Projects

PollinAction - Actions for boosting pollination in rural and urban areas

The objective of the LIFE funded project PollinAction is to mitigate the pollination crisis by creating a green infrastructure (GI) network, made up of natural and semi-natural areas, in rural and urban landscapes in North-East Italy. This will involve habitat restoration and the implementation of nature-based solutions. The project is mainly aimed at converting arable crops and rural or urban marginal areas into key habitats for pollinators. To reach this objective, it will improve species-poor grasslands and landscape heterogeneity by creating connectivity among rural and urban areas as well as along road infrastructure and riverbanks. LIFE PollinAction will assess the ecosystem conditions and services and will implement payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. The definition of an urban planning of compensation measures at local scale will be also considered as well as the design of circular economy processes and close-to-market solutions to boost farmer competitiveness. The project will be replicated in a marginalised and abandoned area in the Aragon region of Spain. This will allow the effectiveness of GI to be evaluated in two areas with opposite dynamics (i.e. specialisation/intensification vs. marginalisation/abandonment).

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Researcher: Gabriella Buffa
Duration: 01/09/2020 - 31/03/2025

Optimised personalised drug therapies for renal pathologies in type II diabetes

Diseases, co-morbidities, and patients responses to certain therapies are the result of a complicated interplay of numerous factors. The relationships defining how this intricate network of inputs leads to various outputs is extremely difficult to derive using conventional means. Thanks to Big Data, high-level applied mathematics and computers, the EU-funded DC-ren project (Drug combinations for rewriting trajectories of renal pathologies in type II diabetes) is developing a tool that will take all this and more into account, and enable optimised personalised drug therapies for significantly enhanced outcomes. The team is focusing on diabetic kidney disease, a common co-morbidity of type 2 diabetes often accompanied by cardiovascular disease. Currently, the drug cocktails targeting it produce highly varied responses. Thanks to its vast patient database, advanced experimental techniques and dynamical systems theory, DC-ren is developing a completely new and widely applicable computational framework for decision support.

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Researcher: Debora Slanzi
Duration: 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2024

Environmental impacts of shipping emissions

The objectives of "EMERGE - Evaluation, control and Mitigation of the EnviRonmental impacts of shippinG Emissions" are to quantify and evaluate the effects of potential emission reduction solutions for shipping in Europe for several scenarios, and to develop effective strategies and measures to reduce the environmental impacts of shipping. EMERGE objectives are achieved through real-world test cases involving measurements and modelling on actual vessels, along main shipping routes and in sensitive European marine regions. EMERGE collects and synthesizes experimental evidence on waste streams to water and emissions to air originating from ships, for different emission control technologies. The measurements will focus on abatement techniques and will include emissions to, and concentrations in water, air and marine biota.

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Researcher: Antonio Marcomini
Duration: 01/02/2020 - 31/12/2024

A sustainable, resilient and innovative European aquaculture

"NewTechAqua - New Technologies, Tools and Strategies for a Sustainable, Resilient and Innovative European Aquaculture" intends to expand and diversify EU production of finfish, molluscs and microalgae by developing and validating technologically advanced, resilient and sustainable new solutions. The organizational approach of NewTechAqua is to group the solutions in 6 different categories: feed, Industry 4.0, sustainable farming, genetics, new species and new products. They are validated on conventional (Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, seabass and seabream) and emerging (greater amberjack, meagre, Senegalese sole and grey mullet) finfish species, molluscs (Pacific oyster, mussel) and microalgae.

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Researcher: Roberto Pastres
Duration: 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2023

Cultural-E: Plus Energy Buildings

Cultural-E is a EU-funded project, which aims to define modular and replicable solutions for Plus Energy Buildings (PEBs), accounting for climate and cultural differences, while engaging all key players involved in the building life cycle. Cultural-E will develop technologies and solution sets that are tailorable to specific contexts and energy demands, as well as performing a comprehensive optimisation of the value/cost ratio of Plus Energy Buildings. Sets of design-for-assembly technologies will be developed through a careful mapping of European climates, building archetypes, and cultural energy habits. We are going beyond the state-of-the-art by maximising the share of the demand covered by renewable sources, towards zero emissions in the operational phase.

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Researcher: Wilmer Pasut
Duration: 01/10/2019 - 30/09/2024

Risk Governance of Nanotechnology

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are covered by REACH/CLP regulations; the general opinion is that the risk assessment (RA) approach routinely used for conventional chemicals is also applicable to ENMs. However, as acknowledged by OECD and ECHA, the OECD and ISO Test Guidelines (TGs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) need to be verified and adapted to be applicable to ENMs. The project RiskGONE will support the standardization and validation process for ENM by evaluating, optimizing and pre-validating SOPs and TGs and integrating them into a framework for risk governance (RG) of ENMs.

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Researcher: Antonio Marcomini
Duration: 01/01/2019 - 31/12/2022

Restoration of dune habitats in Natura 2000 sites of the Veneto coast

Despite their valuable attributes for both human society and nature, dune ecosystems share a history of exploitation and mismanagement. Environmental problems associated with coastal misuse include loss of natural habitats and loss of the natural pattern of landscape, alien species spread, threats to native species, and decreased resilience of plant communities. Tourism is nowadays considered one of the principal cause of degradation, in particular intense tourism pressure coupled with a general lack of ecological consciousness of the value of these ecosystems may compromise not only the natural value and the ecological functionality of these systems, but also the quality of the recreational experience itself, raising the issues of environmental management and sustainable use. In light of this, the general purpose of this project is to re-establish and maintain over time the ecological integrity of habitats 2IIO|2L2O, 2130*, 2250* e 227 0+ and of Stipa veneta* populations, as a means to guarantee the ecological functioning of the entire coastal dune mosaic, in 4 Natura 2000 sites of the North Adriatic coastline, making use of an ecosystem approach that considers all ecosystem components (e.9. human activities, habitats and species, and physical processes) and applies well developed methods. 

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Researcher: Gabriella Buffa
Duration: 01/09/2017 - 31/03/2022

Preserving European Deaf Signing Communities

The project SIGN‐HUB ‐ Preserving, Researching and Fostering the Linguistic, Historical and Cultural Heritage of European Deaf Signing Communities with an Integral Resource ‐ aims to provide the first comprehensive response to the societal and scientific challenge resulting from generalized neglect of the cultural and linguistic identity of signing Deaf communities in Europe.
This Horizon 2020 project will provide an innovative and inclusive resource hub for the linguistic, historical and cultural documentation of the Deaf communities' heritage and for sign language assessment in clinical intervention and school settings.
To this end, it will create an open state‐of‐the‐art digital platform with customized accessible interfaces.

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Researcher: Chiara Branchini

Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe SHARE is a multidisciplinary and cross‐national panel database of micro data on health, socio‐economic status and social and family networks of approximately 123,000 individuals (more than 293,000 interviews) from 20 European countries (+Israel) aged 50 or older.

Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences SERISS, aims to equip Europe’s social science data infrastructures to play a major role in addressing the key societal challenges facing Europe today and ensure that national and European policymaking is built on a solid base of the highest‐quality socio‐economic evidence.

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Researcher: Agar Brugiavini