Loss of sensory and motor functions as a result of spinal cord injury (SCI), as well as in stroke or plexus injuries, results in severe limitations for activities of daily living, and require enormous costs in terms of health care and personal support, serving as a powerful motivation for the development of new strategies that can partially restore or substitute the lost functions. Rehabilitation therapies play a crucial role to reinforce functional recovery through repetitive exercising or stimulation enhancing function of spared neural circuits. Bypassing the lesion by means of electrodes to stimulate the healthy peripheral nervous system (PNS) is an alternative strategy in attempt to achieve effective regain of function. Thus, functional electrical stimulation (FES) systems have become some of the most promising solutions to restore motor functions in SCI patients. The RESCUEGRAPH project aims at using graphene-based flexible electrodes as the neural interface of a FES system to reproduce and allow rehabilitation of gait and, at the same time, to drive neuroplasticity at spinal and brain levels to enhance functional recovery of motor and somatosensory processing after SCI, by applying neuromodulatory inputs through afferent sensory stimulation. The workflow of RESCUEGRAPH starts with the design and fabrication of graphene-based electrodes on a flexible substrate. These electrodes will be implanted in rat peripheral nerves to assess the functionality, in terms of effectiveness and selectivity of stimulation and recording neural signals, during chronic implant. A multichannel microstimulator will be provided, together with routines based on gait analysis and modelling, to stimulate peripheral nerves with graphene intraneural electrodes implanted, in order to activate different muscles in a coordinated bilateral locomotion pattern. Such FES system will be integrated and used daily to improve the gait in rats after SCI. We will also investigate how FES of efferent and afferent peripheral nerve fibers is able to drive neural plasticity and enhance activity of the spared neural circuits and improve brain-nerve connectivity in the SCI animals. We aim at increasing the TRL of graphene-based technology for bioelectronic medicine applications for neuromodulation and rehabilitation, by developing and integrating the graphene-based electrodes in a building block with a multichannel stimulator and an adaptable control program to constitute an advanced FES for inducing standing and walking in paraplegic subjects. The components and the whole FES system for locomotion will be optimized in experimental animal models, ensuring safety, efficiency and chronic functionality, thus, paving the way to future usability in human patients.

This project addresses the coproduction of climate-impacts knowledge, in a hands-on collaboration between scientists and users such as climate-adaptation-policy experts and other stakeholders. The project team boasts world-class experts in science-policy dialogue, cross-sectoral impacts research and research coordination, and scientific excellence in impacts modelling. The end product is an open climate-impacts service portal, ISIpedia, offering tailored access to state-of-the-art climate-impacts assessments and data, based on the cross-sectoral, multi-model simulations conducted within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP, www.isimip.org). ISIpedia’s development will integrate the full chain of climate-impact-service co-development, from research design and implementation, to delivery, with tasks fulfilled by the ISIMIP team, a Stakeholder Engagement Team (SET), and the ISIpedia Assessment and Editorial Team (AET). ISIpedia users may include climate adaptation planners e.g. involved in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and implementation practitioners, regional knowledge hubs, trans- and interdisciplinary scientists including climate economists, and regional climate experts from the private sector such as (re-)insurance companies. Four key tasks will be undertaken: 1) stakeholder-supported selection of focus topics and development of the scenario design for the next ISIMIP simulation round; 2) co-development of societally- and user-relevant impacts indicators based on the (bio-)physical projections generated within ISIMIP, such as “number of people affected”, “economic damages” or indicators related to the Sustainability Development Goals; 3) provision of input data and coordination of cross-sectoral impact-modelling activities within ISIMIP, and 4) establishment of a new online platform ISIpedia to provide informed access to simulation data, regional, cross-sectoral impact assessments based on ISIMIP data, and co-developed indicators.