PeripheRIS undertakes research to enable institutional support for innovation policy in European peripheries, with a focus on policy implementation. For more than a decade since the financial crisis, uneven development in Europe has intensified, while the economic, social and political problems faced by peripheral regions have become widely recognized. Yet, under the EU's regional and innovation policies, peripheries are meant to compete with core regions to be economically sustainable - a process which relies on innovation as a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. While it has been suggested for some time that institutions play a role in peripheral development, serious inquiry into institutional aspects of regional innovation systems (RIS) has only recently been sparked. PeripheRIS focuses on the interplay between institutions and actors for the innovation-driven, sustainable transition of peripheral regions in Europe, bridging institutional and entrepreneurial strands of RIS as they unfold in complex institutional-entrepreneurial relations. In peripheries, these can be reduced to key personalities on both sides, and the focus turns to the actors at work within the system. The research aims to uncover mechanisms of institutional support to innovation. From his placement at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Bradley Loewen will develop a case study on the innovation system of Italy's South Tyrol region for comparison to prior cases in Central and Eastern Europe. A mixed methods approach is adopted based on qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (causal process tracing) methods. The cases will support theory-building in the area of evolutionary economic geography, to overcome the need for deep contextualization in future case research, which is a limitation for policy learning. In addition to academic outputs, the project will result in a practical guidebook with recommendations to local and regional governments for supporting innovation in peripheries.

Alpine Community Economies Lab (ACElab) uses participatory design methods to support alpine communities in addressing cross-cutting concerns of sustainable socio-economic development outlined in the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region and the Alpine Convention. Via a gender-sensitive community-based research space, I will engage a diversity of civic actors and policy makers in the collaborative investigation of (trans)local economies (e.g. forestry, tourism, crafts) sustaining their valley district. Together we will envision developments that have both people and the environment at their core. To do so, I mobilise my expertise in design-led civic participation and feminist economic geography and my Host and Secondment institutions’ expertise in regional development and participatory governance. Together we will prototype, test and refine a multifaceted community economies toolkit to be released via open-access. ACElab will enhance my expertise in leading participatory research projects with a gender-sensitive approach that work across the public and private sector. Through collaborations with the Host, the Secondment institution and the partnering policy makers (from local to European level), I will gain significant skills in research governance, public engagement and impact creation. I will gain expertise on alpine regional development and build research networks for follow-on grants. Thus, the fellowship will support my intended career of leading a participatory research lab in the alpine region. Beyond myself, ACElab offers significant value in the context of Horizon 2020 by addressing areas of special focus (e.g. economic growth & innovation, inclusive & reflective societies) and key objectives (e.g. build an effective research and innovation system, increase the economic potential of strategic areas) in collaboration with policy makers. Its value is significant for the Host as it premiers a community-based research lab and working with design-led methods.

WiKollect aims at creating a workflow for the large-scale transference of high-quality contents across languages. The workflow is divided in four cyclic steps. In step (i) an automatic model will identify contents available in a document in language A which are missing in a document, on the same topic, in language B. In step (ii) candidates to fill the gaps in the document in language B will be automatically generated. In step (iii) such candidates will be subject to manual evaluation by language learners. In step (iv) the contents identified as high-quality will be promoted to fill the gaps in the document in language B. WiKollect will take advantage of the barely-exploited synergy among natural language processing, language learning, and crowdsourcing. To address the different research challenges posed by the workflow design and implementation, it will create an innovative and re-usable hybrid intelligence architecture combining (a) artificial intelligence —such as machine learning and natural language processing— to identify contents worth transferring across languages and generate potential translations and (b) human intelligence —by means of implicit crowdsourcing— relying on a crowd of language learners to flag good contents. WiKollect will create different by-products in addition to the research products that will be generated by addressing each step in the four-step workflow. Language learning exercises on specific topics and complexity levels will be generated. The fair re-use of contents across languages will be promoted with the mass production of high-quality contents. During the MSC period, WiKollect will target the generation of Wiktionary contents in Italian and German. Still, the workflow is flexible and extendable and can be applied to other documents (e.g., Wikipedia articles, news) and languages in the near future.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder (after Alzheimer's) associated with oxidative stress and aging, and affects an estimated 1% of people worldwide over 60 years of age. The pathogenetic triggers of neurodegenerations are largely unknown. Current therapeutic interventions only partially alleviate symptoms and do not restore normal neuronal function or prevent progressive neurodegenerations. Identifying novel molecular targets and searching for therapeutic agents that block neurodegeneration and promote neuronal restoration is a key challenge in the field. I and the Host have together identified 51 candidate genetic loci associated with age-related neurodegenerations in PD model and PD patients, respectively. These candidate genes are evolutionarily conserved in both vertebrate and invertebrate animals. I hypothesize that some of these genes, via an evolutionarily conserved signal transduction pathway, alleviate the oxidative stress in the dopaminergic neurons and protect them against degeneration. This project combines my (C. elegans genetics) and Host (cell-based PD models) expertise to identify new genetic pathways that mediate protection against neurodegenerations during oxidative stress and aging. I expect that achieved goals of the proposal will be important discovery that should lead to novel therapeutic targeting for Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative proteinopathies. My long-term goal is to become an independent scientist and establish lab to find novel therapeutic targets and strategies for the diseases associated with oxidative stress, including PD. Gained research experience together with improving my teaching, mentoring and management skills during this fellowship will help me to achieve my goals and transition myself into independence.

Urgent decarbonisation of all energy-related sectors is vital in order to reduce climate change impact and secure sustainable growth. To achieve to this goal, increase of renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar, is crucial. Due to their intermittent nature, they are challenging to integrate in the power sector. One of the most recognized solutions is so called sector coupling – connection of various energy sector to achieve balancing of intermittent electricity production from renewable energy sources. District heating, in combination with heat pumps, is more than suitable technology for power and heating sector coupling. In order to secure the role of district heating in future energy systems with high share of variable renewable energy source, the impact of different boundary conditions such as district heating supply temperature, heat pump source temperature and availability, has to be studied. This project will provide systematic analysis of the impact of DH network parameters on the successful integration of variable RES in the power system through sector coupling and utilisation of building thermal mass as a thermal storage option. This will be carried out by developing numerical model capable of assessing opportunities of ancillary services and demand response capabilities enabled by heat pumps in future power markets combined with thermal inertia of buildings’ as the thermal storage. Then, strategies for a large-scale integration of heat pump technologies, in the power markets with a great share of variable renewable energy sources, will be developed. The project outputs will facilitate positioning district heating systems and heat pump technologies as the key component of future energy systems thus, enabling a greater share of RES in the final energy consumption, higher energy efficiency. Consequently, this will result in lower greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions thus supporting EU energy and climate long-term goals and policies.