NeuroWelfare in Cash Transfers Measures (CTs): Do Welfare Cash Transfers Show Different Brain Activity and Improve Equality? (NW) aims to pave the way for the interdisciplinary study of the brain functioning and the socio-cognitive impact on self and social perception in the experience of the two main paradigmatic cash transfer schemes: conditioned CTs (CCTs) and unconditioned CTs (UCTs). NW’s idea is born from my PhD effort, in which I studied a Basic Income pilot project, observing a mindset shift in the re-distributive beliefs and attitudes of community’ financiers, showing me the need for a neurophysiological understanding of CTs phenomena. NW’s achievability has been improved from the previous project’s application in its methodological operationalization, better defining the outcomes’ measurability and scalability to isolate effects of CTs’ on the brain. The assessment of social protection measures is usually done by looking at the behaviors of the welfare recipients. In addition, social neuroscience efforts are frequently focused on mental manifestations observed in the laboratory environments. What if the modern techniques to investigate brain activity would be applied to healthy individuals perceiving income support in their social environment? By utilizing an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach, I pursue to combine the knowledge and the methodology of human sciences with those of social neurosciences, to detect and measure the effect of CTs’ on brain from three empirical intertwined perspectives: (1) neurophysiological, (2) cognitive and (3) interactional. I’ll train my interdisciplinary skills thanks to experienced supervisors in Vilnius University, University of Oregon and ISCTE-Lisboa. NW tackles the complexity of redistribution social phenomena, advancing my career progress in the brand-new field of “Neurosociology”.

Tackling heterogeneous cell populations at single-cell resolution is becoming increasingly important in different branches of biology and biomedicine. Many useful techniques have been developed to profile and even selectively purify single-cells, however, the demand for techniques with better analytical performance and improved high-throughput capabilities, remains very high. Droplet microfluidics can fulfill this demand by bringing higher throughput, scalability and single molecule resolution that are hard to achieve with conventional technologies. In this project, a droplet microfluidics platform will be developed and applied for ultra-high-throughput single-cell screening and sequencing. The project will be focused on B-cells that produce therapeutic antibodies or biomolecules of industrial interest. Cell compartmentalization into microfluidic droplets together with capture beads and barcoded DNA primers will enable a direct establishment of the linkage between the genotype (genes or mRNA) and phenotype (binding, regulatory or activity of secreted proteins). The proposed work will allow the quantitative high-throughput antibody phenotyping without loosing the original heavy-light chain pairing, a significant advantage over other technologies. Like no other system available to-date this the technological approach outlined in this proposal will provide a unique way to identify the primary sequence of heavy and light IgG genes encoding functional monoclonal antibodies directly from single-cells, without a need to perform gene cloning or cell immortalization. The results of this work are likely to bring a significant impact not only in applied biological sciences but also in biotechnology and biomedicine.

Constricted by electron spin statistics, the maximum internal quantum efficiency of 100% can be achieved in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) by utilizing purely organic thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials. However, due to strong charge transfer, they exhibit broad emission with a full-width-at-half maximum (FWHM) > 70 nm. Recently, multiresonant TADF (MR-TADF) emitters, a sub-class of TADF materials based on alternating boron and nitrogen atoms embedded into polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon scaffolds, are attracting much interest in OLEDs. Their key attributes include a narrow FWHM, high photoluminescence quantum yield, and unprecedented color purity. Even though these MR materials have advantages in color purity over conventional TADF materials, their device stability is weak and results in a poor operational lifetime (LT) due to the large singlet-triplet energy gap, delayed fluorescence lifetime, and too slow rate of reverse intersystem crossing (RISC). Especially, narrowband blue OLEDs LT (<100h) is still inferior to the conventional TADF OLEDs. The HONESTY project seeks to address the above issues by rationally designing organic narrowband novel TADF emitters. Our designs comprised four types (a combination of boron and non-boron) targeting a high RISC rate, leading to highly stable narrowband blue OLEDs with long LT. Among the four types, one design includes yet unexplored rigid tellurium-based acceptor decorated with high triplet energy donors, which is keen for new TADF scaffolds. The rigidity of all chemical components with slightly twisted confirmation and aryl groups on donors will work coherently to furnish highly stable OLEDs with suppressed efficiency roll-off, improved device stability, and long LT. Overall, the HONESTY proposal is anticipated to provide a breakthrough in stable blue narrowband TADF-OLEDs with the supervision of Karolis Kazlauskas, a physics expert in stable OLEDs working at Vilnius University, Lithuania.

The physics of charge and spin transport is the basis of current consumer devices. Recent discoveries in solid-state physics have highlighted the importance of the coupling of the electron’s motion to its spin for transport phenomena. However, our understanding of transport with this so-called spin-orbit coupling has been largely limited to non-interacting systems, even though the first experimental systems with well-controlled spin-orbit coupling and interactions are already available. Here, we aim to provide a theoretical description of these novel interacting spin-orbit coupled systems. More concretely, we will derive equations describing the motion of spin and mass, and solve these equations. We will investigate spin transport in the uncharted regime where the inter-particle interactions compete with spin-orbit coupling. In particular, we will quantify the robustness of the familiar transport phenomena (e.g., the spin Hall effect) in the presence of interactions. The group of Prof. Juzeliunas is at the forefront of spin-orbit coupling physics. The group of Prof. Stringari is one of the leading groups in the world when it comes to collective excitations of the many-body system. Combining their expertise with my quantum transport proficiency will allow to obtain, for the first time, a transport theory of interacting quantum gases with spin-orbit coupling, and provide its predictions as a collective excitation spectrum, which is directly accessible by ultracold-atom experiments. A successful accomplishment of this aim will open up the possibility to push spin-dependent transport phenomena to new regimes.

Over the past decade, epigenetic phenomena have taken centre stage in our understanding of gene regulation, cellular differentiation and human disease. DNA methylation is a prevalent epigenetic modification in mammals, which is brought about by enzymatic transfer of methyl groups from the S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) cofactor by three known DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs). The most dramatic epigenomic reprogramming in mammalian development occurs after fertilization, whereby a global loss of DNA methylation is followed by massive reinstatement of new methylation patterns, different for each cell type. Although DNA methylation has been extensively investigated, key mechanistic aspects of these fascinating events remain obscure. The goal of this proposal is to bridge the gap in our understanding of how the genomic methylation patterns are established and how they govern cell plasticity and variability during differentiation and development. These questions could only be answered by precise determination of where and when methylation marks are deposited by the individual DNMTs, and how these methylation marks affect gene expression. To achieve this ambitious goal, we will metabolically engineer mouse cells to permit SAM analog-based chemical pulse-tagging of their methylation sites in vivo. We will then advance profiling of DNA modifications to the single cell level via innovative integration of microdroplet-based barcoding, precise genomic mapping and super-resolution imaging. Using this unique experimental system we will determine, with unprecedented detail and throughput, the dynamics and variability of DNA methylation and gene expression patterns during differentiation of mouse embryonic cells to neural and other lineages. This project will give a comprehensive, time-resolved view of the roles that the DNMTs play in mammalian development, which will open new horizons in epigenomic research and will advance our understanding of human development and disease.