AIOLFI Théo Aiolfi is an MSCA Cofund EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellow working at CY Cergy Paris University, in collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He was formerly an Early Career Teaching Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) and Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) of the University of Warwick, where he was awarded his PhD in 2022. His doctoral research was conducted at the department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) in collaboration with the department of Theatre and Performance Studies (TPS), under the joint supervision of Shirin Rai and Silvija Jestrovic.
Théo’s interdisciplinary research is located at the intersection of politics and performance studies. His thesis developed a comparative case study of the political communication of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen during their presidential campaigns of 2016 and 2017, examining the complex intersection between populism and exclusionary nationalism. His doctoral work focused on populism, defining it as a political style, an open-ended repertoire of political performances articulating any ideological content through an opposition between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, transgression and the articulation of crisis.
In addition to populism, performativity and politics as performance, Théo's research interests also include discourse and visual analysis, semiotics, popular culture and theories of International Relations.
Research Project
Performers of the Climate Crisis: Eco-populism and Political Representation in the Anthropocene
Because of its global threat for life, the climate crisis is the most important challenge ever faced by humankind. The consequences of human activity on the planet have become increasingly alarming, backed by a unanimous scientific consensus. Yet, despite the extreme salience of these changes, the inaction and apathy of political leaders across the world has led a new generation of political actors to take it upon themselves to make their fellow citizens aware of the gravity of the crisis and to foster radical change. Put differently, they have become symbolic performers of the climate crisis.
Developing their own crisis narratives to mobilise their fellow citizens and highlight the passivity of the current elite, these political actors have developed new forms of green politics. This interdisciplinary project explores two types of such actors: activists and elected politicians. Through a comparative analysis of five Western countries – including Belgium, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States – this project at the crossroads of politics and performance studies seeks to chart the repertoire of the political communication of these actors. It does so through the lens of populism, understood as a political style, to consider the innovative way they combine left-wing radicalism and environmental politics, and feminism to articulate a global people united against an unresponsive elite. EUTOPIA SIF
Igor Aronson
Presentation
Igor Aronson is a Huck Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is a fellow of American Physical Society since 2002. Prof. Aronson is a recipient of multiple international awards, the most recent is the Alexander-von-Humboldt Research Prize, 2019. His research focuses on collective behavior in active biological and synthetic systems, microrobotics, and non-equilibrium phenomena.
Research project
Fundamental principles regulating collective behaviors in living systems are crucial to physicists, biologists, and engineers. The consensus is that the emergent order results from aligning interaction between the neighbors and the misaligning effect of the external noise, e.g., due to thermal fluctuations or bacterial run-and-tumble motion. However, external noise is not the only and, more importantly, the foremost source of misalignment. Self-propelled particles moving on a disordered substrate - bacteria swimming in a porous environment or cancer cells penetrating a heterogeneous extracellular matrix - are affected by the imperfections, roughness, and random obstacles of the medium. Focusing on these two systems, we will investigate living active matter with long-range hydrodynamic interactions (bacteria) and short-range steric interactions (cancer cells, amoeba). We will use simplified discrete models of active matter and their continuum approximations subject to quench disorder. We will obtain insights into how the quenched disorder influences the onset of collective behavior and long-range coherence in bacterial and amoeboid systems. This research will stimulate new experimental techniques and predictive mathematical tools for motile microorganisms in a heterogeneous environment.
Carrie Benjamin
Presentation
BENJAMIN Carrie Ann Benjamin is an ethnographer, urban anthropologist, and educator interested in the role of public space in in reshaping local and national debates on inequality, immigration, and ‘race’ in France. Her previous research project, funded by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick (2018-2021), explored the relationship between public space, ‘civility’, and whiteness in France through a multisensory lens. Recently, she has worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ESRC/ORA-funded project Atmospheres of (Counter)terrorism in European Cities in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Studies at the University of Birmingham (2021-2022). She holds a PhD in Anthropology from SOAS, University of London (2017), where she worked as a Research and Administrative Assistant for the SOAS Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies.
Research Project
The project ‘Atmospheres of (in)civility: public space, activism and moral communities’ takes a multi-sensorial, atmospheric approach to understanding the intersections between urban public space, (in)civility and the formation of moral communities. Much of the recent work on incivility and anti-social behaviour has approached it from a legal and criminological standpoint, highlighting how middle- class tastes are imposed on public spaces to the detriment of vulnerable groups. However, there is a need to broaden our definition of ‘incivility’ to account for the incivilities and injustices perpetuated by institutions as well as individuals. Bringing together French and English literature on atmospheres, ambiances, and the senses with work on anti-social behaviour and incivility, the project proposes an interdisciplinary investigation on how a politics of care and solidarity impacts the welfare and inclusion of vulnerable urban populations. Drawing on the anthropological tradition of participant observation and ‘sensory apprenticeship’, the project focuses on refugee outreach and support groups to learn how they navigate city spaces, practice care, and attempt to produce atmospheres that foster welfare and inclusion. In approaching these questions, this project contributes to the politicisation of the notion of atmospheres and ambiance by drawing attention to the relationships between the ‘openness’ of public spaces and ambiances and the wellbeing of urban residents. EUTOPIA SIF
Raphael Cahen
Presentation
CAHEN Raphaël Cahen is a Post-doctoral Fellow as well as a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has studied law, history and political sciences in Aix-en-Provence, Perugia and Munich and holds a Joint PhD in Law and political sciences from Aix-Marseille University and the LMU Munich (2014).
