The development in recent years of ultrashort light sources in the attosecond regime has opened new avenues for the investigation of electronic and nuclear dynamics. In particular, the current development of UV-XUV or UV-X-ray pump-probe schemes with subfemtosecond temporal resolution represents a doorway to study chemical reactions in excited states of molecules in real-time, including biological reactions, such as e.g. those related to DNA damage and mutations. The aim of this project is to understand and ultimately control photochemical reactions in excited states of polyatomic molecules, especially relating to two fundamental processes in biology and chemistry: (i) cis-trans photoisomerization and (ii) the internal conversion of pi-pi*/n-pi* states in organic chromophores. Two top-notch experimental methods will be employed to achieve this goal: attosecond X-ray transient absorption (X-ATAS) at the University of California at Berkeley (United States), where the fellowship will be carried out under the supervision of Prof. S. Leone, and three-color femtosecond pump-probe velocity map imaging (fs-VMI) at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), where the incoming phase will take place under the supervision of Prof. L. Bañares. The project is divided in three specific objectives and work-packages. Firstly, the powerful X-ATAS method will be employed to observe dynamics in real-time through individual carbon atom spectra and disentangle the dynamics underlying these processes in two polyatomic targets –nitroethylene and transbutadiene– and two bio-relevant ones –thymine and citosine. Secondly, attosecond control in real-time using X-ATAS on the pi-pi*/ n-pi* internal conversion in thymine will be performed in a pioneering experiment. Finally, effective femtosecond control with fs-VMI of these processes in nitroethylene and trans-butadiene, molecules of interest for technologies, will be performed based on the relevant results from the X-ATAS experiments.

Catheter-associated urinary infections (CAUTIs) are among the most common nosocomial infections, leading to substantial morbidity and mortality. They prolong hospital stays and significantly increase the economic cost of the disease. Despite the many techniques that have been developed to prevent them, spanning from the training of health professionals to the intraluminal use of antibiotics or "classical" microbicide coatings, the problem is still largely unsolved. A smart strategy to address the problem would be the development of a universal microbicide coating that only exercises its effect on the indwelling catheter when activated with visible light travelling through the catheter itself, the latter playing as a hollow optical fibre if made of transparent polymer. In this context, we aim to prepare self-disinfecting photoactive (urinary) catheters using the advanced components that modern chemistry and technology provide us, namely, (i) low-power super-bright cheap LEDs and laser diodes, (ii) highly transparent biocompatible polymers (silicones), (iii) versatile surface functionalisation techniques (plasma, silanisation) and (iv) tailored photosensitising dyes capable of generating large amounts of singlet oxygen upon illumination. This reactive oxygen species leads to the destruction of the microorganisms and, therefore, the incipient biofilm (antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation, aPDI), leaving unharmed any cell not contacting the catheter. The combination of the researcher knowledge (photochemistry, dye derivatisation and photodynamic effect), and some of the strongest areas of expertise within the host groups and collaborators (applied photonics, silicones and microbiology), provides all the necessary tools to tackle this challenging interdisciplinary proposal. The project success will benefit both the researchers involved and the entire society, as it contributes to overcome the problem of CAUTIs occurring in hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Freestanding layers of complex oxides are a completely new generation of 2D materials which exhibit a plethora of coupled responses and endow 2D materials with robust correlated groundstates. In this project we explore the control of magnetism in a freestanding oxide driven by the coupling of its ferromagnetic groundstate to strain induced polar structures enabled by the freestanding form. Deterministic control of magnetic textures (namely skyrmions) is an exciting area of research for its potential to impact computing and information technology. However, the metallic nature of most ferromagnetic materials renders the direct control by electric fields impractical due to screening by free carriers. Developing approaches to direct electric control of ferromagnetism in a single material remains a virgin land to explore. FLEXOMAG aims at the use of strain induced flexoelectricity in a metallic oxide with strong spin orbit interaction (SrRuO3) to nucleate spin textures, skyrmions and skyrmion lattices. Flexoelectricity enables the creation of a polar structure in the presence of strain gradients, and is expected to impact magnetic ordering via direct coupling of spins with a polar structure by spin-orbit coupling. Moreover, strain gradients will act as effective electric field and would not suffer from the cancellation by screening due to free charges. Flexoelectric control of magnetism is in itself an important breakthrough in fundamental science and it will further yield a completely novel strategy to tailor spin textures. We will use twistronics of 2D oxides to design skyrmion lattices never observed before in oxides. Skyrmions and skyrmion lattices are acclaimed information vectors sought in the design of next generation magnetic memories. This research will supply a long sought technological platform to fabricate skyrmions by design.

