The proposed action titled “ECoSync” aims to incorporate computational modelling as a pivotal framework for elucidating the intricate dynamics of social bonding. This new framework is crucial for the European Work Programme in the current global crises. The action perfectly aligns with the Programme's vision of addressing pressing societal challenges for the well-being and stability of European communities. Recognizing the profound impact of emotions on human well-being, this research endeavors to uncover the underlying mechanisms that govern the emergence of social bonding. The action includes training in computational modelling and fundamental research in musical performance. It highlights interpersonal synchronization as a method for cultivating strong interpersonal connections. Understanding the interplay between emotions and interpersonal synchronization in musical interaction opens up new avenues for exploration, supporting resilience and recovery in the context of global adversity through social bonding. To quantify the processes underlying the formation of social bonds, we will execute a sequence of three work packages (i.e., WP2-WP4). These work packages will synergistically integrate cutting-edge methodologies from nonlinear dynamical systems, social and affective neurosciences, and music psychology. WP2 will focus on the computational mapping of emotional effects on interpersonal coupling. In WP3, we will validate and refine the model through empirical dyadic musical interaction, leveraging advanced motion capture and physiological techniques. In WP4, we will investigate how emotions influence group synchronization and its subsequent impact on social bonding. Finally, the action’s international mobility and training in research will broaden the applicant's academic portfolio and develop extensive experience as well as professional connections, furthering the advancement of the applicant's career as an independent researcher.

COORDINATE will do political psychology with infants to reveal meaningful mechanisms for coordinating resource distribution so basic that they manifest even in the preverbal mind. The distribution of resources, help, territory and priority decision rights are central dilemmas for group-living species and the core of politics. Navigating these dilemmas, young children must discover the structure of their social world: who is friend or foe, superior or subordinate, and what does this mean for how people interact? To solve this learnability problem, I argue that early- and reliably-developing core representations and motives have evolved for navigating basic kinds of social relationships with critical adaptive value. Consistent with this theoretical proposal, I discovered that preverbal human infants mentally represent social dominance and, like other animals, use relative size to predict the outcome of zero-sum conflict, spawning a new field of research (Thomsen et al, 2011, Science). However, human society is also defined by reciprocity and by distributing resources according to need, effort and prior possession, yet it remains unknown if these coordination mechanism are inscribed already in the preverbal mind. Here, we test the high-risk proposals that 1) preverbal infants expect direct reciprocity to govern resource donations; 2) infants and preschoolers use gratitude to predict the future reciprocal altruism of others; 3) infants also use asymmetries of prior possession, hunger need and relative effort to predict who will prevail in resource conflict; 4) that beyond the dyadic and triadic relationships typically studied in the field, preschoolers and preverbal infants use the abstract structural forms of pyramidal hierarchy, clique and lines to represent the group relationships of social hierarchy, communality and equality, respectively. These mechanisms likely operate intuitively across life and so we will test if they undergird political ideology and -psychology

The quantification of past plate motions is of paramount importance to advancing our understanding of Earth’s evolution. Plate motions of the last ~130 Ma are well-resolved from magnetic isochrons and hotspot tracks, but as those records are progressively destroyed by subduction, they cannot be used in deeper time. Before 130 Ma, plate motions can only be quantified through the study of paleomagnetism, but analytical limitations have so-far prevented us from using this tool to its full potential. For example, owing to the axial symmetry of the Earth’s magnetic field, the determination of paleolongitude from paleomagnetic data –although theoretically possible– has long been considered an intractable problem. TANGO will capitalize on this untapped potential through an innovative and cross-disciplinary approach integrating modern data-science techniques into paleomagnetic research, thereby opening a new research frontier. Aiming to contribute towards the neglected issue of paleomagnetic precision, I will focus on state-of-the-art computer-intensive statistical methods to provide the conceptual basis for a much needed probabilistic framework for paleomagnetic research. These efforts will allow me to provide paleogeographic reconstructions with uncertainty estimates for the first time. With that framework, through application of unsupervised learning methods, I will also be able to tackle the outstanding problem of paleolongitude determination in deep geologic time, which remains one of the most important challenges in modern geophysics. Such novel and quantitative methods development is strongly complementary to the core research efforts at CEED (University of Oslo) to explore the missing links between plate tectonics and mantle evolution. In this pursuit, TANGO will reinforce the international and multidisciplinary dimension of my early stage career and will allow the European Union to remain at the cutting-edge of paleomagnetic and tectonic-related research.

We are at a pivotal time in climate action. To fight climate change, we need to accelerate scale-up of clean energy technologies, like fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries, which underpin our energy transition. A major bottleneck in accelerating rational design of next-generation devices is the non-optimal, heterogenous, and often stochastic nature of porous materials within these devices. A vital design parameter of porous materials is pore-scale wettability, which can fundamentally alter transport of species, and thereby dictate device performance. However, we do not yet know the ideal wettability configuration to design our devices around due to fundamental gaps in our understanding of mixed wettability. In this project, I plan to synergistically combine three fields – physics, energy engineering, and automation – to provide a fundamental blueprint to design two-phase flow in next-generation energy materials. First, I will create a microfluidic platform to conduct high-throughput experiments and statistically analyse the effect of a wide range of wettability combinations on flow patterns. State-of-the-art wettability models will be advanced and validated using experiments and create a “mixed-wet phase diagram”. I will then computationally explore the established phase diagram to create designer porous materials with directed transport properties for energy application. Then, superior computational designs will be tested experimentally to cross-validate model capabilities and propose porous media for energy applications (with a focus on water transport in fuel cells). The multi-disciplinary physics-informed design strategy employed in the study is expected to benefit diverse clean energy technologies, with potential applications in microfluidic disease diagnosis and other engineered flow systems.

This project proposes the first systematic study of Coptic apocrypha covering the entire timespan of Coptic literary production, and it aims to do so with unprecedented methodological sophistication. Apocrypha is here defined as (1) texts and traditions that develop or expand upon characters and events of the biblical storyworld; (2) and/or contain a claim to authorship by a character from that storyworld or a direct witness to it. A great number of such apocryphal texts and traditions has been preserved in Coptic manuscripts from the fourth to the twelfth centuries. Most of these texts are attributed to apostles or other important early Christian figures, and over time such materials were also increasingly embedded in pseudepigraphical frames, such as in homilies attributed to later, but still early, heroes of the Church. The manuscripts in which this literature has been preserved were almost exclusively produced and used in Egyptian monasteries. Although the use of such apocrypha were at times controversial, the evidence clearly indicates the widespread use of such literature in Coptic monasteries over centuries, and this project will investigate the contents, development, and functions of apocrypha over time, as they were copied, adapted, and used in changing socio-religious contexts over time. The period covered by the project saw drastic changes in the religious landscape of Egypt, from its Christianity having a dominant position in the fourth century, through the marginalization of Egyptian Christianity in relation to the imperial Chalcedonian Church after 451, to a period of increasing marginalization in relation to Islam following the Arab conquest of Egypt in the mid-seventh century. The project will investigate how these changing contexts are reflected in the Coptic apocrypha that were copied and used in Egyptian monasteries, and what functions they had for their users throughout the period under investigation.