Superconducting medium-voltage cables, based on HTS and MgB2 materials, have the potential to become the preferred solution for energy transmission from many renewable energy sites to the electricity grid. Onshore HTS cables provide a compact design, which preserves the environment in protected areas and minimizes land use in urban areas where space is limited. Offshore HTS cables compete on cost and – compared to conventional HVDC cables – have the clear benefit of eliminating the need for large and costly converter stations on the offshore platforms. MgB2 cables in combination with safe liquid hydrogen transport directly from renewable energy generation sites to e.g., ports and heavy industries, introduce a new paradigm of two energy vectors used simultaneously in the future. Both HTS, cooled with liquid nitrogen, and MgB2, cooled with liquid hydrogen, MVDC superconducting cables will be designed, manufactured, and tested, including a six-month test for the MgB2 cable. For grid protection, a high-current superconducting fault current limiter module will be designed and tested. Furthermore, the technology developments will be supported by techno-economic analyses, and a study of elpipes, large cross-section conductors for high-power transfer, will be performed. The superconductor technology developments will accelerate the energy transition towards a low-carbon society by the direct key impacts of the project: • 30% LCOE reduction for offshore windfarm export cables • 15% reduction in total cost of entire offshore windfarms • Possibility to transfer 0.5 GW in the form of H2 and 1 GW electric energy in one combined system • Installation of cables for 90 GW transmission capacity by the consortium partners by 2050 • Creation of 5 000 European jobs within the field of sustainable energy

Although genome sequencing is well advanced, our understanding of the genome to phenotype to fitness relationship remains very poor. It is becoming very evident that the information stored in genes is not enough to understand their impact without knowing the phenotypic and environmental context. The fact that a gene is present in a genome tells very little about when it is expressed and its relationship to other genes and mutual effects on gene expression pattern. To understand how phenotypes emerge from a specific genotype, we need to understand gene regulatory networks and their mechanisms of regulation. In this project, I propose to study the relationships between genotype, phenotype, fitness, and environment using a microfluidic device coupled with transcriptomics with the goal of collecting high dimension high quality data for unprecedented level of understanding and predicting regulatory networks, evolution, and evolutionary constraints in the form of epistasis and pleiotropy. I will use programmable DNA binding protein called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to perturb gene expression of (1) combinatorial global regulators within the transcriptional regulatory network, (2) cascades of genes that form gene network hierarchy, and (3) single global regulators with low level mutations at many positions in their genetic code. I will then quantify the expression pattern of the transcriptome using RNA sequencing and the growth fitness of each strain. The environment will be highly controllable as we will create a cutting-edge microfluidic system to study many strains of bacteria in a high-throughput manner. Successful implementation of the strategies explored in this project will open the doors to plenty of other avenues to explore with fruitful outcomes wherever there is a need for combining genotypic, phenotypic, and fitness studies in highly controllable environments

How can we vividly remember so many episodes of our life that, by definition, only happened once? During wakefulness, the hippocampus – a brain structure critical for episodic memory – encodes ‘memory traces’ of our experience. During sleep, it “replays” the very same sequences of neurons that were originally activated during the awake episode. Such reactivations are essential for memory consolidation. Over the years, a growing body of studies have unveiled “on-site” reactivations within the hippocampus, sometimes with a neocortical or subcortical “partner” structure, but the overall activity in the brain during these events remains largely unknown. It is unclear whether brain regions replay memory traces all at once or separately. This is a major knowledge gap because numerous cortical and subcortical structures strongly influence memory. In this project, we propose a unique combination of recording and analysis techniques to reveal the whole-brain correlates of hippocampal replay. To achieve this, we will use functional ultrasound, a newly emerging technology which monitors subtle changes in cerebral blood flow over the whole brain at a resolution up to tens of milliseconds, in combination with high-density electrophysiology, the actual gold-standard to record neuronal activity. With the help of a dedicated behavioral task, we will first establish ‘brain maps’ associated with hippocampal replay and then learn how to decode a specific memory trace from these maps. In a second time, we will investigate how emotional valence affects these maps, and in particular how replay patterns are modified over the course of learning. This project has the potential to track across the brain an individual memory trace from its creation to storage, all along consolidation processes. This project will considerably enhance our understanding of memory networks and potentially provide new regions of interest for the study of neurodegenerative disorders.

In the field of colloidal science, much progress has been done on the synthesis of complex building blocks mimicking molecular structures with the hope of elaborating innovative materials. However, in the present state of the art, the rates at which these building blocks are obtained are exceedingly small. As a consequence, even though theoretically, revolutionary materials can be imagined, throughputs are far too low to approach industrial applications. We propose to unlock this bottleneck with microfluidic technology. The starting point is the discovery (by ESPCI) of a new hydrodynamic mechanism that reorganizes droplets clusters into well-defined configurations during their transport in microchannels. In this work, the monodisperse production, at high rates, of a variety of anisotropic clusters (triangles, tetrahedrons etc.), has been demonstrated. Our objective is to deepen and harness this mechanism by transforming, under high throughput conditions, such clusters into solid and stable building blocks that self-assemble into functional materials. Rates of production of one million of building blocks per second are feasible. This would open new avenues in the field of material sciences and pave the way towards an industrial production of revolutionary colloidal materials. The project clearly focuses on this goal, by bringing together outstanding teams with complementary expertise: Microfluidics & Chemistry (ESPCI), Hydrodynamic theory & Condensed Matter Physics (Technion), Numerical Simulations (KTH). The WPs include the chemical synthesis of surfactants, high throughput production of building blocks, their crystallization into functional materials, emphasizing on photonic band gap materials, characterized numerically by Technion. Fundamentally important, work will be tightly linked to theoretical analysis and numerical simulations and will benefit from market studies made by a SME.

This FET-open Coordination and Support Action is called “Nanoarchitectronics” (NTX) to denote a new interdisciplinary research area at the crossroad of Electromagnetics and Nanoelectronics. NTX It is a new technology aimed at conceiving, designing and developing reconfigurable, adaptive and cognitive structures, sensorial surfaces and functional “skins” with unique physical properties, and engineering applications in the whole electromagnetic spectrum; through assembling building blocks at nanoscale in hierarchical architectures. The conception of this new area responds to the need of unifying concepts, methodologies and technologies in Communications, Environment Sensing Systems, Safety and Security, Bio-Sensing Systems and Imaging Nanosystems, within a wide frequency range. This FET project proposal gathers thirteen universities, research centers and high-tech industries, belonging to eight European countries. According to the FET work-program, the major objective of “Nanoarchitectronics” is to boost the future application-driven research through the establishment of an accepted language among physicists and engineers, a shared way of thinking, a common theoretical foundation and a common strategy for the future. Therefore, the project aims at laying the foundation for an ever-increasing synergy and progress of Nanoarchitectronics. To achieve these objectives, Nanoarchitectronics is structured in four main activities. The “Concept” activity is devoted to establish and define the concepts of Nanoarchitectronics and its boundaries with respect to other disciplines and to the activity carried out by other consortia. The “Strategy” activity identifies the policy dialogue and the strategic view of the consortium in terms of position, impact and vision. The “Virtual Networking” serves to internal web communication (private), and for dissemination (public). The “Dissemination and Exploitation” activity is carried out mainly by the industrial partners of the consortium