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BOLD MINDS aspires to enhance the understanding of vulnerability factors underlying the emergence of borderline personality disorder (BPD), with an ultimate aim of increasing the potential for young individuals to receive early, evidence-based help when their mental health is at risk. BOLD MINDS will achieve this by investigating whether disruptions in two aspects of autobiographical memory (AM), narrative identity (NI) and involuntary AM (IAM), are associated with BPD features and problem behaviours in adolescents concurrently and over time. In doing so, BOLD MINDS will strengthen the understanding of mechanisms underlying the emergence of BPD in adolescence and lay a groundwork for developing evidence-based early interventions for BPD. While currently limited, the study of AM in this field is essential for two reasons. Firstly, because the aspects of AM under investigation, NI and IAM, are known to be involved in identity formation and emotion regulation which represent two key psychological processes that are disrupted in adults with BPD and are linked to problem behaviours such as self-harm and suicidality. Secondly, because promising research is emerging on the use of AM targets in the treatment of emotional disorder in adults, and provides a strong model for future treatment development with vulnerable adolescents. In addition, this timely research program aligns with calls from international organizations to prioritize early interventions to promote adolescent mental health. BOLD MINDS will adopt and adapt state-of-the-art ecological momentary assessment and analytical techniques and work at the crossroads of clinical and cognitive psychological perspectives, allowing for a multidimensional approach to understanding BPD vulnerability. Training-through-research and formalized training of the experienced researcher will prepare her for a permanent academic position and the founding of her own research lab specializing in AM and early interventions for BPD.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Memory and Identity in Adolescence

Bilingual Experiences, Cognitive Ageing and underlying Mechanisms

The goal of the Bilingual Experiences, Cognitive Ageing and underlying Mechanisms (BECAME) project is to examine the functional neuroplastic mechanisms underlying mitigatory effects of bilingual experience on age-related cognitive decline. While evidence is available for structural brain changes supporting bilingualism-induced effects on cognitive aging (CA), functional mechanisms underlying such effects are not yet well understood. BECAME aims to fill this gap by investigating the trajectory of bilingualism-induced functional neuroplasticity across the adult lifespan (ages 18-85), crucially adopting an individual differences approach related to measurable degree of bilingual engagement. Importantly, although such benefits are thought to be rooted early in the lifespan, evidence for the timeframe and conditions of their early emergence is scarce. The choice of including the whole adult lifespan allows us to investigate these mechanisms and their emergence more directly from a lifespan perspective. I combine behavioral testing with brain recordings via electroencephalography (EEG). EEG is widely used in cognitive neuroscience to assess brain activity and the degree of communication between brain regions (functional connectivity) in response to stimuli and at rest. Combining behavioral and EEG modalities will allow me to test bilingualism’s effect on functional connectivity, as well as its consequences for functional efficiency, the minimum required neural activation to successfully perform a task. This will enable a detailed, evidence-based account of the protective effects observed in older-aged bilinguals, and how they are built from earlier life stages. By illuminating the relationship between multilingualism and resulting neurocognitive adaptations, BECAME will enable to capitalize on it as a health initiative, with manifold societal implications and the potential to be translated into actionable policies exploiting multilingualism to ameliorate effects of CA.

WHeelchair Activity Monitoring project (WHAM)

Wheelchair users (WCU) are three to five times more inactive than the general population, leading to a high risk of developing preventable secondary conditions. Although physical activity (PA) guidelines have been specifically developed for WCU, we lack systematic approaches to implement them in practice, as well as valid algorithms to monitor PA change in WCU through sensor-based solutions. Accordingly, the overall scientific aim of the WHeelchair Activity Monitoring project (WHAM) is to advance PA research and practice in WCU by developing valid digital markers for monitoring of and providing feedback on PA, paving the way for implementation and intervention. I will accomplish this through combining the complementary research fields of 1) behavioural intervention studies focusing on increasing PA in WCU (core competence University of British Columbia, UBC; outgoing phase) and 2) sensor-based PA monitoring (core competence Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU; returning phase – consolidated by non-academic placement at Maastricht Instruments, which develop research prototypes including PA monitors). WHAM’s scientific aim is achieved through three objectives: 1) Measure the effect of a pragmatic exercise intervention trial on self-reported physical activity levels and cardio-respiratory fitness, 2) Develop valid algorithms for tracking PA markers in WCU, and 3) Co-create a framework that outlines how PA can be conjointly monitored and provided feedback on in WCU. This fellowship will enable me to become established as an internationally recognized researcher in the field of “physical activity and disability”, while bringing together ongoing national disjointed research activities in this field. Altogether, my overall ambition is to contribute to reducing inequalities in daily-life participation among WCU compared to the rest of the population.

