The quantum revolution is happening now. Every day experimentalists around the world produce more complex, reliable and powerful quantum devices which take us one step closer to quantum computation, communication and cryptography. Testing is a crucial part of the development process necessary to ensure suitability of the device for the application in mind. Methods used for small devices quickly become impractical, as the devices become more complex and we need to develop efficient and robust testing procedures in order to make further progress. Fortunately, quantum physics is well-suited for this task, as it allows to precisely characterise devices under surprisingly weak assumptions. This feature, known as self-testing, is intrinsically related to the fundamental concept of Bell inequalities. The goal of this proposal is to develop efficient and robust testing procedures for complex quantum devices based on Bell's theorem. In the short-term these will allow experimentalists to efficiently characterise their devices, while in the long-term they will enable a customer to certify that a newly bought quantum device adheres to the specification, which opens the door to device-independent information processing. The timeliness of this proposal is demonstrated by the fact that the first loophole-free Bell experiments were reported within the last year. On top of practical applications, self-testing is important from the foundational point of view. By exploring the intimate connection between the quantum (microscopic) world of Hilbert spaces and the classical (macroscopic) world of resulting probability distributions, it provides the unique link between what we see and what is happening at the quantum level. This fellowship will allow Jędrzej Kaniewski to work under the supervision of Matthias Christandl (a world-class expert on quantum correlations) at the University of Copenhagen (a leading institution in both theoretical and experimental aspects of quantum mechanics).

Coastal seagrass ecosystems provide important services to nature and mankind in form of coastal protection, nursery grounds and carbon sequestration. However, seagrass meadows are affected by global climate change and anthropogenic stressors such as eutrophication and coastal development. Yet, the mechanistic interactions between these ecosystems and environmental change remain unclear due to the complexity of studying the seagrass habitat, which exhibit a multitude of chemical gradients and dynamics. The requirement for high-resolution measurement techniques for resolving the biogeochemical dynamics and microenvironments surrounding seagrasses in their natural habitat has led to the development of a variety of chemical techniques typically quantifying a single analyte at a time, which gives limited insight to the true dynamics of the seagrass-sediment interaction which is central for seagrass fitness and survival under environmental change. The SIPODET project will develop new multi-parameter chemical imaging techniques by combining luminescence-based optical sensor foils (planar optodes) with diffusional equilibrium in thin-film (DET) enabling simultaneous sensing of pO2, iron, phosphate, nitrite/nitrate, ammonium, manganese, pCO2 and pH. This project will encompass expert training of Dr. Cesbron in the use of planar optodes complementing his expertise in 2D DET mapping of chemical species, which will enable the development of a novel combined chemical imaging technology mentored by a world leader in microenvironmental analysis. The novel technology will investigate the dynamic chemical microenvironment in the seagrass rhizosphere and how this is modulated by environmental change and plant stress (e.g. effects of temperature, pH or eutrophication) in Zostera marina and Zostera noltei.

I intend to investigate the representation of genocidal perpetrators in documentaries from a narratological perspective. There is a large corpus of documentaries representing perpetrators. Many feature in-depth interviews with perpetrators and are directed by victims, who in some cases spent several years filming perpetrators. Yet despite this remarkable corpus of films, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the representation of perpetrators in academic literature. ‘Representing Perpetration’ will investigate documentary filmmakers’ political and ethical narrative strategies of representing genocidal perpetrators across four different genocides: The Holocaust, the 1965–1966 Indonesian massacres, the Cambodian genocide, and the genocide of the Tutsi. I will examine the ways in which documentary filmmakers reframe the perpetrators’ self-deceptions and seek to undermine (successfully or not) the perpetrators’ accounts of history. In so doing, many of these documentary filmmakers manage to wrestle testimonies of atrocities from those most invested in concealing them. Methodologically, I will use narratology to systematically analyse directors’ depiction of genocidal perpetrators. This approach is particularly suitable to investigate the double role these documentaries play in providing an evidentiary record of perpetrators’ testimonies but also in shaping the historical narrative in accordance with the directors’ ethics.

Frameworks for assessing the risk of invasive species under climate change are still not widely applied although biological invasions and climate change rank among the top threats to biodiversity, economy and human well-being globally. This is at least partly due to a lack of reliable predictions of invasion success and range dynamics under changing climates. Mechanistic and process-based models are theoretically well-suited to generate spatially explicit forecasts of species invasion risk, as they are ecologically realistic and allow accounting for species evolutionary potential. Their use however lags behind that of less data-demanding and relatively easy to use correlative tools. This project will therefore investigate the ecological and evolutionary factors determining when more complex but ecologically realistic mechanistic and process-based model approaches yield better forecasts of invasion risk than simple correlative tools. The project will combine a detailed investigation of well-known avian invader (the ring-necked parakeet) with a multi-species assessment of a large number of avian invaders in Europe and Australia. These invasions offer an exceptional model system for answering the questions at hand. This timely Fellowship answers to calls to move from patterns to processes, and as recent European legislation requires consideration of synergistic impacts of climate change on biological invasion risks, Fellowship outputs will relevant for policy as well. The host institute (CMEC) is at the forefront of macroecology and climate change biology, and brings worldwide access to excellent researchers with experience directly relevant for the Fellowship (C. Rahbek, M. Araújo, D. Nogués-Bravo). I will not only benefit from deepening my analytical skills and conceptual understanding of macroecological research frameworks, but CMEC’s training experience in academic leadership will enable me to reach a position of professional maturity at a high international level.

This project focuses on quantum automorphism groups of graphs and their connection to isomorphism games. We will investigate physically observable quantum behaviours, prove self-testing theorems and foster a two-way exchange between quantum groups and quantum information. The latter connection relies on quantum isomorphisms of graphs, which are defined as perfect quantum strategies of isomorphism games. Quantum isomorphisms from a graph to itself have been shown to be equivalent to quantum automorphisms, in the setting of quantum automorphism groups. One of the main questions that the project aims to understand are nonlocal symmetries of graphs. Those are quantum symmetries of graphs coming from non-classical quantum strategies of the corresponding isomorphism game. Interestingly, there are graphs that have quantum symmetry, but all quantum strategies are equivalent to classical ones. Thus, there is a difference between the considered model of reality and our observations of reality. Understanding this phenomenon will enable us to provide new examples of pairs of quantum isomorphic, non-isomorphic graphs. Another objective is to obtain self-testing theorems for isomorphism games. In the language of nonlocal games, self-testing means that any near perfect strategy is close to some fixed reference strategy. Self-testing theorems of linear binary constraint systems will be studied to transfer them to the isomorphism game setting. The project aims also to use recent results in quantum information theory for addressing open questions in quantum groups. On the one hand, giving examples of quantum automorphism groups of graphs that are not residually finite dimensional. On the other hand, figuring out the complexity of computing quantum symmetry and nonlocal symmetry.