CORDIScovery – unearthing the hottest topics in EU science, research and innovation

We see cultural artefacts, hear music composed centuries ago and, if we are lucky, get to handle pieces that were created by long-forgotten makers. But what about bringing to life the smell of a historic scene, or an object no longer made?

This episode looks at the novel ways researchers are analysing the artefacts left to us by our ancestors, and the new light that shines on how they lived. Come and hear what our guests have been exploring.

Inger Leemans, is a professor of Cultural History at VU Amsterdam and researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is passionate about making her research on the smells of the past accessible to everyone.

Matthew Collins is a fellow of the Danish and Swedish Royal Academies, and chair of the Archaeology section of the British Academy. Collins explores the ways in which archaeology can borrow tools from biology to explore ancient artefacts and tissues, from shells and bone to parchment and pots.

Michela Rossi is a scientific project officer at the Joint

Computational power, AI, genomics: the treatment and diagnosis of prostate cancer is advancing rapidly. This episode finds out how. 

A leap forward in the diagnosis and treatment would be very welcome: prostate cancer is the second most frequent malignancy in men. In 2020 alone, around one and a half million new cases and almost half a million deaths were registered worldwide.  To explore new diagnostics and treatment are: 

Jan Tkac, founder and chief scientific officer at Glycanostics, in Slovakia. The company has developed an innovative diagnostic test for cancer, based on novel biomarkers. Jan is also keen to explore how different sports relate to the levels of endorphin release. 

Harald Mischak, chief scientific officer of Mosaiques Diagnostics & Therapeutics, Germany. Harald is focused on understanding the underlying molecular structures of certain types of cancers.  

Joaquin Mateo, group leader of the Prostate Cancer Translational Research Group at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, in Barcelona. He is especially interested in the development of novel forms of precision medicine. 

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!dgTGkb

Printed buildings, energy from atmospheric humidity, earthquake resilience – some of the novel ideas taking age-old construction techniques and making them fit for the future. 

The way we build has not evolved much over millennia, but the context is radically different. So how can we build the homes we need in the least damaging way possible? To talk us through some of the latest ideas are: 

Abdelghani Meslem is senior research engineer in Hazard and Risk Modelling at NORSAR in Norway. His work is focused on earthquake risk modelling, risk reduction and management.

Paweł Sikora is an associate professor from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Poland, where he researches additive manufacturing, lightweight concretes and nanotechnology.

Andriy Lyubchyk is assistant professor of Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials at the Research Center in Industrial Engineering, Management and Sustainability, part of Lisbon University. Andriy focuses on harnessing nanoengineering to advance the generation of renewable energy.  

For more info, visit: https://europa.eu/!DRRdbj

Democracy is a collective achievement and 2024 has been called its biggest year. Europeans go to the polls in June, to vote for their representatives at the European Parliament, and 8 of the 10 most populous countries in the world are also holding elections. But the process will face

Our three guests explore some of the latest ideas about those threats and how to counter them.

Jan Kubik is distinguished professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University in America, and professor emeritus of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He is interested in the rise of right-wing populism.

David Dueñas-Cid is an associate professor at Kozminski

Sven-Eric Fikenscher is a researcher with the Center of Excellence for Police and Security Research, at the Bavarian Police Academy (website in German) in Germany.

For more info, visit: https://europa.eu/!mrpyYW

About 500 000 babies are born early in Europe every year, for some the condition is fatal. Complications relating to being born prematurely are the leading causes of death in the under-fives. Improving feeding, mitigating the impact on the brain and rethinking prevention – our three projects are doing what they can to push back these numbers.  

Audrey van der Meer is co-director of the Developmental

Isabel Hoffmann is a deep-tech entrepreneur. By harnessing technology and connectivity, she is working to help create a world in which food contributes to health, not to societal diseases. Her company Tellspec is developing innovative ways of personalising nutrition to help premature babies thrive.

Julien Penders is co-founder of Bloomlife, a company designing wearable technologies and predictive analytics to promote prenatal health. Bloomlife has developed a device paired with data analytics to increase access to care, provide personalised feedback to mothers, and help doctors predict and manage pregnancy complications.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!BR3r43

Did the ability to feed babies porridge help to fuel the population explosion seen in the Neolithic period? Did people take to the seas far earlier than previously thought to chase whales and seals? What is the difference between a flourishing desert frontier fort and one that dwindles into dust? We take a look at three times when food was a catalyst for change.