Longitudinal Investigation of Visual and Numerical Perception in Preterm and Full-term Infants

The number of preterm births is on the rise -now more than 1 in 10 babies- and being born preterm is associated with having difficulties in two very important and related cognitive skills that we rely on daily: numerical and visual perception. However, a knowledge gap exists on neural and behavioural associations of numerical and visual perception in full-term and preterm infants. PrePER aims to uncover the underlying neural signatures of the cognitive dysfunctions that preterm infants might display in the first year of their lives and the role of parent-baby interaction to predict preterm infants that are at risk of developing these cognitive difficulties in the second year of their lives. The purpose is to establish criteria to identify infants (especially preterm) at-risk of having cognitive difficulties in numerical and visual perception. Shedding light on normal and impaired cognitive functions in infancy is an essential stepping stone that will pave the way for early diagnostic tools and interventions that would correct the cognitive dysfunctions more efficiently while the brain is still developing. The activities in PrePER will lead to original and innovative outcomes that are beneficial for four parties: 1) Scientific communities will be interested in the results as the ambitious research objectives address questions that have not been asked before. 2) Parents of preterm infants, health-care providers, and policy makers will be interested in the results as the overall aim is to establish criteria to identify infants at-risk of having cognitive-developmental difficulties in the first year of their lives. 3) The researcher will be accelerating her career progression as the training objectives meet her specific needs. 4) The supervisor will be enlarging her research interest and network as the research objectives include a topic within the researcher’s expertise.

AQUASERV – RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES FOR SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE, FISHERIES AND THE BLUE ECONOMY

The overarching objectives of AQUASERV are to bring together, enhance, integrate and customise RI capacities (including facilities, instruments and expertise) and through the provision of transnational access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access, to significantly further scientific advance and promote and facilitate the implementation of European Common Fisheries Policy, the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Sustainable Blue Economy and the European Green Deal. 

AQUASERV will achieve these objectives by offering scientists from academia and business remote and on-site transnational (TA) and virtual (VA) access to an advanced set of European research infrastructures and its nodes related to research and management of marine and freshwater biological resources, food and biotechnology. These include the European Marine Biological Resource Centre ERIC (EMBRC), the Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems ERIC, The Aquaculture for Excellence for Aquaculture in Fish (Aquaexcel), and the Infrastructure for Promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition (METROFOOD), as well as the International Council for Exploration of the Sea, both a service provider and stakeholder. It also includes the Research Infrastructure for Science and Innovation Policy Studies (RISIS) to bring contributions from the social sciences and to bring results nearer to policy makers ensuring societal impact. 

To enhance, integrate and customise RI capacities, collaboration between partners and new pipelines to meet the objectives of the project will be developed during the first 3 years and will make available  to users.  To ensure these capacities will not be lost, a sustainability work package involving stakeholders will address the project legacy.  

To maximize impact, AQUASERV will build a communication network among the partnership and develop a dissemination and outreach programme. Furthermore, an advanced training programme will be developed to capture future users and will be updated during the p

IMProving User experience, Long-term sustainability and Services of EU-OPENSCREEN

EU-OPENSCREEN (EU-OS), the distributed European Research Infrastructure for Chemical Biology and early drug discovery, provides world-class services in high-throughput compound screening and medicinal chemistry to users from academia and industry. As one of the largest open-access initiative globally, EU-OPENSCREEN plays an increasingly important role in facilitating early stage drug discovery in Europe. It recently integrated fragment-based drug discovery and chemoproteomics as two new services, but the increasing complexity of modern drug discovery projects requires an even more comprehensive portfolio and integration of emerging technologies. To ensure that EU-OS continues to offer a comprehensive suite of relevant services and support a growing user community to conduct forefront research, IMPULSE will develop, validate and integrate new services in AI/ML, new chemical modalities, and innovative disease-relevant cell models combined with CRISPR-Cas9/RNAi-based genetic screening. IMPULSE will work towards the implementation of common operational and data standards to increase data reproducibility and FAIRness. Bespoke outreach and training activities will raise awareness among key user groups of its new services and advance operational excellence and reproducibility in pre-clinical drug discovery. New models for pre-competitive drug discovery with industry or charities, and growing ERIC member community will reinforce the sustainability and accessibility of EU-OPENSCREEN.

