David against Goliath: Could small consumers of electricity compete in the wholesale markets on equal footing with the other market agents? Yes, they can and FlexAnalytics will show how. Activating the demand response, although a major challenge, may also bring tremendous benefits to society, with potential cost savings in the billions of euros. This project will exploit methods of inverse problems, multi-level programming and machine learning to develop a pioneering system that enables the active participation of a group of price-responsive consumers of electricity in the wholesale electricity markets. Through this, they will be able to make the most out of their flexible consumption. FlexAnalytics proposes a generalized scheme for so-called inverse optimization that materializes into a novel data-driven approach to the market bidding problem that, unlike existing approaches, combines the tasks of forecasting, model formulation and estimation, and decision-making in an original unified theoretical framework. The project will also address big-data challenges, as the proposed system will leverage weather, market, and demand information to capture the many factors that may affect the price-response of a pool of flexible consumers. On a fundamental level, FlexAnalytics will produce a novel mathematical framework for data-driven decision making. On a practical level, FlexAnalytics will show that this framework can facilitate the best use of a large amount and a wide variety of data to efficiently operate the sustainable energy systems of the future.

Sustainable agriculture is an ambitious concept conceived to improve productivity but minimizing side effects. Why the efficiency of a biocontrol agent is so variable? How can different therapies be efficiently exploited in a combined way to combat microbial diseases? These are questions that need investigation to convey with criteria of sustainability. What I present is an integral proposal aim to study the microbial ecology and specifically bacterial biofilms as a central axis of two differential but likely interconnected scenarios in plant health: i) the beneficial interaction of the biocontrol agent (BCA) Bacillus subtilis, and ii) the non-conventional interaction of the food-borne pathogen Bacillus cereus. I will start working with B. subtilis, and reasons are: 1) Different isolates are promising BCAs and are commercialized for such purpose, 2) There exist vast information of the genetics circuitries that govern important aspects of B. subtilis physiology as antibiotic production, cell differentiation, and biofilm formation. In parallel I propose to study the way B. cereus, a food-borne pathogenic bacterium interacts with vegetables. I am planning to set up a multidisciplinary approach that will combine genetics, biochemistry, proteomics, cell biology and molecular biology to visualize how these bacterial population interacts, communicates with plants and other microorganisms, or how all these factors trigger or inhibit the developmental program ending in biofilm formation. I am also interested on knowing if structural components of the bacterial extracellular matrix (exopolysaccharides or amyloid proteins) are important for bacterial fitness. If this were the case, I will also investigate which external factors affect their expression and assembly in functional biofilms. The insights get on these studies are committed to impulse our knowledge on microbial ecology and their biotechnological applicability to sustainable agriculture and food safety.

Extremely low temperatures influence plant development and crop productivity. Therefore, plants have evolved mechanisms to enhance tolerance to freezing (cold acclimation) involving physiological and biochemical modifications. A key side of this process is the biosynthesis and delivery mechanisms of the newly synthesized lipid species towards the appropriate subcellular membranes. Previous studies in Prof Botella´s lab (supervisor) have demonstrated that Arabidopsis SYT1 (Synaptotagmin 1) is an ER-PM (endoplasmic reticulum – plasma membrane) tether component essential for freezing tolerance, and they have characterized SYT3, a novel component of cold-acclimation. The research objective of this proposal is to determine the role that SYT1 and SYT3 have on lipid homeostasis related to cold acclimation at the cellular level, using a combination of mutant analysis, cellular biology, lipidomics and biochemical approaches. Additionally, the findings could have future applications since freezing temperatures are limiting the geographical locations for growing crop plants and periodically account for significant losses in plant productivity in Europe. Dr Ruiz-Lopez (researcher) has wide experience in Plant Lipids. In recent years she has successfully worked in the UK, in one of the world’s leading groups for plant lipids research. Moreover, the host group is one of the world-leading groups in plant responses to abiotic stress research. Their collective expertise represents a very strong team with a proven track-record to conduct world-class research. In addition, secondments are planned to carry out the most advanced lipidomic analysis. This inter-disciplinary Fellowship will exploit the complementary competencies and technologies available at the host to broaden the skills of the researcher, particularly in microscopy, proteomics and management skills, and will also increase the sharing of knowledge and technology transfer between the participant institutions.