Neighbourhood Change in a Comparative Context: a Social-Mobility Approach For decades, scholars have been seeking to understand why and how neighbourhoods change. Integrating different strands of the literature, it is suggested that neighbourhood transitions occur due to the interaction of cyclic dynamics generated by neighbourhoods’ local contexts, and structural transformations generated by higher level contexts. The interaction and the relative roles of these processes have not been investigated so far. Because research designs used to date cannot account for both types of effect, this proposal points to comparative research in contrasting regional and national contexts as a promising direction. Key methodological issues are identified in the current state-of-the-art with regard to the possibility of conducting effective comparative research on the topic: comparability of results, conceptualization of neighborhood change and distinguishing the relative impact of processes at different levels. The proposed research aims at addressing these issues in setting up a systematic approach to comparative analysis of neighbourhood change. The approach relies on the application of methods from social mobility research which has been tackling equivalent challenges. The approach will be implemented in an empirical comparative analysis of neighbourhood change in the Netherlands and Israel.

Today’s sonic displays play a significant role in threatening the quality of our everyday lives, personal and professional. Consequently, the interest to design sound is shifting from crafting the sound towards collaboratively understanding the role of sound and its position in complex environments, such as healthcare and autonomous driving, in which humans and technology must co-exist. Accordingly, the design process requires more inclusive, human-centered and technology-driven approaches to design sonic experiences. Yet the field of industrial design lacks systematic design methods and tools to empower design teams when they collaboratively express creativity through sound and discover sound-driven engineering solutions. Thus, with the PaDS (Participatory Designing with Sound) project, I aim at advancing the knowledge on sound-driven design thinking in which sonic communication (speaking about sound and experiences, imagining and representing them) is especially required within multistakeholder design teams that consist of expert (sound) designers as well as non-experts (e.g., users, manufacturers, policy makers). The main goal of PaDS is opening sound design practices to participatory approaches, in which stakeholders are involved in the design process as partners. The core of this project is the development of methods and representational tools to empower designers and other stakeholders to collaboratively conceptualise, express, and communicate sound-driven designs. To reach its goal, the PaDS project is based on a mixture of interdisciplinary approaches, including sonic interaction design, design cognition studies, and experimental psychology: Applied research and contextual inquiry of sound issues in complex, socio-technological environments provide relevant case studies of collaborative sound design-thinking, that is investigated through protocol analysis and perceptual experiments.

Today, we live immersed in a new globalized universalism, an increasingly homogeneous planet where architecture remains dominated by mass media, hindering renewal. However, in the aftermath of WWII, the Dutch architects Aldo and Hannie van Eyck already proposed a profound rethinking of the eurocentrism of his time. In their work, one can observe a hybrid of universalist and exoticist attitudes, looking for both continuity and renewal of the pre-war avant-garde and for critique on capitalist and nationalist ideologies of his time. This research aims to scrutinize the blending of non-western and modern art in the Van Eycks’ designs in a holistic way where space, inhabitants, political ideas and ways of living merge to shape a multiculturalist notion of society and architecture. There have been earlier attempts to study Van Eyck’s relation with the vernacular by Strauven (1998) and recently Jaschke (2011) and Rodríguez (2016), but they focused on form relations or lacked the full archival sources to tackle the issue. Recent research (2018) has uncovered an enormous amount of information that will be used to go beyond state-of-the-art. The multidisciplinary nature of the project is strong, since it will develop an innovative qualitative approach to the architect’s oeuvre from his private house, an Anthropology of Architecture, using his full ethnographical art collection, books, travel pictures and conference slides as an entry to document and unpack the ways domesticity, global travels and art collecting intersect and sustain a non-universal view from which architecture was re-conceptualised. Proper measures will be taken to integrate the research into different areas of expertise. The results would constitute the first critical inquiry on the influence of the "ethnographic paradigm of the 60s" in postwar architecture, an example of open and inclusive design practices, hence in line with EU global strategies, helping debates in a post-colonial globalised world.

Quantum computers promise to enable a computing power far beyond the capabilities of modern-day classical and super computers and are expected to revolutionise research in, among others, chemistry, medicine and materials research. However, a quantum computer capable of solving useful problems will require millions of high-quality quantum bits (qubits) working together. Currently, there are several qubit hardware platforms that are being studied and commercialised. This commercialisation mainly focuses on superconducting transmon qubits, photonic qubits and qubits made with trapped ions. Although these platforms enabled the first breakthroughs in quantum computing research and are developing steadily, the large size of the qubit systems may hamper their scaling towards the millions of qubits required for useful quantum computations. Groove will overcome the scaling problem that most quantum bit platforms will face, by focusing on the semiconductor germanium platform. Germanium qubits stand out due to a small footprint, well-defined, long-lived qubit states and compatibility with semiconductor manufacturing. This is highly promising for scalability. We will develop high-yield, robust qubits and scale up to 16 qubits, which we will make available in the cloud. In parallel we will write a business plan and prepare the launch of a start-up company already during the grant period, given the strong commercial potential of this technology. Our project will greatly contribute to the EU ambition of being in the forefront of the second quantum revolution by enabling a revolutionary technology fulfilling current and future market needs.

Quantum correlation measurements are essential to study and analyze the statistics of light fields, to observe quantum entanglement and are central in several emerging applications of quantum optics such as quantum cryptography, ballistic imaging, logic gates, quantum repeaters, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and optical tomography. The measurement techniques have not evolved much since the report of the first quantum correlation measurement in 1956: macroscopic optical elements are used to divide a light beam and single photon detectors are placed in each arm, correlations among the detectors signals are then analyzed to yield correlation histograms. This implementation is bulky and prone to misalignment, when measuring higher-order correlations, the number of required components scales up exponentially. My ERC consolidator grant involves performing numerous quantum correlation measurements on light fields generated by single quantum dots coupled to atomic vapours. Here, a new architecture for a quantum correlation counter is proposed where the detectors are all integrated on a chip to offer the user a compact and robust device to measure quantum correlations up to orders as high as 4 and also able to resolve photon numbers with high fidelity. Eight contiguous superconducting single photon detectors coupled to an optical fiber will be used to achieve high detection efficiencies and unprecedented time resolution. Two prototypes of increasing complexity will be built and tested. The final system will form the starting point for a commercialization effort to be led by Single Quantum BV, a spin-off from my research group that produces single photon detectors. I expect an initial sales volume of 10 units/year to grow to 50 units/year after 5 years.