Strengthening resilience and mental wellbeing through the Support4Resilience toolbox for leaders in elderly care

European elderly care experiences labor shortages, lack of qualified workers and a mismatch between capacity and demands, causing stress, burnout, and reduced mental wellbeing among healthcare workers and informal caregivers. Leaders are crucial in promoting supportive working conditions but lack research-based measures to act upon these challenges.

Support4Resilience (S4R) will develop, implement, and evaluate a research-based Toolbox to support healthcare leaders in improving healthcare workers’ and informal caregivers’ resilience and mental wellbeing in elderly care. S4R will identify resilience and mental wellbeing factors among healthcare workers and informal caregivers; explore their perspectives and needs; develop new theory on the relationship between individual and organizational resilience, and mental wellbeing; and develop recommendations and cost-effective interventions. The Toolbox with tailormade resources for policy and practical use will be available through an open access S4R Resource Bank.

The S4R Toolbox includes three main tools: 1) Mapping and identification, 2) Reflection and education, and 3) Reorganization. Measures are initiated at the organizational level and effects on mental wellbeing and resilience transpire at the frontline of elderly care. The Toolbox covers different situational contexts, types of healthcare providers and health system levels. Elderly care settings in six European countries will implement and evaluate the Toolbox through a process evaluation, effectiveness evaluation, and cost-effectiveness evaluation. 

S4R provides policymakers, decisions-makers and leaders with solutions for taking action to solve specific risks for healthcare workers’ and informal caregivers’ resilience and mental wellbeing. Thus, pertinent to the work programme, S4R will support the development of resilient health systems in European elderly care through improved leadership capabilities, governance structures, and adaptive capacities.

NEXT GENERATION IMAGING FOR REAL-TIME DOSE VERIFICATION ENABLING ADAPTIVE PROTON THERAPY

The NOVO project will address a fundamental issue in proton radiotherapy (PT) of cancer, namely the lack of real-time dose verification (RDV) that significantly limits the potential of PT due to uncertainties in the precise delivery of the prescribed dose. In the NOVO project, we will develop the first proof-of-concept of an RDV technology adaptable to any PT treatment and bring the concept to TRL 4 by also considering integration into the PT clinical workflow. The RDV technology will be pivotal for enabling the next generation of adaptive PT therapy, i.e., dose-guided real-time adaptive therapy. Real-time measurement of the dose to targeted and non-targeted tissues will be the key to truly empower patient-centered, personalized cancer treatment, important to improve curation and quality-of-life post-treatment. As a high-risk/high-gain project, NOVO aims at a first-of-its-kind RDV technology through the unique synergy between (1) cutting-edge, inexpensive organic scintillator technology that can detect secondary radiation during treatment for non-invasive measurements, (2) novel and fast image reconstruction, artificial intelligence (AI)-accelerated models and AI-enhanced image reconstruction to allow simultaneous detection of multiple radiation species and tissue compositional analysis, (3) tumor-tracking and imaging of tissue radio-sensitivity based on oxygen levels, (4) intelligent automation of decision-making schemes for real-time dose-guided adaptive therapy. The project will essentially open a new era in PT that enables curing more cancer patients and reducing toxicity from treatment. The NOVO consortium covers the entire value chain of RDV development (technology providers, theory and modelling, technology integration and PT clinics) and optimally engages nuclear, medical, and high-energy physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, oncologists, biologists, as well as European PT centers. 


Development of innovative proton and neutron therapies with high cancer specificity by 'hijacking' the intracellular chemistry of haem biosynthesis.

Deep-lying cancers, such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer, are very difficult to access and incurable by the current standards of care. The fluorescence of photosensitive molecules (PSs) can precisely guide surgical resection of GBM. Nevertheless, photomedical treatments like photodynamic therapy (PDT) show limited efficacies due to the low penetration of light into tissue. Proton radiotherapy can reach deep-lying disease through therapeutic energy deposition in a spatially confined region called Bragg peak. Current neutron-based therapies, like Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT), have sufficient penetration depth but lack cancer specificity.
In NuCapCure, we propose to 'hijack' intracellular biosynthetic pathways and use them to produce custom-made drugs that will facilitate two genuinely new cancer treatments: i) "NuCapCure Proton", combining proton radiotherapy, protondynamic therapy through PS proton activation, and proton capture therapy (BPCT) through three produced alpha particles; and ii) "NuCapCure neutron", combining GBM specific BNCT and PS neutron activation as demonstrated in our FET-open project FRINGE.
The main scientific breakthroughs of NuCapCure will be to demonstrate the custom production of novel compounds through native intracellular biosynthesis but also to establish experimental proof-of-principle, both in vitro and in vivo, of the proposed two novel therapies. Our highly interdisciplinary project team comprises world-renowned experts from a unique combination of disciplines: proton and neutron physics, synthetic chemistry, photochemistry, photobiology, radiobiology, medical physics, nuclear reactor and particle accelerator technology and radio-oncology to lay the foundations for novel, targeted and curative therapies against currently fatal cancer indications like GBM.