Bettina Schulz Paulsson, an associate professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, specialises in research related to the Stone Age. Her interests encompass seafaring, megaliths, prehistoric whaling and scientific dating and methods. 

Associate professor of Egyptology at the Polytechnic of Milan, Corinna Rossi, focuses her research on the relationship between architecture and mathematics in ancient Egypt. Rossi has been exploring the antiquities of Egypt’s Western Desert for over 20 years.

Sofija Stefanović is professor of Physical Anthropology and Bioarchaeology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She is interested in the prehistoric patterns of fertility and the influence of the duration of breastfeeding on children’s health in the Neolithic period.

Pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss are all threatening our sustainable use of marine resources – at the same time we need seafood. It’s a conundrum! Could lights help by deterring the wrong fish from getting into nets? Can AI help zap the virulent sea lice that plague fish farmers? And how do zebra fish bridge the gap between aquaculture and medicine? Listen on to get some answers!

Rachel Tiller is a chief scientist and director of Biodiversity and Area Use, at SINTEF Ocean, Norway. She is interested in putting smart tools in the hands of the fishing community to help them catch what they are intending to catch.

Margaret Rae is the managing director of Konree Innovation, based in Ireland. The company aims to harness the latest technological approaches to improve the health and welfare of farmed fish.

Marc Muller , now retired, was a senior assistant professor at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), in the University of Liège. He studies skeleton formation in zebrafish, and the insights that gives us into human skeletal pathologies.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!RmVKTH

What do a mathematician, a palaeontologist and a researcher considering the rehabilitation of multiple sclerosis patients have in common? All three are women who have carved themselves successful careers as scientific researchers.

In a change to our usual format, this episode of CORDIScovery invites three female researchers from completely unrelated areas to talk about their work, discuss their own experiences and offer insights into what helped, and hindered them, in the development of their careers.

Elena Ghezzo is a fellow of Ca’Foscari University of Venice. She is particularly interested in screening fossils using spectral imaging, and in the distribution and extinction patterns of large carnivores before the Holocene. She is joined by Camilla Pierella, an assistant professor at the University of Genova. She studies the neural control of movement, robots for rehabilitation and body-machine interfaces.

Erika Hausenblas is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Leoben, in Austria. She studies how stochastic systems, characterised by randomness and uncertainty, impact the modelling of a wide range of phenomena, such as weather patterns, stock markets and biological systems.

For more info the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!QqDYJ3

Climate change is here: so what are we doing to meet the challenges in Europe? Ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 28, we will be hearing from four cutting-edge researchers who are working to get us ready to deal with the coming changes in our environment.

Using the internet of things (IoT) to track mosquitoes that carry diseases more often associated with the global South; protecting our woodlands and forests from the impact of destructive beetles and other factors; examining the impact of extreme storms on our architecture and working out how to keep people safe from waves that are higher than ever, overtopping coastal defences that were designed in another era – this episode is on adapting to climate change in Europe.

Talking us through these and other ideas are: João Encarnação CEO of Irideon, who is particularly interested in the development of IoT sensors for insects with impact on public health, food safety and biodiversity. Along with Guillaume Marie, an independent researcher and part of the team of developers behind ORCHIDEE, the French land surface model used by the UN to predict climate change. They are joined by Marie Pia Repetto, professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Genoa, Italy whose main interest is in wind engineering, and Corrado Altomare. Altomare is a postdoc researcher at the Maritime Engineering Laboratory of Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, and is actively involved in mounting Europe’s response to the problem of sea wave overtopping in coastal areas.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!RHTnb9

If you use a car, a phone or want to see more renewable energy sources in our electricity supply then listen on – this episode is for you.

We need storage devices that can balance out the intermittent power produced by renewable energy sources and our demand. We have to identify viable, novel materials to make a new generation of batteries in order to get around bottlenecks in lithium supply – set to get even worse as demand for electric vehicles takes off.

A whole new generation of cooling systems could speed up recharging time and prolong battery life. While paper-thin sheets of silicon with great conductive power could be a new boost to electric vehicle uptake. Explore these advances with our three guests:

Juan J. Vilatela leads a research group at IMDEA Materials, in Madrid. His scientific career is focused on methods for synthesis and assembly of 1D nanomaterials into macroscopic nanotextiles for energy and structural applications. Pekka Peljo is associate professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Turku, Finland. He is interested in developing electricity storage technologies for wind and solar power. Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin, president and one of the co-founders of WATTALPS, is interested in electrification, batteries and their optimisation, including the patented cooling technology.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!YYnKjc