Marine polychaete worms (Annelida) are key organisms in marine benthic ecosystems. They have important roles from decomposers to consumers and due to their burrowing lifestyle, they actively participate in oxygenation of sediments maintaining benthic ecosystem health. Polychaetes are known to host protistan symbionts (gregarines), which themselves are infected my microsporidian parasites, forming a tripartite symbiosis. Symbiotic interactions have been of fundamental importance in ecological and evolutionary processes through the history of life, and have ultimately shaped the biodiversity we witness today. However, the polychaete-gregarine-microsporidian tripartite interaction has not been studied before and it is unclear how these interactions affect the polychaetes. Consequently, it is unclear how the the tripartite symbiosis might affect the functioning of benthic ecosystems. One reason behind this knowledge gap is the difficulty of applying experimental approaches with marine hosts and symbionts that are unculturable. With PolyPro3 specifically aiming to resolve the nature of the tripartite symbiosis and the diversity of the interaction by using state-of-the-art molecular methods combined with traditional ecological fieldwork, I will bring a significant step forward in addressing this key gap of knowledge. I will use differential transcriptomics and quantitative methods to disentangle the interaction, and a large spatial scale field sampling across the opening of the Baltic Sea combined with metabarcoding approach to describe the diversity and specificity of polychaete-gregarine-microsporidian tripartite symbiosis. PolyPro3 will also provide novel insights into the impacts of the tripartite symbiosis on the functioning and stability of important benthic habitats and provide effective means for investigation of other marine symbioses. Lastly, PolyPro3 significantly adds to the knowledge on neglected biodiversity of polychaete associated marine protists.

TeCh-Coast aims to understand how past populations have used tools and what technological choices they have made to deal with the coastal environment. On the southern Norway seashore, the Late Mesolithic (6300-4500 cal BC) sites constitute a unique knowledge repository of coastal hunter-gatherer populations, in which stone-knapped tools are the most frequent artifacts. However, very little is known about the use of these to exploit coastal resources. How and for what were these tools used? How does their use reflect socially transmitted technological knowledge to exploit coastal resources? Through an innovative and interdisciplinary techno-functional approach, TeCh-Coast aims to bring new functional data on the use of lithic tools to further understand the technological choices of coastal populations. Analyses of the plastic deformations on the surface of the tools due to their use (i.e. use-wears) will be performed on three preselected lithic assemblages. In addition, an experimental analytical program will be set to identify quantifiable wear attributes in lithic tools resulting from the exploitation of marine animal resources by means of confocal scanning microscopy. Finally, by combining observations with a dynamic technological approach and landscape archaeology, the project will aim to identify the technological choices of the coastal groups. More widely, the present project will provide a broader perspective on the Atlantic European seashore, allowing cross-regional comparisons with other coastal groups. The TeCh-Coast project results will have an important impact on the research of the coastal Stone Age hunter-gatherer populations, as well as bring new methodological perspectives to use-wear studies. The results will be disseminated by open-access publications and outreach activities. Through a prehistoric perspective, the project aims to engage in the social debate about the role of technology in the exploitation of environmental resources in the present.

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.

The SCIENTIA-FELLOWS II (SF-II) proposal is based on of the FP7-funded SCIENTIA-FELLOWS programme (http://www.med.uio.no/english/research/scientia-fellows/) coordinated by the University of Oslo. The original programme has recruited over 80 researchers and provided excellent training in both research and transferable skills. SCIENTIA-FELLOWS developed into a highly successful programme in Health Sciences that attracted talented researchers from the whole world. UiO will take the programme to the next level, into a broader European context. SF-II will introduce new aspects such as a strong innovation component, new industry and academic partners (including from the Less Represented Countries), inter-sectoral opportunities and new training features in both research and transferable skills. These novel aspects, with diversified training options and exposure to cross-sectoral cooperation will further enhance the experienced researchers’ career prospects and prepare them for leadership positions in research, where scientific and transferable skills are improved with a strong insight into the importance of ethics and gender balance. The new programme will also benefit from the vast experience of the previous edition and from a review performed by independent experts. New SCIENTIA-FELLOWS II will meet the challenges presented in Horizon 2020 and develop into a European knowledge and innovation hub for the benefit of academic and industrial researchers. Through the SF-II researchers will also benefit from the influx of public and private funding available to develop and establish early stage companies in the European context. Through SF-II, the programme partners will establish a symbiotic environment where training, research excellence and innovation will contribute to fueling European economic growth and development of a new generation of researchers and research leaders with experience both in academia and industry cultures to broadly support European excellence.