaces. Overall, these objectives aim at expanding and generalising interfacial microrheology to much shorter time-scales, as well as to provide critical insight to the mechanisms underlying particle stability and self-assembly at interfaces.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Cardiosphere-derived stem cell (CDC) therapy for myocardial infarction (MI) has been shown to elicit moderate beneficial effects. Research currently focuses on improving CDC administration, retention and efficacy. This proposal aims to develop Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and engineering tools to facilitate this research. Specifically, microinjection of fluorine-19 labeled CDCs will allow for MRI tracking and quantification in vivo. Non-invasive global and regional cardiac function measurements will assess efficacy of stem cell (SC) therapy. Parallel to these studies will be an independent design, synthesis, use and evaluation of fiber-enriched scaffold. The anticipated impact will be multifaceted, including the study of cardiac function in disease, and the potential applicability of generated results with cutting edge SC regenerative technologies in heart failure and prominent cardiomyopathies. Research efforts will be stimulated in manufacturing processes for scaffolds, cardiac functional assessment post-injection of SCs, and validation of their homing, engraftment and viability using cellular tracking methods.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: I propose to study phases of matter that emerge in quantum systems far away from equilibrium. This is a very challenging and urgent problem as the recent experimental advances in cold atoms, trapped ions and solid-state physics in general, put us in front of possibilities that we never had in the past. The degree of control that we have nowadays on single atoms, the temperatures we are able to reach and the capability to keep an exact quantum evolution for long times, are only some of the several advances with the potential to disclose new physical phenomena with huge impact on society in the next years. Experiments and industry are moving fast towards building new devices, but most of the theoretical understanding still needs to be developed.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This proposal is aimed at developing novel, super hard, non-lubricated air cooled bearings that would give a step change in minimizing the engine oil system and its complexity. An SFC gain of 0.1 to 0.3% is anticipated as a result of this project.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Over the next five years an unprecedented number of initiatives will coalesce, contributing to an extension of the reach of the Internet to the world’s most remote regions. While previous efforts to expand Internet access have focused on urban areas, current initiatives are leveraging new technologies from drones to satellites to provide affordable access to the worlds poorest, many of whom are in Africa and live in regions where the state is weak and there is protracted violent conflict. Current debates have largely focused on technical issues of improving access, or assumed ways that technology will help ‘liberate’ populations or improve governance. This project focuses on a key puzzle that is often overlooked: How does increased access to social media affect the balance between peace-building efforts and attempts perpetuate violence in conflict-affected communities?
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project aims to build a group that brings together experts in gauge-theoretic, geometric, and group-theoretic techniques. It consists of 4 branches.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The overall vision of the project is to demonstrate methods for switching friction and adhesion – such as “switch off friction” or “switch on adhesion” – reversibly and with remote control. My hypothesis is that fluids confined to nanofilms between solid objects can be designed to dramatically alter their surface properties under the influence of applied fields, and so can be used to switch friction, lubrication or adhesion in a controlled and reversible way. The emphasis of the project is on creating well-defined model experiments, with high resolution in both film thickness and interaction forces, in order to reach a fundamental understanding of the new concepts and mechanisms involved. The novelty lies in both the newly-proposed mechanisms of switching friction and adhesion interactions, and the new instrumentation constructed to detect and analyse the forces. The new methodologies necessary for these pioneering experiments involve two new versions of a Surface Force Balance (SFB) providing molecular-resolution (0.1nm) control and measurement of interfacial liquid films, controlled application of electric and magnetic fields, and ultra-sensitive measurement of friction and adhesion. Notably, one of these new instruments will have macroscopic graphene electrodes for confinement of liquid nanofilms (0 – 100nm) between atomically smooth electrodes. The wide range of ‘switchable’ liquids studied will include polyelectrolytes, magnetic fluids, ionic liquids and self-assembled systems. Ultimately, this project will change the way we think about surface interactions into something we can ‘switch and control’.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The last two decades have witnessed a great commercial success of lithium ion battery (LIB) in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. However, current LIB technology cannot meet the rapid increasing demand from information technology and vehicle industry, primarily due to limited capacity and serious safety concern of graphite anode. Discovering new anode material with high capacity and good reliability has been a central issue. Because of its high theoretical capacity and excellent operation safety, silicon (Si) has attracted considerable attention as a promising anode to replace graphite. Nevertheless, dramatic volumetric change during lithiation/delithiation process causes severe pulverization and disconnection of electrode from current collector, leading to a fast capacity loss. To tackle these critical problems, a new concept to achieve facile, cost effective, green, and scalable synthesis of Si/carbon nanohybrid anode is proposed. By reducing Si particle size to the range below 10 nm and homogeneous embedding of Si nanoparticles into carbon buffer matrix, the volume change and associated stress can be effectively accommodated to improve the cyclability of the LIBs. Instead of conventional aqueous and/or organic solvents, three industrially widely used thermosetting resin monomer systems including vinyl ester resin, epoxy resin, and phenolic-formaldehyde resin are utilized as both solvent and carbon source. Cost effective silane coupling agents bearing appropriate chemical functional groups act as the precursor of Si and cross-linking agents of the thermosetting polymers. Ultra small Si nanoparticles are in situ formed and homogeneously embedded in the in situ formed porous carbon matrix by sequential photo/thermally induced polymerization, calcination in inert atmosphere, Magnesium thermal reduction, and KOH activation. The mechanism of control over morphology, crystallinity, dispersion, and composition of the Si/C nanohybrid anode and correspondin
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This research programme is fundamental solid state chemistry at the boundary with condensed matter physics. It will discover new transition metal compounds with layered crystal structures and aims to put them on the world stage by exploiting the compositional tunability which is intrinsic to non-molecular systems. The discovery and chemical rationalisation of new composition-structure-property relationships is anticipated to lead eventually to future industrial developments in applications as wide ranging as superconductors, thermoelectric materials, magnetic materials, batteries and heterogeneous catalysis. Parallel to the research, the fellow’s outreach activities will centre on highlighting these “synthetic minerals” to the general public in a permanent exhibit. The host group and the fellow bring complementary expertise to the project and the career development of the fellow will be through the research and outreach and also in the development of collaborations with Oxford Physics, and the world-leading international facilities for neutron and synchrotron X-ray science at the local Harwell campus and in Grenoble.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project aims to examine the causal effect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the achievements of Palestinian high school students in their final exams that conclude the high school degree between the years 1998-2012, and the mechanism behind it. The analysis in the project will rely on a unique data source, which will ensure a relatively clean identification of the effects of conflict on Palestinian students' achievements. Data on students' achievements and schools include unique data on the individual test scores in all subjects at the Palestinian high school final exam (the Tawjihi General Examination) for the whole population of Palestinian students enrolled in their final year of the Arts and the Scientific curricula, and information on the characteristics of all high schools in the West Bank, including unique data on the teachers. The custom-made data on political violence will be comprised of datasets stemming from different sources. The first source is Geographic Information System (GIS) data on various types of conflict-induced restrictions to mobility, including check-points, and roadblocks, within the West Bank, which enable a calculation of the gap of distance and time between individual’s locality of residence and locality of school, with and without the presence of Israeli physical barriers to movement. The second source is conflict-related Palestinian fatalities and prisoners.