Fellows-in-Residence 2019-2020

Within the framework of The Paris Seine Excellence Initiative, the IAS has launched the Fellows-in-Residence (FIR) programme.

This program aims to foster international collaborations, interactions between disciplines and the emergence of new research directions by hosting in residence, for a period of 4 months to 1 year, thirteen high-level researchers, both confirmed and promising young researchers.

The fellows for the year 2019-2020 are:

Priscilla Baker

Presentation - Priscilla Baker is the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Analytical Systems and Processes for Priority and Emerging Contaminants (ASPPEC) and a Senior Professor of Chemistry at the University of Western Cape (UWC). She was elected  Fellow of the African Academy of Science (FAAS, 2018) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) of UK in 2019. Prof Baker is an analytical-electrochemist and has more than 15 years of experience in the development of organic and inorganic smart materials (polymer blends, hydrogels, Schiff base metal complexes) for application in sensors, electroanalysis and energy-generation systems. She is the co-leader of SensorLab™ (UWC Sensor Research Laboratories) since 2004, and the research centre’s team comprised 8 Academic staff,  postdoctoral fellows and 40+ postgraduate students.  Baker currently serves as the director of the South African Systems Analysis Centre (SASAC, November 2017-present), former Department of Chemistry HoD, (UWC, 2017-2018), chairperson of the South African Chemical Institute Electrochemistry Chapter (2006-2018) and current Regional Representative (Africa): International Society of Electrochemistry. Baker was announced Winner of the Department of Science and Technology, Distinguished Woman Scientist award in the category Physical and Engineering Sciences (2014) and in the same year she was awarded the Deputy Vice Chancellor’s Young researcher Award, by the University of the Western Cape.

Research project
Current approaches to water screening for emerging and persistent chemical residues requires considerable effort, with high associated costs, sample processing and lengthy laboratory centred analysis times. Determination of such species, particularly toxic residues within an aquatic system coupled with the identification of the agent itself can lead to elucidation of the source and enable root cause analysis. Achieving this goal on site or in real time is a multidisciplinary scientific challenge. Current environmental monitoring strategies rely on dissolved oxygen, turbidity and pH on deployment units from which data can be relayed remotely. Integration of multifunctional sensor systems onto existing aquatic sensor platforms, has the potential to enrich data generated and relay vital early warning information for protection of aquatic and human life. Such high-value information on the toxic state of watercourses immediately after a pollution incident is an exciting scientific challenge which will impact upon this, most valuable of our planets resources with subsequent impact on food chain integrity and human health.  Electrochemical technologies have reached the state where they are not only comparable with other technologies in terms of cost but also are more efficient, more compact and easy to implement in the field. Electrochemistry is a clean, versatile and powerful tool for the detection of emerging and priority pollutants in water and other environmental matrices.

Interview

Vassilis Christophides

Presentation - Vassilis Christophides is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Crete. He has been appointed in 2015 to an advanced research position at INRIA-Paris. Previously, he worked as a Distinguished Scientist at Technicolor, R&I Center in Paris. His main research interests include Databases and Web Information Systems, as well as Big Data Processing. His current research work at INRIA focuses on Network measurements and IoT data analytics. He has published over 130 articles in high-quality international conferences and journals. He has been scientific coordinator of a number of research projects funded by the European Union and the Greek State. He has received the 2004 SIGMOD Test of Time Award and 2 Best Paper Awards (ISWC 2003 and 2007). He served as General Chair of the EDBT/ICDT Conference in 2014 and as Area Chair for the ICDE “Semi-structured, Web, and Linked Data Management” track in 2016. He has also co-authored a book on entity resolution in the Web of data.

Research project
Big data management promises to bring a significant improvement in people’s lives, accelerating knowledge discovery, research and innovation. However, in the last few years, there is an increasing concern regarding the lack of fairness (leading to bias), diversity (leading to exclusion), and transparency (leading to opacity) of data-driven algorithms supporting decision-making, raising a call for responsible data-driven decision making by design. So far, efforts for responsible decision making have mostly focused on Machine Learning algorithms, assuming that they have been trained on high-quality data, ignoring the underlying complex pipelines that may have produced such data. A core data pipeline for producing such data is entity resolution (ER), which discovers and unifies descriptions that correspond to the same real-world entities.