He is doing research on intellectual history, as well as history of institutions and international law.
His major publications include Friedrich Gentz (1764-1832): Penseur post-Lumières et acteur du nouvel ordre européen (Berlin, Boston 2017) as well as two special issues on the history of international law (Clio@Themis vol.18, JHIL vol. 22/1) and two edited books Les Professeurs allemands en Belgique. Circulation des savoirs juridiques et enseignement du droit (1817-1914), ed. R. Cahen, J. de Brouwer, F. Dhondt, M. Jottrand, Bruxelles, ASP, 2022 ; Joseph-Marie Portalis : diplomate, magistrat et législateur, ed. R. Cahen, N. Laurent-Bonne, Aix-en-Provence, PUAM, 2020.
He is currently editing a book with Sean Morris, Pierre Allorant and Walter Badier on Law(s) and international relation(s) : actors, institutions and comparative legislations including 20 contributions from top researchers.
Research project
International law is said to be a distinct profession with institutions and journals first in the 1870s. Nevertheless, from the French Revolution to the Franco-Prussian Wars (1870-1871), lawyers have initiated professional practices that related to the development of international law. They were involved in foreign offices, scientific academies, and universities, they wrote textbooks and articles and formed networks.
This project aims to investigate the interaction between foreign offices and international lawyers as well as the link between political migration of lawyers and their implication in the making of international law. This research will therefore shed light on the discourses and processes leading to the institutionalization of international law.
For the first time, it will also closely analyse the interactions between foreign offices and international law as well as the juridification of international affairs in the nineteenth century.
To do so, this project will benefit from the use of unpublished primary sources coming for the foreign offices of France, Prussia (Germany), Austria, Belgium, Great-Britain, and Russia.
Koteshwar Devulapally
Presentation
DEVULAPALLY Education
- Bachelors in Science (B.Sc.) ,Kakatiya University, India
- Master in Chemistry ,Kakatiya University, India
- Ph.D. in Chemical Science (2021) CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, India.
Research Interests:
- Synthesis and photophysical characterization of organic materials, metal organic complexes, conjugated molecules for photovoltaic applications.
- Functional polymer materials synthesis for various applications.
Experience:
- I have successfully synthesized organic/inorganic compounds by handling of air or moisture sensitive compounds and reagents via condensation, alkylation, arylation and catalytic reactions. Developed major core units such as: macrocyclic precursors of porphyrin, phthalocyanine derivatives and inorganic metal complexes, to achieve the synthesis and subsequent optimisation of targeted hole, electron transport and electrode materials for solar cells applications.
Research Project Molecular materials for perovskite photovoltaics:
In the last five years, the rise of halide perovskite photovoltaics is one of the most impressive evolutions in the history of photovoltaic technologies with greater than 25% of their power conversion efficiency (PCE). Interestingly, these devices can also efficiently operate under low intensity and diffuse light. Thus, it is apparent that perovskite-based solar cells (PSCs), is the future of the next generation PV technologies suitable for both either indoor or outdoor applications, power IoT devices, etc. The triumph of PSCs lies in unlimited possibility to design excellent and selective perovskite light absorption and long charge-carrier diffusion length of organic materials. Importantly, these solar cells are prepared by soft techniques using solution processing. Therefore, the cost-effective large-scale production is realizable. In this context, production cost, device performance and stability, leading to durability and long product’s life, are considered as the key performance parameters. Despite of important progress in term of device performance, the long-term stability of targeted technology needs to be further ameliorated.
EUTOPIA SIF
Frederic Dumur
Presentation
DEMUR Frédéric Dumur is associate professor since 2008 at the University of Aix Marseille (France). Formerly at the University of Angers, the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne and the University of Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, he joined in 2008 the Institute of Radical Chemistry in Marseille. His research focuses on photochemistry and all the related applications including radical chemistry, photopolymerization and water-waste treatments. His research interest also includes the polymerization of organic monolayers on various metal substrates for optoelectronic applications. From 2013 to 2015, he was also associate researcher at the (Integration: from Material to Systems) IMS laboratory at the University of Bordeaux where he worked on the elaboration of organic light emitting diodes. He co-authored about 350 publications and 10 book chapters.