Despites dental pulp capping materials should meet the certain requirements, the available materials have one or more shortcomings—poor biocompatibility and rheological properties, fail to maintain pulp vitality and to simulate reparative dentine formation and expensive etc. Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) is widely used material because of its beneficial properties. However, its composition bismuth oxide, which is suspectable to toxicity, has an impact on rheological properties. This emphasizes the necessity of looking for inexpensive alternatives to materials that meet the specifications. This project's goal and novelty are to investigate the potential processing of the dental pulp capping cement, which is made of strontium silicate (SrSiO3), strontium fluoride (SrF2), piezoelectric material (PZM) and tricalcium silicate (Ca3O5Si) and its rheological properties and hemocompatibility. Because SrSiO3, SrF2, PZM and Ca3O5Si have the promising properties. This project's work packages are split into four categories based on the interdisciplinary approach since it involves the synthesis and characterization of PZM, the processing and characterization of cement, the identification of rheological parameters utilizing ISO standardizations, and hemocompatibility, and acquiring new transferrable skills. Additionally, the interactions among the selected compounds will be determined. The scientific impact of this project is comprehending the physical properties and the immune system's response to evaluate the cement's suitability as a replacement for existing materials, as well as resulting in further uses in dentistry and medicine. The societal impact is providing millions of patients in Europe with predictable and outstanding treatment outcomes each year to maintain pulp vitality and health. Eventually, it will ease the financial load on millions of patients who need dental care, will be avoiding inflated medical expenses and misuse of the patent (economic impact).

SrSiO3-based Dental Pulp Capping Cement

Midlene fra FUGE-Funksjonell genomforskn.i Norg fordelt på år

Midlene fra FUGE-Funksjonell genomforskn.i Norg fordelt på fylker

Midlene fra FUGE-Funksjonell genomforskn.i Norg fordelt på fagområde

Specialized proteomics service will be provided by the node at the Biotechnology Centre of Oslo for i.) quantitative proteomics ii.) clinical proteomics, and iii.) cell death proteomics. Quantitative proteomics will be performed either in cell culture by stable isotopic labeling of amino acids during cell culture (SILAC) or with other material by oxygen-18 labeling with final quantitative analysis using mass spectrometry and bioinformatic tools. Clinical proteomics is focused on the investigation of body fluids (e.g., saliva) and microorganism (e.g., Lactobacillus). Cell death proteomics comprehends the treatment of cells with specific drugs and detailed analyses of modified proteins (e.g., regulated proteolytic degradation) and protein translocations bet ween mitochondria and cytoplasm.

A node of the FUGE platform for proteomics at the Biotechnology Centre of Oslo

It is now a well established fact that in order to mitigate unwanted environmental effects of CO2 emissions the capture and storage of CO2 is one method promising significant cuts. The continuing growth of world demand for fossil fuels, will only increase  the need for CO2 capture and storage technology. Capture technologies are in place, which can be applied to exhaust gases from both power generation plants and industry in general. Post-combustion scrubbing by use of amine solvents is one such technology ; other technologies are pre-combustion and oxyfuel. A large number of capture plants are needed world-wide, it is imperative that the cost and energy use in such plants are significantly reduced. Innovative solutions for utilizing existing process equipm ent, can lead to a reduction in energy consumption and simplify overall design of post-combustion capture plants. A negative aspect of CO2 capture technology is that amine reclaiming process gives a potentially large annual amount of hazardous waste which  will need treatment. We will build on existing competence and seek to improve performance of in particular post-combustion technology, thereby also improving our knowledge base and strengthen our industrial foundation as well as the scientific one. 

Thr ee main activities will be the focus:  
1.Monitoring of technology development within CO2 capture.
We will build our competence and also support the two other activities. It is an aim of this work to use the platform created to propose research projects t hat target a significant improvement of the technologies investigated.
2.Environmental impacts of CO2 capture technologies.
CO2 capture will play an important role in mitigating global environmental climate change, but the technologies to be used will or may give rise to more local environmental impacts that will need to be solved.
3.Simulation and optimization.
Mathematical modelling of both process and process equipment in CO2 capture technology.

