Enabling Technologies for A Sustainable Future: Ionic Liquids as Transformative Tools in Nanomaterials Synthesis

Nanomaterials have become indispensable for modern life. Many advanced technologies critically depend on nanomaterials with engineered structures and properties. Technological borders could be pushed further if more powerful tools for the synthesis of nanomaterials could be made available.

This project aims at the exploration of how ionic liquids (room temperature molten salts) direct the formation of nanomaterials at the atomic level. As a result, this will allow the design of ionic liquids as molecular tools for the tailored creation of a desired nanostructure. Furthermore, this transformative synthetic access will open up the door to new materials and green technologies to meet the challenges of a sustainable society.

Plant transportomics

Transport of metabolites across cellular borders is essential for plant fitness and survival, and has proven important in controlling key quality traits in agriculture. Yet, the function of thousands of transporters is largely unknown. We will create a first-of-its-kind transportomics database and determine the function of the transporters in the model plant thale cress using plant extracts as substrates. This has potential to revolutionize our understanding of transporter function in plants.

We will decode the chemical language of plants by mapping the metabolites exuded and the transporters present at the root and leaf epidermis during stress conditions when intense communication occurs. The knowledge gained and molecular tools generated will have application in sustainable agriculture.

‘S4OS: Scalable analysis and Synthesis of Safe, Small, Secure and Optimal Strategies for Cyber-Physical Systems’

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are emerging in almost every area of modern society, from intelligent transport, smart energy, smart cities, to smart health care. The rapid growth of machine-learning techniques in CPS leads to better products in terms of performance, efficiency and usability. However, CPSs are often safety critical (e.g., self-driving cars and medical devices), and the need for verification against potential fatal accidents and security attacks is self-evident and of key importance.

S4OS will develop a new generation of mathematically well-founded scalable methods and tools, integrating machine learning and model-based verification techniques in a unified framework for constructing optimal cyber-physical systems that are guaranteed to satisfy crucial safety and security constraints, and can be certified to do so.

Data-Driven Discovery of Functional 2D Materials

The development of materials that can lead to new technological advances has traditionally been a slow and expensive process based largely on empiricism. Recently, it has become possible using supercomputers to simulate materials down to the smallest atomic scale and thereby predict the properties of a material with a given chemical composition before it is made in the laboratory. With his VILLUM project, Kristian Thygesen will develop software that combines advanced materials computations with artificial intelligence to enable the design of materials with specific, desired properties more effectively and rationally. The method will be used to search for new types of nano-materials composed of just a few atomic layers (2D materials) that can be used as building blocks for the next generation of electronic components or perhaps future quantum computers.    

Future proofing processing of biopolymers in food (REPROOF) 

Our food system needs to be more sustainable and robust. It is critical to developing smart strategies to process raw materials into the foods of the future, without compromising safety, stability, appeal, minimizing the use of resources and waste and optimize their nutritional value. Only an integrated food systems approach can deliver fundamental knowledge and new smart processing approaches to control the dynamics of the interactions between complex food biomolecules based on the soft material science, with a specific focus on structure and function relationships in relevant multiphase systems. This internationally leading program will enable more resilient food processes, and inspire a new generation of scientists working at the interface between engineering, biochemistry and food physics.

Table-top synchrotrons

I have an in-built desire to understand nonlinear physical phenomea and control them for advanced technical applications that benefit humanity. This is why I work in so-called supercontinuum generation in optical fibers the size of a human hair - it contains a plethora of beautiful nonlinear physical effects, such as generation of violent rogue waves that on the ocean destroy ships. My ambitious vision is to develop novel optical fibers that guide both ultra-short and ultra-long wavelengths, and develop new laser technology and theoretical understanding to control the violent supercontinuum process in them. This will allow me to develop a user facility of table-top lasers covering the wavelength region from 33 to 15,000 nanometers with a brightness order of magnitude higher than 50,000 times larger synchrotrons.

Wireless Architectures for intelligent and Trusted connectivity in the posT-5G ERa (WATER)

The objective of WATER is to create concepts, theories, and technology for intelligent and trusted wireless connectivity beyond 5G. The research vision is motivated by three trends: (1) The continuous increase in the number and heterogeneity of connections; (2) The wireless infrastructure will evolve towards more openness and disaggregation; (3) A growing number of industries will require reliable, resilient, and predictable wireless connectivity. WATER pursues this vision with four key concepts and ideas: (1) Redesign communication models and protocols to account for the ever-increasing intelligence at the devices; (2) Make learning and predictability an integral part of spectrum allocation and usage; (3) Enrich the communication models with the new developments in physics, such as electromagnetic metamaterials; (4) Enable data exchange by flexibly trading off between privacy and extraction of value from the data.

Smart Battery 

Smart Battery is a disrupting multidisciplinary project aiming on transforming the battery systems by adding artificial intelligence and cell-level rest time management.

In EV application, the Cloud will be used to on-line retrain the initial lifetime model to get it personalized and improved.

The project will positively impact society in the electrification of the transportation sector and in the residential storage as 2nd life application, saving manufacturing cost and CO2 emissions. The scientific impact will be significant by redefining the philosophy of battery system making them chemistry- independent, aging-balanced, fault –tolerant and truly modular in both power and data. It will open for new research in the combined areas of batteries, power electronics and AI.

Illuminating the dark universe with gravitational waves

We spend a lifetime carrying the weight of gravity, one of the fundamental interactions in the Universe. Why do things fall, how do they fall? The quest to understand gravity has broadened our knowledge of the Universe, giving us a new vision of our planet, of the Solar system and beyond.

The direct detection of gravitational waves opened a new era, and a new window to a hitherto invisible Universe, one where black holes - the last frontier in physics - play a key role. In the same way that atomic spectroscopy drove the discovery of Quantum Mechanics, black holes will allow us to test and understand General Relativity in an unprecedented way. This project will explore black holes as engines of discovery for fundamental physics, pushing the boundaries of science.

Mathematics of the topological open string 

String theory has introduced into mathematics many new ideas, and perhaps even more remarkably, new relationships between old ideas. For instance, it turns out that we learn new things about knots in ordinary three-dimensional space by considering this space as a boundary condition for the surface that a string-theorist's string traces out in a six dimensional space; the knot being how the string arrives at the boundary. Another remarkable relationship concerns how this kind of geometry of strings and boundaries can be translated into the geometry of an entirely different kind - that concerned with polynomial equations - on an entirely different space, related to the original by a process in which, rather mysteriously, short distances are exchanged for long! These are the sort of phenomena Shende will pursue as a Villum Investigator.