Research project
During the last decades, the great population increase worldwide together with the need of people to adopt improved conditions of living led to a dramatically increase of the consumption of polymers. Materials appear interwoven with our consuming society where it would be hard to imagine a modern society today without plastics. A continued increase in the use of plastics has led to increase the amount of plastics ending up in the waste stream, which motivated to more interest in the plastic recycling and reusing. In 50 years, the global plastic production has increased up to more than 4000%, engendering various environmental problematics. Yet, despite mounting evidence of detrimental environmental impact and public concern regarding the end-of-life of polymeric materials, the reprocessing, recycling and recovering of plastics approaches developed by our societies are overtaken by this ever-growing production of polymers. Solutions have thus to be found to address these issues. Among possible solutions, polymer recycling is a way to drastically reduce environmental problems caused by polymeric waste accumulation generated from day-to-day applications of polymer materials. The recycling of polymeric waste helps to conserve natural resource because the most of polymer materials are made from oil and gas. With aim at recycling polymers, the polymer waste that can be turned back into its monomers and which can be re-used as raw materials for new polymer production and by the petrochemical industry constitutes the most efficient valorization of polymer waste. As far as polymer recycling is concerned, for polymers as common as polystyrenes and polyacrylates, depolymerization of styrene is only possible at 250°C and acrylates at 350°C. We propose in this project to investigate an innovative strategy for inducing depolymerization reactions.
Marta Giuca
Presentation
GIUCA Marta Giuca is currently a fellow researcher for the EUTOPIA -SIF Program at the University Cergy Paris, LEJEP Laboratory.
Since 2018, she has been a Ph.D. student in Criminal Law at the University of Catania, where she earned her Ph.D. (Doctor Europaeus Program) in October 2022, with a thesis on Artificial Intelligence and Criminal Liability. She was visiting researcher at the Max Plank Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law of Freiburg and at the University Paris-1, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2021).
She graduated in 2014 from the University of Pavia with an interdisciplinary thesis on Administrative and Criminal Law (the powers of the criminal judge in administrative actions). The following year she also obtained a diploma from the Institute for Advanced Studies (IUSS) of Pavia after completing her studies in social sciences and law.
In the years 2015-2016, she served an internship at the Court of Milan and since 2017 she is a lawyer.
Her research interests mainly involve how new technology impacts on criminal law. She studied how cryptocurrencies affect and transform economic crime, particularly money laundering, then she focused her investigation on liability concerning the production and usage of AI systems, seeking to identify areas of legislative intervention, balancing the need for the safeguards of legal goods, on the one hand, and the respect of the principles of individual responsibility and legality under criminal law, on the other hand. Since September 2023 she is involved in her research project: Crim-AI.
Research project
AI systems bring fundamental changes to our environments, some of which have an impact on criminal liability, due to the shift from the classic notion of “product”. Existing criminal liability rules may not always protect the legal goods, which may lead to a “responsibility gap”.
The research project aims to answer the fundamental question concerning the relationship between law and technological progress in order to guarantee the safeguarding of fundamental rights and values under criminal law in the light of the European principles for a trustworthy AI. Therefore, the research intends to highlight promising and challenging aspects of EU rules on AI, also in comparison with extra-EU legislative efforts to regulate AI, and aims at complementing them in the specific sector of criminal law.
The field of investigation is the negligence of AI systems’ manufacturer and user in case of an algorithmic error, defined as “artificial negligence”. In such a context, the project seeks to identify areas of legislative intervention, balancing the need for the safeguards of legal goods, on the one hand, and the respect of the principles of individual responsibility and legality under criminal law, on the other hand.
These reflections are then tailored into two specific contexts of the use of AI systems: that of automated vehicles and AI in healthcare.
EUTOPIA SIF
Giuseppe Grasso
Presentation
grasso Giuseppe Grasso is professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Catania and is responsible for a signed agreement between the Chemical Sciences Department of University of Catania and the IRCSS Bietti in Rome. He obtained his PhD at the University of Nottingham and has won the Fulbright Scholarship as a visiting Professor in 2015 to stay 9 months at the University of Pennsylvania. He has participated to many funded national and international projects and has been the National coordinator of the PRIN project “Role of metal dyshomeostasis and ubiquitin-proteasome system derangement in brain pathologies: risk factors and neuroprotective strategies”. His research focuses on the study of molecular interactions between biomolecules involved in certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. In particular, some metalloproteases involved with these diseases are studied and the possibility of modulating the enzymatic activity of these biomolecules for therapeutic purposes is investigated. The influence that metal ions such as copper or zinc and oxidative stress have on the biomolecular mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration is also studied using various analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry, surface plasmon resonance, NMR as well as biochemical methods.
Research project
Proteasome is considered a crucial target for therapies in many diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders and cancers. FDA-approved drugs specifically inhibiting the proteasome, revolutionized the therapy of hematological cancers. Beside the inhibitors, new classes of molecules, acting as modulators of the proteasome activity, are emerging. In this scenario a promising direction in the design of proteasome modulators could be peptide structures. Therefore, during the project I will focus my effort to develop chimera peptides as a new family of proteasome activators able to lead to the degradation of misfolded protein aggregates. The peptides will contain also a carnosine moiety as data just published from my group have showed that carnosine is an activator of insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE), a metalloprotease which is also able to degrade amyloid beta peptides. As the latter seem to be responsible for accumulation of misfolded protein and consequent neurodegeneration, chimera peptides, which contain a peptidic part able to activate the proteasome as well as a carnosine moiety able to activate IDE will be synthesized in this project and tested towards IDE and proteasome activity, in an effort to develop a new drug which could have a high impact in the battle against neurodegenerative diseases.
