As technology readiness level of Tidal Energy Converters (TECs) increases, moving from prototype demonstration to commercialisation, research efforts are focusing on TEC arrays layout optimisation to reduce costs and become competitive in comparison with other energy systems. Even though there are several prototypes of different scales that have been tested on the last years (mostly under controlled conditions) there is limited data on deployments in real conditions which negatively affects the accurate formulation of constrained problems on array schemes resulting on incomplete layout optimisation models. This project aims to provide a significant contribution towards the understanding of (a) the effects of TECs interactions with the environment; (b) the capabilities and limitations of common strategies used for the numerical modelling of TECs; and (c) how to mathematically formulate optimisation models to solve the TEC array layout problem considering technical, socio-economic and environmental constraints. From the methodology point of view, constraint optimisation models will be mathematically formulated considering ocean energy protocols, data collected from in-field measurements of prototypes tested in real environments and with surrogates built from validated numerical simulations. The outcomes of the project will contribute to improve common guidelines and standards for licensing tidal energy projects and de-risk financial investment. The Experienced Researcher (ER) will emerge from the project with an in-depth knowledge of tidal stream energy, training in mathematical optimisation and on new skills in data collection, increased competence on numerical modelling, and strong skills in research project management and coordination. This will grant him the capacity of achieving maturity as a researcher on ocean energy, a new emerging sector with great growth potential.

Project BREATHE aims to contribute a new understanding of cultural and behavioral traits of North African early humans through the archaeological record of southern and northern Libya. This is a crucial region for understanding the trans-Saharan connections that contributed to the global dispersal of our species. However, the current scant archaeological and chronometric data for the Saharan and peri-Saharan regions limits our knowledge of biogeographic dynamics that linked different regions of North Africa at key moments of human biological and cultural evolution, especially around the emergence of H. sapiens ca. 300 ka. The project research areas, the Jebel Gharbi to the north and the Acacus and Messak to the south, represent the extremes of an ideal North-South transect with different environments and archaeological records, an important axis between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. These arid regions have deeply eroded landscapes where Pleistocene geoarchaeological archives are rare. Except for few buried contexts, the evidence is mostly comprised of lithic artefacts found on open-air surfaces. Nevertheless, these surface lithics can provide a wealth of information when an array of cutting-edge analytical techniques (geospatial statistics, geometric morphometrics and wear analyses) are combined in the way proposed by BREATHE. These artefacts span the final phases of the Early Stone Age, the early emergence of the Middle Stone Age and its later manifestations, particularly the Aterian. The spatial amplitude of the research areas enables large-scale landscape analyses to be carried out, identifying land use and occupation patterns not detectable at a site-oriented research scale. This provides a unique window into past human behaviour and biogeographic dynamics in a central arid area that may have played a key role in the adaptive strategies that enabled our species to colonise new and challenging environments across Africa and beyond.

A hallmark of human culture is our unsurpassed innovative ability, which allowed us to expand into almost all environments on the planet and build the cultural world we inhabit today. By identifying the conditions driving innovations across primates, we can provide new insight into when and how humans developed this unique culture. PRIMERS will address this need by adopting a systematic and holistic approach to testing the catalysts of a watershed behaviour in our evolutionary history: the ability to make and use sharp stone tools (flakes). The advent of intentional flakes in the human lineage marks the first clear divergence between animal and human technology. With tools to access high-value calories, our ancestors now had the physical and cognitive resources to lay the groundwork for our culture. PRIMERS will use a triangulation approach to follow the emergence of flaking in appropriate proxy models: wild and captive chimpanzees, capuchins, and macaques. Objective 1 will define the baseline stone manipulation propensities of these species using novel artificial intelligence coding methods. Objective 2 will test two other major drivers of innovations: exposure and experience. An experimental paradigm with in-built controls, large sample sizes (N =350), and long-term testing protocols (approx. 4 years) will be used to empirically evaluate the cognitive and developmental primers of innovations. Objective 3 will systematically compare primate assemblages to some of the oldest human stone tools, allowing for inferences to be made on when cognitive capacities diverged between humans and other primates. Structural Equation Models will then determine the relative contributions and interactions between the measured factors. By testing three species, combining and upscaling experimental paradigms and implementing powerful modelling tools, PRIMERS will radically enhance our understanding of the conditions required for innovations, and with it, the primers of human culture.

Our current knowledge about human evolution is biased toward terrestrial data whereas some crucial information is stored in sites that are now submerged since the terminal Pleistocene. In dry-land archaeology, the combination of micro-evidences (through paleobotanical, geoarchaeological, and experimental data) has revealed new information. My project aims to explore the applicability of these approaches for the investigation of submerged Paleolithic sites by tackling two main questions:1) What kind of microarchaeological materials are preserved in submerged Paleolithic sites? 2) Why do anthropogenic micro-remains (e.g., phytoliths, ash pseudomorphs) preserve in submerged sites? With the new set of techniques (phytolith morphotype and taphonomy, mineralogical and elemental analysis on thin sections) and knowledge (experimental archaeology, Paleolithic period) to be learned as a Global Fellow at Rutgers University (USA) and in the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour at the University of Algarve (Portugal), I will provide a new methodological background needed to investigate submerged Paleolithic sites. The combination of micro-geoarchaeology to detect submerged Paleolithic sites and experimentation to explain their preservation will yield highly relevant results. The exploitation of new evidence off the continental shelf will open unique ways for the scientific community while providing the base to protect our cultural heritage from sea-level rising and the exploitation of the seabed. This project will turn me into a unique transdisciplinary and versatile underwater archaeologist at the forefront of archaeological science advances, with a breadth of expertise. I will share practices with marine scientists, paleobotanists, geoarchaeologists, and underwater archaeologists in multiple periods and regions, hence preparing for my employment in tenure positions in the fields of archaeology and marine science.

The project ‘TANKWA, Technological Adaptations of Nubian cores in the Karoo: new geometric morphometric Approaches’ uses innovative digital archaeological methods to investigate human technological adaptations to arid regions during the Middle Stone Age (MSA), a critical period of early human anatomical and behavioural development. Specifically, this will focus on a new late MSA technological variant observed in the arid Karoo region of interior South Africa which uses Nubian technology, a distinctive Levallois method of stone point production more commonly seen in MSA contexts in North Africa, the Levant and Arabia. Using cutting-edge digital Geometric Morphometric techniques, this research will establish a novel method for studying Nubian technology and lithic points, testing the hypothesis that this technology was an adaptive response to the challenges facing hunter-gatherers in an arid environment. The recently discovered open-air site of Tweefontein has a large artefact assemblage offering the ideal opportunity to characterise this technology, complemented by museum study of other South African Karoo sites. The novel approach applied will generate replicable quantitative data that allows the contextualisation of Nubian technology both in the southern African archaeological record and globally, establishing the first inter-regional comparison between Nubian technology in the Levant and South Africa. The training from experts at two international research institutions in Portugal and Israel, together with the applicant’s existing expertise in this under-studied region, culminates in a unique project which advances methods in lithic analysis and contributes to our understanding of early modern human adaptations and dispersals within and outside of Africa from a new perspective.