The Innovation Union (IU) is a flagship initiative of the Europe 2020 Strategy which has a central role in achieving the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. It is aimed at improving conditions and access to finance for R&I in Europe, to ensure that innovative ideas can be turned into products and services that create growth and jobs. The IU contains over thirty action points including a key point for ‘Enhancing access to finance for innovative companies’. According to the EC’s proposal, the EU needs to put in place financial instruments to attract a major increase in private finance and close the market gaps in investing in R&I. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument aimed at implementing the IU. By coupling R&I, Horizon 2020 focuses on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. Under the 'Industrial Leadership' pillar, Horizon 2020 supports companies and other organisations engaged in R&I to gain easier access, via financial instruments, to loans, guarantees, counter-guarantees and hybrid, mezzanine and equity finance. Currently, the priority is to continue and build on activities that have been worthwhile in supporting R&I in 2007-2013 such as the RSFF, the RSI for SMEs and GIF-1. Horizon 2020's financial instrument facilities will also operate in conjunction with those of EU programme COSME, and the coming two years will see, a significant participation by Horizon 2020 in the proposed SME Finance Initiative; the launch of a pilot facility supporting the technology transfer process; and a new focus on improving access to risk finance by larger midcap firms. The overall objective of the conference is to raise awareness of the financial instruments, facilities and accompanying measures launched under Horizon 2020 and to enhance access to finance for R&I and growth. Focus will be given to the interactions between these instruments, COSME, and ESIF as well as with instruments at national

The Internet is a critical infrastructure that is composed of The Internet is a critical infrastructure that is composed of tens of thousands of networks and is required to work reliably 24/7. An integral functionality to achieve this is stable, efficient and secure routing of data traffic across several network domains. The current inter-domain routing protocol, BGP, facilitates the exchange of control-plane information (i.e., reachability of Internet resources over network paths) in a scalable and expressive manner; however, the lack of inherent security (e.g., authentication) mechanisms in its design frequently results in routing attacks. We focus on BGP prefix hijacking attacks, where a network, either due to malicious intent or because of a misconfiguration, advertises fraudulent/invalid information to the BGP routers of other networks; this information is propagated to the entire Internet, eventually leading to traffic being directed to invalid destinations (ending up dropped or intercepted and manipulated). Available proactive defenses are typically limited and inefficient. In our previous work, we have developed an advanced production-grade detection and mitigation tool that works reactively to counter these attacks. However, in practice, network operators cannot even measure how exposed their networks are to hijacking attempts, as well as their potential impact. In this project, we address exactly this need and aim to build a Proof of Concept (PoC) of a BGP hijacking vulnerability assessment service employing real-world experimentation, accurate simulations and realistic emulations. We aim to evaluate this PoC on at least two real networks, and refine its design using feedback from its future users, i.e., the network operators. We further plan to investigate key challenges towards the commercialization of such a service, namely estimating the costs for rolling out a global peering infrastructure that is needed, and defining the associated product offering.

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), are a heterogeneous group of conditions leading to difficulties with speech, learning and other neurological functions greatly affecting patients and healthcare, societal, and educational systems. The rising prevalence of NDDs highlights the urgent need to understand their origins, often rooted in early cortical development. In humans, the cerebral cortex, responsible for cognitive functions like language and learning, is susceptible to disruptions during early brain development, a process tightly regulated by neuronal growth and protein synthesis. The coordination of biochemical events in eukaryotic cells, including protein synthesis, is facilitated by compartmentalizing key molecules either into organelles or as membraneless condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). LLPS is crucial for neurotransmission, memory, and synaptic plasticity. The fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1 (FMRP) has been shown to undergo LLPS with the translation factor 4E-BP2 (eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein 2), a key regulator in the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway implicated in both autism and FXS and the development of cortical outer radial glia. The Neuro-Phase project will investigate the role of LLPS and the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in NDDs and more specifically the role of 4E-BP2-FMRP LLPS interaction in translational control and early human brain development which has yet to be explored. To test this hypothesis, the Neuro-Phase project will use innovative biological models, including human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived brain organoids and organotypic cultures of post-mortem human embryonic cortical explants. This project will provide critical insights into the pathogenesis of NDDs by identifying potential therapeutic targets, that leverage cellular intrinsic mechanisms like LLPS, to mitigate or prevent these conditions.

Supermassive black holes form the most intriguing astrophysical systems offering countless opportunities to study fundamental physics in regimes not accessible to laboratories on Earth. Their multimessenger emission manifests in the formation of accretion disks, jets, and the acceleration of extremely energetic particles all of which are still poorly understood. Optical polarization can provide answers to such long-standing black hole physics questions since optical polarization signatures clearly distinguish between competing theories. However, the optopolarimetric data necessary for such a task are missing. BOOTES is a unique joint observational and theoretical program that can unify our understanding of transient (tidal disruption events) and steady (active galactic nuclei) supermassive black hole systems using optopolarimetry. The unprecedented telescope time (109 nights/year) and high-accuracy optical polarimeter available to the proposed work will allow us to produce (1) the first comprehensive optical polarization monitoring of tidal disruption events; (2) the first systematic very-high-cadence optical polarization monitoring of relativistic jets. Having clear polarization expectations from the state-of-the-art models we will uncover two fundamental black hole processes: the accretion disk formation mechanism; the high-energy particle energization process in relativistic jets – two open questions currently at a precipice of a breakthrough in black hole studies.