Integrons are genetic platforms that enhance bacterial evolvability through the acquisition and stockpiling of new genes encoded in mobile elements named cassettes. They are found in the chromosomes of environmental bacteria but some have acquired mobility through their association to transposons and conjugative plasmids. These mobile integrons (MI) caused the unexpected rise of multidrug resistance that is now a major threat to modern medicine, and are good proof of the adaptive power of integrons. Class 1 integrons are the most relevant MI and the major experimental model. Yet little is known about the hundreds of sedentary chromosomal integrons (SCI) that have driven bacterial evolution for eons. The paradigm of SCI is the superintegron (SI), an extremely large integron located in the chromosome of Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of Cholera disease. Despite its role in the adaptability of one of the deadliest pathogens in history, the SI is poorly characterized because it is only functional in its native genetic background, yet its presence interferes with, and precludes all studies performed in V. cholerae. I propose to solve this paradoxical situation by deleting the SI, an ambitious project not only for its size (126 Kb) but because it is highly stabilized by 17 toxin-antitoxin systems. To do so, I have developed SeqDelTA, a novel method that is already giving excellent preliminary results. I will then use V. cholerae∆SI to study fundamental aspects of SCIs, yet out of reach. I will elucidate the functions encoded in SI cassettes to understand the role and adaptive value of integrons in nature; I will also unravel the genesis of cassettes: how a gene is exapted from its genetic context to become a mobile module; and I will explore the circulation of antibiotic resistance cassettes among humans, animals, food, and the environment with a novel biosynthetic tool (the I3C). KryptonInt will open and explore the historically inaccessible field of study of SCIs.

Belonging – a concept at the heart of which lies a yearning for home – has domestic, regional, national, and even cosmopolitan implications. It was a particularly important concept in late-Georgian Britain (c. 1780-1830), during which time socio-political instabilities fostered an inward-looking impetus, prompting Britons to ask what home meant and what attachment to home entailed. This project looks at Ireland’s place in late-Georgian British imaginings of national and intranational belonging. Various forms of art – verbal, visual, and aural – will be analysed to show how the story of belonging overflowed formal limitations and became strategically embodied in art. To provide a foundation from which to branch out into various writers, artists, ideas, contexts, and works of art – which are selected across national and gender boundaries – I shall focus on the English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Whilst Wordsworth’s writings about Scotland, Wales, and Continental Europe have been explored, his relationship with Ireland has yet to be fully studied. This project contributes to recent scholarly work on British travellers in pre-Famine Ireland, as well as to studies of Romantic writers’ Irish experiences. Focusing on the theme of belonging, this project revisits the debates, in humanistic geography, about the processes of mediation and remediation in which ‘space’ is turned into ‘place’, or, in another theoretical framework, into lieux de mémoire. But the central theoretical concern is to tease out the complex ways in which the story of belonging was framed in various cultural media and the socio-political implications of various forms of 'strategic storytelling'. This project will redress the marginalisation of Ireland in English literary studies, which reflects an abiding set of cultural prejudices against Ireland that are still perceptible even in twenty-first-century Britain and Europe, even after the Troubles in Northern Ireland had subsided.