Field of research:
History of Science and the Environment

Research interests:
I am interested in the social history of the natural, earth, and environmental sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My current research is generative of what has been called the “labor history of science,” which seeks to understand how scientific knowledge depends on particular relationships between various social groups. Often, the visibility of these interdependencies—and of workers themselves—reflects larger relationships between science and economy.

Planned research project:
As a DAAD postdoctoral researcher I will pursue two book projects. The first, Humboldt Underground, rewrites the history of 'Humboldtian science’ as the history of the labor involved in its production, with a particular focus on Alexander von Humboldt’s activities in the mining industries of Central Europe and New Spain. This entails a study of the mine foremen of Prussian Franconia, Creole surveyors of Mexico City, and other technicians who peopled the geographical science Humboldt called ‘global physics.’
The second project, Artisans in the Mountains, reconstructs the lifeworld of highland families—blacksmiths, cobblers, wainwrights, and shepherds by trade—who established dynastic mountain-guiding and naturaliacollecting enterprises. Spanning the Harz Mountains, Fränkische Schweiz, Savoy Alps, and Bernese Oberland, this project shows how Enlightenment traditions of natural inquiry were routed into pre-existing modes of life, labor, and learning among highland communities in Central Europe.

Keywords:
Artisans, climate, exploration, geography, Germany, mountains, mines, natural history, resources

German host university:
Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München, Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Host during the mobility phase:
Cambridge University, History and Philosophy of Science Department

Website:
https://www.patrickanthonyhistory.com/

Field of research:
Ancient and Islamic Philosophy; Classics

Research interests:
Presocratics and their reception in Antiquity; Hellenistic Philosophy (esp. Stoicism); Plotinus and the Neoplatonic tradition; Graeco-Arabic Studies; modern uses of ancient philosophy (e.g. Nietzsche)

Planned research project:
“The Reception of Heraclitus in Late Antiquity and the Islamic World”
The core of project will be devoted to the study of the trends and the philosophical relevance of the interpretation of Heraclitus in Plotinus, in the post-Plotinian Neoplatonists, and in the Islamic World, in particular in the Plotiniana arabica (i.e. the so-called “Theology of Aristotle” and the “Sayings of the Greek Sage”). I shall mainly highlight the following two main tendencies: on the one hand, the influence of Plotinus’ interpretation of Heraclitus plays a major role in all subsequent readings of the Presocratic and determines some of its key features; on the other hand, the individual interpretations differ remarkably from one another in ways and for reason which I shall try to explain in detail. In addition, also the Christian and the Gnostic interpretation of Heraclitus will be taken into account, since they contributed to the overall understanding of the philosophy of Heraclitus in Late Antiquity and exerted a considerable influence in the Islamic World, too. The account of the philosophy of Heraclitus given by Hippolytus of Rome, which mixes Christian and Gnostic views, has for instance been one of the sources of the important Arabic doxographical work of the Pseudo-Ammonius.

Keywords:
Heraclitus; Reception; Late Antiquity; Neoplatonism; Christianity; Gnosticism; Islamic World

German host institution:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Munich School of Ancient Philosophy, MUSAΦ)

Host institution during the mobility phase:
École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL (Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes, LEM)

Website:
https://ens.academia.edu/MaxBergamo?from_navbar=true

Field of research:
Comparative Literature

Planned research project:
Marcel Proust’s masterpiece A la recherche du temps perdu (‘In Search of Lost Time’) is the paradigmatic novel of memory in modern European literature. Since its original publication between 1913 and 1927, this monumental chronicle of artistic awakening and development amid European modernity’s transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a touchstone for discussions of memory and its representation in literature. The project 'Literary Afterlife and the Search for Lost Time' understands Proust’s novel and its various afterlives in later literary works (e.g. allusions, adaptations, references, reworkings, or rewritings) as productive acts of cultural recollection. In doing so, this project interrogates the extent to which these afterlives might reduce or enhance the original work, while also asking what of the original is both remembered and forgotten – what is lost, but perhaps also gained – in its later literary incarnations. Bringing together the disciplines of comparative literature and memory studies, this project explores how memory processes in culture and society are thematized across twentieth- and twenty-first century literary works, investigating not only how literary works envision memories of the past, but how they might articulate visions of the future in twentieth- and twenty-first-century European literature. The project is a simultaneous comparative examination of conceptualizations of literary afterlife in European thought and culture – including those elaborated by Proust himself in the Recherche – alongside a comparative critique of contemporary literary works that in manifold ways draw on Proust’s novel. Emphasising the multiplicity of understandings of the idea of Proust’s literary afterlife, and of their contemporary manifestations in various works of French, German, and Spanish literature in particular, this project is a transcultural and multilingual project that covers a broad range of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts. Interdisciplinary by nature, this project provides new perspectives on the fields of comparative literature and memory studies, as well as the history of European ideas and reception studies, by investigating the role of processes of remembering and forgetting in literature in the creation of new literary works.