Optimization and environmental improvement of CO2-capture processes

The usage of crystalline silicon in solar cells to convert sunlight directly into electricity is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. A major challenge of all solar cell research is that electricity from solar cells currently is too expensive for being competitive. An essential issue is therefore the solar cell efficiency. Defects like impurities and dislocations that originate from the crystallization process strongly influence on the performance. A dislocation is a crystallographic defect, o r irregularity, within a crystal structure. While the effects of many impurities can be mitigated through processes used during the solar cell fabrication, the dislocations cause particular problems in multi-crystalline silicon solar cells, since the ener gy required for removing such defects is excessively high. Typically the dislocations exhibit an inhomogenous distribution in the material where zones with the highest dislocation density are often associated with a locally reduced efficiency. It is not c lear what causes these strong variations. Impurities in the form of dissolved atoms or particles are believed to play an important role. A reduced level of impurities can be achieved by controlling the convection in the melt. Advanced numerical modelling of these phenomena is addressed in the present project. Numerical work is accompanied by material characterization using a chemical process to map the dislocation structure and density in real silicon blocks made from directional casting. A challenge will  be to combine experimental data, fundamental theory and process simulations providing temperature and strain histories to build a model that can capture the key phenomena leading to the observed dislocation pattern. For IFE this project will strengthen t he competence in the field of silicon materials science in particular and in the field of computational materials science in general. Norwegian companies focusing on photovoltaics will benefit from this.

Modelling of Solar Grade Silicon Crystallization Processes

Optical MEMS have great potential in a number of industrial applications. We intend to address two innovation areas that are powerful enablers of our vision of an intelligent environment: i) optical spectroscopy, and ii) sensors based on photonic crystals . Both these areas require advances in micro- and nanostructuring techniques. Optical spectroscopy is a powerful measurement tool that can contribute to the sensor technology required to solve a number of important societal problems, such as cost-efficien t recycling, protection of people from harmful gases, and ensuring food safety. Present spectroscometers are too costly and too bulky for most of these applications, however. The purpose of this proposed topic is to develop the technology for a new genera tion of dedicated optical spectroscometers that are based on silicon technology, and that are suitable for incorporation in consumer products. This new technology makes possible the miniaturization and integration of several optical functions on the same chip and to tailor the spectrometer capabilities to a given task, thus reducing the production cost of the whole sensor system by a factor of 10 to 100, with no performance compromises.
MOEMS spectrometers can be used to detect and analyze small concentra tions of gases. They are however, not sensitive enough to detect single molecules. In order to reach the goal of single molecule detection, we intend to use photonic crystals. Though the technology is less mature in this field we believe the future reward s to be great.

Micro and Nano Optical Sensors

Although significant progress has been achieved in the development of models for particle-fluid flow and the understanding of physical phenomena on the single- particle level, it has not been fully utilized in the modeling and simulation of unit operation s. The ultimate goal would be a rigorous model of the whole system i.e. CFD with implemented models for mass and heat transfer and chemical reaction within the particle for the whole reactor. However such a model necessarily implies a high numerical compl exity and still somewhat restricted applicability. Therefore it is suggested to study the cross-effects on smaller systems and to develop a simpler model but based on well-understood underlying phenomena and well-founded parameters in the first stage. 

T ask A. Flow analysis - CFD for fluidized systems: Further develop 3D Lagrangian-Eulerian particle-fluid CFD code, investigate the influence of particle model parameters and force models on the flow regime, and investigate flow structure in the fluid-solid  systems under various operating conditions

Task B. Analysis of phenomena on particle scale - kinetics: Develop models for internal and external mass-and heat transfer as well as chemical reaction and particle shape dynamics, and implement single-particl e models, and perform parameter studies.

Task C. Analysis of cross effects - CFD flow with particle phenomena on small systems: Implement particle models in the Lagrangian-Eulerian particle-fluid CFD code, investigate particle functionality under various  flow conditions, and analyze and develop procedures identifying the driving mechanism and evaluating the governing parameters for a fluidized-bed model.

Task D. Analysis of fluidized bed unit performance: Review existing models/commercial software, util ize the understanding and apply the knowledge on fundamental phenomena, evelop/modify a fluidized-bed model based on simplified flow, mass and heat transfer and chemical reaction models, perform case study.