Maria Herrero Herrero
Presentation
HERRERO Maria Herrero Herrero is a Chemical Engineer from the Polytechnical University of Valencia (Spain). She graduated in 2016 doing a research work on electrospun membranes as drug delivery systems, in the Center for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (CBIT).
After that, she started her PhD also at CBIT with Professor Ana Vallés Lluch. Her research was focused on the study of a three-dimensional system for indirect cell co-culture, by combining different polymeric structures. As a result of her research, she has published several articles in scientific journals.
During her doctorate she continued her training in her field, taking courses in spectrophotometric techniques (CFP-UPV), TEM microscopy (CFP-UPV) and nanoscience (UNED). Moreover, she co-supervised three Final Degree Projects, which obtained an excellent.
Her passion for teaching led her to collaborate with the Department of Thermodynamics of the same university, in the subjects of Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering.
Finally, she is currently finishing her studies in pedagogy at the University of Valencia.
Research Project
The skin is a crucial organ in the human body as it acts as a barrier against external physical, chemical and biological agents.
When a damage occurs in the skin, which occurs frequently, this function is temporarily lost and that can lead to highly dramatic situations. The most common injuries in skin are wounds, burns and different types of cancer.
This ambitious project involves an innovative and versatile hydrogel as a delivery platform for photothermal and wound healing active ingredients based on a multiscale system composed of nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) containing natural bioactive compounds (NBC) – such as curcumin –, and gold nanoparticles.
Curcumin requires encapsulation because of its low biodisponibility, high degradation and hydrophobicity. We will use NLC as the main delivery system, however other encapsulation strategies will be explored to obtain different release profiles.
In addition, gold nanoparticles with different shapes (e.g. nanorods, nanospheres) will be integrated in the system to elucidate the best performing geometry for light triggered drug release.
Finally, the biocompatibility, but also biological performance and clinical potential of our formulations will be evaluated and validated, both in vitro then on skin explants from patients and healthy donors, in order to push this project from bench to bedside and pave the way to a true translational research.
EUTOPIA SIF
Arkadiusz Jędrzejewski
Presentation
JĘDRZEJEWSKI Arkadiusz Jędrzejewski is an assistant professor at Wrocław University of Science and Technology (Poland). In 2020, he obtained a PhD in Physical Sciences from the same university. During his doctoral studies, he completed two longer internships at Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and KU Leuven (Belgium). He was also a recipient of Jan Mozrzymas scholarship for Interdisciplinary Research awarded by Wrocław Academic Hub. His PhD thesis received the first prize (ex aequo) for the best dissertation in the field of Econophysics and Sociophysics from the Polish Physical Society, Section of Physics in Economy and Social Science. He has been a principal investigator of two national scientific projects and has worked as an investigator in a few others. Since 2018, he has been a member of technical program committee of the International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications.
Arkadiusz is passionate about statistical physics and its interdisciplinary applications. He combines methods and theories from non-linear dynamics, non-equilibrium processes, and phase transitions to study various complex systems. His work in this area includes mostly modelling and analysing socio-economic phenomena, like opinion dynamics, diffusion of innovation, or group formations.
Research Project
Social norms are rules or beliefs that guide and shape social behaviors. Rather than stated explicitly and enforced by laws, they are self-enforcing and derived by conformity at the group level. Very often people follow norms unconsciously without awareness how impactful they are in their daily lives. Thus, the emergence of social norms is a subject of broad and current interest, especially in sociology, social psychology, and economics.
Commonly, the formation of social norms is modelled as arising from social influence and homophily without consideration of the interactions with the background. However, the society is clearly coupled with the physical environment where it develops. The change of social norm is frequently connected with some economical or behavioral cost, which may vary in time or may depend on the numbers of adopters. Thus, in the project, we are going to study agent-based models of social norms with feedback loops between the social world and the physical world that imposes such varying costs and barriers. Our aim is to understand under what conditions the norm adaptation can be achieved smoothly or through a discontinuous crisis.
EUTOPIA SIF
Cristian Jimenez Romero
Presentation
Jimenez Dr. Cristian Jimenez Romero (CJR) will be joining the ETIS Laboratory at CYU Cergy Paris University in September 2023 as a Post-Doctoral research fellow funded by the EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellowship Programme. Under the supervision of Professor Thanos Manos, CJR will be conducting research on "Hybrid Neural Networks".
CJR has a diverse background in computer science, neuroscience, and robotics, with several years of experience. From July 2020 to September 2023, he worked as a scientific software developer and postdoctoral researcher at the SimDataLab in the Juelich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) in Germany. His research focused on neurorobotics, swarm intelligence, and the simulation of spiking neural networks (SNNs) on high-performance computing infrastructure. This research was supported by funding from the Human Brain Project. Additionally, CJR worked as a co-supervisor for students at RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
From 2017 to early 2020, he worked as an academic assistant at the Centre for Complexity and Design in the Open University (OU), United Kingdom. Before that, he pursued his PhD at the OU from 2013 to 2017, focusing on developing a learning model to enhance the control of autonomous agents and robots through the utilization of SNNs.
Before embarking on his academic pursuits, CJR had a successful industry career as a software engineer at Nokia Siemens Networks. This experience equipped him with a solid foundation in software development and project management, further enhancing his skill set.
