SHIFT-GEN investigates how narratives of climate change can affect young generations, proposing the first extensive study of young adult climate fiction (YA cli-fi) in English (2000-2023; interest age: 13-19 years). Emerging studies reveal that the chronic fear of environmental catastrophe is particularly affecting young people’s daily life. Feelings of climate anxiety and ecogrief are amplified by a sense of intergenerational injustice, with the so-called climate generation often portrayed as an innocent victim that adults are failing to protect. By adopting an ecocritical perspective, my research will examine whether YA cli-fi portrays young adults as assertive leaders and protagonists, shaping their own future. Moreover, combining recent developments in ecocriticism - namely econarratology, affective ecocriticism, and empirical ecocriticism - this project will investigate whether YA cli-fi is able to prompt the development of ecological citizenship, communicate fears and hopes about the future, and inspire creative thinking and long-term action. Given its scope and purpose, the proposed research is a timely contribution to current ecological debates and can offer significant insights on the connection between the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, engaging in a One Health approach. This three-year action will be undertaken under the supervision of Prof. R. Baccolini (UNIBO) and Prof. E. James (UIDAHO), and includes a secondment supervised by Prof. M. Caracciolo (UGENT). It will comprise a transversal training and the acquisition of transferable skills, as well as a targeted program of dissemination and communication activities. The project will also undertake citizen science research engaging with university students of the Emilia-Romagna region to explore the impact of YA cli-fi on young readers’ climate change emotions, thus employing the theoretical categories of the project to reflect on local communities and fragile landscapes.

InBoRC wants to design a more plural and complex image of the Roman city to integrate and go beyond the classical vision based on the élite and characterised by a top-down approach. As such, it focuses on the social, economic and political impact of middling groups in the city from the Late Republic to the 3rd c. AD. In order to do that the research is based on the study of the intermediate bodies of the cities – social aggregational cores intermediate between the family and the city – which are our best indicator of the civic action of this stratum of population. The project will mainly focus on the epigraphical sources coming from the cities of Roman Italy. However, InBoRC is not geographically strictly limited, but it is nourished by punctual parallels coming from the epigraphical documentation of Roman provinces. The main goals of this research are: i) analyse the sociability of these groups, and ii) study their agency in the civic life. The principal outcome of the project will be a monograph built on a multidisciplinary approach involving epigraphy, Roman history, sociology, economic and urban history, and archaeology. As a support of the monograph, I will provide digital open data of the inscriptions analysed in the text. Ancient texts will be encoded and enriched with metadata (city, people, institutions, etc.) using EpiDoc XML language in order to integrate new open linked data within existing European e-infrastructures (eg. Trismegistos, EDH, EDR). These goals will be achieved by a unique combination of “hands-on” research training, courses and workshops on scientific and complementary so-called “soft” skills facilitated by Brown University, ANHIMA Research Center, and the University of Bologna. The success of this project will allow me to assume fixed term tenure track position and eventually to obtain the position of Associate Professor at UNIBO.

A pressing challenge in synthetic chemistry is developing sustainable methods to convert abundant feedstocks into valuable chiral products. The DESY-HAT project addresses this by pioneering new catalytic techniques, powered by visible light, to achieve stereoselective functionalization of carbon–hydrogen (C–H) bonds, the most ubiquitous moiety in organic molecules. Specifically, the project aims to access complex chiral molecules directly from readily available C–H substrates, including natural products, through enantioselective C–H functionalization via Hydrogen Atom Transfer (HAT) processes. The DESY-HAT project focuses on using HAT to selectively target C(sp³)–H bonds in symmetrical and meso substrates. The resulting desymmetrization processes will provide direct access to highly enantioenriched chiral products. This innovative approach, combining HAT with enantioselective organocatalysis, is a largely unexplored frontier in the field. The project will develop HAT desymmetrization strategies and apply them for enantioselective C(sp³)–C(sp³) and C(sp³)–heteroatom bond formation. The project benefits from the Melchiorre group’s expertise in radical photochemistry and organocatalysis and will receive industrial guidance from Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals to identify suitable C–H substrates and assist with scaling up processes to practical applications. Through this interdisciplinary research, DESY-HAT will generate chiral compounds with biologically relevant frameworks, advancing the field of asymmetric synthesis while providing me with crucial skills for the next stage of my career.

REMoTIon proposes an innovative Compact Resonant Wave Barrier (CRWB) to mitigate railway-induced ground vibrations. Engineering implementation of current pile barriers is limited due to their large dimensions, especially in city centers. Instead, by exploiting the locally resonant metamaterials concept, the proposed research framework allows for designing barriers with practical engineering dimensions. The main research objectives of the project include: (i) analytical design of CRWB guided by dispersion laws by employing Multiple Scattering theory, (ii) numerical design and optimization of CRWB exploiting a mixed wave finite element method and machine learning technique, and (iii) fabrication and testing of CRWB on the field. The development of the REMoTIon project demands a multidisciplinary approach that can be guided through a multi-phase learning journey at three academic institutions involved: PennState University (18-months outgoing phase, supervisor Prof. Shokouhi, expert in wave propagation and machine learning), KU Leuven (6-months secondment phase, supervisor Prof. Degrande, expert in train-induced vibrations), University of Bologna (12-months return phase, supervisor Prof. Marzani expert in surface wave measurement, material testing, and prototyping). Under the guidance of these experts, new expertise in ground-borne vibration abatement, wave propagation in heterogeneous soil, machine learning, and signal processing will be achieved through a high-level training-through-research framework. Attending training courses, publishing research results in top international journals, and obtaining new transversal skills will reinforce my career and put me in a privileged place for a tenured researcher position in EU academia working on metamaterials. The REMoTIon project will be organized into 6 work packages (WPs). WP1 to WP3 will cover the objectives, while WP4 to WP6 will include the research training, exploitation/dissemination, and project management phases.