In this project, we target ER systems that are responsible by design, in particular when decisions about which entity descriptions should be resolved first need to be made with respect to a given budget. The objectives of ReponsibleER are: (a) to enrich the diversity of resolved entities, (b) to ensure fairness of resolved entities, and (c) to enhance the transparency of ER systems. For (a), we are interested in formalizing progressive ER as an optimization problem in which we are not simply interested in maximizing the number of resolved entities for a given budget, but the diversity of the entity graph resulting after merging the matching descriptions. For (b), we are interested in measures of centrality capturing the popularity of matching candidates in an entity graph processed by a progressive ER algorithm, then ensuring that all popularity groups are fairly represented in the results. For (c), to enhance transparency, we need to provide meaningful explanations regarding the intermediate decisions taken throughout an ER process (e.g., indexing, matching). Currently, there is no existing work targeting responsible ER by design.

Interview

Demétrio A. da Silva Filho

Presentation - Demétrio Filho is a professor of Physics at the University of Brasilia and is the head of the department of Materials Structure, in the Institute of Physics. His research focus in the transport properties of Organic Semiconductors. He has published more than 70 scientific papers that currently has been cited more than 11.000 times. He finished his PhD at the University of Campinas with a research stay at The University of Arizona (USA). After his post-doc at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he has been Senior Research Scientist at the same institution in the group of Prof. Jean-Luc Brédas. He is now full professor at the University of Brasilia.

Research project
One of today's big challenges to material scientists is how to make cheaper and more efficient photovoltaic panels. Three-dimensional (3D) perovskite solar cells (PSC) emerged in 2009 and, with unprecedented growth of efficiency (from 3.8% to 21.8%), have attracted the attention of both academia and industry. Current research is focused on the two biggest challenges concerning the PSC: increasing their stability and reducing their toxicity. Here we propose a research project that will combine our expertise on organic semiconductors to apply state-of-the-art theoretical models in the description of the electronic structure and the nature of an exciton in a two-dimensional (2D) analogy of the 3D hybrid perovskites. Our research project takes advantage of the theoretical expertise of our group, in the theoretical characterization of excitons and their dynamics in organic materials and the expertise of Dr. Sini’s group at the University of Cergy Pontoise in the spectroscopic signature of these quasi-particles to draw a comprehensive picture of the phenomena of light absorption and charge separation in these devices. Once a model is developed and validated, we will use it to investigate the impact of the substitution of the lead atom by other atoms, in the search for a solution to the above-mentioned toxicity problem. By understanding the nature of an exciton, we will be able to propose 2D structural modifications that will substantially improve the stability and the overall performance of these optoelectronic devices.

Interview

Juraj Földes

Presentation - Juraj Foldes is an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics at the university of Virginia.  He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Peter Polacik. Later, he had postdoctoral and research experience at the Vanderbilt University, Institute for Mathematics and its applications at the University of Minnesota, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and at the IAS and Universite de Cergy-Pontoise.

Juraj Foldes’ research interests are broad and encompass different parts of mathematics such as Partial Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, Fluid Mechanics, and Stochastic processes. Since the doctoral studies he has been interested in qualitative properties of solutions of parabolic and of elliptic equations, and over-determined problems, which model various natural phenomena such as chemical reactions, or biological systems. Currently, his main focus is on randomly forced equations of Fluid Dynamics and related problems in the theory of turbulence. More specifically, he studies ergodic, mixing, and qualitative properties of invariant measures, which encode statistical properties of flows. 

Research project
Complex systems exhibit very complicated, often chaotic dynamics and sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Due to highly unstable character of solutions, it is merely impossible, to follow one trajectory either numerically or analytically. Also, explicit solutions are often practically invisible in experiments due to exterior influences or hidden parameters.

