UniTrento research continues to be successful, as the European Research Council announced today that two of its research projects, led by Diego Misseroni and Moris Triventi, have been awarded grants.
Counting today's awards, the University of Trento has obtained 40 grants since the European Research Council started to award funding throughout Europe in 2007.
Grants are awarded based on a competitive selection process, in which the only selection criterion is the scientific excellence of the project and of the researcher presenting it.
This time, for the 2022 Erc Consolidator Grant, for researchers who have 7 to 12 years' experience after their PhDs and a very promising scientific curriculum, the success rate was just over 14%. Of the 2222 applications received from all over the world, only 321 were accepted for funding worth 657 million euro. With two successful proposals out of 14, UniTrento is in line with the average success rate in Europe. The projects of the University of Trento are two of the 21 that will take place in an Italian institution, and Diego Misseroni and Moris Triventi are among the 32 Italian researchers who have received a grant.
About the projects
The 60-month Erc project by Diego Misseroni of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, is called S-Foam, Self-Foldable Origami-Architected Metamaterials. The project aims to combine the origami (the art of folding paper) and kirigami (the art of cutting paper) techniques with the principles of engineered materials to obtain extreme mechanical properties that can adapt to the environment. For Misseroni, the challenge is to make this metamaterial smart so that it can autonomously perform a number of logical tasks that control, for example, the change of its shape, without using electronic controls or neural networks. The major applications are in soft robotics (robotic manipulators, capable of grasping objects without damaging them), wearable devices that must adapt to human movements, and medical devices for surgery.
The Erc project by Moris Triventi of the Department of Sociology and Social Research, is called Edupol, Education policies that work: A context-sensitive ‘big data’ approach. The 60-month project is focused on the origin, features and impact of the educational policies that have been adopted in different countries of the world in the last 40 years. The study will investigate, on the one hand, the spread of neoliberal educational policies that promote school autonomy, competition and responsibility as levers for school effectiveness and, on the other, the revival of inclusive democratic educational policies that aim to reduce social inequalities. For the first time, Triventi will examine and compare these two models. He also aims to shift attention from "which policies work" to "which combinations of policies work, for whom and under what circumstances". The project, which makes extensive use of big data and advanced data analysis techniques, aims to advance knowledge of the conditions that determine the success or failure of educational policies.