Advanced nanotools including atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy and correlative microscopy are enabling techniques for discoveries and knowledge generation in nanoscale science and technology. Many R&D efforts have been directed towards the performance improvement of such kinds of techniques for soft matter. However, the greatest challenge faced by these leading edge techniques is the realization of high spatiotemporal resolution, non-invasive, multi-scale and multi-dimensional imaging and manipulation. We therefore propose NanoRAM, a 10 ESR Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Doctoral Network by close collaboration between academic and industrial partners around the theme of innovative nanotools and their industrial applications. NanoRAM will train a new generation of ESRs in the development and application of newly developed manipulation and characterisation nanotools in soft matter research. ESRs will be cross-pollinated with concepts and skills in instrumentation and soft matter characterisation, in particular in fast nanomechanical spectroscopy, nano-robotics, correlative super-resolution nanoscopy, nano biomechanics and mechanotransduction. These skills are applied to reveal for the first time the fast, high resolution, multi-level and 3D information for single cell biomechanics and nanomedicine. Excellent training in new scientific and complementary skills, combined with international and intersectoral work experience, will instil an innovative, creative and entrepreneurial mind-set in ESRs, maximising economic benefits based on scientific discoveries. These specialised, highly trained ESRs will have greatly enhanced career prospects and qualifications for access to responsibility job positions in the private and public sectors. The ultimate goal of NanoRAM is to consolidate Europe as the world leader in innovative nanotool techniques and their emerging applications in soft matter fields such as biomechanics, mechanobiology, and nanomedicines.

Cultural diplomacy (CD) has emerged as a key strategy for nations to build bilateral ties and address global issues. The networks at local, national, and international levels in CD form a crucial infrastructure to operationalise CD programmes. For instance, great power countries such as the UK, US, China, and France all administer their institutions for cultural diplomacy (British Council, Fulbright, and Confucius Institute) via its own global network that enables the top-down programme design to be implemented in foreign local contexts. In addition to these formal networks at a global scale, there are informal networks of professionals in certain sectors (e.g., museums), or for a specific cultural or art form. However, these networks, initiated and operated by actors with different purposes, are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they have the potential to effectively unite international actors to tackle global issues such as rising populism and protectionism through the development of mutual understanding and international collaboration. On the other hand, they can potentially perpetuate disparities between regions (e.g., West and East, Global North and South) and actors (e.g., early career and established individuals) due to monopolies of information and resources. This duality of CD networks and their impacts have yet to attract sufficient academic research attention. Existing research largely focuses on the instrumentality of CD and how they are mis(used) as a propaganda/economic tool by various actors (with a focus on the nation-state perspective). Networks within CD have not been analysed to understand how they affect different aspects of CD activities such as efficiency (of resource allocation), flexibility (to adapt to different foreign contexts), inclusivity (to include various actors and reflect their interests), and sustainability (to have long-lasting impacts). To fill this research gap and contribute to future network-building practices in CD, this project seeks to discuss the following questions in the proposed events: 1. How do networks form and what are their different types (e.g., spatial, content-oriented, or actor-specific) and what are their functionalities? 2. What are the limitations of existing networks, and what kinds of networks are absent but much needed? 3. How do network-building practices in CD converge and diverge in different geopolitical and sociocultural contexts, and what are the implications for researchers and cultural administrators? To investigate the above questions, four global events have been planned to bring together a mix of academics (ECRs and senior researchers), cultural practitioners, and policymakers. This cross-disciplinary, sectoral, and national discussion is expected to contribute to: 1. A definition of cultural diplomacy networks, 2. An articulation of a CD network mechanism specifying goals, contexts, assumptions, and behaviours/actions needed to achieve the desired outcome, and 3. A plan for follow-up research and grant application to apply new methods and pursue new research agendas generated from the four events. To operationalise this project, the PI is intellectually and practically supported by three steering committee members and their institutions in the US, France, and China (see CfS and LoS). Additionally, an advisory board consisting of senior researchers and research platforms will mentor the ECR on the steering committee and share their connections for the networking events. This community of ECRs and senior researchers is the vital intellectual infrastructure for this project and follow-up research.