Multi-level modeling for design and optimization of fluidized bed processes - particle-fluid flow with chemical reaction

Mineral-leaching with CO2-acidified water represents an interesting alternative to conventional leaching techniques based on mineral acids. Previous research at IFE has shown the potential of using CO2 both as leachant and as chemical for downstream proce ssing to commercial products. In view of the international focus on carbon capture and storage, a CO2-based leaching process offers advantages with respect to new products and mitigation of waste problems in the mineral industry and possibility of CO2 sto rage as opposed to conventional processes. So far, research on CO2-based leaching has been mostly conducted in small autoclaves to study reaction kinetics for different mineral types. For commercial utilization of this technology, however, a continuous or  semi-continuous process will be required. The objective of this study is thus to develop a reactor concept for application in industrial processes. Design of a pressurized reactor system that allows for continuous operation and provides adequate reaction  conditions represents a significant challenge. A step-wise approach will be used to finalize the reactor design. The result of the project will be a small demonstration unit for CO2-based mineral leaching.

Development of a novel reactor system for mineral-leaching with CO2

A large part of the Norwegian physical infrastructure was constructed between 1950 and 1970 and is now on (or beyond) the expected service life. Several aspects make it necessary with an extensive focus on further development of rehabilitation techniques and methods. The inadequate funding of maintenance, increased performance requirements, international requirements, higher demands for reliability and safety and the expected increased load due to climatic change all contributes to a need for research and  innovative solutions for rehabilitation of the infrastructure.

This project will be an important step towards new methods and approaches allowing for better use of scarce funding or rehabilitation of infrastructure. The project will also be an important  element in the continuous development of more accurate criteria and Codes of Practice regarding the design, rehabilitation and functionality of critical elements in the infrastructure. The project will contribute to increased status for working with reha bilitation of infrastructure and hence lead to improved recruitment of qualified students and future researchers within this area.

Future Rehabilitation Strategies for Physical Infrastructure

Statistical science is an increasingly recognised tool for discovery and advancement in science, technology, industry and services. Analysis, exploration, interpretation and integration of data are all based on statistical methodology. During the last dec ade we have experienced that the methodological development within statistics to an extended degree is initiated by innovation needs in important application areas. In the spirit of NR's applied role, we will focus on specific application areas and their anticipated coming needs for new statistical tools. Moreover, similar statistical challenges often originate from rather different application areas, which we will exploit. The project will concentrate on methodological needs from the following areas:

- Financial sector, including insurance
- Health sector, including biotechnology
- Marine sector
- Environmental sector
- Public sector

All of these areas are of great importance to Norway, and are also highly relevant internationally. They are characteris ed by large data sets, the analysis of which often influences important and vital decisions. Some of the statistical challenges will be common to the areas. Hence, in addition to solutions connected to a specific area, the project will include methodologi cally driven cross-sector activities.

There will be a close integration between MASC and the work at the Center for Research based innovation, Statistics for Innovation, SFI2. In SFI2 the aim is long-term statistical methodology development needed for re aching innovation aims for the 13 commercial and public partners to the centre, and others, mainly focused on the key areas marine, petroleum, finance and health. 
In MASC there will be a more general and broader perspective by exploring new market areas and important areas to the society where there are few commercial actors.

Modern Application driven Statistical Challenges

The Norwegian society is placing increasing demands on infrastructure, including transportation and harbor facilities.  Existing facilities are becoming more critical as full capacity is being reached. If problems or disturbances to normal operation or in terruption of service arise, the overall consequences for society are increasingly onerous and costly. New construction is underway to help meet these demands. However, the existing infrastructure in Norway is also aging, requiring increasing resources to  manage, operate and maintain it.  Prolonging the life of the infrastructure saves valuable resources, but the measures taken to ensure longer life must also ensure safety for people and material value.

The instrumentation industry has had a rapid techno logy development in the past years, and the 'bits and pieces' of this available technology is now mature for the next phase of research:  the integration of the available technology in system solutions appropriate for our civil and environmental infrastru cture projects.  This research will encompass both the direct application of technology, as well as the methodology and strategy needed to fully realize the benefits the technology implementation can offer. 

The focus of the project will include work on systems and solutions implementing both direct measurements as well as remote monitoring, and will emphasize research leading to immediate and important benefits for society such as early warning of potential hazards.   The research results will provide t echnology and expertise for the target end-users, including governmental agencies and public authorities (e.g. Norwegian Road Authority, Police and fire departments), contractors and construction companies, private industry as well as private individuals.