Research project
Hybrid Neural Networks: combining Artificial and Spiking Neural networks to enhance life-long continuous learning in autonomous agents and robots
Generalized continual learning in AI, which involves the ability to learn multiple different tasks, remains a challenge. Despite significant progress in solving specific problems, AI systems still struggle with transferring learned features to new tasks. As a result, these systems often excel in specific tasks but face difficulties in multi-task scenarios. This research project aims to enhance the continuous learning and adaptability of artificial autonomous systems in dynamic environments.
It combines artificial neural networks (ANNs) and spiking neural networks (SNNs) to create hybrid neural networks (HNNs). This integration enables the implementation of learning mechanisms in HNNs that closely resemble biological systems. Led by Dr. Cristian Jimenez Romero under the supervision of Professor Thanos Manos, the project incorporates current trends in AI, neuroscience, robotics, and complex dynamical systems. The host group, ETIS lab at CY Cergy Paris University, offers multidisciplinary expertise and infrastructure, including a computer cluster and robotic hardware. The co-host group, AI Systems Lab at the University of Warwick, contributes expertise in deep neural architectures, robotics, computer science, and mathematical modeling.
EUTOPIA SIF
Katarina Karlova
Presentation
KARLOVA Katarína Karľová was PhD student (2015-2019) and then Junior Researcher (2019-2023) at the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. Currently she is a postdoctoral fellow at CY Cergy Paris Université within the EUTOPIA-SIF project TANGENTE - Theoretical modeling of advanced quantum materials. Her research interests are focused on quantum magnetic materials with the particular emphasis laid on highly frustrated Heisenberg spin systems. In spite of her relatively young age she is already a recognized researcher in this field of study as evidenced by her impressive list of publications involving 30 Current-Contents publications, to which more than 160 SCI citations were already recorded when excluding selfcitations. The quality of her scientific work is proven by numerous awards: 1st place (2020), 2nd place (2018) and 3rd place (2017, 2016) in the competition of young physicists (Slovak Physical Society), the best poster award at the StatPhys conference (Lviv, Ukraine, 2019), Rector's prize for outstanding research-scientific results (UPJŠ, 2019) and the honourable mention in Václav Votruba prize for the best dissertation thesis in theoretical physics (2021).
Research project
The project TANGENTE (Theoretical modeling of advanced quantum materials) deals with unconventional quantum properties of frustrated Heisenberg spin systems, which are inspired by an intriguing class of novel quantum materials. The theoretical modeling of frustrated quantum materials will exploit the state-of-the-art analytical and numerical methods including among other matters the rigorous mapping transformations, the full exact diagonalization and the finite-temperature Lanczos method. The first part of the project is devoted to an investigation of a robustness of the quantum entanglement of the mixed-spin Heisenberg extended delta chain against rising temperature and magnetic field as indispensable requirement for quantum computing and processing of information. The model is inspired by the quantum spin-chain material [{CuMnL}{(NC)3W(bipy)(CN)3}]+, whereby our aim is to provide clarification of its static and dynamic properties along with theoretical interpretation of available magnetic data. In the second part of the project we will characterize in detail long-range entanglement of paradigmatic frustrated Heisenberg spin system with a quantum spin-liquid ground state, which provides promising platform for quantum computation and quantum information processing. This latter stage will be done in close collaboration with the experimental groups searching for advanced quantum spin-liquid materials.
EUTOPIA SIF
Aniket Mitra
Presentation
MITRA Aniket Mitra, a student of Geology has carried out his doctoral research-work in the field of palaeontology under the supervision of Prof. Kalyan Halder in Presidency University of Kolkata, India. Systematic palaeontology of bivalves and palaeobiogeographic studies are his forte. He is interested in paleo-climate reconstruction and studies the effects of climatic perturbations on the migration and morphological adjustments of mollusca. Multi-proxy approach involving stable isotope geochemistry and biomarkers have been utilised by him for palaeoclimate reconstruction. He is a member of the Geological Society of America and The Malacological Society of London. He has received international travel grant awards from GSA, International Geological Congress and the Malacological Society for presenting his research in respective conferences. He has also worked as a research associate in IISER Mohali, India (December 2022- July 2023).
Research project
The present day atmosphere is under a serious threat due to unbridled usage of fossil fuels, CO2 emission and global warming. Studying similar climatic conditions from the past is one of the best way to mitigate the situation in future. An abrupt warming of Bartonian ( i.e.~ 40 Ma ago from now) age within a major cooling phase is comparable to the present situation. The effects of warming on the morphology and diversification of Bartonian bivalves will be studied to parameterise the climate model.
The calcium carbonate shells of bivalves are excellent recorders of the palaeoclimatic conditions at very high resolution down to seasonal variability. Oysters, a cementing bivalve family spend their whole life in a fixed substratum. Thus, they can experience all the seasonality, temperature and environmental variation of a specific location throughout their life. Kutch, a paleoequatorial basin of western coast, India hosts a huge abundance of oysters from Bartonian age of late Eocene epoch. Stable isotope analysis will be adopted for identification of hyperthermal event(s). Cathodoluminescence, Raman Spectroscopy, micro X-rays fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy will be used for identification of seasonal growth pattern within the shells and (if) any morphological adjustment, associated with the global warming.
