Ulm University has been participating in the ERASMUS programme since 1992. Since then, we built up a network of over 100 partner universities in 25 programme countries in Europe, which is constantly being expanded. The main focus, however, is on student mobility (SMS): we want to offer as many students as possible the chance, to carry out a mobility at a good university in a country of their choice with the benefit of financial as well as logistical support. They shall have the opportunity to - take advantage of teaching offers which are either complementary or alternative to our curricula, - get to know other teaching methods and other educational systems, - improve their language skills and intercultural competence, - advance in their personal development and become more independent, responsible and self-organized, - better qualify for the European labour market, - and see themselves as European citizens.The teaching staff mobility (STA) should enable particularly younger academic staff to gather first teaching experiences abroad. In general, it should encourage academics to foster and develop their existing contacts, which often formed the basis for new inter-institutional agreements. Last but not least, the presence of teachers from partner institutions can motivate students to go abroad and the teachers can provide them with information about the ongoing teaching, research and supporting offers at their home institution. Thus, teaching staff mobility is an important factor in promoting student mobility.The activities for training (STT) are primarily addressed to staff in non-academic fields who usually do not have the opportunity to go abroad as part of their job, yet who service international students / staff or work on international projects or topics. Besides raising their intercultural awareness and improving their foreign language skills, the aim is to network with colleagues abroad and to bring home best practice examples.

Next-generation energy storage solutions are needed to satisfy the increasing demand for electrically powered devices. Organic electrode materials (OEMs) are promising candidates, constituted of widely available elements, accessible in processes with low CO2 footprint and easily recycled. However, existing OEMs suffer from a lack of porosity, which inhibits counter ion diffusion to the electroactive sites or renders redox processes irreversible, severely limiting their performance. NanOBatt explores a fundamentally new concept for OEMs in order to significantly improve their intrinsic porosity and provide pathways for efficient counter ion diffusion. In NanOBatt I and my team will investigate redox-active conjugated nanohoops and macrocycles with intrinsic porosity as OEMs in next-generation batteries: Redox-active groups can be installed with the desired properties, their extended conjugation and aromaticity stabilize charges, and their rigid 3D shapes and nanometer-sized cavities lead to nanoporous structures, ideally suited to enable fast counter ion diffusion. In spite of these outstanding properties, conjugated nanohoops have not been explored as OEMs, and even macrocycles have received only little attention as such. The aims of NanOBatt are to develop synthetic strategies and design guidelines for redox-active conjugated nanohoops and macrocycles as OEMs, elucidate the role of conjugation and porosity on charge stabilization and ion diffusion in their charge/discharge processes and investigate their application as OEMs in alternative battery cell configurations, namely Na, Al, Mg and all-organic batteries. NanOBatt uniquely bridges the gap between fundamental research on organic materials and their application in next-generation charge storage devices. With NanOBatt I will initiate a new research field with ground-breaking impact, both in the scientific community as well as for the future direction of my own research.

Discrete time crystals (DTC) in many-body systems are a prominent example of a many-body non-equilibrium state of matter. There have been many theoretical proposals on how to achieve a many-body DTC and they were realised in several experiments. An underlying framework for all different types of DTC models is lacking. My first main goal is to study the DTC phase in many-body systems with a novel framework, namely through their quantum jump behaviour induced by an environment. My second main goal is to go beyond the Lindblad description required for the first goal and consider also the case where Lindblad rates can go negative. Usual jump methods do not work in this case and I will rely on a novel jump method that I co-developed specifically for this situation. To deploy its full power, the method requires further development which will be the first objective of the project. I will study three systems with a DTC phase. The first is a toy model, a driven anharmonic oscillator, a good test case for the method which will provide new insight in the dynamical phase. Next, I study two true many-body systems. The first is a collection of spins where the DTC phase relies on many-body localisation (MBL), inspired on experimentally implemented protocols. My aim here is to distinguish the DTC phase from the ordinary MBL and ergodic phase by the jump statistics. Beyond this, I will explore how many sites must be monitored to detect and distinguish different phases. Finally, I will study a large ensemble of spins that can show the DTC phase, like the experiment in Nitrogen-Vacancy centres, which does not rely on MBL realise the DTC phase. It would be extremely elucidating to compare the nature of the phase to the one that does rely on MBL. I will compare the results from both cases in hopes unifying both realisations or finding clear distinctions.

Chromatin packaging into the nucleus of eukaryotic cells is highly sophisticated. It not only serves to condense the genomic content into restricted space, but mainly to encode epigenetic traits ensuring temporally controlled and balanced transcription of genes and coordinated DNA replication and repair. The non-random three-dimensional chromatin architecture including looped structures between genomic control elements relies on the action of architectural proteins. However, despite increasing interest in spatio-temporal chromatin organization, mechanistic details of their contributions are not well understood. With this proposal I aim at unveiling molecular mechanisms of protein–mediated chromatin organization by in vivo single molecule tracking and quantitative super-resolution imaging of architectural proteins using reflected light sheet microscopy (RLSM). I will measure the interaction dynamics, the spatial distribution and the stoichiometry of architectural proteins throughout the nucleus and at specific chromatin loci within single cells. In complement single molecule force spectroscopy experiments using magnetic tweezers (MT), I will study mechanisms of DNA loop formation in vitro by structure-mediating proteins. Integrating these spatio-temporal and mechanical single molecule information, I will in the third sup-project measure the dynamics of relative end-to-end movements and the forces acting within a looped chromatin structure in living cells. Taken together, my experiments will greatly enhance our mechanistic understanding of three-dimensional chromatin architecture and inspire future experiments on its regulatory effects on nuclear functions and potential therapeutic utility upon controlled modification.