Fifteen years ago it was widely believed that asthma was an allergic/atopic disease caused by allergen exposure in infancy; this produced atopic sensitization and continued exposure resulted in eosinophilic airways inflammation, bronchial hyper-responsiveness and reversible airflow obstruction. It is now clear that this model is at best incomplete. Less than one-half of asthma cases involve allergic (atopic) mechanisms, and most asthma in low-and-middle income countries is non-atopic. Westernization may be contributing to the global increases in asthma prevalence, but this process appears to involve changes in asthma susceptibility rather than increased exposure to “established” asthma risk factors. Understanding why these changes are occurring is essential in order to halt the growing global asthma epidemic.This will require a combination of epidemiological, clinical and basic science studies in a variety of environments. A key task is to reclassify asthma phenotypes. These are important to: (i) better understand the aetiological mechanisms of asthma; (ii) identify new causes; and (iii) identify new therapeutic measures. There are major opportunities to address these issues using new techniques for sample collection from the airways (sputum induction, nasal lavage), new methods of analysis (microbiome, epigenetics), and new bioinformatics methods for integrating data from multiple sources and levels. There is an unprecedented potential to go beyond the old atopic/non-atopic categorization of phenotypes. I will therefore conduct analyses to re-examine and reclassify asthma phenotypes. The key features are the inclusion of: (i) both high and low prevalence centres from both high income countries and low-and-middle income countries; (ii) much more detailed biomarker information than has been used for previous studies of asthma phenotypes; and (iii) new bioinformatics methods for integrating data from multiple sources and levels.

The Renewable Energy industrial sectors in Brazil and Colombia are going through a rapid modernization and expansion period as a result of intensive investments from national and global international companies. Similar processes are expected to take place in Cuba in coming years. There is a sharply growing demand for a new type of qualified graduates in this sector in Latin American countries with deeper professional educational background in Renewable Energy Engineering with the quality similar to that provided in EU Universities. Brazilian, Colombian and Cuban Universities participating in this project, run numerous Bachelor and Master level courses developed by themselves, including in Renewable Energy Engineering (REE). Thus, the aim of this project is not a creation of new Bachelor or Master courses but a radical improvement of existing ones developed by Latin America University academics. To achieve the goal of improving quality of teaching and aligning with EU Universities, the current content of modules and teaching methods in REE modules should undergo deep modernisation processes with the assistance and input of EU universities which have a strong background and experience of teaching in these subjects. Additionally, problems identified in the work with PhD students in partner Universities are that in their study students are narrowly focused on local practices. Therefore, main activities of this project will be:1. Modernisation of core modules in REE taught to Bachelor and Master students to the level of quality corresponding to the EU standard requirements. 2. Improvement of Skills Development of PhD students in IT, communication, self-assessment, presenting and motivating and competencies for better integration into international research community.The major outcome of the project will be better professional knowledge and skills of Bachelor, Master and PhD students in REE conforming with European standards.

The ambition of AtlantECO is to develop and apply a novel, unifying framework for providing knowledge-based resources to design policies, support decisions making and engage with citizens to encourage responsible behaviour to manage the Atlantic system and protect its Ecosystem Services (ES) provision. The aim of AtlantECO is to determine the structure and function of Atlantic microbiome in the context of ocean circulation and presence of pollutants, e.g., plastics, to assess its role in driving the dynamics of Atlantic ecosystems at basin and regional scales; its potential of being used as a sensor of ecosystem state and the mechanisms by which it drives the provision of 5ES. This is key to improve our predictions on future provision of ES in the basin and to favour the establishment of a sustainable Blue Growth strategy for an All-Atlantic community. To realise this vision, AtlantECO has four objectives which are to 1) Assess dynamics of Atlantic marine ecosystems, their ES provision and the interplay of both with socio-economic activities; 2 increase knowledge and data on microbiomes, plastics, the plastisphere and carbon fluxes that support ecosystems at basin scale using best practices and integrative sampling strategies, novel genomics, imaging and biogeochemical methods, bioinformatics and modelling approaches; 3) Assess and predict the cumulative impacts of multiple stressors on ecosystem status and dynamics and ES provision, identifying their drivers and role on tipping points, assessing their changes in recovery of ecosystem structures, functions and services, and developing eco-socio-economic models to predict future trajectories and 4) Deploy a systemic strategy to build capacity and transfer knowledge for a seamless engagement between science, industry, policy, and society. To achieve these objectives AtlantECO brings together experts and pioneers from Europe, South America and South Africa with the relevant resources, knowledge and experience.