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: In recent years it has become evident that the functional human proteome is vastly expanded by post-translational modifications (PTMs) that modify protein function and gene expression in a time- and context-dependent manner. Misregulation of these modifications leads to developmental disorders and often contributes to disease biogenesis. However, with the possible exception of protein phosphorylation, the full roles and regulation of these modifications remain poorly understood. Currently, in particular, arginine methylation is proposed to be largely stable and irreversible. Building on my exciting preliminary data that demonstrate that Jumonji C histone demethylases (JmjC KDMs) can catalyse removal of arginine methylation, this proposal aims to identify biologically relevant methylarginine substrates of the JmjC KDM. Cutting-edge mRNA display-based peptide screening technology will be adapted for use as a substrate identification assay in collaboration with Prof Hiroaki Suga at the University of Tokyo. Consensus sequences identified using this novel methodology will be used to identify biologically relevant peptide sequences by bioinformatic searches. On the return to the UK, results with isolated proteins will be correlated with in-cell studies and the functional consequences of these reactions assessed. Given the high level of interest in the post-translational modification field, the results of this study will be of interest to a very wide-range of scientists including other academic researchers in the field of epigenetics and beyond, and major biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies studying JmjC KDMs as drug targets. The fellowship will provide training in state-of-the-art techniques. The collaboration between the University of Oxford and the University of Tokyo will enhance the research capabilities of the European Union, promote cross-fertilisation of knowledge and strengthen research ties with Japan.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The increasing problem of antibiotic resistance is a major global public health concern. In the EU 25,000 patients die each year due to infections caused by multi-resistant bacterial pathogens, and the EU spends at least 1.5 billion euro per year on healthcare costs. The β-lactam antibiotics are the most important antibiotics representing >60% of small molecules in clinical use. BLAs contain a β-lactam ring which is critical for penicillin-binding protein inhibition. However, BLA efficacy is declining due to resistance mechanisms including the widespread occurrence of β-lactamases, which catalyse β-lactam hydrolysis. Metallo-β-lactamases, long-considered as of little clinical relevance, now present a serious global threat to almost all BLAs, rendering the development of approaches to MBL inhibitors important. Unlike the serine β-lactamases, the MBLs are structurally and mechanistically unrelated to PBPs, and are not inhibited by current mechanism-based SBL inhibitors. Due to variations in MBL structures, a major challenge in MBL inhibition is the development of compounds with the breadth of selectivity necessary for clinical utility. Society is now in an alarming situation and there is a clear need for the development of an MBLI:β-lactam-based combination therapies. The aim of my proposed work is to pioneer, enable and inspire the generation of broad-spectrum MBLIs active against a panel of clinically representative MBLs, but inactive against human enzymes with related active sites. To obtain the desired objective, novel approaches are proposed and include the use of phosphonates and phosphinic acids for: (a) MBL-directed DCC coupled to analysis by non-denaturing ESI-MS and 31P-NMR, (b) 31P-NMR reporter screening method, (c) pre-equilibrated DCLs for MBL-directed DCC, and (d) the synthesis of modified inhibitors. The study will be interdisciplinary and encompass organic synthesis, biological MS/NMR, structural biology, and medicinal chemistry.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The promise of future quantum computers to substantially speed up computations has been advertised widely since the early days of the field. But there is a novel and fundamental aspect of devices based on quantum-mechanical principles that has just started to be explored: Quantum computers can preserve the privacy of computations. This aspect is a distinct new advantage of quantum computers over their classical counterparts. An entire class of unprecedented computations becomes feasible, in which the user data and the whole computation remain perfectly private – a feature impossible to achieve with classical computers. The main focus of this project is to exploit this feature and to implement secure photonic quantum information processing in distributed quantum networks. These networks consist of clients and small-scale quantum computers connected by communication channels. Photons are chosen as they are the ideal carriers for sending information over long distances. The clients can securely delegate computations to the quantum computers, such that neither the data nor the computation is revealed to the computers or any potential eavesdropper. The project will, first, elucidate how quantum resources boost the security of classical computations; second, demonstrate secure quantum computations over long distances and study their verification; and third, examine practical security aspects of implementations. The research will leverage the experimental state-of-the-art by adapting new photonic quantum technologies such as integrated photon sources and waveguide quantum circuits. Moreover, highly-efficient superconducting detectors will be applied to achieve excellent quantum control of the photons. This research is highly innovative and will be pivotal in the researcher’s career development and for becoming an independent research group leader, as it enables acquiring both key scientific knowledge and developing complementary skills.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: From Lebanese immigrants in Argentina to Iraqi refugees in Sweden, Eastern Christians can be found today scattered across the entire world. Too often, however, this global migration has been seen purely as a modern development, one arising from contemporary political and confessional events in the Middle East, while in fact this phenomenon had its roots in the early modern period. From the sixteenth century onwards, Christians from the Ottoman Empire set out for distant worlds and foreign lands, travelling as far as Europe, India, Russia, and even the Americas and leaving traces of themselves across countless European and Middle Eastern archives, chanceries, and libraries. This transnational, ground-breaking project will gather all of these disparate sources into a single analytical frame to uncover, for the first time, the global and connected histories of Eastern Christianity in the early modern world. Through the work of a team of researchers under the close supervision of the PI, the project will reconstitute and analyse a ‘lost archive’ of literary, documentary, and printed sources in three continents, ten languages, and dozens of archives. Under the expert leadership of the PI, the project will include a robust strategy for dissemination, which will successfully bridge the fields of Middle Eastern, European, and global history. In doing so, this project will respond directly to one of the most pressing conceptual challenges facing global history today, that is, how to link the study of the micro-scale level of everyday life to the macro-narratives emphasised by global historians. Underlying this project, therefore, is a major intervention that seeks to advance a rigorous form of global history, and one which preserves philology and source criticism at the heart of its methodology. The outcomes of the project will include print-publications, workshops, and a searchable database of all writings by Eastern Christians from 1500 to 1750.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Recently, the host lab found that a novel ubiquitin E3 ligase, SP1, regulates the translocon of the outer chloroplast membrane (TOC), which is responsible for importing nucleus-encoded proteins into plastids. SP1 achieves this by promoting the degradation TOC components by the cytosolic 26S proteasome. This is the first time the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) has been shown to directly regulate plastid development and function. By increasing or decreasing SP1 levels in transgenic Arabidopsis plants, multiple effects of SP1 were observed; e.g., inefficient de-etiolation leading to low survival rates and delayed leaf senescence in sp1 null mutants (Science 2012, 338:655-9). Also, sp1 mutants are significantly more sensitive to stress (unpublished). These data suggest that SP1 is important for the differentiation and interconversion of different plastid types, and all of the effects are highly correlated with plant growth and yield. Thus, discovery of SP1 strongly suggests potential applications in agriculture, such as delaying leaf senescence to produce a staygreen phenotype, or controlling amyloplast development during grain development, by modifying SP1 expression. This project will investigate the function of SP1 in cereals, and assess the potential of SP1 for manipulating plastids to improve cereal yield. I will generate transgenic plants with manipulated SP1 expression in Brachypodium distachyon (a versatile cereal model) and Oryza sativa (rice). I will study the development of plastids in the transformants, and assess the transformants for beneficial effects on yield parameters, such as starch content, seed weight, germination, de-etiolation, leaf senescence and stress resistance. At the end, I will have thoroughly assessed the potential use of SP1 for manipulating cereal traits linked to yield. A major strength of the proposal is the complementarity of my expertise with that of the host. Our unique combination of skills will ensure success of the project. Household, family and fertility changes are key drivers of population dynamics. Discovering and explaining the velocity of these changes is essential to understand the current situation and to provide scientific evidence on our demographic future. DisCont will provide seminal contributions by studying the impact of macro-level discontinuities on household and family formation (including fertility) in post-industrial contemporary societies. In the past decade, two macro-level discontinuities have radically transformed lives: the Great Recession and the digitalization of life and of the life course. Although their short-term and long-term impacts are likely to be fundamental, they have not yet been systematically analysed. Through a coordinated series of theoretically-founded empirical studies based on linked macro- and micro-level data, and using a comparative perspective, DisCont will argue that macro-level discontinuities are crucial in explaining broad changes in household and family formation, and that their effects can be persistent either for the population as a whole, or for specific cohorts. DisCont will contribute to five areas: 1) it will make theoretical advances by showing the importance of macro-level discontinuities in the explanation of changes in household and family formation in particular, and in population dynamics in general; 2) it will substantially advance our knowledge of household and family formation in post-industrial contemporary societies; 3) it will contribute in a systematic and path-breaking way to research on the broader societal impact of digitalization and of the Great Recession; 4) it will bring a paradigm shift in Age-Period-Cohort modelling; 5) it will make ground-breaking contributions on the demographic use of “big data” and on the use of agent-based models for the population-level implications of household and family change.