Keywords:
Comparative literature; European literature; Memory studies; Marcel Proust; Intertextuality; Influence

German host institution:
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Host during mobility phase:
Centre for Modern European Literature, University of Kent

Field of research:
Comparative politics

Research interests:
Democratization and authoritarianism; civil society and accountability; Middle Eastern politics

Planned research project:
"Power Sharing and Democratic Stability: A Multi-Method Analysis (1990-2020)"
Long time ago, Plato and Aristotle observed that democracy is difficult to establish and preserve in divided societies. Based on examining the cases of Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, Arend Lijphart showed in his 1969 article Consociational Democracy that democracy can in fact survive in divided societies. Lijphart’s work has inspired a strong research program labeled under consociationalism or what came to be known later as power sharing. Over time, power sharing was transformed from an empirical category to a normative theory to accommodate societal cleavages in divided societies across the globe. The literature however has theoretical, empirical and methodological gaps: theoretically, the literature suffers from an institutional bias that neglects the role of structural conditions; empirically, the literature is dominated by single case studies and small-N comparisons; and methodologically, the literature lacks configurational analyses that allow for causal complexity. This postdoctoral research project bridges those gaps by examining the following research question: Which configurations of structural conditions and power sharing institutions explain democratic stability between 1990 and 2020? The project therefore has three objectives to bridge those gaps. Theoretically, the project develops a two-level theoretical model that connects remote structural conditions and proximate institutional conditions on one hand to democratic stability on the other hand. Empirically, the project examines how power sharing contributes to democratic stability using a medium-N design of 22 consociational countries over three decades. Methodologically, the project employs set-theoretic multi-method research, namely qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and process tracing, to uncover the different structural and institutional configurations that explain democratic stability. Doing so, the project updates the scholarly understanding of how and when democracy works in divided societies.

Keywords:
Power sharing, democratic stability, multi-method, QCA, process tracing

German host university:
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Host during the mobility phase:
University of Zurich

Website:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mahmoud-Farag-9

Field of research:
Archaeology

Research interests:
Bronze Age, Aegean archaeology, Anatolian archaeology, Balkan archaeology, funerary practices, iconography, foreign relations, interregional contacts, postcolonial theory, gender

Planned research project:
"Power of Images and Images of Power: A Historical Examination of the Reflective and Creative Role of Iconography in the Formation of Late Bronze Age Aegean Elite Identities"

Keywords:
Late Bronze Age; Aegean; iconography; elite identities; historical examination

German host university:
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Universität Heidelberg

Host during the mobility phase:
Institut für Klassische Archäologie, Universität Wien

Website:
https://uni-heidelberg.academia.edu/FilipFranković

Poster
 

Field of research:
History of religion, Social Anthropology, Tibeto-Mongol and Buddhist Studies

Research interests:
Religious forms of Mongols and Tibetans; the history and contemporary situation of Buddhism in Kalmykia; gender; ritual healing and popular worship; secrecy; debates over tradition and modernity; religious transformations and creativity; identity formation; oral history and memory; developments in contemporary visual art of Mongols and Tatars; landscape, space and time; late Soviet and post-Soviet provincial society; new religious movements and groups in the postsocialist space    

Planned research project:
“‘Secret lamas’ of the Soviet era and their female lineage holders: Gender dynamics and women’s agency in Kalmyk Buddhism since late socialism to the present”
The project traces the gender dynamics with emphasis on the changing patterns of female agency in Buddhism in Kalmykia (southwest Russia) since the late 1950s to the present by exploring the development and proliferation of categories of religious and ritual specialists where women not only outnumber men, but also play leading roles. My opening hypothesis is that these transformations entailing unprecedented female religious leadership and even deification of certain women, which appear representative of the contemporary Kalmyk religious scene, were initiated by the state persecution of Buddhism during the Soviet era. The given ethno-historical context provides us with an important study-case of religious innovations, particularly involving changed gender roles, generated through state suppression. It also illustrates how the continuity of a religious tradition can sometimes be maintained largely through its transformation. To what extent have female activists – during socialism and after – been custodians of Kalmyk religio-cultural and ethnic continuity? Or have they, on the contrary, become initiators of de-canonization and reformers of traditional cosmology? Envisioned as an transdisciplinary study involving approaches of social anthropology, history, Tibetan Buddhist studies and Mongol studies, the project combines historical analysis, archival research, ethnographic description and analysis, and methods of anthropological fieldwork. Based on unique oral histories and unpublished archival materials, the proposed research will challenge and advance the existing perspectives on women’s empowerment and agency in conservative religions by discussing the Soviet state, a totalitarian regime that persecuted religions, as the driving force that blindly set in motion the process of radical feminization of religious specialists.

