ICTA-UAB receives five MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships projects
ICTA-UAB has received five of the seven Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships in the 2024 call of the European Commission's Horizon Europe programme awarded to the UAB. The other two projects will be carried out in the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology.
The following projects have been selected:
Cultural Keystone Species as a tool to co-design biocultural stewardship for biodiversity conservation (KEYSTONES): Giulia Mattalia will explore the concept of cultural keystone species as a global biocultural tool with which to preserve biodiversity in this project that advocates for an approach that goes beyond biological diversity, integrating culture and beliefs. This global project will be conducted under the supervision of Victoria Reyes-García (ICTA-UAB and UAB Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology), in collaboration with the Mi’kmaq Nation of Canada and the Huancavilca people of Ecuador, as well as with the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada and the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador.
Building Land Degrowth Transitions (BuiLDT): David Gilbert will study alternative support and employment models in Western relations dominated by production, exchange and consumption. By exploring material and ideological aspects of the relations between social movements in America, Europe and Southeast Asia, he will record the potential of these economies and social relations with the aim of improving current existing challenges such as the exploitation of labour and non-human beings. The researchers will work at the ICTA-UAB under the supervision of Giorgos Kallis.
Pathways to Sustainable Wellbeing: A Bayesian Approach to Decent Living Within Planetary Boundaries (PostGroWellBeing): Bineh Ndefru will use Bayesian methods to model human wellbeing in a multidimensional manner with the aim of exploring optimal conditions for a decent life within planetary limits and provide support to political debates on degrowth. She will be working on the project with Jason Hickel as principal investigator at the ICTA-UAB.
European periphery and the Yugoslav Understanding of Planning: Researching Ideas for Making Environmental Strategies (E-YU-PRIME): Aleksandar Matković will explore the ideas and history behind a forgotten green transition in the former Yugoslavia to learn how that proposal, called social planning, can be used in today's European periphery for the green transition of Europe. The project will be carried out at ICTA-UAB under the supervision of Giacomo Dalisa.
Tracking the role of subsistence in emerging sociopolitical complexity through monumentality (MONUFEAST): Andrés Mejía Ramón will analyse microfossils extracted from one of the largest archaeological mounds in the Americas. The aim is to identify the role of food production and preparation in the origins of civilisation in the Bolivian Amazon, and to obtain key sequences of events in the change of subsistence strategies and political organisation over several centuries. The principal investigator of the project, which will be carried out at ICTA-UAB, is Umberto Lombardo.
Role of three-dimensional genome architecture on innovation through gene duplication in chordates (CHORDUP): Marina Brasó Vives will be investigating the interaction of the 3D organisation of the genome within the cell nucleus, gene duplication and the evolution of new functions in the genome of chordates. She will do so at the laboratory directed by Aurora Ruiz-Herrera Moreno, lecturer in the Department of Cellular Biology, Physiology and Immunology and researcher at the IBB and ICREA Acadèmia.
The functions of small microbial ORF-encoded proteins in nosocomial infections (SMALL): Veronica Young will work in the Systems Biology of Infection Lab, directed by Marc Torrent, at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, with the aim of identifying and characterising the SEPs (proteins encoded by small open reading frame ORFs) in key pathogens for nosocomial infections. Using computational and experimental methods, she will assess the role of SEPs in these infections and their potential uses in developing new antibiotics.
In total, the European Commission has awarded €417 million to 1,696 researchers in the 2024 MSCA call, to which 10,360 applications were submitted. The successful applicants, 43.8% of whom are women, represent almost 95 nationalities. The main disciplines with selected projects are social sciences and humanities, with 22.94%, and life sciences, with 20.93%.