In 1929, one year after the formulation of his world-famous equation, Paul Dirac wrote that "the fundamental laws (…) of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, (…) but lead to equations that are too complex to be solved". While Dirac was referring to analytical solutions to his equation, numerical approaches have made tremendous progress over the past century. Nonetheless, the so-called strongly correlated materials continue to defy a common experimental and computational access to some of their intriguing exotic properties in solids. In this proposal, I will investigate correlated transition-metal oxides, which undergo a phase transition upon external perturbation, such as temperature, pressure, strain or laser excitation. I will develop a unique table-top ultrafast soft-X-ray absorption and holographic imaging experiment. The measurements will follow the attosecond to picosecond dynamic switching between metallic and insulating phases after laser excitation of transition metal oxides with element-specific absorption measurements, and simultaneously spatially resolve the ultrafast emerging nanometer texture of the phase transition. The unprecedented measurement of attosecond nanoscale dynamics will enable to unambiguously identify the mechanism and ultimate speed of phase transitions. I will use the fundamental insight from attosecond nanoscopy to test the hypothesis, that structural and electronic IMTs coexist and can be steered through both sample engineering and attosecond light-field control, which will pave the way towards PHz oxide electronics. Controlling the currently absent spatial uniformity of phase transitions on the nanoscale and the concomitant order-of-magnitude resistivity changes are key ingredients to guide transition-metal oxides towards their long-heralded usage in future oxide electronics as thin-film transistors, which will finally enable ReRAM memory to enter high-volume manufacturing.

RISCAPE will provide systematic, focused, high quality, comprehensive, consistent and peer-reviewed international landscape analysis report on the position and complementarities of the major European research infrastructures in the international research infrastructure landscape. To achieve this, RISCAPE will establish a close links with a stakeholder panel representing the main user groups of the report, including representatives from ESFRI, the OECD and Member state funding agencies to ensure usability and the focus of the Report. It will also benefit from close co-operation with other projects and initiatives in the European research infrastructures development to ensure consistency with the existing landscape work. Particularly, RISCAPE builds on the European Research Infrastructures (RIs) in the ESFRI landscape report (2016) and on the landscape analysis done or currently underway in the H2020 cluster projects. RISCAPE leverages the experts on the European RIs with extensive knowledge on the disciplines involved and RI development in Europe and the project benefits from the contacts and tools developed in the cluster- and international RI collaboration projects to maximize the discipline-specific usability of the results. A key factor in the RISCAPE analysis is that the complementarities will be analyzed in a way which is natural and suitable for the discipline and RI in question. The resulting Report and the used methods will be independently peer reviewed to maximize the usability and objectivity of the information provided for the EU strategic RI development and policy. The project answers directly to the European Commission strategy on EU international cooperation in research and innovation, particularly on the need to obtain objective information in order to help implement the (EC) strategic approach.

The goal of the RADIOBLOCKS project is to achieve a maximal boost for the European major world-leading research infrastructures in radio astronomy, which over the years have invested heavily in maintaining existing facilities as well as in substantial upgrade programmes, after identifying common challenges towards their mid- and long-term scientific visions. In this project, the institutes responsible of these facilities join forces, together with partners from industry and academia, in order to develop “common building blocks” for technological solutions beyond state-of-the-art, that will enable a broad range of new science and enhance European scientific competitiveness. They share the need to continuously improve their capabilities in order to enable new science: sensitivity, field of view, bandwidth, angular, time and frequency resolution, commensality and on-sky time, reaction time and RFI mitigation. Engagement with industry to co-develop advanced technologies will increase the partners’ technological levels and strengthen their market positions, creating a true European innovation system. This project carries out carefully targeted development work and addresses common aspects in the complete data chain, categorizing this in four phases: Novel detectors and components, digital receivers, transport and correlator, and data (post)processing. We will design and demonstrate common building blocks based on cutting-edge technologies, that will be enablers and extenders in the areas most critical to the RIs, and can and will be used for upgrades of several RIs. The building blocks will be new instrument components and advanced digital solutions based on newly available (HPC/AI optimized) hardware. This approach will enable a tremendous increase of the science delivery potential of Europe’s major radio astronomical observatories, for science cases that are high on their long-term agendas, aimed at the widest possible science community in Europe and beyond.

Recent pandemics showed Europe how serious health threats can be to society. Proactive approaches are needed to ensure that medical countermeasures are available during pandemics. PROACT EU-Response’s overarching objective is to prepare Europe for future pandemics by strengthening upon existing networks of experts and civil society focused on clinical therapeutic platform trials within hospital inpatient settings across Europe. In case of an outbreak, this network will provide capacity to pivot rapidly to implement large, multi-country platform trials studying therapeutics and diagnostic-tool performance. Underpinned by strong community involvement and further strengthened by the inclusion of social and implementation scientists, PROACT EU-Response centres on six objectives: expand a solid network of clinical centres across Europe that will implement a clinical trial assessing a syndromic approach for respiratory viral infections; strengthen a laboratory network to identify pathogens and biomarkers of disease monitoring for routine surveillance; support a network of methodologists and trialists who will ensure the trials’ logistical and methodological aspects; initiate a network of professionals to work on preparedness tools to ensure a smooth pivot from inter-pandemic to the pandemic period in case of an outbreak; build a network of social science researchers who will provide nuanced understanding of the social contexts; and establish a community group to work on activities that will empower patients and citizens in Europe regarding their own health and educate them about science and health issues. By bringing together scientists, social science researchers, and civil society members, PROACT EU-Response will benefit the entire European population and beyond through decreased mortality and morbidity associated with emerging diseases, lower societal economic costs of morbidity, strengthened research and innovation expertise, human capacities, and know-how for combatting communicable diseases.

The overarching goal of MUMMERING is to create a research tool that encompasses the wealth of new 3D imaging mo-dalities that are surging forward for applications in materials engineering, and to create a doctoral programme that trains 15 early stage researchers (ESRs) in this tool. This is urgently needed to prevent that massive amounts of valuable tomogra-phy data ends on a virtual scrapheap. The challenge of handling and analysing terabytes of 3D data is already limiting the level of scientific insight that is extracted from many data sets. With faster acquisition times and multidimensional modali-ties, these challenges will soon scale to the petabyte regime. To meet this challenge, we will create an open access, open source platform that transparently and efficiently handles the complete workflow from data acquisition, over reconstruction and segmentation to physical modelling, including temporal models, i.e. 3D “movies”. We consider it essential to reach this final step without compromising scientific standards if 3D imaging is to become a pervasive research tool in the visions for Industry 4.0. The 15 ESRs will be enrolled in an intensive network-wide doctoral training programme that covers all aspects of 3D imag-ing and will benefit from a varied track of intersectoral secondments that will challenge and broaden their scope and ap-proach to research. The ESRs will exit the MUMMERING network as highly attractive and employable PhDs with a practical and qualified take on industrial research.