Bacterial cells are immensely important because of their effects on the environment, as disease causing agents and as industrial organisms. An understanding of the detailed functioning of bacterial cells is critical if we are to control them and manipulate them to our advantage. Microscopes are a crucial component of the range of experimental tools that we used to study bacteria. Because the cells are extremely small we need exceptionally high sensitivity and magnification to be able to resolve details of their structure. The purpose of this proposal is to provide the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, which is one of the premier sites for research on the fundamentals of bacterial cells, with advanced imaging equipment. The new instruments will allow us to look more deeply than ever before into these tiny cells and understand the mechanisms that take place inside them.

CAPE (European Open Compute Architecture for Powerful Edge) aims to redefine the landscape of edge-cloud computing infrastructures by developing the EdgeMicroDataCenters (EMDC's) and eHPS as a 'new unit of computing' for data-dense edge environments. The project designs and showcase an innovative, open hardware platform that is dynamically composable via CXL to answer the end user needs. EMDC and eHPS provides an open high density platform for heterogeneous computing units (XPU), RISC-V architectures all based on industry-standard form factor, COM-HPC that is supported by a robust ecosystem of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) within Europe, ensuring wide accessibility and adoption. To allow end users to be digital sovereign e.g. manage the governance of data, AI models, applications deployed across an ‘edge-first’ edge to cloud continuum, CAPE will employ a cloud-agnostic overlay known as Infrastructure from Code (IfC). This innovative approach abstracts the complexities inherent in diverse cloud computing infrastructures and services, empowering software developers to deploy applications effortlessly across the edge-to-cloud continuum. This is achieved without necessitating extensive knowledge of the underlying cloud infrastructure, enabling deployments across on-premise and off-premise, public and private cloud environments with minimal complexity. CAPE's solution will be validated in 3 use cases: the management of intelligent electric energy microgrids, edge AI and satellite communications. All usecases will evaluate RISC-V (EPI) and CXL solutions. Each usecase will be evaluated on technical, economical and sustainability aspects and benchmarked against legacy hardware in local clouds against edge-optimized data centers.