However, generic solutions develop finer and finer structures as time progresses, and the microscopic disorder give rise to statistical states that are stable. Rigorous proof of the existence, uniqueness, and properties of statistical solutions is a notoriously difficult problem which is closely related to ergodic hypothesis, a conjecture open for most problems. The problem becomes more accessible if one does not neglect exterior influences but rather treat them as stochastic perturbations.

The goal of the project is to investigate statistical states in the buoyancy driven flows created by the stochastic boundary forcing.  It is natural to assume that the heating (cooling) through the boundary is not uniform and can have stochastic nature. We will establish the existence, uniqueness and ergodicity of statistically invariant states for the Boussinesq system with a stochastic perturbation to the bottom (hot) boundary. This result verifies the ergodic hypothesis for the randomly driven system. This is a different stochastic setting with many applications, which however did not yet receive an appropriate attention.

Pierre-Emmanuel Jabin

Presentation - P.-E. Jabin joined the University of Maryland in 2011 and is currently the director of the Center for Scientific Computing and Mathematical Modeling. He defended his PhD in Mathematics in 2000 at the University Paris VI. He was an Assistant Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 2000 till 2004, and a Professor at the University of Nice till 2011.

P-E Jabin works on transport and advection equations and multi-agent systems with applications to biology, ecology, statistical physics… He recently became interested in deep learning techniques
He is an invited at the coming International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro.

Research project

The research project proposes three examples connecting active areas of research to potential applications in data science:

• Multi-agent systems with synchronization mechanisms. Multi-agent systems are conceptually simple and exhibit a wide range of emerging macroscopic behaviors, making them useful in many different settings. We will consider systems where the connectivities between agents may be different and may evolve in time. This leads to learning systems where synchronization between agents is expected or desired, such as for the dynamics of neural networks.
• Feature extraction, for example for classification or clustering purposed, through transport operators. This point focuses on possible  extensions of the so-called Laplacian eigenmaps to  semi-supervised settings through advection operators. This type of methods is especially promising in clustering problems where a priori information on several clusters is available.
• Scaling and Stability of deep neural networks. The aim of the proposed work is to better understand Deep learning algorithms based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), and for example their stability during training through the connection between accuracy and the loss function.

Vojkan Jakšić

Presentation - Vojkan Jaksic has received his PhD in  1991 at California Institute of Technology. Since 2001 he  is  Professor of Mathematics at the McGill University in Montreal,  Canada.  His research interests are in the  field of mathematical physics. Vojkan Jaksic was the Convenor of the XIX International Congress on Mathematical Physics held in  Montreal, July 23-28, 2018, he is serving  as a  member of the Executive Committee of the IAMP 2015-2020, and has served as a   member of the ERC Consolidator Grant Panel jn 2015 and 2017, Section Mathematics (PE1).

Research project
The phenomena of the world are irreversible: we remember past and not future, a broken window does not suddenly reassemble itself, the heat flows from hot to cold. Since the early days of statistical mechanics the macroscopic distinction between past and future has caused wonder. How does irreversible thermodynamics emerge from time reversible microscopic equations of classical and quantum mechanics? How can one explain the constant increase of entropy (disorder) around us on the basis of mechanics? The fundamental works of Boltzmann, Gibbs, Maxwell, Einstein and many others have explained the phenomenon, but the issue has caused (and still does) much discussion and controversy.

From the mathematical side, the vision and insights of the statistical mechanics forefathers are very difficult to justify rigorously and have led to some exceedingly difficult problems in mathematics, most of which are still open. A mathematically rigorous justification of their ideas is one of the major open fields in mathematical physics. My  project concerns mathematical development of Boltzmann's ideas in the context of classical and quantum statistical mechanics, and is centred around the notions of non-equilibrium steady states and entropy production. This  research  program involves some of the most advanced tools of modern mathematics, and will be carried in part in collaboration with L. Bruneau and A. Shirikyan at the UCP Department of Mathematics.