Measurement and monitoring for safety of infrastructure, environmental protection and reduction of society risk

With accelerating demands and increasing complexity of new, high value products there is a growing number of applications and requirements where the limitations of conventional manufacturing technology will hamper innovation and development. In response t o this, a new concept of manufacturing based on the successive addition of material (Additive Manufacturing Technology, AMT) has been developing since the last decades of the twentieth century. It is today possible to integrate AMT with conventional manuf acturing processes to create hybrid manufacturing processes. Hybrid manufacturing based on AMT has the potential to combine the design flexibility of AMT with the precision and productivity of conventional manufacturing and thereby create shapes that woul d be extremely difficult to produce through other methods.

SINTEF and NTNU have decided to initiate a joint effort on AMT. Establishment of a Geminisenter with a state-of-the-art AMT laboratory is planned for 2008. This will create a unique research comm unity. AMT will then be available for students and Norwegian industry. This is important for preparing students and Norwegian industry for the manufacturing technology of the future. SIP DIMOF together with CRI NORMAN will use the laboratory to introduce AMT and hybrid manufacturing for improvement of industrial processes and products. A next generation AMT system will be developed through MPP. This will make the research community in Trondheim a national, and possibly even a Nordic, center for AMT resear ch on both a fundamental and an industrial level.

Direct Metal Object Fabrication - A New Concept for the High Performance Manufacturing of Complex and Customized Parts

Parallel computing is about to hit the mass market, replacing the traditional sequential computer. This change is caused by a major shift in technology, the introduction of heterogeneous computers equipped with both a multi-core CPU and data-stream accele rators. Such accelerators might come in the form of programmable graphics cards (GPUs) or embedded on the processor itself, like in the Cell BE processor. Heterogeneous computers have the potential for huge increases in performance, but mandate new progra mming paradigms.

Most computer programs existing today are programmed according to a sequential paradigm. Until a few years ago, commodity computers were almost solely based on single-core CPUs, and the steady growth in CPU frequency automatically increa sed the performance of sequential programs. In the last years, this growth has slowed down, and the trend is for computers to increase the number of cores at the expense of clock frequency. Hence, the performance of sequential programs does not increase a s fast as before and parallelization is necessary to effectively utilize new CPUs.

Data-stream accelerators are computational units that allow a series of compute-intensive operations to be applied to a set of data. These units are not as flexible as tra ditional cores, and they need to be controlled by a general-purpose core (like a traditional CPU). When properly controlled, data-stream accelerators easily give a tenfold increase in performance compared with multi-core CPUs for large data sets.

In this  strategic project we aim to sustain a position in the forefront of this emerging and rapid evolving technology, and address computational challenges from scientific and industrial application areas where we have deep knowledge and long experience. The re search of the project is grouped into three work packages:
-WP1: Heterogeneous computing
-WP2: Partial differential equations
-WP3: Geometry processing

Heterogeneous Computing - Boosting Performance of Scientific and Industrial Computing by Heterogeneous Parallel Architectures

Software development is critical for the modern society. Still, many software projects are completed late and have substantial cost overruns. Recently, agile software development has emerged as a radical new way of organizing the development process, stro ngly emphasizing change tolerance, evolutionary delivery and active end-user involvement. However, there are many agile development methods, few evidence-based guidelines and little scientific knowledge of the principal factors that enable the reported im provements. This is a barrier to the successful adoption of agile methods in industrial projects. 

EvidenSE aims at overcoming this barrier by developing theories and evidence-based methods for the trade-off between agility and discipline in effective so ftware development with a strong focus on project management, collaborative processes, and team learning.

The theory building activity includes the cumulation of scientific knowledge related to agile project management, collaborative learning processes i n agile teams, and a framework for describing software engineering theories.

The evidence-based methods activity includes developing guidelines for conducting, evaluating and reporting from individual empirical software engineering studies, synthesizing evidence from disparate individual studies, and developing guidelines for evidence-based professional software engineering practice.

EvidenSE will be tightly integrated with applied research projects with the Norwegian software industry, and will be carr ied out in close cooperation with top international researchers in relevant fields. The project will include two PhD candidates.

Evidence-Based Software Engineering

Today, the term climate adapted buildings and building structures is the common designation given to structures which are planned, designed and performed to withstand various types of external climatic impact - including precipitation, snow deposition, wi nd, temperature and exposure to the sun. The term may also be widened to include a more proactive role of the building envelope, i.e. envelopes that are able to maintain an optimum indoor environment with a minimum of resource use (energy, materials, and labour) during the building's lifetime. Very little research has been attributed to the exploration of how to design envelopes that meet the increasing demands of minimum resource use in combination with varied and harsh climatic exposure.