Keywords:
female religious agency, gender, secrecy, religious innovations and continuity, late socialism, political power, Buddhism, Kalmykia, religious empowerment, postsocialism

German host university:
Heidelberg University

Host institution during the mobility phase:
Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL), Paris, France

Field of research:
Organizational sociology, sustainability studies

Research interests:
I am interested in how sustainability performance occurs in businesses, its implications for sustainability governance (in particular sustainable supply chain management and sustainability standards) as well as in the cultural foundations of (un-)sustainable development.

Planned research project:
The aim of the project is to establish the state of knowledge of when and how cultural changes unfold in businesses, and to use this state of knowledge in the long run for the design of a novel management approach to business sustainability. The development of a novel management approach is necessary because current approaches of sustainability management are based on implicit assumptions of effectiveness (Imbrogiano, 2021). This state of the art affects the effectiveness of the practices of a variety of actors, such as sustainability standard setters, rating agencies, consultancies, and sustainable supply chain managers, amongst others, because management approaches that were designed on the basis of evidence of reducing business unsustainability appear not exist (Imbrogiano, 2021; Imbrogiano & Nichols, 2021). Therefore, by focusing on cultural aspects of sustainability performance in businesses, this research departs from contemporary practices and aims to offer a new perspective on how management interventions need to be designed to enable the achievement of societal sustainability aims in businesses. Beyond establishing the state of knowledge, this research will collect and analyze data from the metal industries.

_{References:
Imbrogiano, J. P. (2021). Contingency in Business Sustainability Research and in the Sustainability Service Industry: A Problematization and Research Agenda. Organization & Environment, 34(2), 298-322.
Imbrogiano, J. P., & Nichols, E. (2021). How to serve sustainability performance in businesses? An appetizing recipe to link practices to performance in business sustainability research. Business Strategy and the Environment, 16, 1610-1622.}

Keywords:
business sustainability, organization/industry culture, socio-technical systems change

German host institutions:
Leuphana University Lüneburg

Host during the mobility phase:
Laval University, Canada

 

Field of research:
Philosophy

Research interests:
Systematic: Ontology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Science.
Historical: Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Blumenberg), Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (Dilthey, Derrida, Gadamer), German Idealism and Romanticism (esp. Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, Novalis, Schleiermacher), Post-Idealism (esp. Marx and Nietzsche).

Planned research project:
“Beyond Nature: Foundations of a Phenomenological Archaeology.”
The phenomenon of nature recently received great attention in virtue of climate change and the challenges it poses regarding the relation between humans and the natural environment. In different areas such as anthropology and science studies, researchers have pointed out the necessity to rethink the modern division between nature and culture. The main objective of this research is to develop a transcendental concept of nature that calls into question these divisions, and thus to provide a philosophical clarification of the relation between nature and history. Following a systematic investigation of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s investigations of the lifeworld, I argue that phenomenology provides the basis for the development of a transcendental concept of nature that is not opposed to culture or history, but rather that this concept of nature is genetically related to intersubjective historicity. Husserl calls this dimension of the lifeworld “earth”. The earth belongs not merely in a biological or ecological register, but in a transcendental one; it works as the pregiven ground, as that from which things ultimately take on meaning. By analysing the concept of earth and its relation to historicity, I intend to offer a critical look on the common understanding of the conceptions of nature and, furthermore, to present a new account of phenomenology, which I call archaeology. The analysis of the earth radically changes both our understanding of history and of philosophy, as the earth provides a starting point and the ultimate anchorage of the experience in general.

Keywords:
Phenomenology; Nature; History; Lifeworld; Intersubjectivity; Horizon; Anthropocene; Husserl; Merleau-Ponty.

German Host Institution:
Institute of Philosophy, University of Wuppertal

Host institution during the mobility phase:
Husserl Archives Leuven, KU Leuven, Belgium

 

Field of Research:
Public Economics

Research interests:
Public Economics, Optimal Taxation, Political Economy, Behavioral Economics,
Experimental Economics

Planned research project:
“Tax Evasion and Its Hidden Economic Benefits” The question of how to handle tax evasion is of considerable relevance for society. Many reports and surveys have documented the vast estimated loss due to tax evasion. Yet, governments did not succeed in considerably eliminating this pervasive issue. In the economic literature the issue of tax evasion has already been investigated very intensively both from a theoretical and from an empirical angle. The common objective in this strand of academic research is almost exclusively focused on how to perfectly enforce tax compliance. This project wants to approach the issue of tax evasion from a different angle. It is inspired by a very counterintuitive mechanism discussed theoretically in early public economics literature: This theoretical curiosum suggests significant benefits of tax evasion, with potentially even tax-revenue increasing effects. Specifically, incentives to evade offset the undesirable distortions of taxes on labor supply. Put differently: effectively lowered taxes likely increase labor supply, which, in interaction with different types of risk aversion, potentially increase tax revenues. These differential effects have been largely omitted by the literature thus far. With an original attempt, this research agenda aims to innovatively and cleanly identify how the opportunity to evade affects the overall tax revenue. Building upon promising initial results of a preceding lab experiment under highly controlled conditions, the proposed project will combine multiple empirical methods to explore the hidden economic benefits of tax evasion from various angles. Systematically less abstract and more generalizable. In detail, an empirical study using German administrative data as well as a field experiment will be implemented. Finally, the novel empirical insights are utilized to also provide a new conceptual contribution to the theoretical debate, which remains yet inconclusive about the desirability of tax evasion in optimal income taxation. While this project does not intend to speak to the moral question of tax evasion (which indeed has manifold adverse consequences for society), it challenges a long-standing assumption that evasion unavoidably lead to lower tax revenues. Given costly enforcement, governments might be well advised to take the potential benefits of tax evasion into account and raise the question: to what extent is enforced compliance desirable? Even further, this project might yield valuable insights for efficient tax enforcement by targeting specific behavioral traits.

