Transplantation of autologous split-thickness skin -the epidermis with a tiny layer of dermis- remains the golden standard for various skin wounds like burns and large trauma. This treatment, however, comes with a number of serious drawbacks, including pain, mobility-limiting contractures and disfiguring scars. The SkinTERM consortium will address wound healing in a completely different way, recapitulating (certain aspects of) skin embryonic development in adults, and aiming for regeneration rather than repair. Skin organogenesis will be induced by key elements taken from the extracellular matrix of foetal and non-scarring species and by employing (stem) cells from relevant cellular origins. The starting point for the study is the remarkable capability of early foetal skin and skin from the spiny mouse (Acomys) to heal perfectly without scars/ contraction and with appendices such as hair follicles. Novel biomaterials and skin substitutes will be developed and evaluated. In order to effectively embrace this new approach, the PhD students need to have knowledge in key elements of basic science, regenerative medicine and biomaterial sciences. As translation to medical devices and especially advanced therapy medicinal products is currently too limited, we will give the PhD students a solid theoretical and practical foundation on topics like regulatory affairs, GMP and GCP, as well as secondments in industry. Driven by both the enthusiasm to gain basic scientific insights and the need for efficacious and innovative therapies, the students will acquire expertise through cutting edge scientific projects and will be trained by leading experts in all required skills to further develop their scientific findings into real life-science products. The SkinTERM program will thus create a new generation of entrepreneurial, multidisciplinary and inter-sectorially trained scientists with excellent career perspectives in either academia, industry or government.

NAUTILOS will fill in existing marine observation and modelling gaps through the development of a new generation of cost-effective sensors and samplers for physical (salinity, temperature), chemical (inorganic carbon, nutrients, oxygen), and biological (phytoplankton, zooplankton, marine mammals) essential ocean variables, in addition to micro-/nano-plastics, to improve our understanding of environmental change and anthropogenic impacts related to aquaculture, fisheries, and marine litter. Newly developed marine technologies will be integrated with different observing platforms and deployed through the use of novel approaches in a broad range of key environmental settings (e.g. from shore to deep-sea deployments) and EU policy-relevant applications: - Fisheries & Aquaculture Observing Systems, - Platforms of Opportunity demonstrations, - Augmented Observing Systems demonstration, - Demonstrations on ARGO Platform, - Animal-borne Instruments. The fundamental aim of the project will be to complement and expand current European observation tools and services, to obtain a collection of data at a much higher spatial resolution and temporal regularity and length than currently available at the European scale, and to further enable and democratise the monitoring of the marine environment to both traditional and non-traditional data users. The principles that underlie the NAUTILOS project will be those of the development, integration, validation and demonstration of new cutting-edge technologies with regards to sensors, interoperability and embedding skills. The development will always be guided by the objectives of scalability, modularity, cost-effectiveness and open-source availability of software and data products produced. NAUTILOS will also provide full and open data feed towards well-established portals and data integrators (EMODnet, CMEMS, JERICO).