Large-scale technological, biological, economic, and social complex systems act as complex networks of interacting autonomous agents. Large numbers of interacting agents making self-interested decisions can result in highly complex, sometimes surprising, and often suboptimal, collective behaviors. Empowered by recent breakthroughs in data-driven cognitive learning technologies, networked agents collectively give rise to evolutionary dynamics that cannot be easily modeled, analysed and/or controlled using current systems and control theory. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop new theoretical foundations to tackle the emerging challenging control problems associated with evolutionary dynamics for networked autonomous agents. The aim of this project is to develop a rigorous theory for the control of evolutionary dynamics so that interacting autonomous agents can be guided to solve group tasks through the pursuit of individual goals in an evolutionary dynamical process. The theory will then be tested, validated and improved against experimental results using robotic fish. To achieve the aim, I will: (1) develop a general formulation for stochastic evolutionary dynamics with control inputs, enabling the study on controllability and stabilizability for evolutionary processes; (2) introduce stochastic control Lyapunov functions to design control laws; (3) construct new classes of conditional strategies that may propagate controlled actions effectively from focal agents in multiple time scales; and (4) validate experimentally on tasks with unknown difficulties that require a group of robotic fish to evolve and adapt. The project will result in a major advance from the conventional usage of evolutionary game theory with the systematic design to actively control evolutionary outcomes. The combination of theory with experimentation and the multi-disciplinary nature of the approach will lead to new applications of autonomous robotic systems.

The Fellowship's purpose is to make a comparative assessment of China’s soft power strategy in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and how a group of selected European countries (Italy, the Netherlands and Hungary) and the EU are engaging with and positioning themselves. The research analyzes the key components of the Initiative unlocking its vision, such as narrative, concepts and values; its modus operandi, intended as forms of engagement; its impact, in terms of scientific cooperation and education; and its prestige, on how China’s image is portrayed abroad. Through this comparative analysis, the research investigates how European countries are supporting, contraposing, and/or overlooking China's strategy assessing the implications for EU integration dynamics. The project’s overarching aim is to use the expertise from a representative of the policy sector (Fellow in charge) who has worked closely with the Chinese government and has direct access to Chinese sources, guided by a long-standing academic professor (researcher in charge) from a reputed European university and a profound expert in EU integration dynamics and the EU-China relationship to generate new knowledge and understanding. The project aims to strengthen a network of academic and policy stakeholders in Europe and China that can support a deeper understanding and dialogue, thus enhancing much-needed institutional collaboration between the theoretical and practitioners’ level. The Fellowship will intervene in the fields of international relations and EU integration studies. However, by promoting closer collaboration not only at subject and individual level but also at institutional level, the Fellowship is expected to generate greater partnerships across various disciplines via increases in the number of collaborations among European universities located in the selected countries and in China.

BODICON examines processes of identity negotiations under colonial regimes by investigating the biocultural effects of conquest and colonisation of the Roman Empire. Representing a new generation of contact studies, the aim is to expand upon traditional elite/non-elite dichotomies or the focus on the health of conquered peoples toward how political transformations are incorporated by the human body of both the colonized and the colonizers. The research focuses on Roman Macedonia (Greece) and explores variable effects of colonisation by analyzing skeletal remains and burial patterns from the colony of Dion, the sacred city and pilgrimage site of ancient Macedonians. To achieve this aim, BODICON adopts for the first time a novel, multifaceted and holistic approach that combines bioarchaeology and current, sophisticated theoretical reflection on culture contact and admixture of populations with cutting-edge interdisciplinary techniques and methodological innovations from other scientific fields (paleodietary reconstruction, biodistance analysis, radiochronology). The Fellowship will offer to the Experienced Researcher (ER) the opportunity to acquire advanced intellectual and technical training and new skills in these fields and reach the research objectives. At the same time, the Fellowship is the timely opportunity for the ER to re-establish her career after a prolonged break and the ideal next step in order to re-enforce her research position. Finally, the creation of interdisciplinary networks as well as the dissemination and communication of the results to the scientific community and the broader public will first, contribute to the global understanding of the formation of modern national identities and second, explore the way historical data are used in contemporary political debates.

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from/to third countries not associated to Erasmus+. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

This research project aims to address one of the Grand Challenges in contemporary science: the de-novo synthesis of life. More specifically we aim to achieve, for the first time, Darwinian evolution in a system of fully synthetic molecules. This ambitious aim may be reached by combining the expertise of the experienced researcher on out-of-equilibrium systems with the expertise of the host lab on self-replicating molecules. This combination will enable replication to be operated out of equilibrium. The central idea is to run the self-replicating molecules in a regime where replication and replicator “death” are competing processes. Replicators only survive as long as they replicate faster than they are destroyed. The simplest implementation of such regime is a flow system in which replicator building blocks are continuously flown in, while outflow of part of the replicator solution constitutes replicator “death” through a process of (non-selective) physical removal. In addition to replication, two more ingredients are required for Darwinian evolution: mutation and selection of the mutants that are best adapted to their environment. To realise those elements, we will create a mixture of replicator mutants by offering a mixture of different building blocks. Alteration of fitness parameters (by altering the environment) should shift the mutant distribution towards the replicators that are best adapted to the new environment. Environmental parameters that will be explored include flow systems with thermal gradients (selectively trapping replicators that assemble into long fibers) and co-solvents and salts (affecting the supramolecular interactions that hold the replicator assemblies together).