EUTOPIA SIF
Mantra Mukim
Presentation
mukim Mantra Mukim is Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Fellow (EUTOPIA-SIF) at CY Cergy Paris University. His research interests include global modernism, critical theory, twentieth century Hindi literature, decolonial studies, continental philosophy, and the lyric. As an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced, University of Warwick (2022-23), he researched the Hindi poet Muktibodh, the long poem form, and the modernist archives in the Indian subcontinent, something he will build on during his time in CY Cergy.
With Derek Attridge, he edited the book ‘Literature and Event: 21st Century Reformulations’ (New York: Routledge, 2021), and his research articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Journal of Modern Literature, Textual Practice, Interventions, Samuel Beckett Today, and Irish Studies Review. Funded by Chancellor’s scholarship, he completed his PhD in English & Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in 2022, focusing on Samuel Beckett’s poetry and the aesthetics of failure. He is currently preparing his first monograph based on this research.
Research project
Precarious Form: Life, Voice, and Work in Global Modernist Poetry (1945-2000)
This project focuses on Anglophone, Francophone, and Hindi modernist poetries that respond to questions of precarity and precariousness in the late twentieth century. It sets up a relationship between precarious living and writing, arguing that the historical changes, instabilities, and uncertainties that lead to global precariousness also shape modernist poetics. In studying issues of subjectivity, literary form, and poetic voice in a comparative framework, the project aims to illustrate the role of literature in not just representing or expressing precariousness but performing it and imagining a way beyond it. To this end, the project uses the term ‘Precarious Form’ to think of a multilingual modernist tradition that formally and thematically responds to the failures of a capitalist and Cartesian modernity.
EUTOPIA SIF
Dorothée Rusque
Presentation
RUSQUE Dorothée Rusque is a EUTOPIA-SIF post-doctoral fellow at the Heritage research group of the University of CY Cergy Paris since October 2022. She previously held a post-doctoral position at the Department of Literature and Knowledge of the University of Neuchâtel (2020-2022), where she contributed to the Sinergia project “Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment”. She received a PhD in history from the University of Strasbourg (2018), with her thesis “The Dialogue of Objects. Production and Circulation of Naturalist Knowledge: the case of Jean Hermann’s Collections (1738-1800)”. She was assistant Lecturer (ATER) in modern history at the University of Strasbourg for three years (2015-2017, 2018-2019). Her research deals with practices and cultures of natural history in the eighteenth century, with a strong focus on collections of natural history, material culture, patrimonialisation of nature, production and circulation of scientific knowledge, colonial botany, scientific explorations in America and Australia. She is currently working at the publication of her thesis and is co-editing a book on the herbaria of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She is expanding her research focus towards the rise of the globalized market of natural history in the eighteenth-century Europe.
Research Project
The trading of natural specimens took on a new dimension in the 18th century thanks to the success of natural history collections, books and the rise of scientific explorations. The family business founded by the famous dealer Jacob Forster (1739-1806) is particularly representative of the desire to expand the naturalist market boundaries. He opened shops in the main cities of the European market (London, Paris and St-Petersburg) which he entrusted to his family during his trips to collect specimens. In London, the shop of his brother-in-law George Humphrey (1739-1826) highlights the role of explorations in the geographical expansion of trade as it contains natural specimens collected in the Pacific by sailors who participated in James Cook’s expeditions and by his son who was sent as ‘his Majesty Mineralogist’ to Australia.
This family business offers the opportunity to investigate the modalities of the naturalist market’s globalization by using several scales of observation, from the interconnected shops scattered in Europe to the international exchange networks between scientists, dealers and collectors. The modernisation of commercial practices through different tools like auction catalogues, the circulation and commoditization of objects, as well as the role of merchants as intermediaries in the construction of knowledge reveal little known aspects of this trade. More broadly, this work shows the interest of a perspective that crosses sciences, economy, global history and material culture in the study of natural history in the 18th century.
EUTOPIA SIF
Dongsoo Shin
Presentation
SHIN Professor Dongsoo Shin is a professor of economics at Santa Clara University in California, USA. His research covers several areas in microeconomics, including agency theory, applied game theory, organizational economics, public economics, and industrial organization. Specific research topics include delegation and authority, dynamic incentives, optimal task design, organizational flexibility, price discrimination, public good provision, and price signaling, among others.
Professor Shin’s articles have appeared in leading academic journals in microeconomics, organizational economics and industrial organization, such as RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and Journal of Economics and Management Strategy.
In the past, Professor Shin has held visiting positions at leading academic institutes in Europe and South America, such as University of Mannheim, Humboldt University of Berlin, ESSEC Business School and THEMA, and FGV. His research has been presented at numerous academic seminars, workshops, and conferences.
At Santa Clara Univetsity, Professor Shin teaches courses in Microeconomics, Game Theory, and Mathematical Economics.
