M-ONE project aims to demonstrate a breakthrough innovative MRI coil for brain imaging at 7 Tesla (7T) enabling a homogeneous and better quality of the image. Starting from the promising results of the M-CUBE FET-OPEN project n°736937 (MetaMaterial antenna for ultra-high field MRI), the young SME Multiwave Technologies, coordinating the M-ONE project, will with its interdisciplinary consortium (CEA, AMU-Fresnel Institute and UCLouvain) develop a prototype of a MRI head coil that will enable the first artefact-free entire brain images, hence reaching TRL6 at the end of the project. There is a race to a highly competitive global position in ultra-high field (UHF) MRI. For brain images, the UHF allows a better understanding of brain mechanism and hence a better diagnostic of brain disease. Nevertheless, some issue of radio frequency field inhomogeneities appears at 7T on transmit magnetic field B1+ images. They are translated on brain imaging by three dark areas on brain images, the two temporal lobes and the cerebellum, making diagnosis either impossible or non-conclusive in these regions. During the M-CUBE project, two technologies based on metamaterials have been established to homogenize the brain images. Some partners of the M-CUBE project that constitutes the M-ONE consortium decided to combine these two patented technologies taking the best of each one in order to develop the M-ONE coil. The main objective of the M-ONE is to develop a 7T metamaterial head coil with the best B1+ homogeneity on the market with an equivalent or higher signal-to-noise-ration that the standard 7T head coil. To achieve these coil characteristics, the 7T metamaterial head coil 1Tx/32Rx will be constituted of a metamaterial birdcage coil in transmission (1Tx) combined with a receive array coil (32Rx). This innovation will place a European SME, Multiwave Technologies, at the pole position of the global MRI Market.

BOHEME’s ambitious goal is to design and realize a new class of bioinspired mechanical metamaterials for novel applicative tools in diverse technological fields. Metamaterials exhibit exotic vibrational properties currently unavailable in Nature, and numerous important applications are emerging. However, universally valid design criteria are currently lacking, and their effectiveness is presently restricted to limited frequency ranges. BOHEME starts from an innovative assumption, increasingly supported by experimental evidence, that the working principle behind metamaterials is already exploited in Nature, and that through evolution, this has given rise to optimized designs for impact damping. The “fundamental science” part of the project aims to explore biological structural materials for evidence of this, to investigate novel optimized bioinspired designs (e.g. porous hierarchical structures spanning various length scales) using state-of-the-art analytical and numerical approaches, to design and manufacture vibrationally effective structures, and to experimentally verify their performance over wide frequency ranges. Through this disruptive approach, BOHEME will provide a pipeline to the technological development of a new class of bioinspired metamaterials in innovative applicative sectors over various wavelength scales, from non-destructive testing, to noise reduction, to low-frequency vibration control (including seismic), to coastal protection or energy harvesting from ocean waves. Industrial partners will provide know-how for proof of principle experiments and possible prototypes. The project is ambitious and inherently multidisciplinary, involving research in biology, mathematics, physics, materials science, structural and ocean engineering, drawing from scientific excellence of the partners. It involves theoretical, numerical and experimental aspects, and is a high-impact endeavour, from which basic science, EU industry and society can benefit.

