Most Europeans wish to spend their final hours at home, surrounded by loved ones. Specialist palliative home care services have been established to fulfill this wish, even for patients facing severe terminal illnesses. The sociological research project NEDIPAL: Negotiating Digital Technologies in Palliative Home Care aims to better understand the intricacies and challenges of using digital technologies – such as teleconsultations, apps, wearables, and artificial intelligence – to make palliative home care more accessible to a broader range of patient groups, while also enhancing its economic and environmental sustainability. Current research typically views digital technology usage in palliative home care either from the viewpoint of patients and family caregivers or of professionals, with both seeming decoupled from one another. In contrast, NEDIPAL examines the co-production of palliative home care by professionals in collaboration with patients and family caregivers, through the lens of systems and organizational theory. The sociological project transcends disciplinary boundaries by integrating insights from health services research, palliative medicine, communication, and digital inclusion. The research will involve qualitative on-site field studies in the Belgian region of Wallonia at five interdisciplinary “Équipes de soutien à domicile”. NEDIPAL is hosted by BRISPO, an interdisciplinary research center specializing in digitalization, health, life course, and aging. With my supervisor’s international experience and unique competence, along with my prior research in palliative home care and experience in France, I am confident that I will achieve NEDIPAL’s research and training objectives and position myself as a leader in research on the digitalization of palliative care. This project will prepare me for achieving my mid-term career goal of working in Belgium or France and help me advance my non-academic career as an expert in digital health services.

Pannexin1 (Panx1) channels mediate the exchange of biochemical messengers between the cytosol of a cell and its extracellular environment. This type of cellular communication underlies cell death and inflammation, both which are associated with a plethora of diseases. Closing pannexin channels therefore seems an interesting therapeutic strategy. In this respect, the ERC Starting Grant project CONNECT has demonstrated that peptide-based inhibition of Panx1 channels counteracts the manifestation of acute and chronic liver disease. However, these peptides cope with stability issues thus impeding clinical application. No other types of appropriate Panx1 channel inhibitors are available today despite their promising therapeutic potential. The present CONNECT-2-CLINIC project will meet this urgent need by generating specific and in vivo-applicable Panx1 channel inhibitors. For this purpose, nanobodies targeted towards Panx1 will be produced using unprecedented protocols that combine DNA immunization with new nanodisc technology. Panx1 nanobodies will be tested in vitro for their capacity to inhibit Panx1 channels and to reduce cell death and inflammation. They will be subsequently tested in a human-relevant mouse model of cholestatic liver disease. This technology track will be aligned by a 3-phase business track in order to analyze and create market value. By doing so, the CONNECT-2-CLINIC project will provide solid proof-of-concept for further pharmaceutical development and clinical application.

Glaciers are key contributors to sea-level rise and are critical water resources that supply fresh water to hundreds of millions of people around the world. It is therefore of paramount importance to accurately simulate the future evolution of these precious ice bodies. Despite recent progress in modelling the global evolution of glaciers, existing simulations suffer from vast uncertainties related to (i) model input, (ii) a simplified representation of glacier processes, and (iii) an important mismatch between the timescales over which models are calibrated (multi-annual to decadal) and those over which the future glacier projections occur (century timescale). ICE³ will revolutionise the regional- to global-scale modelling of glaciers, by (i) strongly reducing uncertainties in model input through innovative inversion of climatic information, (ii) developing new approaches to model glacier processes in 3D, and (iii) for the first time simulating past glacier evolution globally over centennial time scales with an ice-dynamic model. These improvements will culminate in new global glacier evolution projections under a range of future emission scenarios, which will in turn inform the next generation of sea-level rise and water availability projections. While redefining the landscape of large-scale glacier modelling, ICE³ will also ensure that the novelties it produces are incorporated in climate change impact models to guide policymakers and practitioners in adapting to a changing environment.