The aim of SMNS research is to comprehensively understand changes in biodiversity at all levels – from genetic diversity to the diversity of species and communities to the level of ecosystems – over geological timescales. SMNS investigates how the diversity of organisms, species communities and interactions has developed in the course of evolution, discerning patterns of change over time and which biotic and abiotic environmental drivers are responsible for this. The SMNS investigates both evolutionary and anthropogenic influences on biodiversity across different temporal and spatial scales.
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Our expertise encompasses a wide variety of organisms, from charismatic Indonesian tarsiers under threat of extinction to thermophilic neophytes that have spread rapidly and conquered new habitats in the past decades in response to rising temperatures. From giant fossil marine reptiles that were dreaded top predators of the Jurassic Sea to millimeter-sized parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs in other insect larvae, preventing agricultural pests. With more than 12 million specimens in our collection and cutting-edge facilities, we investigate this diversity to unravel the uniqueness of each specimen. It is the fascinating stories behind each specimen that we convey not only in scientific articles but also to our visitors in the exhibition. Be it the first evidence of cancer from 240 million years ago, the predation among giant marine reptiles, as evidenced by bite marks or how the evolution of mouthparts contributed to the diversity we see in some hyperdiverse insect groups.
Through close collaborations, such as with the particle accelerator at KIT, we are able to use synchrotron radiation to create three-dimensional models of insects trapped in amber millions of years ago or visualize the behavior of live parasitoid wasps moving in their host.
We regularly carry out expeditions and paleontological excavations. Both in the vicinity, where many world-famous fossil deposits are easily accessible and also worldwide, with many highly important findings. They range from small, such as the oldest fossil hummingbird to the probably heaviest animal that ever lived on earth: Perucetus colossus. Our scientists describe new species from the meadows and forests in the area where most people would not expect to find the unknown. But also from remote areas such as cave systems across Europe, tropical rainforests or the islands of New Caledonia. We do this together with institutions and researchers from the area and maintain close collaborations that allow for capacity building and vice versa knowledge exchange on an eye level. We are active members in several networks, through which we are able to join forces with other natural history museums, universities and research institutions of all kinds to conduct large-scale projects, such as the German Barcode of Life.
The Science and Research Centre Koper (ZRS Koper) works on an interdisciplinary basis, involving humanities, social and natural sciences, with special emphasis given to the research in the specific environments of the Mediterranean and the upper Adriatic region.
Read More The main activities are:
– basic and applied research, production of professional expertise and counseling, education, organisation of scientific meetings, publishing and editorial activities, librarianship .
ZRS Koper is actively integrating in international scientific cooperation and is connecting with many similar organisations worldwide.
Researchers are also actively involved in academic process at all three Slovene public universities, thus ensuring the transfer of research results into the educational sphere.
History of ZRS Koper
The Science and Research Centre of the Republic of Slovenia, Koper (ZRS Koper) was founded on the 1st December 1994 by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia as well as the community of coastal municipalities (as legal successor of all three coastal municipalities: Koper City Municipality, Izola Municipality and Piran Municipality) and the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
During the years 2003 to 2015 ZRS Koper acted as a member of the University of Primorska and was it’s main research hub. Nine ZRS Koper institutes carried out an enviable job, many internationally recognized researchers have enabled the transfer of knowledge to dozens of study programs.
Aiming for responsible design of its own future, the ZRS Koper researchers strive for a new form of organization. Following the decision of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, a public research institute, the Science and Research Centre Koper was established on 26 November 2016.
For 60 years, the Institut d’études européennes of the Université libre de Bruxelles (IEE-ULB) has been at the forefront of the study of the European institutions and the evolutions of European integration. The interdisciplinary research at the IEE-ULB is based on the contributions of researchers and academics representing 13 disciplinary research centres and units from across 5 Faculties: the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Law and Criminology; the Faculty of Arts, Translation, and Communication; the Faculty of Psychology, Education Sciences and Speech Therapy; and Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management.
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As a scientific platform at the crossroads of several departmental research centres, the IEE conducts, coordinates, promotes, facilitates and publicizes specific interdisciplinary activities on European issues. Overall, understanding the institutions, policies and dynamics of integration associated with the EU requires considering them in the context of globalization. This has seen the IEE’s approach evolve into a so-called concentric one. This concentric research agenda is organized along four transversal research themes grouping researchers from all of the aforementioned disciplines:
• Europe as an area of freedom, security and justice – Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the maintenance and development of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice has been one of the European Union’s objectives. The IEE-ULB’s first crosscutting area of research is devoted to studying this objective.
• Europe as an area of economic and social regulation – The IEE-ULB’s second area of research addresses European policy-making by dealing with the most important areas in view of an understanding of European integration: economic governance, territories and regional policy, common market and social issues.
• Europe as a community of norms and values – The IEE-ULB’s third crosscutting area of research focusses on cooperation processes, processes of identification and conflict generated by European integration and their role in the legitimization of the EU as a political entity.
• Europe in the world – The IEE-ULB ‘Europe in the World’ crosscutting area of research examines the European Union in terms of global governance; i.e. the interactions between global policy and European policies.
