Due to climate change, mismanagement and multiple use conflicts, the socio-ecological integrity of rivers has become a globally critical issue. This project aims to develop and test innovative solutions addressing the river crisis, and formulate recommendations to upscale this know-how to other hydrological and cultural contexts beyond Europe, based on thematical studies in the Rhine and other European rivers. The 18 months Seed Money project will reinforce the Eucor partners working on interdisciplinary methods and solutions, aiming at practical science-policy transfer in the context of riverscape management, perform transboundary fact-finding workshops in cooperation with the local stakeholders, generate a competitive proposal including Eucor partners for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Doctoral Network (DN) with about 15 PhD theses. Theses will be jointly elaborated and supervised by an international team of experts, in close cooperation with the new Eucor MSc. course and the new Eucor Excellence Chair on Water Sustainability, interacting and fostering further European projects.
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Funding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
Minimal-invasive surgeries have many advantages for the patient, but are more demanding for the surgeons than conventional open surgeries. In particular, the surgeon does not have a direct view on the surgical site because surgical instruments are inserted into the patient through small openings. So, a minimally invasive camera, i.e. an endoscope, is required that has to be manipulated by an assistant while the operating surgeon guides the surgical tools. In many cases, the surgical team is set up in an ad-hoc fashion and the collaboration between surgeon and his/her assistant is not optimal. Alternatively, we propose robot-assisted minimal invasive surgeries, where a robot guides an endoscope according to the desire of the surgeon. While the articulated robotic endoscope (i.e. an endoscope with discrete joints and rigid links like a finger) visualizes the surgical site in a stable way, machine learning algorithms ensure that the endoscope “knows” which object to focus on to provide the desired view for the surgeon. In summary, the project aims at the development, investigation, and validation of a controllable articulated endoscope camera. The project is led by the University of Basel and carried out in cooperation with the KIT.
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Funding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The Cuivrality project is dedicated to the development of new chiral coordination complexes with a central copper atom (CuI) that exist as image and mirror image complexes. Each molecule of this pair of molecules will be obtained separately. When these complexes are organized together, they will form larger units that are stabilized. These units are of scientific interest because of their optical properties related to polarized light. The project is led by the University of Strasbourg and carried out in collaboration with the KIT.
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Funding Line "Teaching"
The collaborative project “3D Human Movement Studies” seeks to combine scientific and teaching experience in the field of human movement analysis in a joint teaching concept. The
project brings together four different Master's programs in movement analysis offered at the Universities of Basel, Freiburg and KIT. By combining the different methodological and content-related emphases, the aim is to enhance the quality of teaching in sports science and biomedical engineering. An elective joint teaching course between the working groups as well as an exchange on a PhD student level and student level will be established. The project is led by the University of Freiburg and is carried out in cooperation with the University of Basel and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Funding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The project “Smart functional sequence-defined oligomers and polymers incorporating rigid cyclodextrin host molecules” in the field of supramolecular chemistry examines various possible applications of cyclodextrins as renewable host molecules that have high attractiveness as cheap and sustainable building blocks. In combination with sequence-defined oligomers, they will serve to access to new types of highly selective catalysts. In turn, by combining cyclodextrins with sustainable cross-linked polymers, environmentally friendly and reusable materials for the design of sustainable water purification systems will be prepared. The project is led by the University of Strasbourg and is carried out in cooperation with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
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Funding Line "Teaching"
Sustainability challenges are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and international. The project “Interdisciplinary student research lab in the Upper Rhine Region” tests an innovative interdisciplinary and internationally oriented seminar format in the field of sustainability. A team of students from different disciplines (psychology, industrial engineering, geography) from the universities of Basel, Strasbourg and the KIT will conduct their own research by dealing with a specific research question in the field of energy and mobility transition. The project concludes with an evaluation of how this teaching format can be implemented in the study programs’ curricula on a long-term basis. The project is led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and is carried out in cooperation with the University of Strasbourg and the University of Basel.