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CountryCode: IT
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD , UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
Country: Italy
Description: Recently, the host lab found that a novel ubiquitin E3 ligase, SP1, regulates the translocon of the outer chloroplast membrane (TOC), which is responsible for importing nucleus-encoded proteins into plastids. SP1 achieves this by promoting the degradation TOC components by the cytosolic 26S proteasome. This is the first time the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) has been shown to directly regulate plastid development and function. By increasing or decreasing SP1 levels in transgenic Arabidopsis plants, multiple effects of SP1 were observed; e.g., inefficient de-etiolation leading to low survival rates and delayed leaf senescence in sp1 null mutants (Science 2012, 338:655-9). Also, sp1 mutants are significantly more sensitive to stress (unpublished). These data suggest that SP1 is important for the differentiation and interconversion of different plastid types, and all of the effects are highly correlated with plant growth and yield. Thus, discovery of SP1 strongly suggests potential applications in agriculture, such as delaying leaf senescence to produce a staygreen phenotype, or controlling amyloplast development during grain development, by modifying SP1 expression. This project will investigate the function of SP1 in cereals, and assess the potential of SP1 for manipulating plastids to improve cereal yield. I will generate transgenic plants with manipulated SP1 expression in Brachypodium distachyon (a versatile cereal model) and Oryza sativa (rice). I will study the development of plastids in the transformants, and assess the transformants for beneficial effects on yield parameters, such as starch content, seed weight, germination, de-etiolation, leaf senescence and stress resistance. At the end, I will have thoroughly assessed the potential use of SP1 for manipulating cereal traits linked to yield. A major strength of the proposal is the complementarity of my expertise with that of the host. Our unique combination of skills will ensure success of the project. Household, family and fertility changes are key drivers of population dynamics. Discovering and explaining the velocity of these changes is essential to understand the current situation and to provide scientific evidence on our demographic future. DisCont will provide seminal contributions by studying the impact of macro-level discontinuities on household and family formation (including fertility) in post-industrial contemporary societies. In the past decade, two macro-level discontinuities have radically transformed lives: the Great Recession and the digitalization of life and of the life course. Although their short-term and long-term impacts are likely to be fundamental, they have not yet been systematically analysed. Through a coordinated series of theoretically-founded empirical studies based on linked macro- and micro-level data, and using a comparative perspective, DisCont will argue that macro-level discontinuities are crucial in explaining broad changes in household and family formation, and that their effects can be persistent either for the population as a whole, or for specific cohorts. DisCont will contribute to five areas: 1) it will make theoretical advances by showing the importance of macro-level discontinuities in the explanation of changes in household and family formation in particular, and in population dynamics in general; 2) it will substantially advance our knowledge of household and family formation in post-industrial contemporary societies; 3) it will contribute in a systematic and path-breaking way to research on the broader societal impact of digitalization and of the Great Recession; 4) it will bring a paradigm shift in Age-Period-Cohort modelling; 5) it will make ground-breaking contributions on the demographic use of “big data” and on the use of agent-based models for the population-level implications of household and family change.
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CountryCode: IT
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD , UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
Country: Italy
Description: The immune system coordinates vital responses against a plethora of threats. It relies on well-described signalling networks via soluble proteins and cell-to-cell contacts. The secretory pathway traffics all secreted and surface proteins, but the mechanism of how immune cells control this process is unclear.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is critical in fuel cells (FC), batteries and corrosion. Sluggish kinetics of the ORR remains a key barrier to efficient electricity generation in FC operating on renewable fuels such as hydrogen or alcohols. Poor understanding of the ORR mechanism has hindered development of cost-effective and improved FC catalysts.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is critical in fuel cells (FC), batteries and corrosion. Sluggish kinetics of the ORR remains a key barrier to efficient electricity generation in FC operating on renewable fuels such as hydrogen or alcohols. Poor understanding of the ORR mechanism has hindered development of cost-effective and improved FC catalysts.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: In this project I, Pawan Kumar, a Nucleic Acid Chemist seek to team up with a pioneer in Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Biology (Professor Tom Brown) to carry out a highly interdisciplinary study at the University of Oxford to obtain deeper insights into DNA and RNA synthesis and metabolism in living cells and its application to cancer research. I propose to detect and quantify nucleic acid synthesis in proliferating cells by fluorescence without the requirement for toxic metal ions or antibodies. Earlier known methods such as [3H]thymidine and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine labelling are either slow and labour intensive or require the use of harsh conditions. Incorporation of 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine into newly synthesized DNA and its subsequent detection with an azide derivative of a fluorescent dye under copper catalyzed alkyne azide cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction conditions presents a better alternative. However, cytotoxicity of copper salts restricts its use for living cells. I will use the strain promoted alkyne azide cycloaddition reaction, Diels-Alder reaction, and inverse electron demand Diels-Alder reaction to study cellular DNA and RNA. None of these reactions require the use of toxic metal salts. I will develop the conditions under which both DNA and RNA will be stable, so that it will be possible to isolate intact fluorescent nucleic acids from cells for detailed analysis. I will prepare the modified nucleosides and use them to label newly synthesized DNA and RNA in cells enabling their detection by reaction with fluorophores by using metal free click ligation reactions. The study will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms regulating DNA replication and the interplay between transcription and DNA replication. In the project I will develop techniques to provide information on the toxic effect of antimetabolites used commonly in anti-cancer therapies, and for identifying the mechanisms of viral replication and understanding the viral life cycle.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: As elsewhere in Europe, Anglo-Saxon England saw a development from an oral, vernacular, native, and pagan culture to one that was primarily literate, Latinate, imported, and Christian; and such a transition is clearest in Anglo-Saxon verse. CLASP will focus on all surviving verse of Anglo-Saxon England, composed in Old English and Anglo-Latin over a period of over four centuries (c. 670–1100 CE), and produce for the first time an online and interactive consolidated library, marked up through TEI P5 XML to facilitate the identification of idiosyncratic features of sound, metre, spellings, diction, syntax, formulas, themes, and genres across the entire corpus, so forging connections and suggesting more certain chains of influence both within and between the two main literary languages of Anglo-Saxon England. The bilingual corpus comprises almost 60,000 lines of poetry, with about half surviving in each language, and mostly appearing in only a single witness, usually in manuscript. More than fifty named poets are identified, many of them dateable with more or less precision, whose influence on each other can be closely documented, while in the case of anonymous verse, most of which is in Old English, the focus will be on tracing potential influence between texts, to establish a comparative rather than an absolute chronology. CLASP will use the full panoply of digital resources, including sound- and image-files where relevant, to make the oldest surviving poetry in England available to a modern audience for unprecedented kinds of exploration, comprehensive analysis, and interrogation, and in a series of conferences, workshops, and other publications will show the potential of such a comprehensive multilingual corpus to revolutionize perspectives not only on Anglo-Saxon England, but elsewhere in Europe, where Latin and the vernacular likewise co-existed in a Christian context across centuries.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The (World Wide) Web hosts a wide range of argumentative text from resources of multiple disciplines and online debates. Also, tools (such as Debadepedia and Twitter) encourage the communication of arguments in social and scientific settings. With the exponential growth of the Web and its users, a vast amount of argumentative text on the Web remains hidden. In order to query the Web for structured arguments included in web pages, it is necessary to address both of the following issues: (1) the deployment of technologies that enable an automatic extraction of the components of natural language arguments and the representation of their meaning and (2) the deployment of a pragmatic argumentation formalism that takes into account the uncertain and inconsistent nature of data on the Web to reason with structured arguments.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Convex relaxations, such as linear and semidefinite programming, constitute one of the most powerful techniques for designing efficient algorithms, and have been studied in theoretical computer science, operational research, and applied mathematics. We seek to establish the power convex relaxations through the lens of, and with the extensions of methods designed for, Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs).