The project's principal objectives are to develop more energy-efficient building envelope assemblies and new methods for the design of building envelopes in harsh climates, resulting in more accurate and geographically dependent design guidelines. The strategic project  will be organised as part of the Birkeland Centre for Sustainable Building at SINTEF Building and Infrastructure.

CAB - Climate Adapted Buildings

Norway has a unique situation with large resources of minerals and ores, and the mineral industry is in growth. Refinement of mineral products, development of new products and reduction of waste are important objectives in a market situation with high int ernational competition and increasing consciousness on environmental issues. A process for reacting carbonic acid with olivine to form magnesite and silica has been experimentally tested at Institute for Energy Technology. The reaction products are of com mercial interest. As a follow-up, similar experimental tests will now be done on a large number of mineral resources. In particular, titanium and aluminium are interesting commercial targets, where carbonic acid can be included as one or more steps in an industrial process. A screening of a large number of mineral resources will be carried out. On basis of this screening, the most promising mineral processes will be selected for further development. This will involve optimalisation of experimental conditi ons. The minimum number of process steps and how to combine them will be addressed. Reaction rates and quality of products are key issues. In order to obtain high quality products, good understanding and control on redox reactions is necessary. Evaluation  of possible processes will consider preliminary process design, techno-economical and environmental issues as well as the market situation.

Norwegian value chain based on carbonic acid and mineral resources

The proposed SIP will be divided into four main parts, EM Scattering properties, UAV technology, Environmental Informatics, and Applications. In the EM scattering properties part the main activity is improved understanding and modelling of the interaction  of EM waves with the earth surface. This is necessary to develop new and improved algorithms for satellite remote sensing within the main activity areas at Norut IT: satellite oceanography, landcover/climate change monitoring, geohazards and cryosphere. In the UAV technology development we will focus on introducing UAV as an important new platform for remote sensing. Within Environmental Informatics we will work with ICT problems relevant for the new Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) con cept, new improved remote sensing data processing technology and integration of UAVs with satellite and in-situ data. The backbone of the project is an application part where we together with users will demonstrate the applicability of remote sensing with in selected application areas as e.g. glacier mass balance monitoring, improved vegetation classification, snow parameter mapping and ocean wind field estimation.

New and improved remote sensing techniques for environmental monitoring

The project utilizes the production facilities at SINTEF MiNaLab as a tool for University research. This production line is fully ISO sertified and offers state-of-the-art equipment for silicon based MEMS production. The project funds both production of d evices and training of students.

The main fields of work will be:
- Optical elements in collaboration with UiO, Staford and NTNU
- CMUT production and integration in collaboration with NTNU
- RF-MEMS switches in collaboration with NTNU
- Quantum dot base d UV detectors in collaboration with UiO
- MEMS sensors for biomedical in collaboration with UiO, Rikshospitalet and Ullevål Univeristy Hospital
- Microtechnological plattforms for investigation of nanosystems, in collaboration with UiO.

Microtechnological research platform

The main theme of MARIAGE is the ability to publish and access rich media material over a long period of time. The right-most column illustrates that we want to improve commercial services of different types at different level. 

Three problem areas that need to be solved for making rich media accessible for generations are:
1.Migration: i.e. how to move from one technology to the next whit a minimal loss of information
2. Human computer interaction and universal design 
3. Handling intellectual property rights

The glue for joining these tree aspects in MARIAGE is the Metadata / Ontology layer. This layer will provide the framework, the metadata and the ontologies needed to improve the state of the art in these three areas and thereby opening for better business models. The layer will consist of upper ontologies, domain specific ontologies and terminal and network ontologies.

The solutions and demonstrators we will produce as a result of the studies will be in the areas Transcoding, Adaptation, Storage systems and Rights management. The use of the terms transcoding and adaptation is often used as synonyms. We will refer to transcoding as part of a migration strategy while adaptation is a more day-to-day re-coding or reshaping of digital items from one f ormat to another. 

Software tools and demonstrators will be developed, among them a new version of NR's Motion JPEG 2000 encoder and decoder, practical tools for assigning rights to digital assets, HCI prototypes and a prototype of a multi media storage system (s/w).

FUGE-Funksjonell genomforskn.i Norg

A node of the FUGE platform for proteomics at the Biotechnology Centre of Oslo

Awarded: NOK 2.2 mill.

Summary

Funding scheme:

FUGE-Funksjonell genomforskn.i Norg

Funding Sources

Thematic Areas and Topics