Research project
The research identifies the optimal structure of an organization with a top management and multiple subunits. Each subunit has private information about its task environment. Under centralized structure, the top management is the only party that aggregates all subunits’ information – all subunits report their information directly to the top management. Under delegated structure, all subunits information is aggregated through the “chain of command” – one subunit reports its information to another subunit which in turn reports to another subunit, and so on. We show that under centralized structure, although the top management has a tighter control over the subunits, the organization may not be able to fully utilize its aggregate information. Under delegated structure, on the other hand, the organization can fully utilize its aggregate information, although the top management relinquishes some control to the subunits at upper levels of hierarchy. According to our analyses, centralized structure is optimal if the subunits’ task environment is more likely to be good (low-cost environment). Delegated structure, by contrast is optimal if the subunits’ task environment is more likely to be bad (high-cost environment).
Mehmet Berk Talay
Presentation
TALAY M.Berk Talay, studies strategic marketing problems related with product competition among firms along with the global co-evolution of products, companies, and industries. He is currently involved in a set of large-scale projects, which examine the drivers of new product success in different markets with particular emphasis on competition, sustainability, and portfolio management.
His prior research involves the analyses of how and why innovations affect competitiveness over time, drivers of success and failure in inter-firm collaborations for new product development, and global evolution of brands. In the course of his research, Berk has worked on automotive, pharmaceutical, entertainment, and retailing industries.
Talay’s work has appeared in top tier scholarly business journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of International Marketing, and Industrial Marketing Management, among others. He has also received several grants as PI or Co-PI from UMass Lowell, Marketing Science Institute, as well as Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) for his research projects. He also serves at the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Industrial Marketing Management. His research has been highlighted in high-profile media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, and Wall Street Journal.
Research project
The concept of sustainability has gained substantial attention recently due to growing concerns about resource over-consumption, environmental degradation, and social inequity. Concurrently, the role of innovation in helping organizations transition to sustainability has become a core topic for academics, managers and policy-makers resulting in a push towards sustainable innovations. Despite their popularity, developing sustainable innovations entails a vicious cycle: they require additional investments in R&D for transformation, which increase their costs and thereby limit their appeal on the market. Their limited appeal, in turn, preclude their development and implementation.
This project is based on the notion that luxury products and services can help break this vicious cycle. Customers of luxury products can afford to pay the considerably higher prices, which affords their developers better odds of recouping their investments and offering their products in mainstream markets thereafter.
This project aims to answer 3 main research questions: 1) How can luxury products and services facilitate the development of sustainable innovations and help make meaningful progress toward moving them mainstream? 2) How do the relations between sustainable innovations, luxury markets, and market performance vary by context: France vs. U.S.; and by product type: low- (i.e., fast moving consumer goods) vs. high-(i.e., automobiles) involvement products.
Klajdi Toska
Presentation
TOSKA Klajdi Toska graduated in Civil and Architectural Engineering in 2017 at the University of Padua. After graduation he worked as a research fellow until he started his PhD course in 2018 at the same University. His thesis examined innovative techniques for monitoring and strengthening existing structures, focusing on the confinement technique for reinforced concrete structures through fiber/textile reinforced cementitious composites. After receiving his PhD he obtained a post-doctoral position with a research topic on structural reliability of existing roadway bridges. During his experience he has been involved in several research projects dealing with structural materials behavior, sustainability, seismic risk and reliability of bridges and in-situ structural health monitoring of structures and has co-supervised more than 15 master thesis . His main research interests include Concrete Material and Structures, Composites Materials, Cementitious Composites and Seismic Assessment and Retrofitting Techniques.
Research Project
Composites are part of the innovative materials that are increasingly being used in the construction industry. Among these, cementitious composites have found a wide use by combining the properties of traditional cementitious material with that of more innovative ones such as carbon and glass fibers, UHSS, nylon, etc. Their combinations are various and the use of discontinuous or sorted fibers into nets or textiles has given rise to products such as FRC, FRCC, TRC, TRM, SRG, FRCM etc. The goal of this project is to investigate the behavior of cementitious composite materials and their effectiveness in retrofitting techniques when under severe thermal stress. The project will include an extensive experimental campaign that will firstly investigate the behavior of the composite material exposed to high temperatures. The variation of the main mechanical characteristics as strength, deformation capacity and stiffness will be monitored. Later the experimental campaign will investigate the effectiveness of the composite materials applied as reinforcement in reinforced concrete structures when under high thermal stress. The collected experimental data will be used to develop analytical models that describe the behavior of cementitious composite materials when subjected to severe thermal stress.
EUTOPIA SIF
Asif Ur Rehman
Presentation
UR REHMAN Asif Ur Rehman is your researcher in Additive Manufacturing (AM). He has Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a thesis on AM while he worked as Marie Curie ITN Fellow at ERMAKSAN, Turkey. Previously, he worked on AM at the Glass and Ceramic Lab at the University of Trento, Italy. Asif's research interests include AM, implementation of machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-physics simulations for AM. He has authored over 31 publications and filed over 5 patents. He is a regular reviewer of several reputed journals. He is currently serving as a Guest Editor for two special issues related to AM in two different journals. He was also a recipient of Young Scientist Award in AM.