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Recent advances in Computational Mechanics are towards the development of predictive tools that can accelerate the 'Materials Development Cycle' by unraveling the linkage between macroscopic properties and microstructure. The availability of 3D tomographic tools and the era of Exascale computing have initiated the quest to develop stronger, tougher and more durable alloys by employing 'virtual predictions' in lieu of expensive destructive testing. However, our lack of understanding of the 'structure-toughness’ relations is one of the main bottlenecks in this pursuit. Moreover, the uptake of some of these new alloys (TRIP, TWIP etc) is hampered by the concerns of hydrogen (H) induced cracking.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Cardiac Ventricular Remodelling (VR), i.e. the alteration of tissue microstructure that is a hallmark of several cardiac diseases, can have profound effects on cardiac function. A novel imaging technique, Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) offers the potential to quantify VR in vivo and could thus have a significant impact on the assessment and treatment of cardiac disease. This project proposes the development of advanced analytical tools to evaluate its usability in the quantitative characterization of cardiac microstructure. The tools developed will aim at a) providing a mathematical description of normality in cardiac microstructure; and b) analysing local variation as an alternative descriptor for remodelling. A combination of preclinical and clinical validation will be performed, with histological slices used as ground truth for the identification of microstructural features. Emphasis will be placed on the development and application of a rigorous mathematical framework for the processing of tensor fields, including the quantification of local differences between tensors and the construction of statistical models for the quantification of pathology.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Discrete mathematics has seen enormous advances in the last few years, with solutions being found to a number of famous and long-standing questions, such as the Erdos distinct distance problem and the existence conjecture for combinatorial designs. Much of this progress owes to an increased understanding of random and pseudorandom objects. An entire framework, known as the probabilistic method, has grown around the application of randomness to combinatorial problems, while pseudorandomness is playing an increasingly important role.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Late medieval European court cultures have traditionally been studied from a mono-disciplinary and national(ist) perspective. This focus has obscured much of the interplay of cultural performances that informed “courtly life”. Recent research has begun to reverse this, focusing on issues such as the tensions between orality, writing, and performance; the sociocultural dimensions of making and owning manuscripts (musical and otherwise); the interstices between musical, literary and visual texts and political, social and religious rituals; and the impact of gender, kinship, and social status on the genesis and transmission of culture and music. These “new medievalist” studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the cultural meanings of singing, listening, and sound in late medieval times.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project investigates the relationship between Chaucer's canonical status and his obscenity, both of which have been closely associated with the Canterbury Tales since Chaucer's death in 1400. Readers of the Canterbury Tales have made note of its occasionally indecorous language and content (particularly in relation to sex, the body, and bodily functions) ever since the earliest surviving manuscript was compiled c. 1405. But whereas obscenity is one of the major features of Chaucer's reputation in the eyes of present-day readers, many medieval and early modern readers viewed Chaucer’s obscene matter as standing at odds with his canonicity. This project traces the building tension between Chaucer's perceived obscenity and his literary reputation from his death in 1400 to the publication of poet laureate Robert Southey's expurgated version of the Canterbury Tales in 1831. By examining variations in the language and content of manuscripts, incunables, and print editions of the Canterbury Tales produced within this period (as well as reader annotations), I will show that scribes, readers, editors, and modernizers of Chaucer's most famous work persistently modify or comment on its language and content in an effort to downplay (or, occasionally, to enhance) what they perceive as obscene. I situate my findings alongside contemporaneous remarks by writers and editors regarding Chaucer's literary heritage in order to assess the relationship between variations in his reputation and variations in the Canterbury Tales. The project incorporates intensive training in the study of manuscripts and early printed books, and will result in at least 2 scholarly articles, a book proposal, and several conference presentations and public engagement initiatives intended to communicate my results to the widest possible audience. A MSCA Fellowship at the University of Oxford will enable me to work closely with a leading expert in the history of the book over the course of the project.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The primary aim of the action is the construction and analysis of new predictive and verifiable mathematical models that can uncover the effects of time delays upon various cell biology processes. In this timely project we aim to apply cutting edge functional differential equation techniques to interrogate a number of cell biology processes of huge current interest, including collective cell movement, tumour growth and self-organizing pattern formation. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop new mathematical ways to understand and control cell biology processes. The successful outcome of this project will be robust and experimentally testable mathematical theories that can be applied to a wide variety of biological and medical problems, whenever temporal delays are relevant.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The aim of this project is to consider X a smooth projective algebraic curve and a representation ρ of π1(X) into a semisimple Lie group G, and study deformations of ρ when X deforms into a singular curve. This question will open a brand new direction in the theory of representations of fundamental groups and G-Higgs bundles. The main tool to approach the problem will be non- abelian Hodge theory to transform this topological question into the geometric one. Then we use recent new developments in the classification of representations together with new algebraic objects which recently appear in non-abelian Hodge theory to study this question. It will take us to the study the deformations of G-Higgs bundles together with deformations of harmonic bundles over X when X is a curve and varies.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: 'Geometry, arithmetic, and quantum physics historically have had many points of intersection. This project will use recent techniques in algebraic group actions, especially those of Kirwan, to address problems of overlapping interest to distinct research groups at the University of Oxford – Algebraic Geometry, Number Theory, Mathematical Physics, and the Centre for Quantum Mathematics and Computation.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Plasmodium vivax is the most widespread malaria and constitutes a significant proportion of human malaria cases. P. vivax accounts for 100-400 million clinical cases each year among the 2.5 billion people living at risk in Latin America, Oceania and Asia. The recently revised Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap to 2030 recognises the severity of P. vivax malaria and calls for a vaccine intervention to achieve 75% efficacy over two years – equally weighted with P. falciparum. However, despite this global health need, efforts to develop interventions against this parasite have lagged far behind those for P. falciparum, in large part because of critical bottlenecks in the vaccine development process. These include i) lack of assays to prioritise and down-select new vaccines due to lack of an in vitro P. vivax long-term culture system, and ii) lack of easy access to a safe controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) model to provide an early indication of vaccine efficacy in humans. The Objectives of this MultiViVax proposal will address these critical bottlenecks and shift the “risk curve” in order to better select successful vaccine candidates against multiple lifecycle stages of P. vivax:
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Brain metastases, particularly from breast cancer, are a significant clinical problem. About one fifth of breast
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: A highly effective malaria vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum should help prevent half a million deaths from malaria each year. New vaccine technologies and antigen discovery approaches now make accelerated design and development of a highly effective multi-antigen multi-stage subunit vaccine feasible. Leading malariologists, vaccine researchers and product developers will here collaborate in an exciting programme of antigen discovery science linked to rapid clinical development of new vaccine candidates.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The past decade has witnessed a phenomenal success in relativistic cosmology. It is now possible to constrain the structure, content and evolution of the Universe with an accuracy of a few percent. The current focus of cosmology is to understand some of the fundamental problems in physics such as: the accelerated expansion of the universe, the nature of dark energy and dark matter and the initial conditions of large scale structure. Key to addressing these problems is ascertaining the role general relativity plays in cosmology. While we now have remarkable astrophysical constraints on general relativity on milliparsec scales, we have no direct cosmological constraints on gigaparsec scales. Given the quality of the up and coming cosmological data, it is now time to tackle the challenge of constraining general relativity on large scales.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The sum being greater than its parts is a common theme in condensed matter physics. Materials made of large numbers of simple constituents often exhibit intriguing and markedly distinct phases of matter with properties very different from any of the individual constituents. Understanding the possible phases of matter and identifying them in real materials is the central focus of this branch of physics. Roughly speaking, two categories of phases of matter exist--- conventional phases which show a geometrical pattern of order, and topological phases, where the order is more elusive and related to topological concepts. In the past three decades, topological phases have attracted a large amount of interest due to their tendency to exhibit highly robust quantum phenomena which has various applications in quantum engineering and metrology. The current frontier in the field aims at understanding the variety of novel topological phases which arise when some extra symmetries, such as time reversal, are not allowed to be broken. In this project we explore this new type of phase using the concept of composite particles --- an idea which has been extremely useful in previous studies of topological matter, but has not been applied in the symmetry-protected context previously. The fundamental idea behind our approach is to view symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of spin/electron systems as conventional ferromagnets/superconductors/metals of composite objects. Besides its conceptual importance, such an approach will allow us to utilize our knowledge of conventional phases in the context of SPT phases and also derive microscopic models which realize these states of matter. It will thus increase the chance of discovering new SPT phases in nature.