Perspective taking, the ability to take another person's perspective, is instrumental in building successful and harmonious partnerships, from romantic relationships to international cooperation. Yet, failure to achieve perspective taking, or egocentrism, is increasingly observed in clinical and healthy populations. Fortunately, perspective taking is a skill that can be acquired through training, but, to date, existing training has only yielded limited results. This project aims to conduct the first epidemiological study of egocentrism (i.e. to assess its prevalence in Europe, its severity, its psycho-sociological determinants, and its consequences on mental health and well-being) and the first large-scale perspective-taking training intervention for both healthy and clinical populations. By distinguishing the profiles of egocentrism and identifying their key determinants, Work Package (WP) 1 will assess perspective-taking performance (and associated psycho-sociological factors) in Alzheimer, addictive disorder, anorexic, and forensic patients and in matched healthy control participantss. Building on the Supervisor’s team expertise in devising and conducting training interventions, WP2 will devise and conduct intervention programs tailored to the distinct egocentrism profiles in the same populations as WP1. WP3 will export the WP1-WP2 methodology into a free web-based assessment and training tool to conduct the epidemiological study and the large-scale training intervention in the general population, from adolescents to seniors. The assessment and training tool will be made available to all clinicians, researchers and all other actors to foster further uses such as for youth education programs, support programs for caregivers, or mental health promotion programs targeting vulnerable populations.

The development of science and technology provides the availability of sophisticated products but concurrently, increases the use of combustible materials, in particular organic materials. Those materials are easily flammable and must be flame retarded to make them safer. In case of fire, people must be protected by materials confining and stopping fire. It is one of the goals of the FireBar-Concept project to design materials and assembly of materials exhibiting low flammability, protecting substrates and limiting fire spread. The objective of FireBar-Concept is to make a fire barrier formed at the right time, at the right location and reacting accordingly against thermal constraint (fire scenario). This fire barrier can be developed in several ways according to the chemical nature of the material and/or of its formulation: - Heat barrier formed by inherently flame retarded materials (e.g. mineral fibers, ceramic …) and exhibiting low thermal conductivity (note the assembly of those materials can also provide low thermal conductivity controlling porosity and its distribution) - Evolution of reactive radicals poisoning the flame and forming a protective ‘umbrella’ avoiding the combustion of the material - Additives promoting charring of the materials and forming an expanding carbonaceous protective coating or barrier (intumescence) - Additives forming a physical barrier limiting mass transfer of the degradation products to the flame The FireBar-Concept project is multidisciplinary and it requires expertise in material science, chemical engineering, chemistry, thermal science and physics. The approach is to make 5 actions linked together by transverse developments (3) according to this scheme: (i) fundamentals of fire barrier, (ii) multi-material and combination of concepts, (iii) modeling and numerical simulation, (iv) design and development of experimental protocols and (v) optimization of the systems.

The aim of the project is two-fold. One goal is to employ techniques from smooth 4-dimensional topology in the study of deformations of isolated surface singularities. More specifically the project aims at advancing in the study of smoothings of rational surface singularities by means of gauge-theoretic invariants as well as lattice-theoretic combinatorial techniques. A conjecture of Kollar regarding a class of rational surface singularities with a unique smoothing will be considered. The conjecture has natural symplectic and topological counterparts. The plan consists in proving the topological version and investigating the extent to which this version of the problem can lead to advancements in the original conjecture. Another primary goal is to investigate properties of the 3-dimensional rational homology sphere group, such as n-divisibility and torsion, via constructions involving rational cuspidal curves in possibly singular homology planes. In this context a first specific goal is producing examples of 3-manifolds which are either Seifert fibered spaces or obtained via Dehn surgery on an algebraic knots which are 2-divisible in the rational homology sphere group. In a similar setting it will be investigated the extent to which rational homology balls bounded by integral surgeries on torus knots can be realized algebraically.

## Project outline: Ground-breaking rethinking of the user-computer relationship We aim to develop an ERC Synergy Grant project that will redefine the relation between the user and computer program, grounding it in a historically-anchored broad notion of literacy. Leveraging this foundational rethinking of computer literacy, we develop a new framework centered on the novel concept of Literate User Interface (LUI). The integration of historical and epistemological research methods into fields that are usually future-oriented is a basic methodological innovation of our proposal. It enables us to provide a realistic vision for the future which (i) is based on a deeper understanding of the current situation and the social and technical forces shaping it, (ii) makes it possible to uncover original conceptualizations and techniques from past movements which have been forgotten or which have been reshaped historically to become unrecognizable and (iii) provides an understanding of why visions on the future from the past failed to materialize. ## Research objective I: The concept of a Literate User Interface (LUI) We will (i) develop the concept of Literate User Interface (LUI) as a basic new approach for building systems that can be understood and controlled by their users, focusing on the level of the (socio-technical) system rather than on a particular programming language; (ii) implement concrete materializations of the concept showing its viability and (iii) use human-centric research methods to build systems that enable the user to steadily reconceptualize their relation to programs. ## Research objective II: New approach to computer education We use a transdisciplinary research method to establish a broad notion of computer literacy. We will (i) integrate historical perspective into education in order to provide accessible broad perspective, (ii) precisely characterize a broad notion of literacy, shifting from small-scale coding towards broad-scale understanding of systems and their consequences and (iii) develop specific educational materials based on systems that implement our notion of Literate User Interface to show that such broad notion can lead to a deep understanding of realistic complex computer systems. ## Transdisciplinary collaborative methodology The only feasible approach for realizing these objectives is through a transdisicplinary method bringing together four main areas of research: (i) computer science education, (ii) history and philosophy of computing, (iii) foundations of computer programming, and (iv) human-centric interface design. Our current proposal goes beyond narrow disciplinary approaches within history, philosophy, education and computer science. It brings those fields together and places them on equal footing to work on one and the same problem: how to solve the literacy crisis? Due to its transdisciplinary nature, a ground-breaking ERC Synergy Grant project proposal can only be developed in a close collaboration with academic and industry experts across multiple disciplines. The requested funding will make it possible to organize the necessary series of workshops and research meetings, leading to an ERC Synergy Grant proposal submitted in autumn 2025.