Research project
The research proposal, aims to address the environmental impact of the construction industry by utilizing 3D printing technology and eco-friendly materials. The research will be conducted through a collaboration between CY Cergy Paris University and the University of Warwick. The project will utilize a binder jetting method for 3D printing, which involves depositing a composite powder layer and spraying a liquid binder to consolidate the powder. The aim is to optimize the mix composition to make it more sustainable and ensure the solid interface between layers and complete activation of particles.
The project has three main research objectives: 1) to study the 3D printing feedstock and deposition properties, 2) to establish the relationship between the binder-fluid process, and 3) to control the liquid diffusion and activation to achieve high mechanical strength. These objectives will be achieved through a combination of experimental measurements, computational modeling, and analytical and numerical modeling.
The research project will be hosted by the research groups at CY Cergy Paris University and the University of Warwick. The team members have expertise in materials research, additive manufacturing processes, and numerical modeling. Regular project meetings and videoconferencing will be held to ensure collaboration and knowledge sharing.
The project is aligned with the EUTOPIA SIF's key research areas of materials engineering and sustainability.
EUTOPIA SIF
Kontad Ounnunkad
Presentation
Ounnunkad Kontad Ounnunkad is professor of Physical Chemistry at Chiang Mai University. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Wollongong, Australia in 2010. For his scientific achievements, Kontad received research fellowships from France Embassy in Thailand, Matsumae International Foundation and British Council in Thailand (Newton Fund). Moreover, he was awarded Endeavour Research Fellowships from Australian Embassy.
At Chiang Mai University, his research focuses on the development of new electrochemical sensors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and infectious disease diagnostics. Recently, he is on the list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists 2022 in the fields of Applied Physics and Analytical Chemistry, by Stanford University
Research project
The discovery and development of new electrode structures promise superior energy or power density. Consequently, the architecture design of supercapacitor (SC) electrodes offers enormous opportunities due to the high mass loading of active materials, large specific surface areas, fast ion diffusion kinetics, electrolyte accessibility, and short electron transport pathways. The application of the designed architectures enables the composite electrodes with an unprecedented combination of energy and power densities. Moreover, it was found that 3D ordered macroporous or inverse opals structures also offer unusual electrochemical properties endowed by their intrinsic and geometric structures. This improvement could be ascribed to rapid diffusion pathways and better electrochemical reactions of high-surface-area 2D materials. This feature enables a decrease in the entire impedance of SC electrodes. Therefore, the design of 2D material-based electrodes’ architecture is a technological challenge in order to maximize the SCs’ performances. In our preliminary work, we have found that the new sandwich-structured electrode provides superior capacitance over their common composite electrodes. During the fellowship program, we would like to carry on the study of the structure-property relationship of 2D nanomaterials, and the device construction and the investigation of its properties, devices, and structure-performance relationship. We propose to collect the properties data of SC fabricated from our developed electrode. We will do the day-to-day results discussion with professors and researchers at CYU. Finally, we expect to achieve a well-optimized device and publish our work in a journal at an international level.
Rainer Verch
Presentation
VERCH Rainer Verch is professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
He studied mathematics and physics in Berlin and in Cambridge, UK, and received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Hamburg in 1995. He became a professor in theoretical physics at the University of Leipzig in 2005. His main area of research is quantum field theory in curved spacetimes and in non-commutative geometries, relativistic aspects of quantum information, and related areas of mathematical physics. He has served as chairman of the Mathematical Physics section of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, and on the editorial boards of General Relativity and Gravitation and the book series Fundamental Theories of Physics, and has recently introduced an international master degree program in Mathematical Physics at the University of Leipzig.
Research project
Marco Vianna Franco
Presentation
VIANNA FRANCO Marco Vianna Franco is a historian and philosopher of ecological economics. He is trained as an engineer and holds a PhD in Economics from the Center for Regional Development and Planning of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Formerly a lecturer and researcher at João Pinheiro Foundation (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) and postdoctoral fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Vienna, Austria), he is also affiliated with the Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on the study of human-nature relations from the perspectives of political economy, intellectual history, and philosophy of science. He is a member of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought and the International Society for Ecological Economics. He has co-authored (with Dr. Antoine Missemer) the recently published book “A History of Ecological Economic Thought” (Routledge, 2023).
Research project
Knowledge on how energy flows shape and condition social systems and, thus, bear implications to economic issues, date back to the late nineteenth century. Within German-speaking scholarship, there is a long but largely forgotten intellectual tradition bridging the fields of thermodynamics and political economy in a quest to understand how biophysical laws and constraints are intertwined with modes of social organization and provisioning processes. Therefore, the objective of the research project is to assess the assimilation of the rising field of energetics in currents of economic thinking in Central Europe (1880s-1930s). It focuses on economic value, resource accounting, and social reform as key questions in the works of figures such as Eduard Sacher, Rudolf Goldscheid, Oskar Nagel, Johann Žmavc, Josef Popper-Lynkeus, and Karl Ballod-Atlanticus, using published and unpublished primary sources as well as archival material. Offering a thorough theoretical framework to reconcile the natural and social sciences, these lesser-known thinkers and their ideas merit renewed attention, not least given their potential to inform contemporary debates in fields such as ecological economics.