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) transcribes protein-coding genes in eukaryotes. The proper RNAPII transcription termination is crucial for generation of functional mRNAs, and then proteins. Termination, or stop of RNA synthesis, may occur before or after mRNA 3’-end cleavage and polyadenylation. In the last decade many details have been acquired about mRNA maturation, but still little is known about the termination per se. In this proposal I will redress this problem.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Ultrafast light pulses offer the fascinating opportunity to study system dynamics at ultrashort time scales. Trains of ultrafast light pulses also feature a broad frequency comb structure that has been exploited e.g. in high precision metrology. These characteristics have made ultrafast optics with coherent control techniques a flourishing field in recent years. A rich toolbox has been developed to generate shorter pulses with engineered temporal and spectral properties.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Approximately 45-60% of all cancer patients are treated with radiotherapy. Some of these patients have a good outcome, but in other cases their illness fails to be cured. This may result from distant metastases or from regrowth of the primary tumor. This training network is built on the premise that considerable advances in understanding radiobiology will open novel routes for effective therapeutic intervention with biological targets to improve the outcome of cancer treatment; this progress requires a European-wide effort.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The overarching goal of the project is to understand the economic, social, institutional and policy factors that have shaped the impacts of free movement and public debates about it. It aims to help European policymakers develop policy responses that inspire public trust, ensure the fairness and sustainability of free movement, and maintain inclusive policies that reduce inequalities across the continent.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The aim of this project is to create the technology needed to understand the content of images in a detailed, human-like manner, significantly superseding the current limitations of automatic image understanding, and enabling new far reaching human-centric applications. The first goal is to substantially broaden the spectrum of visual information that machines can extract from images. For example, where current technology may discover that there is a ``person' in an image, we would like to produce a description such as ``person wearing a red uniform, tall, brown haired, with a bayonet, and a long black hat.' The second goal is to do so efficiently, by developing integrated image representations that can share knowledge and computation in multiple computer vision tasks, from detecting edges to recognising and describing thousands of different object types.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Photosynthesis underpins life on earth. Despite its fundamental importance, our knowledge of the molecular regulators that control the expression of photosynthetic genes is limited, and only four transcription factors are known to regulate the expression of cohorts of photosynthetic genes in plants.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The central research question this project will pose is: how did mobility in the great age of travel and discovery (c.1550–1700) shape English perceptions of human identity based on cultural identification and difference? The role of those marked by transcultural mobility was central to this period. Our current world is all too familiar with the concepts that surfaced or evolved as a result: ‘foreigners’, ‘strangers’, ‘aliens’, ‘converts’, ‘exiles’, or even ‘translators’, ‘ambassadors’ and ‘go-betweens’.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project will take direct action in exploiting the powerful planarian model system to achieve novel insights into the molecular processes underpinning oncogenesis and cancer. Based on the principle that biochemical and physiological functions of many genes are conserved across phyla we will identify planarian genes that control the migration, proliferation and differentiation of the highly proliferative pluripotent adult stem cells (pASCs). We will combine a bespoke specially designed partial irradiation assay, bioinformatic and expression based candidate gene identification and the capacity to perform RNAi based screens of gene function to identify novel genes controlling pASCs that are conserved in humans. Those novel genes of greatest promise will then be studied in mammalian cancer cell lines using the insight gleaned from planarians. This project brings together, for the first time, a world-class planarian laboratory with an eminent cancer cell biologist, Dr Kosaka, who will acquire all the expertise required to exploit the planarian system and at the same time transfer his extensive knowledge of cancer biology to the Aboobaker laboratory.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Micro-organisms were believed until recently to live independent, unicellular lives but are now understood to rely on complex systems of social behaviours for survival. In pathogenic bacteria, cooperation and communication between cells leads to increased virulence and the understanding of how these behaviours evolve is of fundamental importance to the future of human health. Almost nothing is known, however, about social behaviours of bacteria infecting human hosts, and research on social behaviour in microbes is limited to well-characterised lab strains. This proposal describes a program of research designed to exploit the opportunities offered by an interdisciplinary approach to address the growing challenge posed to human health by disease caused by bacterial infection. Specifically, I have three primary objectives: (1) to develop a model system for investigating social behaviour in long-term bacterial infections; (2) to identify evolutionary mechanisms driving dynamics of social behaviour in long-term infections and (3) to exploit social dynamics in the treatment of bacterial infection. This proposal applies evolutionary theory to the clinical challenge of bacterial infection to develop novel intervention strategies beyond the scope of conventional medicine, which is based primarily on understanding of bacteria at the cellular level.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: We propose to create and investigate new types of organic-inorganic perovskite materials for low-cost solar cells. The state-of-the-art perovskite based solar cells employ MAPbI3, which has raised concerns over the potential toxicity of Pb. The strategy of the MPerS project is to create, investigate and optimise sustainable perovskite materials for solar cell application. More than one types of metal and organic ions will be introduced in the perovskite structure to realize layered materials which are expected to exhibit both excitonic and free carrier behavior with enhanced stability. Thin films of the new materials will be characterized using several techniques, e.g. Xray diffraction. THz, Time resolved emission spectroscopies, EBIC will be used to understand the generation and dynamics of charge carriers in the materials and across interfaces. Development of solar cells will be carried out with an aim to reach 15% power conversion efficiency employing a non-toxic absorber. This highly interdisciplinary project that spans the field of chemistry, condensed matter physics, electronics and engineering is conceived on basis of the combined expertise of the host and the applicant and state-of-the-art infrastructure at the UOXF. A secondment at Oxford PV will test the commercial viability of the project. This project addresses Horizon 2020’s goals on clean and sustainable energy and the EU’s concern on toxicology of Pb . Completion of the project will open up new areas in low-cost electronic materials with wider impact and improve EU’s competitiveness in materials research. While the applicant will get an opportunity to learn new experimental skills in condensed matter physics and spectroscopy and benefit from industrial exposure. UOXF will benefit from the applicant by using his skills and broader broader collaboration with leading researchers in materials science. A plan is also proposed to carry out public engagement, dissemination and commercial exploitation.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Social media can have an impressive impact on civic engagement and political discourse. Yet increasingly we find political actors using digital media and automated scripts for social control. Computational propaganda—through bots, botnets, and algorithms—has become one of the most concerning impacts of technology innovation. Unfortunately, bot identification and impact analysis are among the most difficult research challenges facing the social and computer sciences.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project investigates how bacteriologists at the Pasteur Institute reimagined the French empire as a biotechnological space of experimentation in the early twentieth century, and conversely, how medical technologies developed in French colonies in Indochina, West Africa and Tunisia were enrolled to both shore up and challenge colonial power.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Birds have been called “une aile guidée par un oeil”, and whilst they possess many senses besides vision, their wings are indeed guided largely by their eyes. Nevertheless, we know surprisingly little of how birds use vision to guide their flight, and almost nothing of the underlying guidance and control laws. This is an extraordinary omission, and unfortunate given the importance that vision is poised to assume in autonomous unmanned aircraft. With good reason, the law still requires a human eye to remain in the loop, but as with the coming revolution in driverless cars, the future of flight lies in autonomy. I see a once-in-a-career opportunity here: we need only imagine a hawk, shooting over the top of a hedgerow then plunging through the undergrowth onto its fleeting prey, to see what engineering could learn. Building upon the success of my ERC Starting Grant on Bird and Insect Flight Dynamics and Control, my proposed Consolidator Grant has two overarching ambitions: 1) to revolutionize our understanding of vision-based guidance and control in birds; and 2) to carry these insights over to application in unmanned autonomous aircraft. This presents a formidable technical challenge, but by combining a state-of-the-art motion capture suite with targets/obstacles moving under motion control in a custom-built facility, I will use system identification techniques to unambiguously identify the guidance and control laws underpinning perching, pursuit, obstacle avoidance, and gap negotiation in birds. More than this, I will identify the precise motion cues to which they attend, settling longstanding questions on the extent to which guidance emerges from simple algorithmic rules versus state feedback and estimation, with wider implications for our understanding of avian perception. This work will break new ground in all directions, testing applied insights in the same facility, and so leading the world in drawing the study of birds and aircraft together under one roof.