The WZB Berlin Social Science Center conducts basic research on problems of modern societies in a globalized world. The research is theory-based, problem-oriented, often long-term, and mostly based on international comparisons. Around 200 scientists from various disciplines work together at the WZB, mainly from sociology, political science, economics, and law. Our research areas are dynamics of social inequalities, society, and economic dynamics, international politics and law, dynamics of political systems, migration and diversity, and political economy of development.
The Herder Institute supports a wide range of scientific activities on the historical and cultural development of East Central Europe through its research, knowledge transfer, documentation and digitalization departments. The focus of interest is on Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well as the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. An important concern is the joint exploration of the interrelation of this core region with its neighbors (above all Germany, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia) in a comparative pan-European context. For several years now, the Digital Humanities have been a major focus of the institute’s work, both in the area of digital and social infrastructure development as well as in research and career development.
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The unique collections consist of a research library on the history and culture of East Central Europe, which now contains more than half a million media units, including a music collection, a samizdat collection and a press collection. Daily and weekly newspapers from East Central Europe have been archived since 1952 and have been evaluated for the period up to 1999 in a systematic collection of more than 5 million clippings. In addition, the Institute also has one of the best image archives with image carriers of all kinds, especially on the art and cultural history of East Central Europe (currently about 700,000 units), a map collection with about 45,000 map sheets, about 1,200 old maps and slightly more than 6,300 aerial photographs from the years between 1942 and 1945. Finally, the document collection focuses on the history of the Baltic
States and continuously collects estates, family archives, individual archival documents as well as photographed archival records (about 1,300 running meters of shelving). The materials held in stock are the starting point for our own research, close cooperation with the two universities in Giessen and Marburg in research and teaching, and close networking with numerous other Leibniz institutions (Leibniz Research Associations).
Current project-leading perspectives
Collecting, preserving, indexing and communicating
Visual history and art history
Reflection and design of digital change
Space – City – Environment
Political orders – conflict – security
Research at Leiden Observatory spans the entire width of modern astrophysical enquiry. It is based on observation, theory, simulation, and experiment. Two broad clusters characterize the ongoing research. Within each theme, researchers carry out their personal and specialized research programme. The two clusters are: Galaxies, the structures in which they are embedded, Exoplanets, and the formation of stars and planets.
Galaxies and the structures in which they are embedded: Researchers at Leiden Observatory study the fundamental physics – the basic properties, materials and forces that create structure in the Universe. Which processes collect matter into galaxies and gas into stars? With the use of powerful telescopes advanced calculations, and computer simulations, astronomers seek to understand the origin, structure and evolution of galaxies in general and the Milky Way in particular. Through these structures, they try to uncover the unknown physics of dark matter and dark energy that takes up 95% of the Universe.
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Exoplanets and the formation of stars and planets: At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars (exoplanets) and study how stars and planets form, for instance, by following molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planetary systems. In this way, they address questions about the origin of life and the possibilities of life existing on planets other than Earth. In other words, is Earth unique?
In the last five years Leiden Observatory hosts nine ERC researchers (list below), these researchers make big contributions to the clusters above.
ERC Reinout van Weeren, Unravelling the pysics of particle acceleration and feedback in galaxy clusters and the cosmic web (2018)
ERC Serena Viti, Molecules as Probes of the Physics of External galaxies (2019)
ERC Joe Hennawi, Quasars in a Neutral Universe: Chronicling the History of Reionization, Enrichment, and Black Hole Growth (2020)
ERC Elena Maria Rossi, Probing our Galaxy from the Center to the outskirts (2020)
ERC Ewine van Dishoeck, Linking chemistry and physics in the planet-forming zones of disks (2021)
ERC Aline Vidotto, The influence of stellar outflows on exoplanetary mass loss (2021)
ERC Henk Hoekstra, Observational Cosmology Using Large Imaging Surveys (2022)
ERC Jackie Hodge, A new View of Young galaxies with ALMA and JWST (2023)
ERC Yamila Miguel, Next-Generation of Interior models of (Exo)planets (2023)
These researchers showcase the diversity of frontier research, the diversity of research infrastructures (from space telescopes to radioastronomy) and the diversity of researchers’ careers (from starting to advance ERC grants) and backgrounds.
Based in Vienna, the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) is Europe’s research center for translating data into solutions for a better world. A core of CSH’s mission is to conduct independent research in complexity science, addressing key challenges facing society and the planet that cannot be solved by traditional disciplinary approaches. For example, pandemics, the economy, and human migration are all manifestations of multiple interconnected, dynamic, and co-evolving networks that complexity science is uniquely suited to describe.
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CSH researchers have expertise across a wide range of topics, from algorithms to zoonoses and many in between. CSH researchers share the common languages of physics, computation, statistics and applied mathematics and often specialize in one or more additional disciplines, such as sociology, economics, or medicine.
At CSH, researchers extract meaning from the vast amount of data representing our planet’s various dimensions: economics, migration, health, climate change, social values, urban development, and more. With this knowledge, they seek insights that are useful for both science and society, and they can make evidence-based statements about how complex systems will respond to change and propose realistic interventions to move them in a positive direction for society.
