The Syrian Civil War led to the displacement of more than 5.6 million Syrians in surrounding nations, millions of whom are children. Nations around the world are striving to resolve the economic, cultural, and societal strains of accommodating an unprecedented number of refugees. The proposed project aims to begin tackling this problem by investigating experiences of Syrian refugee children to determine whether individual characteristics influence their psychological and behavioral responses to the Syrian Civil War and subsequent circumstances. The research objectives entail applying innovative, evolutionary-developmental models to explore individual differences in the ways early childhood adversity is biologically embedded and reflected in developmental milestones and mental health. The project applies strong interdisciplinary methods to the analysis of existing, high-quality data to understand the intersections of genetics, endocrinology, psychology, and behavior. The overarching goals of the project are to 1) understand individual differences in the developmental origins of health and illness, 2) identify modifiable risk and protective factors that suppress or enhance refugee mental health, and 3) inform individualized interventions to prevent and treat mental illness among Syrian—and other—displaced populations. Bringing to bear leading experts in neuroendocrinology, genetics, psychiatry, and resilience; high-quality, longitudinal data; and state-of-the-art training in genetic and hormonal data analyses, this project will showcase European excellence in innovative, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral research in child development and public health and policy.

Adjoint based design optimization techniques are widely recognized as having a large potential to revolutionize the design process of modern gasturbines. By applying such techniques, the optimization of the entire gasturbine system with million degrees of freedom is within reach of the current available computational power. Such simulations include inherently all interactions between the different components avoiding sub-optimal designs. However, today’s reality is far from this prospect. Current adjoint design optimization techniques only consider aerodynamic performance, preventing the optimization of complete systems, as they are by their very nature multidisciplinary. This project will develop an adjoint optimization methodology that goes beyond only aerodynamic considerations and includes other disciplines such as structural mechanics and vibration dynamics concurrently for the first time, such that in the longer term optimization of complete systems will be achievable. The key to achieving a true multidisciplinary adjoint design optimization is to work with a master CAD geometry that is shared between all the different disciplines. This differs significantly from the current practice in adjoint techniques, which mainly considers parameterisations that are suitable for only aerodynamic optimizations. The involvement of a master CAD geometry requires the differentiation of a CAD system, until now this has not been performed as CAD systems are invariably proprietary and as such not accessible. In addition, the extension of the methodology to multiple disciplines requires for a highly skilled researcher with a background in aerodynamics as well as structural mechanics. The fellow of this proposal is a research leader at the Von Karman Institute, which has gained significant experience in the area of multidisciplinary design optimization of turbomachinery over the past 9 years and is the developer of a gradient free optimization system which includes a dedicated

A moving contact line (MCL) is a moving line of intersection between a fluid/fluid interface and a solid wall. MCLs are central to a wide range of flows in nature and industry, however, their modeling has been a classical difficulty, especially under non-isothermal conditions. The project will tackle this challenge and we will develop a novel computational model enabling simulations of non-isothermal flows involving MCLs with unprecedented efficiency. The model borrows the idea from the large eddy simulation in turbulence modeling; it will resolve the macroscale flows only while model the effect of MCLs using non-isothermal hydrodynamic theories, which will also be developed in the present project. We expect that the model can lead to a reduction of computational effort by nine orders of magnitude for three-dimensional flows, compared with direct numerical simulations using a uniform grid, and it will therefore enable affordable simulations of practical flows in industry.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), the most common form of acute leukaemia, remains incurable for most patients. New targeted therapies based on kinase inhibitors are being tested in AML, but not all patients benefit to the same extent, highlighting the need for personalized treatments. Previous work has shown promise for Aurora B inhibitors in AML. Here, the student will take proteomic and system biology approaches to investigate the mechanisms that sensitize AML cells to Aurora B targeted therapy. In addition to advancing our understanding of Aurora B role in cancer biology, this work has the potential to impact AML personalized therapy. Aurora kinases play prominent roles in cancer biology (Ref 1) and clinical trials evaluating Aurora B inhibitors in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) are showing promise. However, not all patients respond to these therapies to the same extent and the mechanisms that allow cancer cells to evade treatment are not fully understood. The aim of this project is to investigate the mode of action of Aurora B inhibitors in AML cells and the biochemical mechanisms that make cancer cells sensitive or resistant to these compounds. To this end, the student will compare the wiring of biochemical networks in cell lines of different sensitivity profile to Aurora B inhibitors and will investigate how such biochemical wiring changes upon therapy. This will be achieved by using state-of-the-art proteomic and phosphoproteomic methods in combination with computational approaches to derive biochemical network topology from such datasets. These methodologies are well developed in the host laboratory and their application in different cancer models has shown that responses to kinase inhibitors are determined by the combination of the activity of both the target and parallel pathways (Refs 2-5). The hypotheses generated with the initial cell-based work will be tested in additional AML cell lines, primary AML samples obtained from the BCI tissue biobank and in those derived from current and planned Aurora B inhibitors clinical trials in AML. In addition to advancing our understanding of how Aurora B controls cancer biology, signatures associated with patient responses may represent biomarkers for patient stratification and personalized medicine. The project will train the student in mass spectrometry-based proteomics and computational biology applied to the investigation of intracellular cell signaling and cancer research. These unique combination of skills are in short supply in the UK and are highly valued by industry and academia.

The democratisation of multimedia content creation has changed the way in which multimedia content is created, shared and (re)used all over the world, yielding significant amounts of user-generated multimedia resources, big part shared under open licenses. At the same time, creative industries need to reduce production costs in order to remain competitive. There is, therefore, an opportunity for creative industries to incorporate such content in their productions, but there is a lack of technologies for easily accessing and incorporating that type content in their creative workflows. In the particular case of sound and music, a huge amount of audio material like sound samples, soundscapes and music pieces, is available and released under Creative Commons licenses, both coming from amateur and professional content creators. We refer to this content as the 'Audio Commons'. However, there exist no practical ways in which Audio Commons can be embedded in the production workflows of the creative industries, and licensing issues are not easily handled across the production chain. As a result, most of this content remains unused in professional environments. The aim of this project is to create an ecosystem of content, technologies and tools to bring the Audio Commons to the creative industries, enabling creation, access, retrieval and reuse of Creative Commons audio content in innovative ways that fit the requirements of the use cases considered (e.g., audiovisual, music and video games production). Furthermore, we tackle rights management challenges derived from the content reuse enabled by the created ecosystem and research about emerging business models that can arise form it. Our project will benefit creative industries by providing new and innovative creativity supporting tools and reducing production costs, and will benefit content creators by offering a channel to expose their works to professional environments and to allow them to (re)licence their content.