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Influenza virus causes a large socioeconomic burden on society, with 70 000 deaths every year in Europe. It is estimated that 1 in 1000 children and elderly every year are hospitalized due to influenza infection. Children, due to high susceptibility and high levels of shedding, are the main source of spread of the virus. Therefore, CDC in 2010 included children as a high priority group for influenza vaccination. Two influenza vaccines are licensed: inactivated (IIV) and live attenuated (LAIV) vaccine. The LAIV was introduced to provide broader protection by additional stimulation of T cell responses. At present the two major obstacles in the widespread use of LAIV are concerns raised over vaccine effectiveness and the lack of immunological correlates of protection. In 2016 the CDC in the US recommended against the use of LAIV due to its poor effectiveness in the 2015/2016 season. However, the same vaccine, in the same season had high effectiveness as assessed by UK and Finland public health authorities. Currently the reason for this discrepancy is not known. This project will take advantage of cohorts of children who have received LAIV provided by both US and UK sponsors, to investigate the immunological basis for the observed variability and to define the role of adaptive immunity by applying the systems biology tools and machine learning algorithms for predictive modelling. Progress in the clinical investigation of children has been hampered by limited methods that could be applied to the small blood volumes, but recent advances in systems biology have opened new opportunities that did not exist before. Tracing the influenza vaccine imprint on immune system, termed FluPRINT by the proposed project will help to identify cellular signatures of vaccine-induced protection in children which is of importance for the development of next generation of influenza vaccines that will be more effective in this target population.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Atomic scale defects play a key role in determining the behaviour of all crystalline materials, profoundly modifying mechanical, thermal and electrical properties. Many current technological applications make do with phenomenological descriptions of these effects; yet myriad intriguing questions about the fundamental link between defect structure and material function remain.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Complex networks are an essential ingredient of modern life, and underpin integral parts of our biological, physical, technological and socio-economic universe. Thus far, such networks have been mainly represented as graphs. However, while graphs can capture pairwise interactions between nodes, fundamental interactions in networks often take place between multiple nodes. For example, in socio-economic networks, the joint coordinated activity of several agents (e.g. buyer, seller, broker); the formation and interactions of coalitions; the emergence of peer pressure; and the existence of triadic closure are all prevalent.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The field of multi-agent systems (MAS) is concerned with the theory, design, and implementation of systems of semi-autonomous software agents that operate in an environment, and typically have conflicting goals. A key issue in such domains is that of coordination: how to design agents to minimise any potential negative aspects of their interactions, and to maximise any potential positive aspects. A key approach to coordination is that of normative systems. A normative system defines constraints on the behaviour of agents to coordinate their interactions. This research programme is at the intersection of normative systems design and evolutionary game theory (EGT). EGT studies how evolutionary forces can lead populations to game theoretic solutions, and has been useful in understanding, for example the distributions of populations of species in habitats. The hypotheses of this project are that (1) EGT can provide a useful mathematical framework to model and understand normative systems in MAS; and (2) EGT techniques can provide a powerful framework to engineer normative systems for MAS. Thus, norm synthesis will consist of an evolutionary process in which most successful norms will prosper, while unsuccessful norms will be naturally discarded. The tools used to understand such norms will be solution concepts from EGT - notably the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy. In this project we will develop both frameworks for understanding EGT for normative systems design and to synthesise normative systems for MAS, and we will empirically investigate our techniques in the context of two application domains. To carry out this project the fellow will be trained in classical game theory and EGT. To this aim he will benefit from supervision of Prof Michael Wooldridge, and collaboration with his research group in Oxford. This project will develop science and will contribute to the development of the fellow's career plan to become an independent researcher.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: A revolution is underway, as the fast-paced electronics industry moves towards the nanoscale, researchers are starting to consider single-molecule electronics. Such devices are within reach partly due to a new field, called molecular spintronics, which permits the prospect of controlling both spin and charge in single molecules. On the other hand, we know almost nothing about how a magnetic molecule is affected by electrons flowing through it or what chemical ingredients it takes to construct perspective devices. SpinReMag will investigate these uncharted waters by exploring the boundary between chemistry and single-molecule read-out technology. SpinReMag is a strongly multidisciplinary project utilizing an innovative mix of synthetic chemistry, physics and materials methodology to overcome present experimental limitations. Our design approach is to investigate single-molecule junctions, except instead of placing a molecules between bulk electrodes, we will directly grow photoactive groups on the molecule so that electrons will flow through or close to the spin center after a light pulse. This affords an ultra-clean system that can be studied in bulk, with a perfectly defined geometry of the magnetic and electronic elements. SpinReMag will provide the fundamental ground work to explain how molecular spins interact with flowing electrons. The execution of this project will for the first time provide the understanding of fundamental spintronic processes, and open new pathways to the rational design of single-molecule spintronics. The information gathered by SpinReMag will direct the future of research in single-molecule electronics and in the optical control of spin systems in general.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: String theory provides a unified description of particle physics and gravity, within a consistent theory of quantum gravity. The goal of this research is to develop both the phenomenological implications as well as conceptual foundations of string theory and its non-perturbative completions, M- and F-theory. Both, seemingly independent, questions are deeply connected to a mathematical structure, the Higgs bundle, which characterizes supersymmetric vacua of dimensionally reduced gauge theories, and insights into the moduli space of Higgs bundles will result in a fruitful cross-connection between these subjects.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Solid state lead halide perovskites have recently emerged as the latest thin-film photovoltaic device class. High power conversion efficiencies (22 %) and stabilities (> 1000 hours at 80 ˚C under 1 sun illumination) have been obtained using lab scale processes and small area cells (<1cm2). The building blocks of the perovskite materials are very low cost and the processing into the final perovskite thin-film can be achieved with low temperature fast processes. This makes these materials very cost efficient, and promises to deliver a future PV technology with a levelled cost of electricity (LCOE) below that of existing mainstream PV. There has been much advancement with combining perovskite with silicon cells, to deliver a “tandem” junction cell with much higher efficiency than either sub-cell. Although this perovskite-on-silicon approach is likely to deliver the first perovskite PV products, it restricts the manufacturing and module format to wafer based, and hence misses out on the real promise of ultimate high volume manufacturing via large area sheet-to-sheet or reel-to-reel coating. Within PERTPV we will advance the perovskite thin-film PV technology to the next level by undertaking a “double pronged” drive on both performance (efficiency and stability) and the development of scalable device and module fabrication methodologies, compatible with high volume manufacturing. Our consortium consists of the leading academic groups in perovskite PV research, in addition to research companies, and 3 commercial partners at appropriately complementary stages in the value chain (Technology driver, materials supplier and equipment supplier). In addition to our ambitions target of surpassing 30% power conversion efficiency in a thin film all-perovskite tandem cell, and delivering a certifiably stable module technology, we will also perform full life cycle analysis and ensure a safe means to undertake mass deployment and recycling of the Perovskite PV modules.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The aim of ROADMAP is to provide the foundation for a Europe-wide real world evidence (RWE) platform in AD by piloting multi-modal data integration tools and engaging with all key stakeholder groups for consensual definition of patient outcomes, tools and methods that are actionable and relevant. ROADMAP will leverage best practice and exploit synergies with other projects and initiatives at the national and European levels in pursue of scalable and transferable solutions for dataset characterisation, outcome classification, data standards, data sourcing, software application and guidelines on the handling and interpretation of RWE data. In parallel, the project will deepen understanding of the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) and health economics (HE) impact of a RWE approach for a meaningful contribution to the Big Data for Better Outcomes programme in IMI2.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Macroeconomic data are largely non-experimental. Thus, causal inference in macroeconomics is largely based on assumptions about what aspects of the variation in the data are exogenous. This presents two major challenges, which this research addresses directly. First, few such assumptions are generally accepted. Second, conditional on any set of assumptions, identification of causal effects is often weak because there is little relevant variation in the data. To tackle these challenges, I propose three lines of enquiry to explore new sources of identification and develop the requisite econometric methods.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The primary purpose of the proposed project is a deeper understanding of instabilities in plasmas and their influence on transport phenomena and large-scale dynamical processes. The studies will be focused on nonlinear regime of development of the firehose and mirror instabilities triggered by pressure anisotropy spontaneously generated in stellar-wind environments by large-scale expansion/compression effects and plasma turbulence. Recent studies of microphysics of the instabilities have provided systematic knowledge on saturation effects in nonlinear regime and related wave-particle interactions. This opens a possibility of investigation of a feedback between the microphysics and large-scale dynamics. The project is anticipated to provide answers to the questions: what is the effective collisionality of a pressure-anisotropic plasma that is unstable or marginally stable to the firehose and mirror instabilities and how does it change the effective pressure tensor (viscous stress) used in fluid description of plasmas?