Philippe Le Corre

Presentation - Philippe Le Corre is a Research Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School, affiliated with both the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. In addition, he is an Associate in Research with the John K. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and also served as an Adviser to the French Minister of Defense and as a Senior Policy Analyst on Northeast Asia in the French Ministry of Defense. He has taught at Sciences Po Paris, Inalco and Johns-Hopkins University. His research focuses on China’s global rise with a special interest in Chinese investment and influence in Europe and Eurasia. His last book is China’s Offensive in Europe (Brookings Institution Press, 2016). His work has also appeared in Asia-Europe Journal, Carnegie Working Papers’ series, China Economic Quarterly, Perspectives Chinoises, Etudes Revue de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques and in a recent edited volume, Rethinking the Silk Road (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2018).

Research project
While the Sino-American relationship continues to deteriorate, including on the trade front, Europe has become an economic playing field for China. Chinese Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Europe in the last decade may amount to over €300 billion. Following the 2008 financial crisis, China’s presence in Southern Europe has increased, especially with substantial investments in the fields of transport, energy and port infrastructures. It has not just been an opportunistic move, it also matches China’s strategy which includes a growing influence at the periphery of Europe, both inside and outside the European Union. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research project will examine China’s presence in Southern Europe, look at specific case studies and study how Europe has been responding to China’s assertive rise.

Activities
14 May 2020 - 2:00PM : e-Masterclass, in collaboration with CY|AS and ESSEC, on China and Europe: What Stakes in 2020
It will be live on Youtube and available to everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJdCRLC0JqI&feature=youtu.be

Interview

Robert Lustig

Presentation - Dr. Robert Lustig currently is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, and Member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. He also has adjunct faculty appointments at UC Hastings College of the Law, and Touro University-California. Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He completed his pediatric residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1983, and his clinical fellowship at UCSF in 1984. From there, he spent six years as a research associate in neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University. In 2013, he received his Masters of Studies in Law from UC Hastings College of the Law. Dr. Lustig is the Chief Science Officer of EatREAL, a non-profit dedicated to reversing childhood obesity and diabetes by impacting the global food supply and changing school food. Dr. Lustig is the author of many academic works, and of the popular books “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease”, the “Fat Chance Cookbook”, and “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of our Bodies and Brains”. He has received awards for public service from UCSF, and lifetime achievement from four international dentistry societies.

Research project
Lack of digital regulation has resulted in numerous untoward behavioral effects in children, including: 1) attention, cognition, memory, and learning; 2) reading and critical thinking; 3) exposure to unwanted or inappropriate content; 4) multitasking, interruptions, and stress; 5) stimulation and self-regulation; 6) depression and emotional well-being; 7) empathy; 8) sleep; 9) loneliness; and 10) cyberbullying. Increases in childhood addiction, depression, attention deficit disorder, polarization and hate speech, and suicide have all been documented.  Yet the digital genie is out of the bottle, and there is no way to stop digitalization. Rather, the goal is to train children to understand and utilize digital information early; to be appropriate digital citizens in order to mitigate such harms.

One of the reasons that technology drives addiction is the rise in stress. Cellphone use is linked with stress, sleep loss, and depression in young adults. For boys it’s video game addiction, while girls instead appear to suffer from social media addiction. Just like sugar or alcohol exposure is not always addictive; and just like gambling or pornography is not always addictive; technology may or may not be, depending on the individual.

Development of a curriculum for helping prepubertal children with the burden of digitalization is required. While I am at IAS, I will work with the ETIS Unit of the Université de Cergy-Pontoise and the MOOC Factory of the Université de Paris-Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity on developing such a curriculum and storyboard to combat technology addiction in children.

Interview

Salvatore Monteleone

Presentation - Salvatore Monteleone is a Research Assistant in Computer Engineering at the University of Catania, Italy where he received his Ph.D. degree in Communications and Computer Engineering in 2014.

