Leishmania causes devastating human diseases – leishmaniases - representing an important public health problem in the Mediterranean basin and declared as emerging diseases in the EU due to climate change and population displacement. The LeiSHield-MATI consortium will for the first time investigate in an integrative fashion the complex parasite-vector-host interplay in cutaneous leishmaniasis affecting Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Iran (MATI), using field isolates and human clinical samples. The ultimate goal of our project is to identify genetic factors selected during natural infection and to understand how the complex parasite-vector-animal interaction impacts clinical outcome in infected patients. This goal will be achieved through a highly ambitious secondment plan between all partners, and the organization of courses and workshops to train the next generation of scientists generating a long-term impact on the research capacities in endemic areas. Capitalizing on complementary infrastructures of its EU, African and Asian partners and their expertise in molecular parasitology, epidemiology, systems level analyses, bioinformatics, computational biology, immunology, dermatology, field studies, and public health, our project will drive important innovation in clinical research, strengthen capacities in disease endemic regions, inform authorities on control measures, and raise awareness in all partner countries on this emerging EU public health problem. The highly inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial structure of LeiSHield-MATI, and its powerful integrative and comparative approach is novel in parasitic systems and will drive a unique bio-marker discovery pipeline for the future development of new prognostic and diagnostic tools, as well as novel preventive and therapeutic measures that will ensure long-term collaboration, promote scientific and commercial self-sustainability of its partners, and will have an important impact to improve public health.

The HPC Digital Autonomy with RISC-V in Europe (DARE) will invigorate the continent’s High Performance Computing ecosystem by bringing together the technology producers and consumers, developing a RISC-V ecosystem that supports the current and future computing needs, while at the same time enabling European Digital Autonomy. DARE takes a customer-first approach (HPC Centres & Industry) to guide the full stack research and development. DARE leverages a co-design software/hardware approach based on critical HPC applications identified by partners from research, academia, and industry to forge the resulting computing solutions. These computing solutions range from general purpose processors to several accelerators, all utilizing the RISC-V ecosystem and emerging chiplet ecosystem to reduce costs and enable scale. The DARE program defines the full lifecycle from requirements to deployment, with the computing solutions validated by hosting entities, providing the path for European technology from prototype to production systems. The six year time horizon is split into two phases, enabling a DARE plan of action and set of roadmaps to provide the essential ingredients to develop and procure EU Supercomputers in the third phase. DARE defines SMART KPIs for the hardware and software developments in each phase, which act as gateways to unlock the next phase of development. The DARE HPC roadmaps (a living document) are used by the DARE Collaboration Council to maximize exploitation and spillover across all European RISC-V projects. DARE addresses the European HPC market failure by including partners with different levels of HPC maturity with the goal of growing a vibrant European HPC supply chain. DARE Consortium partners have been selected based on the ability to contribute to the DARE value chain, from HPC Users, helping to define all the requirements, to all parts of the hardware development, software development, system integration and subsequent commercialization.

While physics is grappling with new problems dominated by strong interactions and (or) correlations, two main strategies are available to the theorists. The first consists in developing sophisticated approximations and numerical techniques for studying ab-initio models; the second in elaborating analytical methods to solve exactly the main models that capture the physics of interest. This latter approach is less general, but essential for our fundamental understanding, for developing controlled approximations, and to provide benchmarks for the numerical simulations. The purpose of this proposal is to obtain exact results for two types of problems. The first concerns phase transitions in 2+1 dimensional electrons gases in presence of disorder and mostly without interactions. A classical example is the transition between plateaux in the integer quantum Hall effect, where, despite of a wealth of numerical and experimental data, the values of the critical exponents are not known exactly. The study of the corresponding conformal field theories is made difficult by the non-unitarity and non-compactedness of the associated target space. In the last few years, steady progress has occurred on these questions. The understanding of sigma models on supergroups has improved thanks to developments around the AdS/CFT conjecture. Deep relations have been uncovered between the non-simplicity of lattice algebras and logarithmic properties of the associated conformal field theories. The formalism of Schramm-Loewner evolutions has transformed our understanding of fractal properties and geometrical phase transitions. We plan to build on this progress to further our understanding of critical properties in disordered electronic systems. In particular, we plan to understand better the role of continuous symmetries and indecomposability in logarithmic theories, the topology of renormalization group flows, and the probabilistic nature of wave functions and electronic trajectories. The second problem concerns out of equilibrium transport in nanosystems such as quantum dots. This topic, of crucial importance for applications and experiments, is even more challenging that the foregoing one. Indeed, the physical phenomena involved are not suited to the traditional methods of solid state physics; they often are non-perturbative (implying spin-charge separation, charge fractionalization and non Fermi liquid strong coupling fixed points), and are difficult to study numerically. Following works by some of us, and independently by the group of N. Andrei at Rutgers, it seems possible to find realistic models where transport can be studied exactly. We plan to obtain a complete solution for these models - from the I-V characteristic to the full counting statistics and the entanglement entropy. We plan moreover to use these solutions to obtain benchmarks for new numerical techniques using time-dependent density matrix renormalization group. Finally, we plan to explore more fundamental properties, such as renormalization and fixed points out of equilibrium, the integrability of the Keldysh formalism, and fluctuation-dissipation relations à la Gallavotti-Cohen. Finally, the two problems share common features, which we plan to study as well - from the role of non-compact target spaces in the description of transport to the reformulation of the replica method using contours `a la Keldysh'. This project brings together two groups (IPhT and LPTENS) whose expertises are complementary, and who have in the past accomplished important progress on related problems.