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Confronting past atrocities is essential to consolidate democracy and human rights protection. Truth and justice initiatives investigating crimes perpetrated at the national level have long been occurring. Yet, accountability for transnational crimes is a pending issue in scholarship and practice.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Evidence shows that violence in urban areas affects women of all ages, socio economic and cultural backgrounds in particular (WHO 2014). The immediate and extensive costs of violence targeting women perpetuate the existing gender hierarchies by setting boundaries on women’s movement, mobility, presence: that is, on their use of urban space. In addition to restrictions in mainstream social life, gendered violence is a systemic source of experiencing helplessness, humiliation, and distress which overall are a fundamental component of women’s wellbeing. VISMEM will investigate the impact of place-based memories of violence among diverse women for their use of urban space, and interrogate the utility of visual methods for understanding that impact. More precisely, the study uses visual methods to explore diverse women’s everyday negotiations of space in Istanbul, focusing in particular on their movements in relation to three research sites where forms of violence against women have occurred. VISMEM’s overall objective is to develop a conceptual framework and visual tools for multisector policy and research engagement with memory as a key means to locate, assess, and ameliorate women's differential experience of violence and wellbeing in the city. Women in different social and spatial settings remember (and forget) the physical and mental effects of violence through personal experience and through popular accounts of its effects. The differential workings of memory in turn have implications on the lived experiences and wellbeing of a city's current (and future) residents/visitors. Yet, the nexus of memory, place, gender remains disconnected from the multisector urban agenda on difference, inclusion, and wellbeing. VISMEM will provide transferable knowledge and policy-related results on the relation between gendered violence, memory, and will greatly improve our understanding of place memory as a focus in achieving gender-goals in urban social and spatial integration.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Recent studies have highlighted a pivotal role for long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in normal physiology and disease. As a key example, Xist lncRNA is crucial during the early development of female mammals and is involved in many diseases, e.g. progeria and cancers. To date, cellular and developmental studies have advanced our knowledge of the function of Xist, but a detailed understanding of molecular mechanism is lacking.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria protects against environmental insult and is central to pathogenesis hence finding ways to disrupt its integrity is a route towards new antibiotics. However, our understanding of OM biology is limited. In particular, how the OM is organised is largely unknown. My laboratory recently discovered spatiotemporal Outer Membrane Protein organisation (OMPorg) in Escherichia coli, a new organising principle that explains how OMPs are turned over. We found that OMPs cluster into islands that can be mimicked in supported bilayers using purified proteins. As cells grow, OMP islands are displaced to the poles by new islands, leading to binary partitioning of old OMPs in repository cells following septation.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The centriole is a conserved organelle essential for cell organisation, division and motility through its capacity to organise microtubules. A broad range of human diseases, such as microcephaly and cancer, have been associated with defects in centriole formation, making the full characterisation of its assembly process of great interest. Centrioles are miniature cylinders of characteristic symmetry, diameter and length, yet the molecular methods by which these parameters are defined are only partly understood. The objective of this proposal is to study the structure – function relationship of the centriolar proteins SAS-6, Cep135 and CPAP, which together form a protein interaction network that supports centriole elongation and connects the core centriole scaffold with its microtubule-based exterior. This project will be carried out through an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach combining structural biology, biophysics and functional assays in human cell lines. We will investigate the effect of disease-causing mutations in the structure and function of the SAS-6 – Cep135 – CPAP network. This work will boost our understanding of the centriole formation process and how it is perturbed in disease, and be a pioneering example of elucidating the molecular architecture of a cell organelle.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in phenotype that does not involve changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Epigenetic modifications are partly inherited, but unlike the genome itself, are cell specific, plastic, and its mechanisms are affected by different factors and processes such as aging, environmental factors or the use of drugs. The epigenetic changes are the result of epigenetic tags (chemical tags) that can determine gene expression. There are two main types of epigenetic modifications: DNA methylation and histone modifications. Many diseases such as cancer, inflammation, neurological and cardiovascular diseases can be related to aberrant histone modification patterns. Since Histone modifications are mainly carried out by three types of proteins (writers, readers and erasers) there is great therapeutic interest in these proteins, since they may influence disease onset and progression. However, the identification of potent and selective inhibitors is challenging due to structural similarities between individual domains of the ‘epigenetic’ proteins.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Self-propelling colloidal particles, originally designed to mimic living microorganims, offer exciting opportunities to engineer smart materials equipped with activity. To date, the behavior of synthetic microswimmers has been extensively studied in homogeneous environments, close to confinements and in semi-dilute suspensions. However, for materials’ design, the use of solid-like phases, such as crystals and glasses, is highly desirable. While recent numerical simulations have invested a lot of effort in understanding the structural and mechanical properties of dense colloidal materials with activity, experiments significantly lag behind. One difficulty stems, for instance, from the presence of short-range attractive forces that affect the active motion when two of more microswimmers come near contact.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Fluorine is a key element in modern pharmaceutical, agrochemicals and anesthetics. It is well-known that fluorine substitution can strongly improve drug efficiency by modifying the properties of compounds such as lipophilicity, metabolic stability, bioavailability and protein binding affinity. The selective installation of fluorine into molecules, especially in a catalytic way, still represents a major challenge for organic synthesis. To date, chemists have developed a range of transformations for carbon-fluorine bond formation yet the vast majority employs fluorine sources derived from F2, a highly toxic and corrosive gas. Only few processes involve the use of cheaper fluoride salts but often require expensive transition metals and suffer from a limited scope. With this proposal, we envision the development of a novel asymmetric metal-free catalytic reaction for carbon-fluorine bond formation by employing cost effective fluoride salts. The organocatalytic process we have designed is mechanistically unprecedented and will be applied to the synthesis of enantiopure fluoroamines which have a direct application in medicinal chemistry. This novel methodology will therefore provide a novel toolbox of reactions for chemists both from academia and industry and has the potential to have a strong impact on society by improving diagnostics, patient care and health-related quality of life.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Financial and business services (FABS), including law, accounting, and business consulting, have been one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy, with a fivefold rise in real value added since 1980. Although FABS are central to the processes of globalisation, financialisation, urbanisation and development, our understanding of the sector in the context of tumultuous changes of the early 21st century is partial. How have the FABS firms and centres been affected by the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis? How are they changing in response to new financial regulation, the expected shift of economic activity to the Asia-Pacific region, and the digital revolution? What are the impacts of FABS on urban, regional, and global development? We urgently need groundbreaking frontier research to better understand the nature and dynamics of FABS, and their implications.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: This project will analyse the monumental art (large decorative programmes on buildings) of two areas of the former eastern Roman Empire which came under Islamic rule but which have never been the subject of an integrated comprehensive study: Egypt and Syro-Palestine (modern Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine). It aims to determine systematically how the strength and nature of the local ‘classical’ (Greco-Roman) traditions and expressions of identities influenced monumental art in these regions during Late Antiquity (AD 250–750), the period of transition from paganism to Christianity and, in turn, to Islam. By defining and distinguishing between the different strands of classical influence, both local and external (from the centres of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria), and investigating the roles of local artists and artisans as creators rather than imitators, this project will transform our understanding of the artistic culture of the late antique Middle East.