He has published 1 book chapter, 6 refereed international journals and 23 conference papers.

He is Chair of the Technical Program Committee of NoCArc workshop (held in conjunction with MICRO) and member of the Technical Program Committee of the conferences:

• ICCEA, International Conference on Computer Engineering and Application,
• CTRQ, International Conference on Communication Theory, Reliability, and Quality of Service
• ScalCom, International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications,
• NetACT, International Conference on Networks and Advances in Computational Technologies.

Dr. Monteleone is an affiliated member of the European Network of Excellence on High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation (HiPEAC). He is a member of IEEE and of the IEEE Internet of Things and IEEE Sustainable ICT Communities.

His general research area is embedded systems design & applications with contributions mainly focused on low-power design, Network-on-Chip architectures, and IoT based systems.

Research project
The role played by the on-chip communication system, based on the Network-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm, is becoming more and more important as the number of processing elements increases. Wireless NoC (WiNoC) architectures are considered nowadays as the most viable solution for addressing the scalability limitations of future manycore architectures. Unfortunately, there is a lack of tools and methodologies for optimizing WiNoC based architectures in a multi-objective fashion. Main issues are due to the lack of simulation environments and estimation models to rapidly assess a WiNoC configuration. The main goal of the proposed collaboration, entitled "Design Methodologies for Energy Efficient Emerging NoC Architectures (E3NoC)" is the design and implementation of a framework aimed at exploring the wide design space spanned by the architectural and micro-architectural parameters of WiNoC based architectures. The optimization process will also involve the optimization of the application to be mapped by means of the Approximate Computing paradigm. Another important point of this collaboration is to share the know-how especially for what concerns the study of power consumption modeling of several parts of the RF-NoC communication chain including the digital part implemented on FPGAs. Other expected outcomes and benefits will include the chance for scientific publications and the basis for a common research project proposal that would include exchange students programs as happened in the past.

Events

Seminar : January 28, 2020
“The Network-on-Chip paradigm: Challenges and Opportunities” 

Pierre Purseigle

Presentation - Pierre Purseigle is Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. A graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon, he began his career at the University of Toulouse and the University of Oxford, before taking up a lectureship and senior lectureship at the University of Birmingham. He was also Marie Curie Research Fellow at Yale University and Trinity College Dublin and Visiting Professor at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

His work to date has mainly focused on the European and global history of the First World War. His first monograph was a comparative study of urban mobilization in England and France between 1900 and 1918. He also co-authored a book on the history of the British world (1815-1931) and edited and co-edited several scholarly volumes. He has published articles and book chapters on the comparative urban history of the First World War, on refugeedom during the conflict, and on humour in wartime. His most recent publications have investigated the historiography and global history of the First World War and the transformations of the belligerent state during the conflict. He is now working on urban reconstruction after WWI and on a global history of urban catastrophes. 

Research project
The cities rise again. Urban recovery and reconstruction in the age of catastrophe, 1900-1939

This project will first investigate the reconstitution of urban communities in Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. It will produce an urban history of the transition from war to peace. Based on a study of devastated cities of France and Belgium, it will offer a social history of reconstruction to supplement conventional approaches to the post-war stabilization of Europe.

Secondly, I will position this study in a wider reflection on the global history of urban catastrophes and reconstruction in the early twentieth century (1900-1939). It will explore how urban communities, as well as local and national authorities, responded to the devastation visited upon them by natural disasters, accidents, and military conflicts. It will consider how such catastrophes mobilized urban planners, architects, and humanitarian organizations, and transformed their expertise and practices in the process. This comparative and transnational analysis of urban catastrophes in Europe, the Americas, and Japan will shed new light on the process of social change and the nature of urban resilience.

This project addresses many issues of interest to colleagues working at Paris-Seine in the AGORA research group as well at the ENSA-V.

