Solute transport in unsaturated porous media plays a crucial role in environmental processes affecting soils, aquifers, and carbon capture and storage operations. Natural porous media are characterized by various degrees of structural heterogeneity in the pore size distribution, spatial arrangements and spatial correlations. The impact of this pore-scale heterogeneity on the spreading of a solute plume, its mixing with other solutes, and the resulting reaction rates, is not well understood for unsaturated flow. Since these processes take place at pore scale, direct pore scale experimental measurements are needed to gain comprehensive understanding of them. The aim of UnsatPorMix is thus to elucidate the impact of structural pore-scale heterogeneity on solute spreading/mixing and reaction rates during unsaturated flow, through the combination of micromodel experiments and numerical model simulations. In the first stage of UnsatPorMix, experiments in micromodels with varying degrees of heterogeneity will provide unprecedented results on the phenomenology of pore-scale mechanisms and their effect on solute spreading and mixing. In the second stage, the experimental measurements of phase distribution and solute concentrations, combined to numerically-computed pore scale velocities, will be used to design and validate a pore-scale model for solute transport in these porous media. This model will allow obtaining a large representative numerical data set, enabling statistical analysis and the derivation of quantitative relations between structural heterogeneity and solute transport/mixing. UnsatPorMix will make a significant contribution to the modelling of, and risk assessment for, the various subsurface phenomena and applications cited above. During UnsatPorMix, the applicant will acquire a set of invaluable experimental skills and modeling expertise which will enable him to become an independent researcher and expert in flow and transport in unsaturated porous media.

The COSMOS proposal aims to reduce Europe’s dependence on imported coconut and palm kernel oils and fatty acids and castor oil as sources for medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA, C10–C14) and medium-chain polymer building blocks. These are needed by the oleochemical industry for the production of plastics, surfactants, detergents, lubricants, plasticisers and other products. In COSMOS, camelina and crambe will be turned into profitable, sustainable, multipurpose, non-GMO European oil crops for the production of oleochemicals. Seed properties will be screened and optimised through genetic techniques aiming at high yield, low resource inputs, optimization of the value generated from vegetative tissues and fatty acid profiles adapted to industrial needs. Large-scale field trials will be performed at different locations in Europe to assess the potential of the crops in terms of cultivation practices, seed yield, oil content, ease of harvesting, and resource inputs. Extracted oils will be fractionated into various fatty acid types (monounsaturated versus polyunsaturated) by selective enzyme technologies and extraction processes. The monounsaturated long-chain fatty acids so obtained will be converted to MCFA and high-value building blocks for bio-plastics and flavour and fragrance ingredients through chemical and enzymatic chain cleavage processes. The ω3-rich PUFA fraction will be purified for use in food and feed ingredients. Vegetative tissues such as straw, leaves and press cake will be fed to insects producing high-value proteins, chitin and fats. Insect fats and proteins will be isolated and prepared for use in food and feed products. The overall economic, social and environmental sustainability as well as life cycle of the whole value chain will be assessed. The impact of the project for Europe will be assessed in terms of value chain potentials for value creation and number of jobs that can be created.

Throughout Europe, the expansion of modern, chemical-intensive agriculture is regarded as the principal cause of widespread declines in abundance and diversity beneficial arthropods. Conservation of natural enemies in agricultural landscapes is considered the most ecologically sustainable method for biological control of agricultural pests. An ecological relevant hypothesis is that higher plant diversity, through addition of plant species able to supply accessible food and/or shelters at different seasons of the year, can increase natural enemies' fitness. Based on existing insights in insect–plant interactions, specific floral seed mixtures (to be placed in field margins or as ground cover vegetation) can be developed which target specific visiting biocontrol agents. However, the particular mechanisms involved and potential for practical use in farm management remain unclear. In this project I propose to consider the insect community level, including pests and their parasitoids to evaluate the service of pest regulation provided by plant functional and evolutionary diversity at a time when climate change is expected to trigger more frequent or severe insect outbreaks. This will be done by comparing a group of native flowering plants that are already sold by private companies for bees pollination (or other interests) in terms of their capacity to serve as source of sugar (pollen) for aphid parasitoids while resulting unattractive for their aphid hosts. The best resulting plants will be isolately tested under greenhouse to evaluate their efficiency by measuring the resulting parasitism rate by aphid parasitoids under optimal and extremely hot conditions (summer in Valencia, Spain, where this experiment will be performed during the secondment). Training for me will include experimental design, insect physiology, HPLC analysis, wind tunnel management, insect thermal resistance, plant flower and pollen characterization, plant-insect interactions, statistics and others.

Nobody knows why a soap bubble collapses. When the liquid film forming the bubble, stabilised by surfactants, becomes too thin, it collapses. This seemingly simple problem, ruled by the classical laws of fluid mechanics and of statistical physics, is still a challenge for the physicist. The rupture criteria based on a stability analysis in the vicinity of the film equilibrium state fail to reproduce the observations. However the film ruptures in a foam obey some simple phenomenological laws, which suggest that underlying fundamental laws exist and wait to be determined. The state-of-the-art conjecture is that ruptures are related to hydrodynamical processes in the films, a field in which I have now an international leadership. Recent experimental data I obtained open the possibility to address this question using a fully non-linear approach in the far from equilibrium regime. In this aim, DISFILM will develop an innovative technique to measure the interface velocity and surfactant concentration, based on the use of fluorescent surfactants. The risk relies in the adaptation to dynamical conditions of advanced optical techniques. These quantities have never been measured on flowing interfaces yet, and my technique will be an important breakthrough in the field of free interface flows in presence of surfactants. A set-up will be designed to reproduce on few thin films the deformations occurring in a foam sample. The dynamical path leading to the rupture of the film will be identified and modelled. The results obtained on an isolated film will be implemented to predict the 3D foam stability and the approach will be extended to emulsions. Foams and emulsions are widely used in industry and most of the stability issues have been solved. Nevertheless, most of the industrial formulations must currently be modified in order to use green surfactants. This adaptation will be extremely more efficient and possible with the results of DISFILM as a guideline.

The recent discovery of benzonitrile in a nearby cold molecular cloud (Taurus) marks the first detection of an aromatic species in the interstellar medium by radio astronomy. Benzonitrile provides a key link to benzene, which may be a low-temperature precursor to more complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Understanding the origin of PAHs will help answer fundamental questions about their role in forming interstellar dust as well as potentially prebiotic molecules—material that may be incorporated into new planetary systems. Computational models are used to pinpoint individual chemical pathways by inputting kinetic rates of various formation and destruction reactions and aiming to reproduce the molecular abundances determined by radio astronomy. Many of these rates have not been measured in the laboratory, especially at low temperature. The MIRAGE project aims to measure reaction kinetics of functionalized benzenes at temperatures relevant to the cold interstellar medium and use these measurements to understand radio observations of aromatics in Taurus molecular cloud. To do this, we will use a new technique in development at the Université de Rennes 1 that combines chirped-pulse (sub)mm-wave (CPMW) rotational spectroscopy with uniform supersonic flows generated by the CRESU technique. This apparatus (one of only a few in development worldwide) will be used to measure kinetics for reactions of benzene. These data are critical to accurately explain the observed abundance of benzonitrile, as well as predicting the abundances of other aromatic species currently targeted for detection.