Keywords:
Tax Evasion; Tax Revenues; Labor Supply; Optimal Taxation; Experiment; Empirical
Research

German host institution:
University of Mannheim

Host institution during the mobility phase:
NHH Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen

Website:
https://sites.google.com/view/cornelius-schneider/

Field of research:
Social Anthropology

Research interests:
My main research interest lies in the field of migration and social protection in a transnational level. In particular I am interested in the gendered aspirations and social protection strategies for transnational families, that is, the migrants and their families elsewhere. Methodologically, I work with multi-sited ethnographies.

Planned research project:
This study investigates the trajectories of social protection of African migrants in Mexico, a new but increasingly visible migrant group that has emerged in the past years as a result of a combination of global processes. Migration is a social-protection strategy for individuals and families throughout the globe. At the same time, however, increasingly restrictive migration policies are pushing many migrants to seek new and more risky migration routes. In the past decades, migration and social protection have taken new forms and consequently different relations between the State and society. Many studies have investigated aspects of social protection for migrants from the Global South in industrialized countries of the Global North, with powerful welfare-states. Yet, such focus on origin and destination countries has failed to understand the complexities during the migration process, where people often spend uncertain periods of time in transit countries, frequently affected by violence, socio-economic crises, and a volatile formal social-protection system. Through a mixed-methods approach (ethnographic methods and social network analysis), this project aims to advance our understanding on how mobile populations devise and shape their social protection strategies during their migration trajectories in a transnational manner, beyond sending and receiving states. To do so, this research draws on the case of African migrants in Mexico, a context characterized by inefficient state protection and where social protection practices are carried out informally by individuals and their social networks. By exploring alternative mechanisms of social protection, the findings of this project will aim to inform social policy and ameliorate social inequalities throughout migration processes. Besides being empirically innovative, this study will contribute to the theorisation of current approaches of TSP, which to date have only focused on the circulation of resources across sending and receiving countries.


Keywords:
Transnational social protection, social network analysis, mixed methods, African migrants, Mexico.

German host institution:
Universität Bielefeld

Host during the mobility phase:
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Monterrey, México

Poster

 

Field of research:
Philosophy of Religion

Research interests:
Philosophy of Religion, Spirituality, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Social Justice

Planned research project:
While it is often assumed that religion is a source of political violence, movements like #blacklivesmatter show that religion is involved on both sides in this conflict, my project argues that the experience of spiritual "otherness," commonly called "mysticism," increases openness towards social otherness as expressed in social activism. It aims to show how a deepened understanding of "mysticism" as an open and "negative" structure of spirituality helps to understand the conditions and dynamics under which religion can create communication and understanding across traditional social divides.
Social movements and new expressions of political activism challenge traditional academic approaches as they shift fundamental conceptual dichotomies (such as individual versus communal) by acknowledging the complexity of postmodern identity (intersectionality) and the challenges of its political engagement (e.g., the role of white people in social justice work). From the perspective of the philosophy of religion, these challenges require a re-evaluation of traditional methods and approaches to core texts as well as newly emerging phenomena not previously the subject to study.  My project argues that for a renewed understanding of the role of spirituality for political activism, the notion of mysticism is particularly relevant. In order to bring mystical thought and political activism into a conversation, I will use negative hermeneutics, i.e., hermeneutics, which takes notions of gaps, contradictions, and otherness as its starting point. The project will develop in three distinct steps. 1. Initially, it will explore the use of negative hermeneutics as a method for analyzing mystical structures in texts. 2. Next, the study will apply these insights to two different types of case study: first, to texts in which the connections between traditional mysticism and political activism are explicit and well established. The focus here will be on the mystical and political writings of Howard Thurman and Dorothee Sölle (theological sources). 3. Finally, it will apply negative hermeneutics as a method to analyze mysticism as a framework for the relationship between political activism and spirituality in the study of Movement Chaplaincy (MC), that is, Chaplaincy, which cares for activism movements and their leaders (activist sources).