Rudolf Römer

Presentation - Rudo Roemer is professor in the Physics Department of the University of Warwick, UK, and associated with Warwick’s Centre for Scientific Computing (CSC) which he led 2005-10. After his undergraduate work in Berlin, he worked in the US (Salt Lake City Utah), India (IISc Bangalore) and Germany (University of Chemnitz). R.A. Römer is an expert in multifractal analysis for the treatment of disorder-driven quantum transitions in 3-D systems. His relevant expertise includes the mathematical physics of exactly solvable quantum many-body systems, applications of network models in the quantum Hall regime, the physics of Anderson localisation (AL) and the interplay of disorder and many-body interactions. In addition, in the last decade, he has been developing simple models of protein flexibility and dynamics as well as studying electronic transport in DNA. Roemer is Fellow of the Institute of Physics and hold a number of fellowships and early-career prizes. He is Visiting Furong professor at Xiangtan University, China and secretary and treasurer of the IOP Theory of Condensed Matter group. Currently, Roemer is editor-in-chief of Physica E “Nanostructures and low-dimensional systems” and on the editorial boards for Scientific Reports and Physics Open as well as Member of the International Advisory Board of the Indian Journal of Physics. From 2011-2018, he was editor of EPL (Europhysics Letters). He is author of more than 170 scientific publications and has record of supervising early career researchers with 6 research assistants, 10 PhD and 8 MSc students since joining Warwick.
 

Research project

One of the central challenges in condensed matter physics is to understand how different phases of matter can arise and how these phases can be characterized. A most simple example is of course provided by the three states of water, i.e. solid ice, liquid water and gaseous vapor. These three phases are distinguished from another by well-defined transitions. In the quantum realm, such phase transition exists as well and give rise to many properties of the world in which we live. Phenomena such as, e.g., magnetism and superconductivity are prime examples which are well know. In recent years, other, so-called quantum phase transitions, have been added to the zoo of transitions.

One such example, disorder-induced localisation, introduced by Anderson already in 1958 but revived due to many recent experiments, embodies the paradigmatic example of a quantum phase transition, i.e. driven by the quantum wave-like nature of matter. Very recently, the novel concept of a dynamical quantum phase transition extends the study of phase transitions to the non-equilibrium regime. Conventionally, the study of phase transitions is tedious because right at the transition, fluctuations from equilibrium dominate, making analytic and numeric treatments challenging. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) promise to offer an alternative route to studying such transitions. The ML/DL approach seems to be able to detect phases and transitions between them directly from the computed quantum states. The states are treated similar to classical “images” where early neural network approaches had already shown to be effective in detecting and extracting information. During the fellowship, I intend to study the application of ML/DL approaches to phases in disordered quantum systems at equilibrium, i.e. Anderson transitions, and non-equilibrium interacting quantum systems after a quench, i.e. DQPTs. Both supervised and unsupervised learning will be applied in both cases.

Guilherme Sampaio

Presentation - Guilherme Sampaio received his PhD in History from the European University Institute (2016). His thesis examined the translation, diffusion, and reception of the economist John Maynard Keynes’s writings in France (1920s-50s). Working from an intellectual history standpoint, his research interests cover the societal impact of economic ideas in France, through their influence into policymaking and public debates. Previously he also worked on the political theory and praxis of nineteenth-century Portuguese Republicanism. He is currently transforming his thesis into a book manuscript under contract with Routldge while expanding his research focus towards the early ideational history of European integration.

Research project - John Maynard Keynes remains the best-known economist of modern times while given its historical penchant for economic interventionism, to this day France is regularly deemed a Keynesian country. Yet historians have paradoxically long agreed that until his death in 1946, Keynes was largely ignored by Frenchmen, while soon afterwards his ideas became dominant in the ‘Trente glorieuses’. Based on a novel analysis of how Keynes’s thought was diffused in France from the 1920s to the 1950s, I demonstrate instead that his writings were always thoroughly discussed but that contrasting understandings of monetary policy meant they never came to dominate French policymaking and academia. Accordingly, during the Fellowship I will write an academic monograph derived from my doctoral thesis, to be published by  Routledge. Entitled ‘Keynes and French Economic Policy’, it will be the first scholarly book examining the French reception of Keynes. The first five chapters examine the reception of Keynes’s ideas from the Versailles Treaty to the outbreak of World War II, while the final two scrutinise the repercussion of his economic thought from Vichy France to the arrival of General De Gaulle to power. Further taking advantage of my stay at the IAS, the book will include new archival research.