I propose to solve the Quantum Field Theory (QFT) describing the transition between plateaus of quantized Hall conductance in the Integer Quantum Hall Effect (IQHE). The existence of the plateaus and their topological origin are certainly well understood. In sharp contrast, the transition, which mixes the effects of disorder, magnetic field and possibly interactions, remains very mysterious. Numerical studies of lattice models are plagued by disorder. The QFT description involves physics at very strong coupling, and requires a non-perturbative solution before quantitative predictions can be made. Finding such a solution is very difficult because the QFT for the plateau transition is ‘non-unitary’ - it involves a non-Hermitian ‘Hamiltonian’. Non-unitary QFT is a challenging, almost unexplored topic, that must be first developed before the plateau transition can be addressed. I propose to carry out this task with a cross-disciplinary strategy that uses ideas and tools from conformal field theory, statistical mechanics, and mathematics. Key to this strategy is a new and powerful way of analyzing lattice regularizations of the QFTs by focussing on their algebraic properties directly on the lattice, with a mix of advanced representation theory and numerical techniques. The results - in particular, concerning conformal invariance and renormalization group flows in the non-unitary case - will then be used to solve the QFT models for the plateau transition in the IQHE and in other universality classes of 2D Anderson insulators. This will be a landmark step in our understanding of the localization/delocalization transition in two dimensions, and allow a long delayed comparison of theory with experiment. The results will, more generally, impact many other areas of physics where non-unitary QFT plays a central role - from disordered systems of statistical mechanics to the string theory side of the AdS/CFT duality, to the effective description of open quantum systems.

The high-performance requirements requested by the industry and consumers are responsible that currently 17% of total plastic packaging is multilayer material , meaning 3.03 Mt of plastics. Difficulties for recycling it are accentuated, being mostly landfilled or incinerated. MERLIN project has joined a partnership between sorting technology providers, recyclers, research centers, social innovation experts and end-users to design cradle to cradle solutions. This 36-month research project will offer innovative solutions for all the processes required to increase the quality and rate of recycled plastic materials coming from multi-layer packaging waste: (i) SORTING (combining optical sensors, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and robotics), (ii) DELAMINATION (optimizing depolymerisation and using solvent-based processes), (iii) RECYLING (techniques for repolymerization and upcycling of polymers) and (iv) VALIDATION (developing rigid and flexible packaging solutions and demonstrating circularity of the processes). These solutions will be developed and later validated in a real environment to reach technology readiness level (TRL) 6. This will be complemented with additional techniques and tools for circularity design to increase knowledge and effectiveness in the closure of the European multilayer plastic chain. Finally, transversal activities related to regulation and standardization, safety, sustainability, business, training, dissemination and communication will support to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the project. These actions are aligned with the ones proposed by the European Plastic Strategy to achieve that by 2030 all plastic packaging should be designed to be recyclable or reusable and decrease the quantity of waste generated Potential annual carbon footprint saving that could be achieved recycling all the multilayer waste in Europe could reach 7.42 Mt CO2/year, with a potential economic of €10,605 million and more 106,000 new job positions.