Coralline algae are an important group of benthic marine organisms that form unique, but endangered, biotopes on the seafloor. Coralline algae, have been a notable component of the Mediterranean realm for millions of years and persist to this very day. This is in spite of the multiple environmental perturbations that the Mediterranean had experienced, such as its decupling from other oceanic basins in the past to anthropogenic forcing in the present. As such, the deposits from by coralline algae can allow us to study some of the most significant environmental perturbations in the Mediterranean, explore habitat resilience and improve our understanding of this environment in general. To do so, this project will explore multiple occurrences of coralline algae in the south central Mediterranean using a one of a kind comprehensive data and sample set. This includes both extensive seafloor and sub-seafloor acoustic data, over 1.5km of cored material penetrating multiple ancient coralline rich units, ROV dives from modern living coralline biotopes and compilation of data from the rest of the region. The project will implement cross-disciplinary integration of this data set in a holistic fashion, inducting the researcher into seafloor studies. Together, these elements will give the fellow the ability to explore novel and inventive tools for detailed investigation of these deposits. The combined approach will produce a comprehensive model of the behaviour and evolution of corallines in the Mediterranean over key periods of the last 25 Myr. This work will expend the fellows’ multidisciplinary capacity and will promote the career development of this young researcher within the European community. The products of this project will be made available to the public across multiple venues to be used to promote truism and provide bases for planers and dissection makers in respect to the possible effect on coralline algae rich environments.

This is a project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries. Please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

Oral diseases constitute an increased major public health burden. Alternative dental prevention and therapeutic approaches such as probiotics are gaining popularity, but partly due to these products being live bacteria their use has not gained significant popularity in dentistry. Parabiotics in appropriate doses have been shown to induce health benefits in other medical fields but have only as yet been tested sparingly for dental use. INPAROL aims at producing innovative parabiotics through ultrasound technology from mixed strains of probiotics used in commercial products. INPARAOL probiotics’ effects will be assessed by antimicrobial testing against oral pathogens (single and mixed culture) and also following exposure to varied environmental conditions. Best performing parabiotics will be subjected to biofilm assays replicating oral conditions and toxicity assays, in vitro cell monolayers and in vivo zebrafish embryo models, will be performed. Finally, the molecular changes of changes to inflammatory mediators will be monitored with complex in vitro infection models. Overall, this is the first time parabiotics for oral health application will be produced with the proposed methods which makes this research so niche. My strong clinical and microbiology research background makes INPAROL an ideal fit. I will be joined by a strong supervisory team at the University of Malta consisting of a renowned microbiologist and co-supervised by a world-leader on innovative antimicrobial approaches from the Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam. INPAROL affords an unprecedented opportunity to build on my expertise to kick-start an independent research path in oral health research.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.