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Funding Line "Teaching"
With the new Master Course “MWS – European Master in Continental Water Sustainability”, the four Eucor universities of Strasbourg, Haute-Alsace, KIT and Freiburg aim to train a new generation of experts with interdisciplinary competences in the field of continental water management. Based on the insight that the interactions between humans and the environment as well as the identification of tipping points are becoming increasingly complex, the researchers from France and Germany are convinced that sustainable management in the field of socio-hydrosystems requires experts at the interface of natural, social, and engineering sciences. The problem- and practice-oriented training is based on the existing cooperation in the Upper Rhine region. After an initial test phase, the project partners would like to offer the Master programme as a two-year programme with other partners from the Eucor network.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The LIFT project (Foundations in the Upper Rhine territories) coming from to field of social sciences and humanities intends to share knowledge on foundations and their actions in the Upper Rhine Region. The objective is to identify the strategies of foundations and their interactions with territorial actors and governments within a multidisciplinary framework. The main expected results are the creation of a knowledge database on the Upper Rhine foundations as well as the preparation of an Interreg project in 2025, associating researchers and territorial partners. The project is led by the Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) and is carried out in cooperation with the universities of Basel, Freiburg, Strasbourg as well as the KIT.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The project intends to lay the foundation for a new, interdisciplinary field of research on functional gradient polymeric materials. In general, functionally gradient materials are defined by a progressive variation in composition, microstructure, or atomic order in one or more dimensions, determining a gradual change of a material property as a function of position. Four research groups will work jointly on the generation of such functionally gradient materials in 1D molecular redox-active polymer chains, 2D multi-stimuli-responsive polymer surfaces and mesoscopic hydrogel particles.
MoreFunding Line "Teaching"
The Upper Rhine Graben is world-renowned for its geothermal resources, which already provide renewable thermal energy. The goal of the Geothermal Master Field School is the transnational education of next-generation experts through an innovative, annual 9-day field school. Held in Northern Alsace (France), in direct vicinity to the geothermal sites in Soultz-sous-Forêts and Rittershoffen, the course will teach students to apply theoretical geoscience concepts on the evolution of a deep geothermal system from exploration to exploitation. The course thus exposes students to real-world decision-making processes related to the industrial exploitation of renewable georesources.
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Funding Line "Teaching"
The aim of this biology project is to create a common cross-border curriculum designed to train researchers of excellence in plant sciences.
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Funding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The project in particle physics is headed by the University of Strasbourg and will be implemented jointly with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In jointly supervised master’s theses, students will examine the extent to which newly developed tracking detectors will provide new insights if they are incorporated into the Japanese “Belle II” experiment in a future upgrade. In addition to particle beam experiments in international research laboratories in Germany, expert talks will also be held in Japan.
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Funding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
In a joint yearly seminar on datascience, students from the University of Strasbourg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology form international teams to engage in a software development project. Project outcomes will be individual dashboards applications for data analysis and visualization. The (best) student dashboards will be integrated into a common technological platform. Over time, this platform will thus develop into a growing suit of dashboards for science, technology and innovation analyses. It will be made available especially to students in less technically oriented programs and the public at large.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is the analysis of the conditions necessary for setting up a more efficient and flexible network for the production, distribution and storage of sustainable energies in the Upper Rhine.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
“Quantum machine learning” sits at the interface of quantum mechanics and machine learning, exploring how results and techniques from one field can be used to solve the problems of the other. The project aims at establishing a close-knit community of students and researchers with international visibility and organising an Eucor-wide workshop on “Quantum Machine Learning” with the intention to prepare coordinated research funding applications across these fields in 2020/21.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
In order to contribute to developing innovative and complementary approaches to fight against cancer, the partners aim at understanding how CXCR4 signalling complexes form and how this impacts cytotoxic lymphocytes (CTL) behaviour by using proteomics, in vivo targeting and computational modelling. As CXCR4 plays an important role in CTL reactivation, more insight about its regulation in space and time may provide novel information with therapeutic potential for improving immune checkpoint therapy (ICT).
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The project focuses on the problem of notably metallic micro pollutants in the context of the decommissioning of nuclear facilities. At the Fessenheim site, extensive analyses will be performed associated with the assessment of the potential mobility of these micro pollutants in the ecosphere. As part of the project, a comprehensive methodology – transferable to various industrial places and scenarios – will be developed. The partners will set up a cross-border competence center in the frame of Eucor – European Campus, dealing with respective environmental analyses and their assessment.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
The scholars from the history of literature and culture examine the connection between the discourses of “psychology” and “esotericism” from the 18th to the 20th century (with a focus on Goethe’s time and classical modernism). They start from the hypothesis that both schools of thought overlap in the concept of the unconscious, with the result that this unconscious acquires a metaphysical dimension. The project is located at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and will be realised together with all other Eucor universities.
MoreFunding Line "Research, innovation and transfer"
In order to exploit the potential in the field of molecular chemistry across borders, the trinational cluster “Clus-MolChem-1” will be established, which initially focuses on the catalysis process. The aim of the network is to achieve new research results and to train highly qualified chemists. The cluster plans to award short-term funding to initiate new projects and organize an international symposium in the field of molecular chemistry. The project is managed by the University of Upper Alsace and will be implemented with all other Eucor universities.
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