Keywords:
Mysticism, Negative Hermeneutics, Political Activism, Spirituality, Howard Thurman, Dorothee Sölle, Movement Chaplaincy

German Host Institution:
Universität zu Köln

Host during the mobility phase:
Boston College, USA

 

Field of research:
Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology

Research interests:
The Neuroscience of Language, Language & Emotion, Sound-Meaning Associations, Neurocognitive Poetics, Embodied Cognition

Planned research project:
“Resolving the cognitive and neural basis of affective iconicity”
Human language has generally been considered to be entirely symbolic in that words convey meaning through conventional and arbitrary links to concepts they refer to. In contrast to this classic assumption in modern linguistics, a growing body of work has shown that sound-meaning association in vocabulary is a general property of human language, which plays a crucial role for both phylogenetic language evolution and ontogenetic language development. Particularly, recent behavioral and neuroimaging results support the existence of sound-to-meaning correspondences in the affective domain, termed affective iconicity. Despite this first affirmative evidence on the psychological reality of affective iconicity, little is known about detailed cognitive and neural processes underlying this phenomenon. In a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies, we investigate the influence of affectivity in the sound of words on both the perception of words’ meaning and on word recognition (as in the example of standard lexical decision task). Also, to experimentally assess the complex spatiotemporal neural dynamics underlying affective iconicity, we will conduct EEG and fMRI studies and make use of multivariate analysis techniques that can map stimuli fully spanning the affective space to neural activity. In sum, the proposed research will shed new empirical light on a phenomenon that has long been deployed in poetry and the arts but neglected in psycholinguistics, i.e. evoking affective (and aesthetic) responses by the use of words with specific sound patterns.

Keywords:
Affective Iconicity, Phonaesthetics, Sound Symbolism, Language Evolution, Language Acquisition

German host institution:
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin

Host institution during the mobility phase:
University College London, UK

Poster

Field of research:
Land-system science, Ecology

Research interests:
social-ecological modeling, human-environment interactions, sustainable agriculture, global change, uncertainty assessment

Planned research project:  
‘Integrating process-based land-use and ecological models to assess global change impacts on European bumblebees and pollination service’
Pollinator-dependent crops make up 35% of global food production, representing an estimated economic value of €153bn globally. Bumblebees are amongst the most important wild pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops, but many species are threatened by agricultural intensification and a changing climate. Alarming declines in many bumblebee species and associated yield losses of pollinator-dependent crops have been observed, thus raising concerns regarding future food supply and quality. To date, it is not well understood how different global change pressures might affect the future distribution of bumblebees and how changes to their distribution may alter the pollination services that agricultural production relies on. A major reason for the lack of knowledge is the insufficient representation of bumblebee habitat and bumblebee ecology in state-of-the-art simulation models. The project therefore aims at integrating ‘RangeShiftR’, an individual-based model of species population dynamics and dispersal, with the agent-based land-use modeling framework ‘CRAFTY’, resulting in a research tool that allows to study the bi-directional interactions between bumblebee dynamics and agricultural human decision-making. I envisage to improve the representation of key ecological and land-system processes in a process-based modeling framework that enhances the understanding of global change pressures on bumblebees at national and continental scales, going beyond current approaches that rely on statistical species distribution models. The coupled modeling framework will be used to explore various land-management strategies and conservation policies that aim at minimizing the risks for bumblebees under future global change pressures.

Keywords:
land-use change, model coupling, social-ecological systems, agent-based modeling, integrated assessment, bumblebees, dispersal, global change

German host university:
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Host during the mobility phase:
University of Aberdeen

Website:
https://landchange.imk-ifu.kit.edu/staff/reinhard-prestele

Poster

 

Field of research:
Evolutionary Biology

Research interests:
Starting my early scientific carrier on cichlid taxonomy I have been fascinated by their outstanding diversity ever since. Hence, during my PhD I aimed to reconstruct the complex phylogenetic history of Africa cichlids while putting it into the geomorphological context of the palaeo-drainage evolution of the East African Rift and tectonically related area. Ultimately, my research is motivated by the wonders of evolution surrounding us, such as the phenomenon of adaptive radiations. Understanding and identifying the evolutionary mechanism driving rapid biological diversification is in the focus of my current research.

Planned research project:
“In search of the missing genomic link between two massive adaptive radiations in cichlid fishes”
Hybridization between diverging lineages as well as gene flow into the ancestral lineages of
adaptive radiations is increasingly recognized to trigger rapid diversification, such as in the East African cichlid assemblages. However, most available studies in African cichlids, including genome-wide studies in which hundreds of genomes have been sequenced, have focused on the lacustrine adaptive radiations while paying only marginal attention to the riverine cichlid fauna. Consequently, many lineages which might have contributed to the genomic substrate of the adaptive radiations of Great African Lakes have not been sampled at the level of genomes. My project aims at closing this “genome sampling gap" by focusing on the underexplored riverine cichlid diversity of the biogeographically important region situated between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi.
I plan to sequence 96 draft-genomes of different haplochromine lineages expected to be present in this region (i.e. of the ‘Pseudocrenilabrus-group’, the ‘serranochromines’ and
Astatotilapia). This genomic data, in combination with an in-depth taxonomic evaluation of the taxa, will allow me to assess whether or not additional – yet undiscovered – ancient gene flow from riverine lineages into the ancestral lineages of the adaptive radiations of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi have occurred, and, if so, to explore the genomic contribution of introgression-derived variants in these exceptionally species-rich vertebrate radiations.

