In this project, I will study how individual and social motives interact to drive individual decisions, a question that has fallen between the cracks of different social-science approaches. I will use a common theoretical framework to approach an important, but badly understood, general question: do social motives reinforce or weaken the effect of changes in individual motives? By modifying this common framework to different applications, I will consider its predictions empirically in different large data sets with individual-level information. The planned applications include four subprojects in the social, political, and economic spheres: (i) decisions in China on the ethnicity of children in interethnic marriages and matching into such marriages, (ii) decisions on tax evasion in the U.K. and Sweden, (iii) decisions to give political campaign contributions in the U.S., and (iv) decisions about fertility in Sweden. I may also spell out the common lessons from the results on the interaction between individual and social motives in monograph format intended for a broader audience.

Two recent revolutions in time-domain astronomy are transforming our understanding of stellar evolution in the most massive regime: the detections of gravitational waves (GW) from binary black holes, and the discovery of new and rare classes of supernovae from wide-field transient surveys. With this, a long-standing prediction from stellar evolution theory is gaining new relevance: that stars with He cores above ~35 solar masses will encounter an instability due to pair-production, resulting in either a series of pulsations and corresponding mass ejections, or the complete disruption of the core in a pair-instability supernova. GW detectors can search for the resulting gap in the black hole mass distribution, while supernova surveys can constrain the occurrence of the pair-instability phenomenon in the low-redshift universe by searching for the associated transients. With the upgrade in survey volume in the 2020s by the LSST project, we have an unprecedented opportunity in finding and studying such rare transients, but first need to solve the substantial needle-in-haystack problem of identifying the relevant candidates from a stream of several million alerts per night. TransPIre will address this by drawing on both the analysis and properties of the current state-of-the-art supernova samples being collected, as well as theoretical expectations of (pulsational) pair-instability supernovae, to build the necessary identification software and deploy it on the LSST alert streams to select the best candidates for follow-up and further analysis. As a result, we will uncover the relation between pair-instability phenomena and extreme transients such as superluminous supernovae, identify which interacting transients have mass-loss histories consistent with pulsational pair-instability mass-loss, and either find the first bona-fide pair-instability supernova in the low redshift universe or place the strongest constraints to date on their occurrence.

Human mitoribosome represents a distinct class of ribosomes that has specialized in synthesizing exclusively 13 hydrophobic membrane proteins, forming the catalytic core of the respiratory chain. The mature mitoribosome is composed of 82 nuclear encoded proteins and three mt-rRNAs. It is postulated that mitoribosomes are formed in an intricate and well-defined hierarchical process, involving hundreds of proteins and RNA molecules working in cooperation and under tight regulation. However, a structural insight into this process is completely lacking and most of the trans-factors remain unknown. I propose to fill this gap by harnessing CRISPR/Cas9 for genome editing in combination with the state of the art methods in single particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). By combining these techniques with biochemical characterization, I will reveal mechanistic insights into how mitoribosomal proteins are assembled in a cascade while nascent mitochondrial rRNA molecules are processed and folded. Since high resolution cryo-EM allows now a unique ability to investigate heterogeneous ribosomal populations and built de novo models, the proposed work will not only reveal the maturation states, but also currently unknown factors implicated in the process. On the other hand, the mitochondrion is compartmentalized into sub-organelle sections such as nucleoids, RNA granules, and membrane-related milieus, and they co-localize with various stages of the mitoribosome assembly. I will also use cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) to expand the scope beyond the mitoribosomal complexes and reveal the dynamics of the maturation process and transport mechanism of the assembly intermediates between the sub-organelle compartments. Our approach relies on the most recently developed methodologies and proven strength of the lab complemented by specialized expertise of collaborators, aiming to characterize the transient and low abundant complexes in human mitochondria.

While the need for sustainability transformations is ubiquitous, understanding why and how they succeed or fail is limited. Explanations often focus on either agency-related or systemic factors. Understanding the complex dynamics of transformations, however, requires approaches that bridge perspectives, and recognize the interdependent personal, political, social and ecological dynamics at play. TRANSMOD addresses this gap through interdisciplinary analysis of transformative change in the context of natural resource governance and food systems across the Global South and North. It focuses on how novel ideas and practices emerge and take root in response to crises, such as resource decline or Covid-19, and in interaction with existing structures and processes, such as dominant narratives, power relations and biophysical dynamics. The project will reach its objectives through an approach that transcends a focus on systemic processes versus agency by analysing change or lack thereof as emerging from their relations. It will achieve this through two methodological advancements: i) combining simulation modelling with empirical research of past transformations, which allows analysing key material and immaterial social and social-ecological processes through in-depth case studies and testing their effect on emergent system dynamics through modelling, and ii) making sense of the complexities of change through engaging in ongoing change-making processes. Together, these activities will serve the development of complexity-aware theories of transformation. The project will open up new opportunities for sustainability science by establishing the conceptual and methodological foundations for research that goes beyond natural-social divides with the help of building applying a next generation of social-ecological models. This will enable new ways of theorising that account for the complexity of cross-scale and interconnected social-ecological dynamics of the Anthropocene.