M-Cube aims at changing the paradigm of High-Field MRI and Ultra High-Field antennas to offer a much better insight on the human body and enable earlier detection of diseases. Our main objective is to go beyond the limits of MRI clinical imaging and radically improve spatial and temporal resolutions. The clinical use of High-field MRI scanners is drastically limited due to the lack of homogeneity and to the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of the Radio Frequency (RF) fields associated with the magnetic resonance. The major way to tackle and solve these problems consists in increasing the number of active RF antennas, leading to complex and expensive solutions. M-Cube solution relies on innovative systems based upon passive metamaterial structures to avoid multiple active elements. These systems are expected to make High-Field MRI fully diagnostically relevant for physicians. To achieve these expectations, M-Cube consortium will develop a disruptive metamaterial antenna technology. This we will able us to tackle both the lack of homogeneity and SAR barriers. Metamaterials are composite structured manmade materials designed to produce effective properties unavailable in nature (e.g. negative optical index). They allow us to tailor electromagnetic waves at will. Thus, the scientifically ambitious idea is to develop antennas based on this unique ability for whole body coil. This technological breakthrough will be validated by preclinical and clinical tests with healthy volunteers. M-Cube gathers an interdisciplinary consortium composed of academic leaders in the field, eight universities, and two promising SMEs. Physicists, medical doctors and industrial actors will work closely all along the implementation of the project to guarantee the success this novel approach, a “patient-centered” solution which will pave the way for a more accurate diagnosis in the context of personalized medicine and will enable to detect a disease much earlier that is currently possible.

Increasing demand for fully autonomous wireless sensors to service the emerging technologies of the internet of things, remote and real time monitoring of vulnerable environments or self-sensing smart structures is driving a requirement for efficient and novel methods of energy harvesting. The sensor's data communication has a substantial power requirement that presents a serious constraint upon the number of sensors, and their capability. Our primary aim is to realise innovative Lead-free electromechanical energy harvesters; these will be easily installed, to power, in a clean and low-cost manner, autonomous wireless sensing devices thereby eliminating batteries and human intervention: This will revolutionise sensor applications whilst simultaneously reducing chemical waste. This is timely as in current solutions battery replacement is either logistically impossible or too expensive and batteries carry a toxic chemical cost. Solar panels have the environmental drawback of using toxic materials. In our vision of future sensor technology, with our vibration energy harvesters (VEH) as their primary power source, a battery, will become unnecessary, and their associated chemical waste will no longer occur, and these sensors will become truly autonomous. The harvester's mechanical core will draw on advanced multiresonator designs, integrating Lead-free piezoelectric patches enhanced by the unique wave control capacities of resonant elastic metamaterials. Currently microVEH, though promising, suffers due to frequency mismatch: We have the ambition to bridge the gap between different scales by leveraging the potential of metamaterials. This will dramatically increase the energy available for harvesting, and operational bandwidth. For electronic applications the integration of rectifiers in the circuitry will allow for the full exploitation of the multiresonant design.

The main goals of the EffectFact proposal are a) to advance pure and applied mathematics in the area of factorisation techniques, Wiener-Hopf and Riemann-Hilbert problems and related numerical techniques to solve time dependent boundary value problems in complex discrete and continuous domains; b) to utilize the developed techniques to solve challenging problems from: i) biomechanics (DNA replication), ii) medicine (surgical resection and dentistry), iii) metamaterials (acoustic and gyro-elastic), iv) AI (machine learning), v) environmental and civil engineering (with a focus on earthquake and coastal defences) and, in doing so, c) to establish a new, sustainable, EU-centred network of researchers from different sectors and disciplines, united by their dedication to furthering the projects techniques and results, while transferring this knowledge, best practice and creating new training opportunities for EU researchers. The EffectFact consists of 24 Partners: 9 Academic Institutions from the EU (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland), 6 Universities from the AC (Georgia, Israel, Norway and Ukraine); 8 highly innovative SMEs adopting completely different R&D strategies (UK, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Israel, Slovakia); 1 Academic Partners from the TCs (China). All EffectFact goals align with the RISE Objectives, establishing a unique consortium to fill gaps in several scientific disciplines, impacting H2020 priorities and Horizon Europe missions. These problems could not be solved independently, requiring continuous feedback from analytic, applied and computational researchers from numerous disciplines. This diverse collaborative Network will forge interdisciplinary links within the EU, strengthen the access of EU academics and SME’s to international research, lead to tangible and impactful results, while building a strong base of robust, independent researchers capable of furthering the aims of EffectFact long into the future.