Keywords:
Genomics, Hybridization, Adaptive Radiations, Speciation, Riverine cichlid diversity,
Ichthyology, Taxonomy

German host university:
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Host during the mobility phase:
University of Basel, Switzerland

Website:
https://www.salzburgerlab.org/team/frederic_schedel/

Field of research:
Applied Mathematics

Research interests:
uncertainty quantification, numerical schemes for hyperbolic and kinetic
equations, machine learning

Planned research project:
Hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) model flow problems on a macroscopic level, while ordinary differential equations and kinetic equations model dynamics on a micro- and mesoscopic scale. Many hyperbolic equations can be obtained by considering a limiting behaviour from a model on a fine scale to the macroscopic level. This research project aims to capture the effect of uncertainties in systems of hyperbolic and kinetic differential equations. These may arise in initial, boundary conditions and in uncertain model parameters. We focus on theoretical issues, for instance the wellposedness of stochastic equations as well as on the development of new, efficient numerical methods.

As basic tools we employ so-called stochastic Galerkin formulations, which reformulate a stochastic differential equation as a system of deterministic equations. This approach has been successfully applied to ordinary, elliptic and kinetic differential equations. Recently, results on hyperbolic systems have also been established. The resulting equations pose serious challenges in the numerical resolution. Here, we plan to construct schemes of CWENO-type. These schemes are high-order accurate in smooth regions, but can also resolve singularities in an essentially nonoscillatory fashion.
For multidimensional problems there is a lack of existence and uniqueness results for solutions within the classical framework. Measure-valued solutions and statistical solutions provide a weaker solution concept. It is subject of current research to construct schemes
that are convergent in this framework. In particular, we plan to derive new results for CWENO-type schemes.

Keywords:
Hyperbolic and kinetic equations, uncertainty quantification, high-order schemes, stochastic Galerkin, measure-valued solutions, partial differential equations

German host institutions:
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Host during the mobility phase:
University of Insubria, Italy

 

Field of research:
Astrophysics

Research interests:
Tests of gravity; Black holes; High-energy astrophysical phenomena; quantum gravity

Planned research project:
Extreme gravity with electromagnetic and gravitational waves

Keywords:
Gravitational physics; Gravitational waves; Tests of general relativity; X-ray astronomy; Astrophysics

German host university:
Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen

Host during the mobility phase:
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste, Italy

Website:
https://www.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/~nampalliwar/

Field of research:
Photonics, Optics

Research interests:
Structured light; metasurfaces; advanced imaging; light-matter interaction; nano-photonics

Planned research project:
“Meta-imaging of structured light”
Our aim is to detect, analyze and process the full electric field of structured light and thereby extract typically invisible information from an optical scene. We implement dynamic nano-structured optical coatings, namely, metasurfaces to pave the way to next-generation fluorescence imaging of single molecules as well as responsive molecular nanostructures.

Keywords:
structured light; metasurfaces; non-paraxial light; molecular nanostructures; single molecule imaging; fluorescence imaging

German host university:
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Center of Soft Nanoscience

Host during the mobility phase:
Stanford University, USA

Field of research:
Quantum Information and Computation, Physics

Research Interest:
Open Quantum Systems; Quantum Correlations; Quantum Sensing and Metrology; Quantum Optics and Quantum Photonics.

Planned Research Project:
”Multi-qubit phase estimation trough simulation of open quantum systems in integrated waveguides.”
As quantum sensing is the art of exploiting quantum features to improve the sensitivity of measuring devices, we plan to use open quantum systems as quantum probes for the quantum sensing. In the first stage we want to investigate the impact of dephasing on multi-particle quantum correlation in different initial states. The inherent fragility of the quantum probes against decoherence is the key feature making the overall scheme very sensitive. Exploits dephaysing and induced decoherence as a resource to waveguide phase estimation.
In particular we will use single photons for estimation and multiparticle models to see the interplay between correlations among the polarization of the photons and correlations within the environment degrees of freedom, to systematically explore fundamental properties of different models and see how entanglement changes the estimation precision.

Key Words:
Entanglement, Quantum Fisher Information, Quantum Cramer-Rao bound, Dephasing, Integrated wavequides.

German Host Institution:
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Host Institution During the Mobility Phase:
Department of Physics and Astronomy Aarhus, Denmark

 

Field of research:
Combustion and Interstellar Chemistry

Research interests:
My research interest involves the combustion analytics of next-generation biofuels and the identification of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in interstellar media.