Events - Conference: Translating and Diffusing Economic Knowledge in the Twentieth-Century (June 2020).

Interview

Viera Skákalová

Presentation - Prof. Assoc. Dipl.-Ing. Viera Skákalová, DrSc. – worked as a professor associate at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava in field of conducting polymers. In 1999 she joined the Weizmann Institute of Sciences and then, in 2002, the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. Since 2012 she has been employed at the University of Vienna. Her main expertise is in low-dimensional carbon materials (graphene and carbon nanotubes) with about 130 publications and 2800 citations (H-index: 26 (Scopus)). She has been a principal investigator or coordinator of 10 national and EC scientific projects, organizer of scientific conferences, editor of a book “Graphene: properties, preparation, characterization and devices” (Elsevier, 2014). Since 2004, she has been a managing director of an SME Danubia NanoTech.

Research project
Graphene – one-atom thick layer of carbon network - has a number of outstanding properties which may lead to breakthrough in a number of industrial applications. Moreover, acting as a molecular barrier, graphene has a potential to protect objects of the cultural heritage, exposed to open environment, from degrading due to corrosion. In our experiments we will explore how graphene-coated surface of the precious object could resist to corrosive chemicals. We will test anticorrosive effect of graphene prepared through different routes as well as combined with additional protective layers. The chemical composition of the surface of the protected objects as well as of graphene layer will be analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and by electrical transport. The results will be carefully evaluated with the perspective of practical applications in a wide range of fields.

Elisabeth Subrin

Presentation - Elisabeth Subrin is a screenwriter, filmmaker and visual artist, and Associate Professor of Film and Media Arts in the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts at Temple University. Previously at Harvard, Yale and Amherst, Subrin has received grants and fellowships from The Rockefeller Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, and The Westenberger Foundaton. She was a fellow at The Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker and Screenwriter Labs. Her films have been written about extensively in The New York Times, Artforum, The New Yorker, Art Journal, Frieze, BOMB, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Village Voice and The Boston Globe and has been the subject of academic book chapters, essays, and panels. Subrin is the creator of the feminist film blog, Who Cares About Actresses, and lectures frequently on film, feminism and independent cinema. Her critically acclaimed film « A Woman, A Part, » was theatrically released in 2017, and acquired by Netflix and Showtime. Subrin creates conceptually driven projects in film, video, photography and installation. Working across experimental and narrative forms, her projects seek intersections between history and subjectivity, investigating the nature and poetics of psychological "disorder," the legacy of feminism, and the impact of recent social and political history on contemporary life and consciousness. She is currently conducting archival research and field interviews for an speculative biographical film about the late French actress Maria Schneider
 

Elisabeth Subrin is currently Fulbright - CY Initative visiting scholar at ENSAPC and a fellow of CY Advanced Studies
 

Research project
As a Fulbright Research Scholar, Subrin will continue and extend her research on the late French actress Maria Schneider (1952-2011), best known for her provocative and problematic role in the renown Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial film, Last Tango In Paris (1971). Sexually exploited on the set of the film, Schneider allegedly never fully escaped its grip on her career and personal life. Nevertheless, Schneider remained an outspoken critic of the lim- ited opportunities available for actresses and her prescient observations about the abuse of women in the film industry anticipated the #metoo movement by decades. Drawing from primary source materials, archival research, in person interviews, and the development of new visual and textual strategies, Subrin’s research will culminate in a speculative cinematic portrait of this complex woman which will examine the politics and poetics of contemporary biographical forms, the historical treatment of women in cinema, and the impact of trauma in shaping identity.