One of three key focuses of the European Researchers' Nights “exploREsearch” in Austria will be to enhance the understanding and promote current research in the fields of climate and sustainability with a focus on the European Green Deal. The second key focus is citizen science, which is an efficient way to democratise science and to bring the public and science closer together for enhancing both public knowledge as well as understanding of science. Moreover, in order to open up new perspectives of seeing the world, it is more than necessary to understand arts and show the diversity of research in this area. In this context, the third focus of the European Researchers' Night events "exploREsearch" will be Arts & Research. Besides, we will also emphasize on the Horizon Europe Missions. For the first time in Austria, the ERNs will be organised in several major cities (Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck) at the same time covering Austria from East to West and enabling about a fourth of the Austrian population to directly participate at the events. The events will, on the one hand incorporate on-site formats such as Scientific Booths and Workshops, Science Talks, Science Cafes, Science Slams, the EU-Corner as well as several Social Activities to bring public and science closer together. On the other hand, virtual formats will integrate lectures and workshops as well as a live stream from the on-site stage program for online visitors. Furthermore, the project incorporates a large number of pre-events of which several are dedicated to Researchers at Schools activities. Support for the event and its promotion was stated by Austrian ministries (including also financial support), other public stakeholders, funding agencies and initiatives. The project "exploREsearch" integrates 7 partners with different competences, backgrounds and public outreach, therefore being able to implement successful European Researchers' Nights in Austria in 2022 and 2023.

QLUSTER is constituted as a collaborative network for advancing research in fundamentals and applications, training ESRs with broad skillsets and high adaptability to the increasingly knowledge-based economy of the EU, and with a strong commitment to communicating science to society. Despite similarities in phenomena, language and methods employed to study clustering and mesophase organization across widely different length scales — from subatomic to macromolecular — a coherent effort to bring distinct communities in classical and quantum soft matter together has not been yet undertaken. Our objective is to advance the fundamentals in such fields far beyond the state of the art, cross-fertilizing and creating permanent ties between communities that have evolved separately so far, and fostering the transfer of knowledge essential for a broad range of applications. The ambitious research and training programme will address the properties of classical and quantum soft matter systems under a common framework based on the underlying ultrasoft interactions of the constituents. Ultrasoftness is the key factor leading to the observed complexity in the dynamics, structure, and response to external drives of these different entities (complex polymers, soft colloids, Rydberg atoms in optical lattices, vortex matter in superconductors, etc). QLUSTER comprises a unique theory/experiment balanced team of specialists in quantum optics, polymer physics and macromolecular chemistry among others, providing a valuable platform for communication between the different communities of research in ultrasoft matter. The impact in the academic and private sector of the EU will be broad. There are no previous examples of similar initiatives in the world and QLUSTER will put the EU in a privileged position, through fostering transfer of fundamentals and methods, to innovate in large-scale sectors as e.g., tyre manufacturing, and to find innovative applications of quantum science.

The terrestrial biosphere annually absorbs around one quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities each year and thus beneficially decreases the rate of global warming. The sign and magnitude of the net land carbon dioxide flux is determined by the delicate balance between two key carbon cycle processes: gross primary productivity (photosynthetic carbon uptake by land plants) and ecosystem respiration (carbon dioxide production by all living things). The magnitude of both processes is however highly uncertain due to conceptual and methodological difficulties in disentangling the two from the (measurable) net carbon dioxide flux. This uncertainty undermines our ability to project the future of the terrestrial global carbon cycle, which in turn severely impedes the conception of realistic carbon emission reduction measures allowing constraining global warming below agreed targets. The overarching objective of the proposed project is to provide new constraints on gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration using a dual-constraints approach. Gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration will be estimated jointly by ecosystem-scale carbonyl sulfide eddy covariance and sun-induced fluorescence measurements at three contrasting European ecosystems. The resulting data will then be used in a unifying modelling framework allowing gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration to be determined with much greater confidence based on the dual constraints by the experimental measurements.