Internationalisation is of essential importance to LMU. The EU Programmes for Education with their manifold opportunities, including Erasmus+, are amongst the most important measures to continually promote internationalisation and further develop the international dimension at LMU. LMU has a well-developed, multi-facetted international network which it utilises to foster student and staff mobility on all levels. A key element thereby is Erasmus student mobility. In project year 2016 682 students from all study cycles, who participated in study abroad at a partner university of LMU, were able to receive funding. In addition 120 students, who carried out a traineeship abroad, were also funded. As a result of a relatively high number of withdrawals and declining numbers due to the loss of Switzerland as a project partner, the quantitative goals set for student mobility for studies was almost impossible to be reached . Nevertheless, the result in this area of funding can overall be judged positively, as, according to the EU-survey, the majority of outgoing students stated that they were satisfied with their Erasmus experience. This proves that the current mechanisms (e.g. guidance and support of students on two levels – on the administrative side by the International Office and Careers Office respectively and by the faculties on the academic level) function well and can be further developed in the future. As far as the Erasmus Traineeship Programme is concerned, both the quantitative and qualitative goals could be reached. As observed in previous years, the demand from students of all study levels for traineeships abroad is rising. LMU was in a position to fund all applicants, whereupon till now graduate internships have not played a very big role. The increase in staff mobility for teaching and training is a focus of Erasmus+ and reflects the mobility concept of LMU. The demand of teachers and staff is continually rising. In project year 2016 40 mobilities for teaching and 33 mobilities for training could be funded. The experiences made by staff abroad make an important contribution to personnel development in general as well as to the internationalisation of LMU at administrative and academic level.In the EU-survey, the positive feedback of incoming students about their study abroad experience at LMU and the rising numbers of Erasmus students from our partner universities confirm that the support concept at LMU functions well and that LMU in general is an attractive destination for Erasmus study abroad. Erasmus remains the most important mobility programme at LMU and will be continually developed not only in Europe but also worldwide thanks to the new international credit mobility programme. Both key actions support LMU in its international strategy and make an important contribution to the cooperation of universities in a European and international context.

The systematic investigation of random discrete structures and processes was initiated by Erdős and Rényi in a seminal paper about random graphs in 1960. Since then the study of such objects has become an important topic that has remarkable applications not only in combinatorics, but also in computer science and statistical physics. Random discrete objects have two striking characteristics. First, they often exhibit phase transitions, meaning that only small changes in some typically local control parameter result in dramatic changes of the global structure. Second, several statistics of the models concentrate, that is, although the support of the underlying distribution is large, the random variables usually take values in a small set only. A central topic is the investigation of the fine behaviour, namely the determination of the limiting distribution. Although the current knowledge about random discrete structures is broad, there are many fundamental and long-standing questions with respect to the two key characteristics. In particular, up to a small number of notable exceptions, several well-studied models undoubtedly exhibit phase transitions, but we are not able to understand them from a mathematical viewpoint nor to investigate their fine properties. The goal of the proposed project is to study some prominent open problems whose solution will improve significantly our general understanding of phase transitions and of the fine behaviour in random discrete structures. The objectives include the establishment of phase transitions in random constraint satisfaction problems and the analysis of the limiting distribution of central parameters, like the chromatic number in dense random graphs. All these problems are known to be difficult and fundamental, and the results of this project will open up new avenues for the study of random discrete objects, both sparse and dense.

Proton therapy is rapidly being established in the EU as a promising external beam tumour therapy modality offering an increased tumour-dose conformity with better sparing of critical organs and healthy tissue compared to conventional photon therapy. However, full exploitation of its clinical potential is still hampered by non-negligible uncertainties during the treatment planning and delivery, posing the urgent demand of novel real-time techniques for in vivo verification of the proton beam range. To this aim, the objective of this project proposal HIPPOCRATE (Hybrid Imaging of PET and PrOmpt gamma for preCision RAnge- and biological- guidance in proton ThErapy) is to explore the optimal design and clinical potential of an innovative hybrid medical imaging approach that goes well beyond the state of the art, by combining real-time range verification from energetic prompt gammas with Positron-Emission-Tomography (PET) imaging of irradiation-induced or externally injected tracers, to promote biological- and dose- guidance for personalized, high-precision proton therapy. By improving the quality of the rapidly emerging proton therapy modality, this project will promote longer and healthier lives for cancer patients, with a high societal impact on the EU. Moreover, HIPPOCRATE can potentially go beyond the boundaries of medical imaging in proton therapy, by enabling high quality imaging of a whole new range of promising unconventional radionuclides for diagnostic nuclear medicine imaging, as well as opening the perspective of biological image guidance at the radiotherapy treatment site, independent of the primary radiation quality.

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from EU Member States and third countries associated to Erasmus+ to any country in the world. 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.

Pathogens use antigenic variation to evade host antibodies and cause diseases in humans. Interestingly, in many species antigen switching occurs non-randomly in a hierarchical manner, with specific antigen genes selected in succession. Trypanosoma brucei is a key model organism for the study of antigenic variation in which antigen switching hierarchies of its Variant Surface Glycoprotein (VSG) genes operate. However, how exactly this hierarchy is determined is unknown. Studies in T. brucei have indicated that the spatial positioning of VSG genes within the nucleus is important for controlling their activation. However, to date no systematic investigation of VSG gene nuclear positioning and antigen switching hierarchies has been performed. In this project, I would test the hypothesis that antigen switching hierarchies in trypanosomes are mediated by the spatial positioning of VSG genes in the nucleus. Using T. brucei cell lines in which different antigen switching pathways can be induced, I will determine whether silent VSGs in close spatial proximity to the active VSG before switch induction are selected next in the antigen switching pathway. This will be investigated by integrating a combination of Micro-C to monitor VSG nuclear positioning before and after switching followed by scRNA-seq. I will also develop a dCas9 artificial tethering system to tether silent VSGs either towards or away from the active VSG before switch induction to create a synthetic VSG switching hierarchy. These experiments will generate important insights into the mechanisms which control antigen switching and provide valuable tools for studying nuclear organisation in kinetoplastid parasites.