The function of striated muscles, so called because of their highly regular striation pattern when viewed in a microscope, is crucial for the movement of our body and heart muscles. These stripes are formed from the repetitive arrangements of molecular machines, called sarcomeres that generate force and movement. In the sarcomere, three systems of molecular filaments are working together: actin filaments, which are held together at the Z-disk, myosin filaments, held together at the M-band, and the giant protein filament titin, which links the actin and myosin filaments. Muscle responds rapidly to changes in use, with disuse leading to muscle loss (called atrophy) and exercise leading to muscle growth (called hypertrophy). These processes need to be constantly balanced, and are linked in a coordinated way to those controlling muscle repair by making new proteins for sarcomere repair and replacement of other unwanted or damaged components of the cell. Signals controlling muscle protein turnover are emerging to originate at the M-band and the Z-disk. These structures contain proteins that can sense mechanical stress and control the activity of the protein degradation machinery. Many of these proteins, however, remain enigmatic or haven't even been discovered, and often even their most fundamental functions have not been elucidated. Yet, when the integration of the M-band as a machinery combining structural, mechanical and communication functions is disrupted by genetic defects, severe muscle diseases are the result. This study will shed light on the compositions and regulation of the M-band, its role as a regulator of proteostasis, and why mutations in two of the giant proteins that are involved in its assembly, titin and obscurin, can lead to muscle disease. Inherited defects in the giant muscle protein titin, the largest in the human body, are increasingly identified as common causes of a broad range of muscle diseases. Many of these mutations cause defective proteins that the muscle cell would need to prevent from behaving abnormally by clumping together and interfering with normal function, which may be a major disease mechanism. We will study the impact of code-changing "missense" mutations in titin on the ability of the cell to cope with defective proteins, called protein quality control. The findings will help us to understand the basic mechanisms of how sarcomeres regulate sarcomere quality control, and how this fundamental mechanism is perturbed in severe inherited myopathies affecting mainly children.

Stochastic growth phenomena naturally emerge in a variety of physical and biological contexts, such as growth of combustion fronts or bacterial colonies, crystal growth on thin films, turbulent liquid crystals, etc. Even though all these phenomena might appear very diverse at a microscopic scale, they often have the same large-scale behaviour and are therefore said to belong to the same Universality Class. This in particular means that an in-depth analysis of those processes describing these large-scale behaviours is bound to give very accurate quantitative and qualitative predictions about the wide variety of extremely complicated real-world systems in the same class. Over the last 40 years, the Mathematics and Physics communities in a joint effort determined what were widely believed to be the only two universal processes presumed to capture the large-scale behaviour of random interfaces in one spatial-dimension, namely the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang and Edrwards-Wilkinson Fixed Points, and studied their Universality Classes. In a recent work, I established the existence of a third, new universality class, entirely missed by researchers, and rigorously constructed the universal process at its core, the Brownian Castle. The introduction of this novel class opens a number of new stimulating pathways and a host of exciting questions that this proposal aims at investigating and answering. The second pillar of this research programme focuses on two-dimensional random surfaces, which are particularly relevant from a physical viewpoint as they correspond to the growth of two-dimensional surfaces in a three-dimensional space. Despite their importance, two-dimensional growth phenomena are by far the most challenging and the least understood. Very little is known concerning their universal large-scale properties and the even harder quest for fluctuations has barely been explored. The present proposal's goal is to develop powerful and robust tools to rigorously address these questions and consequently lay the foundations for a systematic study of these systems and their features. The last theme of this research plan concerns the Anderson Hamiltonian, also known as random Schrödinger operator. The interest in such an operator is motivated by its ramified connections to a variety of different areas in Mathematics and Physics both from a theoretical and a more applied perspective. Indeed, the spectral properties of the Anderson Hamiltonian are related to the solution theory of (random) Schrödinger's equations or properties of the parabolic Anderson model, random motion in random media or branching processes in random environment. The Anderson Hamiltonian has attracted the attention of a wide number of researchers, driven by the ambition of fully understanding its universal features and the celebrated phenomenon Anderson localisation. This proposal will establish new breakthroughs and tackle long-standing conjectures in the field by complementing the existing literature with novel techniques.

Random motions in random media have been intensively studied for over forty years and many interesting features of these models have been discovered. The aim is to understand the motion of a particle in a turbulent media. Most of the work has been focused on the case where the particle evolves in a static random environment, for which slow-downs and trapping phenomena have been proved. More recently, mathematicians and physicists have been interested in the case of dynamic random environments, where the media can fluctuate with time. Random walks on the exclusion process is probably the canonical model for the field. Much less is known on this model, but exciting conjectures and questions have been made. Some of the most challenging questions concern the possibility of super-diffusive regimes, and the existence of effective traps along the trajectory of the walk. In this project, we aim at, on one hand, adapt the techniques recently developped in one dimension to the multi-dimensional model and, on the other hand, understand the presence or absence of atypical behaviors for this model.