Planned research Project:
My proposed project “Formation, identification and characterization of polycyclic aromatic nitrogen heterocycles (PANH) in combustion and interstellar processes” aims to combine techniques from astrophysics and combustion chemistry to advance both fields. Different PANHs have been proposed to exist in space but their formation mechanisms are unknown. Using combustion chemistry and flame modeling one can identify possible formation pathways. Yet, the identification of PANHs in flames is only feasible when spectroscopic data on the isolated species are available. Using the advanced and highly sensitive spectroscopic techniques from astrophysics such a demanding goal can be achieved. During my research stay abroad, I will synthesize different model PANHs, and investigate their spectroscopic properties using next-generation light sources like the Free-electron Laser for infrared experiments (FELIX) as well as ion-trap mass spectrometry. The reintegration phase in Germany will focus on the combustion chemistry of biofuels and the identification of possible PANH formation mechanisms.

Keywords:
Combustion chemistry, Interstellar Chemistry, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, Free-electron laser, mass spectrometry, ion-trap

German Host Institution:
Universität Duisburg-Essen

Host Institution during the mobility phase:
Leiden Observatory, Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands

 

Field of research:
Mathematics

Research interests:
Discrete probability theory, in particular mixing times and stochastic processes in random media

Planned research project:
"Analytic and geometric properties of exclusion processes"
The exclusion process is one of the most-studied examples of an interacting particle system. It is used to model the movement of particles in gases or to describe the behavior of traffic among many other applications. Over the last decades, it equally raised the attention of scientists from statistical mechanics and probability theory. The goal of this project is to combine different perspectives on the exclusion process. We want to use intuitions and techniques from statistical mechanics and transfer them to questions coming from probability theory. More precisely, we study connections between the spectral gap of the exclusion process and its corresponding single particle dynamics.

Keywords:
exclusion process, spectral gap, Aldous’ conjecture, hydrodynamic limits

German host institution:
University of Bonn

Host during the mobility phase:
Princeton University, USA

Personal Webpage:
https://sites.google.com/view/dominik-schmid

 

Field of research:
Isotope geochemistry

Research interests:
stable isotope systematics in (bio-)geochemical cycles, high-resolution isotope ratio mass spectrometry, hydrology, paleoclimatology

Keywords:
Archaean atmosphere, sulfate clumped isotopes, triple oxygen isotopes, high-resolution isotope ratio mass spectrometry

Planned research project:
"Using non-traditional systematics of traditional stable isotopes to decipher early Earth’s sulfate cycle"
The aim of the project is to improve our knowledge about the evolution of early Earth’s atmosphere and the associated sulfate cycle in the time frame from approximately 3 to 1.5 billion years before present. We are especially interested in the reconstruction of sulfate sources in the early geologic rock record (in minerals such as baryte or gypsum), and in particular sulfate which originates from weathering on the Earth’s surface. This process requires sufficient amounts of free oxygen in the atmosphere – which was not present from the beginning and evolved over time. Therefore, the detection of this specific sulfate type in old rocks will provide evidence a rise in atmospheric oxygen levels, an important prerequisite for the evolution of complex life.
We want to apply a cutting-edge analytical toolkit which will focus on the stable sulfur and oxygen isotope distribution in our samples. A large part of this work (sulfur and oxygen isotope pairing) will be carried out at the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The work at the German host institution, the Geoscience Center at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, will focus of triple oxygen isotope analysis in accessory minerals of the sulfate, i.e. cherts and carbonates.

German host university:
University of Göttingen

Host during the mobility phase:
Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

Website:
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/dr.+jakub+surma/590418.html

 

Field of research:
Electrochemical energy storage

Research interests:
Energy storage; Batteries; Energy materials; Electrochemistry; Interface/Interphase

Planned research project:
"Engineering the Lithium/Solid Electrolyte Interface for Stable Solid-State Li Metal Batteries"
To achieve stable solid-state Li metal batteries (SSLMBs), this project proposes a novel and multifunctional interface between Li metal anode and solid electrolyte (SE). The engineered interface will reduce the interfacial resistance between Li and SE, facilitate the Li-ion transport, and enable the dendrite-free deposition. To obtain a full understanding of the electrochemical behaviors during cycling towards the improvement of SSLMBs, the project proposes a comprehensive and integrated research program, combining materials design/synthesis with a host of electrochemical analysis and state-of-the-art operando and ex-situ characterization.

Keywords:
Solid-state batteries; Li metal anode; Solid electrolyte; Interface engineering

German host institution:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Host institution during the mobility phase:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Website:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaolin-xu-162a9527/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8U3q4aAAAAAJ&hl=en

Poster

Field of research:
Materials science and engineering (Biomaterials)

Research interests:
Biomaterials, Magnetic materials, Nanoparticles, Tissue engineering, Orthopedics.

