The sustainability of the welfare state in which the state plays a key role in the promotion of solidarity, integration and wellbeing of its citizens may be compromised due to the current economic crisis and unprecent demographic changes. The combination of these pressures with new family forms, pose significant challenges to individuals, families and societies and place solidarity and adjustment between generations as a priority in European states, arguably more important today than in earlier decades, as people live longer and share more years with younger generations. The aim of this proposal is to investigate how the social context, from macro-societal to micro-interpersonal, affects intergenerational solidarity and important indicators of adjustment between generations in two economically and culturally distinct countries: Portugal and UK. The project seeks to examine: national (e.g., policies), regional (e.g. economic circumstances), family (e.g. transfers up and down family lineages) and individual-level relationships (e.g., wellbeing). Mixed-methods will be used to facilitate an integrated approach from macrosocietal to individual variables and enable empirical-base and sound policy making. A synthesis of the findings will focus on the levels of context that can be powerful in shaping inequalities in intergenerational solidarity, well-being and social integration and on the implications for programmes and policies. The strong theory-driven nature of the project, the candidate profile, the international mobility and working in a world-renowned centre of excellence with the support from a dynamic multidisciplinary team representing a wide range of substantive, methodological and policy expertise, are key factors for the project’s impact and candidate career development, skills acquisition and diversification. The project and the candidate career will also benefit from the input and initiatives funded by ongoing topic-related projects (e.g., Cost ActionIS1311)

In this project I plan to investigate by means of numerical simulations the dynamics and rheology of low-density equilibrium gels made of limited-valence building blocks. I will start with simple toy models of patchy particles and then add complexity in the form of inner degrees of freedom by investigating systems that undergo a hierarchical self-assembly process. Examples of such systems are recently synthesised DNA constructs and telechelic star polymers. The novelty of DELTAS lies in the focus put on the role of the internal flexibility as a tool to tune the dynamics and the rheology of equilibrium gels. Indeed, the possibility of fine-tuning the structure of these materials lend themselves well to many applications, ranging from medicine to material science. The project goes one step further by proposing to investigate the kinetics, dynamics and mechanical properties of these systems in the framework of (flexible) patchy systems. The usage of simple toy models will grant a better understanding of the phenomenology of these systems. In addition, the realistic systems I plan to investigate will, on one hand, establish a stronger link between theory and numerical simulations and experiments and, on the other hand, provide a testing ground for the results obtained with toy models.

The antigenic evolution of influenza is conventionally assumed to occur by ‘antigenic drift’ where new strains arise through the incremental addition of mutations in surface glycoproteins. However, the antigenic drift model can only explain the epidemiology and limited genetic diversity observed among influenza virus populations by imposing constraints on the mode and tempo of mutation. We have shown that an alternative model known as ‘antigenic thrift’ successfully models the epidemiology and genetic diversity of influenza by assuming that the antigenic evolution of the virus population is primarily driven by natural immune responses against epitopes of limited variability. We have identified epitopes of limited variability in H1, H3 and influenza B. Each epitope has between 3 and 4 different conformations. These epitope conformations are all in the head domain of the HAs of various subtypes, making them naturally highly immunogenic. The epitope are also limited in variability, often due to their position adjacent to the receptor binding site, cycling through their limited repertoire of conformations as host population immunity changes. By vaccinating against these epitope conformations for each subtype, we can induce immunity against all past and present H1, H3 and influenza B. This approach will remove the need to vaccinate each year and have much higher levels of efficacy. The vaccine can also be made using the established methods of inactivated or attenuated influenza vaccine production. This maintains a price threshold of 5 USD per dose, making the vaccine attractive to pharmaceutical companies, and by reducing the number of doses required to confer immunity and while maintaining production cost, the vaccine is attractive to healthcare providers.

World Bank, EC Joint Research Centre, and other bodies have recently highlighted the potential of online labour markets to boost employment and economic growth. While national job markets have stagnated, online labour markets that connect firms with knowledge and service workers around the world have grown up to 60% a year. An overlooked aspect of these markets is that they extricate workers and employers from national institutional frameworks, such as employment law and collective bargaining, and instead impose their own, technologically enforced institutions. For example, a leading marketplace recently instated a global minimum wage of 4.00 USD/h. With over 540,000 employers and 4,000,000 registered workers in 180 countries, this Californian company is making critical labour policy decisions that influence businesses and individuals from Berlin to Manila. The objective of this project is to lay bare the politics and institutions of these next-generation labour markets promoted with discourses of technological progress. Whose interests find expression in their institutions? Some online workers have begun to organize transnationally with the help of digital media. How do online labour movements emerge and assert power on these markets? And finally, to what extent are these relations still reducible to struggles between capital and labour, rather than more ambiguous networked models of production? We will tackle these questions through a combination of conventional social research methods and innovative Internet research methods, on both virtual research sites (online labour markets and workers' online communities) and physical research sites (market operators' premises and worker gatherings). We survey, interview, and observe designers and workers to reconstruct processes through which online markets, institutions, and movements are shaped, and "scrape" online data to quantify their influence. The results will open up important new vistas in labour policy debate.