The Champalimaud Foundation (CF) was established in 2005 as a worldwide reference for scientific research and clinical practice. Located in a beautiful setting by the Tagus river in the city of Lisbon, Portugal, the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (CCU) is a vibrant scientific and clinical institution where hundreds of national and international (+40 EU and non-EU nationalities) scientists, support staff, physicians, and other healthcare professionals work together to investigate fundamental biological processes and search for effective solutions to alleviate the burden of oncological and neurological diseases, while providing state-of-the-art care to patients.
Read More Research, developed within the Champalimaud Research (CR) programmes, is primarily focused on the fields of neuroscience, cancer and physiology. More specifically, 31 groups are dedicated to fundamental and clinical research on topics that range from Brain-wide control of Behaviour and its impacts in Artificial Intelligence /Machine Learning, to the Immune System and the interaction between Neural and Immune Systems and Disease Progression. With a community of ~500 members distributed in two big open labs (somehow similar to big media newsrooms), with access to several technical and scientific facilities, the aspiration of CR is to help scientists reach their full creative potential and to promote collective achievements beyond those reachable by individual scientists or laboratory groups. The legacy of CR will not only be advances in scientific knowledge but advances in the scientific process itself.
According to the latest European Research Council (ERC) dashboard, which comprehensively overviews ERC-funded projects, Portugal has secured funding for 165 projects since 2007 and CF leads the list of institutions in Portugal for ERC funding, both in terms of total number of grants and of overall funding. Most of our ERC grants are in Life Sciences but we also have secured grants in Social Sciences and Humanities and in Physical Sciences and Engineering.
The Max-Planck-Institute for Biology of Ageing (MPI-AGE) aims to unravel the molecular, physiological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying the ageing process. As we age, many of our body functions decline, often accompanied by the development of complex and chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. Our mission is to understand how we can intervene to mitigate or even prevent these age-related diseases and pave the way for a healthier ageing. Currently, much of the research at the institute focuses on three topics: the molecular genetics of ageing, the study of the ageing brain, and the role of mitochondria in ageing processes. In addition, research groups are investigating how DNA repair and nutrient sensing influence ageing.
Read More To understand these processes, the institute currently conducts work on four different model organisms: worms, fruit flies, turquoise killifish and mice. The studies on model organisms are in the long term to be linked with comparative studies in humans. To this end, we are examining samples from patients in the clinic and conducting studies on long-lived families.
Host researcher Joris Deelen focuses on the identification of the genetic mechanisms underlying healthy ageing and extended lifespan in humans. Moreover, the Deelen group aims to establish novel human ageing studies in Cologne to identify and validate biomarkers of healthy ageing.
Over 50% of the cork produced worldwide comes from Portugal. This material, used for products that range from wine stoppers to the isolation of spaceships, is at the heart of two ERC research grants developed at ITQB NOVA over the last years. The reason is that half of cork’s weight is made up of suberin, a plant polymer with remarkable antimicrobial, anti-biofouling and hydrophobic properties. Suberin can mimic natural processes and offer sustainable alternatives for combating fungal infections, as explored in the project MIMESIS – “Development of biomaterials through mimesis of plant defensive interfaces to fight wound infections”, but also for encapsulation technologies in the food and drug industries, as investigated in SNAIL – “High-performance hydrophobic suberin nanoparticles for the generation of liquid-air biphasic droplets with application in food and therapeutics”. Both projects were led by ERC Grantee Cristina Silva Pereira, head of the Applied and Environmental Mycology lab of ITQB NOVA.
ITQB NOVA is a scientific research and advanced training institute of NOVA University Lisbon. The institute is located in Oeiras, a seaside town with the highest GDP/capita and the most educated population in the country. The institution excels in Molecular Biosciences across diverse disciplines, contributing to societal challenges focused on the well-being of human societies and on the environment.
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The vision for the ERC-funded MIMESIS project was to develop wound dressing biomaterials that combine antimicrobial and skin regeneration properties. The research team successfully developed a biocompatible extraction method that preserves the plant polyesters’ antimicrobial capabilities. Building on this success, the team secured an ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2024, for potential applications in food and therapeutics. This new project, SNAIL, explores the potential of suberin in encapsulation technologies, envisioning a sustainable shield for functional ingredients, such as probiotics and proteins. By transforming plant polyesters into purposeful biomaterials, this work represents a shift away from energy-intensive synthetic production methods, focusing instead on “closing the loop”, supported by the principles of green chemistry and biorefinery.
During the residency, the science journalist is invited to discover this research, which is not only advancing scientific frontiers but also actively contributing to a more sustainable future by having a clear focus and commitment on the translation into tangible innovations. In addition to delving into the project’s intricacies, supported by ITQB NOVA’s cutting-edge facilities, including the largest Portuguese NMR facility, CERMAX, the science journalist will have the opportunity to experience all the intricacies atmosphere of scientific exploration. This encompasses the dynamic journey of discovery, comprising both highs and lows, where breakthroughs are not confined to “Eureka” moments.