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Group: Projects completed before 1 January 2021
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs) are a diverse group of neurological disorders defined by a loss of motor coordination. No effective treatments exist, and there is thus a pressing need for suitable models in which to study disease progression and to screen potential therapies. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are capable of differentiation into any cell type of the body, offer the opportunity to study neurodegeneration in vitro. The proposed study aims to be the first in Europe to establish an iPSC-derived model of cerebellar disease, focusing on two genetic subtypes of SCA - SCA14 and 41. Increasing evidence points towards common pathological pathways shared across multiple SCA subtypes, which could provide novel therapeutic targets. There is also evidence to suggest that abnormalities in Purkinje cell development may contribute to the pathogenesis of the SCAs. This model will thus be used to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying common SCA-causing disease pathways, and to unravel the neurodevelopmental aspects of these diseases, in order to develop early-intervention therapies. Preliminary results indicate successful differentiation of iPSCs into cerebellar progenitor cells, using a protocol I have optimised. Following terminal differentiation, these cells will be investigated for common disease phenotypes and developmental defects, using a combination of transcriptomic, biochemical, and electrophysiological methods. Results will be validated by comparison with post-mortem brain samples and ataxic mouse models. By adapting this differentiation strategy to a format amenable to high-throughput screening, a pipeline will be established for the identification of novel therapeutic compounds. This groundbreaking study will enable the investigation of mechanisms which render the cells of the cerebellum particularly sensitive to degeneration, as well as providing a platform for pre-clinical screening of therapeutics for neurodegenerative conditions.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Metabolism generates vast quantities of acid, which exerts broad-spectrum biological effects because protein protonation is a powerful post-translational modification. Regulation of intracellular pH (pHi) is therefore a homeostatic priority, but carefully orchestrated proton dynamics are a versatile signal.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: 'Chemical elements are the building blocks of life. The major elements, C, H. O, N, P, S are easily recognised as essential nutrients, but their use by life relies on metalloproteins. The identity of the metal centres of these metalloproteins and even the broader palette of trace elements fundamental to life are remarkably poorly known. Whole genomes remain opaque to decoding of this bioinorganic dimension, and optimal trace element concentrations for physiological function. Defining the elemental requirements for maximum growth rate of photosynthesising phytoplankton in the ocean, is critical to understanding Earth's climate. Although microscopic in stature, phytoplankton exert a gigantic influence on the biological pumping of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. Yet their metal requirements are poorly constrained, being inferred from cellular quotas and 'nutrient-like' ocean metal distributions, susceptible to ambiguity between mistaken cellular uptake and use.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: In this fellowship, I aim to explore the trade-off and synergies between conservation and commodity production through an Ecosystem Services (ES) lens in order to determine how sustainable land use practices can be created and strengthened over time, and to extend knowledge on ES within broader land use, and natural capital research. I will carry out targeted fieldwork to investigate the following research lines: 1) how ES are defined and conceptualised as commodities and how these relate to more established ‘land’ commodities. This research line will include ES to humans, but also factors causing ecosystem change that can affect the long-term resilience of such ecosystems, by examining selected drivers of land use change. Research line 2) relates to the impact of appropriation of land for commodities (e.g., the demand for cash crops such as soy, biofuels and land used for livestock production or conservation) on local communities, and the global economy and policies that may drive (the current or any) 'land grabs'. I will take into account the discourse, practices and social relationships around land use that are currently unfolding within the 'realpolitik' of a studied region. These phenomena are highly debated yet remain poorly understood and should become key analytical domains for academics insofar that they are related to broader processes of economic globalization, biodiversity loss and climate change. The findings will be complementary to climate change mitigation efforts and feed into policy processes around securing food security, with an objective to not only contribute to sustainable land use practices but to promote the livelihood opportunities and environmental quality of (often) marginalized communities living in and around contested land.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: PULSE will develop a new generation of ultrasound imaging capabilities to revolutionize the use of this low-cost and portable imaging technology across clinical medicine worldwide.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: A period is a complex number defined by the integral of an algebraic differential form over a region defined by polynomial inequalities. Examples include: algebraic numbers, elliptic integrals, and Feynman integrals in high-energy physics. Many problems in mathematics can be cast as a statement involving periods. A deep idea, based on Grothendieck's philosophy of motives, is that there should be a Galois theory of periods, generalising classical Galois theory for algebraic numbers. This reposes on inaccessible conjectures in transcendence theory, but these can be circumvented in many important cases using an elementary notion of motivic periods. This allows one to set up a working Galois theory of periods in many situations of arithmetic and physical interest.
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CountryCode: UK
Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The immunological synapse is a highly conserved scaffold for communication between immune cells built around cooperation of antigen and adhesion receptors. It often takes the form of a bull’s eye with a central cluster of antigen receptors surrounded by a ring of adhesion molecules. We have recently observed that antigen receptor coated extracellular microvesicles bud directly from the center of the immunological synapse- which we define as synaptic ectosomes. Synaptic ectosomes are transferred to the antigen- presenting cell and can generate signals after the T cell-APC synapse has dissolved. We aim to determine the composition of synaptic ectosomes, determine their fate in the antigen-presenting cell and identify approaches to manipulate their formation in vivo. The objectives will be to 1) isolate synaptic ectosomes from human T cells and determine their molecular composition; 2) determine the functional impact of synaptic ectosomes on the antigen presenting cell; and 3) use gene targeting to control the process in vivo to understand its role in T function of helper, cytotoxic and regulatory T cells. The technologies will include microscopy, proteomics, genomics, and in vivo models with constitutive and conditional gene targeting. This work will address fundamental gaps in our understanding of immune cell communication.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: The ability to temporarily maintain and manipulate information in working memory (WM) is critical for adaptive behaviour. Because WM has limited capacity, it is essential to understand the mechanisms that govern selective access to it. I hypothesise that 1) selective access to WM is governed by states of the brain prior to the encoding and retrieval of sensory information (in particular the phase and amplitude of neural oscillations in the different sensory cortices), and that 2) changes in these states provide a common neural substrate through which several cognitive variables affect WM. I will use magneto-encephalography (MEG) to investigate several key aspects of these central hypotheses in healthy human volunteers. This will advance our understanding of the neural and cognitive mechanisms that govern selective access to WM and could ultimately be used to present relevant information when the brain is most susceptible to incorporate this into WM. The project will be carried out at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, together with leading scientist in the electrophysiological study of WM (Anna Christina Nobre and Mark Stokes) and the analysis of MEG data (Mark Woolrich). This will allow me to not only perform the proposed research to the highest standard, but also to further develop several key skills (broaden my conceptual horizon, acquire novel analysis techniques, establish long-term collaborations, translate research, etc.) that will further my independence as a researcher and place me in the ideal position to start my own research group within few years after the fellowship.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Information visualisation is an essential tool in data-science, but the lack of a theoretical foundation currently prevents visualisation science to make substantial progress and develop solutions for the epistemological challenges posed by Big Data.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
Description: Proteases control major pathways in the nervous system and aberrant proteolysis underlies many neurobiological disorders and diseases e.g. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Signal generation and release is tightly regulated by protease activity, as many key signalling factors are synthesised as transmembrane precursors that require cleavage to liberate their active ectodomains. The largest family of intramembrane proteases are the newly discovered rhomboids, which are found in all kingdoms of life. To date, their physiological significance in mammals is largely unknown, as is the substrate-selectivity of most mammalian rhomboids. I have exciting preliminary data that two uncharacterised mammalian rhomboids, RHBDL1 and RHBDL3, are specifically highly expressed in primary neurons in the CNS. Unlike the well-studied RHBDL2 and Drosophila rhomboids 1-3, they do not have activity against EGF-like growth factors, so they are likely to cleave a novel substrate. A major limitation in protease research has been the lack of unbiased and systematic screens for their substrates. Addressing this deficiency, first, I aim to identify RHBDL1/3-dependent substrates in primary neurons, by adapting recently developed biochemical assays, such as SPECS and BioID. My second aim is the mechanistic validation of these substrates. Third, I will be the first to study the physiological role for active rhomboids, using CRISPR-mediated knock-out neurons and mice. By discovering the role and function of RHBDL1/3 in the brain, I will make an important contribution towards the elucidation of the physiological and medical significance of rhomboid proteases in mammals.
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Coordinator: THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country: United Kingdom
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