Can spin integrated circuits (Spin-ICs) with low power-high speed processing capabilities be realized? What are the key ingredients necessary to catapult present-day spintronics to make such a leap? The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) quantum crystals provides new impetus for exploring ambitious ultralow-power and ultrafast speed prospects of spintronics and nanomagnetism. Atomically thin 2D quantum materials like graphene have created novel possibilities for pure spin current communication, functionalities, and controlling spin phenomena, for inventing entirely new kind of spin components, that could pave the way for spin ICs. SPINNER aims to unleash these prospects leveraging the PI’s pioneering leadership and recent innovations in flexible graphene spin circuits, breakthrough longest spin communication in graphene, and precision characterization of 2D magnetic crystals, aiming for three highly ambitious objectives: (1) Achieving strain control of spin currents and spin Hamiltonian in 2D materials. (2) Enabling field-free pure spin current torque functionalities in graphene spin circuits. (3) Controlling ultrafast spin currents at 2D spinterfaces. The proposed new experiments in SPINNER build upon the PI’s expertise in state-of-the-art spin and charge transport, µ-Hall magnetometry, advanced nanofabrication, and device engineering, augmented with new strengths in magneto-optic Kerr effect and ultrafast spin dynamics experiments. Designed for unprecedented engineering of spin materials and devices, the success of SPINNER will reveal new performance, low-power spin functions, determining the ultimate efficiency and speed of pure spin-current operations for Spin-ICs, leading to multiple new scientific and technological breakthroughs. Realizing SPINNER will make a significant impact on 2D quantum materials, flexible nanoelectronics, nanomagnetism and spintronics, and device physics, proving its high multidisciplinary worth.

States are currently designing new strategies and modalities of intervention in order to adapt to the lasting impacts that the covid-19 Great Lockdown will have on industrial structures, financial systems, global and regional value chains, the nature of business competition, and the world of work. While the forms of reassertion of state authority are likely to be extremely diverse, STASIS focuses in particular on the repositioning of European states with respect to investment from state enterprises, state-owned banks, and state-sponsored investment funds, or what commentators increasingly refer to as ‘state capitalist’ investment. There are concerns that firms impacted by covid-19 may be targeted by 'predatory' state-sponsored investors from beyond Europe, as the crisis is being seized as a strategic opportunity to acquire underpriced assets. STASIS offers an original study of how European states are seeking to regulate state capitalist investment from abroad, in light of the tension between attracting foreign capital and retaining control of critical firms and assets, and as parts of broader attempts to construct new regimes of competition, profitability and growth. It proposes to advance scholarly understandings of the political economy of these investments and regulations, by scrutinising the actors, processes, and multiple forms of contestation they involve within and across economic sectors and European states. It uses mixed methods involving 60 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, a close reading of policy documents and public reports, and economic analysis, in order to explore empirically-grounded case studies (a comparison of the regulations implemented by Germany and France, and a comparison of 2 economic sectors: Health & Biotech; Artificial Intelligence & Robotics). The study, grounded in geographical political economy, brings together recent literature on state capitalism, economic geographies of crisis transition, and labour mobilisations.

The main hypothesis of the proposed research is that, contrary to common and long-standing belief, mitochondrial genetic variation is functional and plays a key role in evolutionary adaptation. I suggest that a novel understanding of selection on mtDNA can derive from simultaneously considering sex-specific selection and genetic interactions between mtDNA and nDNA. Because males are a genetic “dead-end” for mtDNA, mtDNA mutations that are detrimental for males but beneficial for females will spread. This will generate a male-specific genetic load (“the mother’s curse”). Further, the main energy producing pathway in eukaryotes (the OXPHOS pathway) is built collectively by products of the mitochondrial and the nuclear genome. Thus, mtDNA and nDNA are potentially entangled in an intricate web of epistatic interactions that dictates organismal metabolism. The proposed research is built upon a series of interrelated parts, and will use a very amenable insect model organism and employ a range of different research methodologies. Specific aims of the proposed research is (1) to assess the effects of mito-nuclear genotype on key life history traits such as metabolic rate and test whether these effects are sex-specific in line with the “mother’s curse” and (2) to test the hypothesis that mito-nuclear interactions promotes the maintenance of polymorphism in mitochondrial genome through negative frequency dependent selection. This research will have a range of biological implications, ranging from applied medical genetics over our use of mitochondrial genetic markers in population genetics/biology to speciation and our understanding of thermal adaptation to climate change.