Planned research project:
"Icariin encapsulation in PCL/ Cu-doped magnetic bioactive glass platforms for immunomodulated bone regeneration"
Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field that brings engineers, chemists and biologists together to improve the regeneration of lost tissues and ideally reproduce organs. In this regard, a porous biodegradable polymer in combination with the drug is usually used as a cell scaffold. Among all the tissue disorders, bone loss is a common result of fractures, musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoporosis, and tumor removals. According to the literature, in the first stage of inflammation, cytokines induce angiogenesis and osteogenesis, while during the growth of mature tissue they cause oxidative stress and reduce osteogenesis. This research aims to modulate the immune system to increase bone formation by controlling inflammation. To achieve this goal, 3D printed PCL scaffolds with magnetic Cu-doped bioactive glass filler will be developed to release icariin and Cu ions as anti-inflammatory and osteogenic agents. Optimizing the release of Cu ions and icariin, the differentiation of hMSCs to osteoblast cells will be optimized. This platform also could be potentially used in different autoimmune and inflammatory tissue loss scenarios.

Keywords:
Bioactive glass, Icariin, 3D printing, immunomodulation, bone regeneration.

German host institution:
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Host during the mobility phase:
University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands

 

Field of research:
Optimization/Computational Mechanics

Research interests:
Development of analytical and numerical modeling techniques for the optimization of geometries and materials in crashworthiness. Advanced numerical methods for the optimization of composite structures. High dimensionality and complexity/dimensionality reduction techniques.

Planned research project:
"Complexity Reduction Techniques for Surrogate-based Optimization of Composite Structures"
In the most recent decades, composite materials have gained more and more interest due to their favorable mechanical properties in many industrial applications. However, even the production of the simplest components in composite material requires very precise analyses and procedures. Iterative physical experiments and the production process can reach prohibitive times and costs that cannot be easily afforded by industries. Therefore, substantial effort must be put into the project and design phase of the new products, where numerical simulation and optimization techniques represent precious resources. In this context, the heterogeneous nature of fiber-reinforced composite materials makes them quite difficult to address numerically and a single simulation can even take hours. As such, optimization techniques relying on mathematical/surrogate approximations of the high-fidelity models can represent a valid alternative to the standard trial-and-error approach. Nonetheless, since the complexity of the model is high and optimization techniques based on surrogate models – Bayesian Optimization in particular – show performance limits at high dimensionalities, complexity and dimensionality reduction techniques need to be investigated.
The aim of this project is to address complexity reduction techniques in the optimization of mechanical components made of fiber-reinforced composite material, when subjected to nonlinear loads. Moreover, the project would also involve a series of sub-questions that naturally raise when tackling the optimization of laminated composite structures, e.g., mixed-type input variables, the incorporation of previous knowledge, an efficient numerical representation of the components. This work would have a strong impact since it addresses a topic that is strongly demanded in the industrial field. This goal would be reached by employing techniques that have demonstrated to have high potential but have not still been exploited in the area of concern.

Keywords:
Composite materials, fiber-reinforced polymers, surrogate-based optimization, complexity reduction, dimensionality reduction.

German host institution:
Technische Universität München

Host institution during the mobility phase:
Sorbonne Université (LIP6)

Website:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elena-Raponi

Field of research:
Chemical and Process Engineering

Research interests:
High Performance Computing, Numerical Simulations, Detailed Physical Modeling, Energy Conversion Systems

Planned research project:
“Pore-resolved Simulation of Energy Conversion in Novel Porous Media Designs”
It is mandatory to reduce CO2 emissions to reach current climate goals. In the near future, most of the world’s energy will still be provided by combustion. A key technology is energy conversion in porous media, which can drastically increase the efficiency of gas turbines and heating systems and reduce pollutant emissions by chemical reactions taking place within a solid matrix. This technology also enables sustainable carbon-neutral fuels from novel synthesis gas reactors and reformers. Recent advancements in manufacturing technology of porous media (PM) at Stanford University facilitated the production of structures with unprecedented control over the topology. Due to the physical complexity, the fundamental physical processes governing chemically reacting flows in PM are not well understood. In order to guide the design of novel PM reactors and gain an understanding of the physical processes, the project has the goal of developing and adapting numerical tools for PM reactors and perform highly-resolved simulations based on experimental data from Stanford on today’s largest supercomputers with never-before achieved detail. The results are used to derive accurate volume-averaged models, which speed up the reactor design process. The unique circumstances of this project, which combine the vast experiences in cutting-edge porous media research of both Stanford and KIT with access to some of the world's top 10 supercomputers, make this large-scale project possible. The project is therefore interdisciplinary between chemical engineering and high-performance computing.

Keywords:
porous-media reactors, sustainable energy conversion systems, chemically reacting flows, high-performance computing, X-Ray computed tomography

German host university:
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Host during the mobility phase:
Stanford University

Website:
https://www.scc.kit.edu/personen/thorsten.zirwes.php

Poster