Three lectures by winners of ERC grants

The first lecture will take place on 17 May 202 at 17h00 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in U-Residence at G. Jacqueslaan 271, 1050 Brussels. You can register at this link, or through press relations.

The researchers and their projects

Liliana Lizarazo-Rodriguez - ERC Starting Grant Social Sciences and Humanities -  SH2 Institutions, Values, Environment and Space

Project: CURIAE VIRIDES - How the third wave of global judicial (and social) activism is filling ecological governance gaps and challenging the liability-remedy paradigm

In this project Liliana Lizarazo-Rodriguez and her team will explore the progressive transformation of human rights litigation into more eco-centric litigation and the role of (activist) courts. It focuses on how social litigation is greening as well as the consequences of this development for victims of ecological damage. The project seeks to assess the reach of this activism and explores the institutional quality of eco-centric judgements.

Liliana Lizarazo-Rodriguez studied Law in Colombia, Spain and Belgium. Her research interests include sustainable development, business and human rights. She is an adjunct professor at VeCo/IES (VUB), assistant professor at the University of Antwerp, and visiting lecturer at Sciences Po. She is attorney at law in Spain and Colombia and is a member of the West Flanders Bar. As a researcher, she has collaborated on Business & Human Rights projects commissioned by the Federal Institute of Sustainable Development (FIDO/IFDD).

Contact: [email protected] – 0473895358

Christophe Snoeck - ERC Starting Grant Social Sciences and Humanities  - SH6 The Study of the Human Past

Project: LUMIERE - Landscape Use and Mobility in EuRopE - Bridging the gap between cremation and inhumation

This ERC project aims to shed light on changes in mobility, migration patterns and landscape use of early populations in Europe by bringing together information obtained directly from both cremated and inhumed individuals using state-of-the art bioarchaeology. The aim is to identify and characterise the movement of people on a local, regional and European scale to explain how and why people moved, as well as how they used their surrounding landscape between the Neolithic to the Early Medieval period, when both cremation and inhumation were practised.

Christophe Snoeck combines his multi-disciplinary expertise in the fields of archaeology and geochemistry to answer key archaeological questions. He is a research professor and post-doctoral at the VUB research groups Analytical, Environmental and Geo-Chemistry (AMGC) and the Maritime Cultures Research Institute (MARI). Since 2018, he has also been the scientific coordinator of the inter-university CRUMBEL project, which focuses on studying cremated populations from Belgium to better understand population dynamics between the Neolithic and the early medieval period.

Contact: [email protected] – 0494 469 553 - www.crumbel.org

Martin Virte  - ERC Starting Grant in physical sciences and engineering - PE7 Systems and Communication Engineering -

Project: COLOR’UP        All-optical sub-THz signal filtering with multi-COLOUR lasers

Martin Virte and his team will investigate how multi-colour lasers could be exploited to process optical signals at ultra-high frequencies. The so-called ‘mm-wave frequency range’ has high potential to be able to go beyond 5G technology – to 100 to 300 GHz instead of 5G’s current 40 to 50 GHz. The main issue is that these signals are very difficult to manipulate with electronics. The field of Microwave Photonics develops light-based solutions to help overcome the limitations of electronic systems.

Martin Virte is a professor at the Engineering faculty. He received his master’s in engineering with a major in Photonics from the French Centrale Supélec. Virte has worked for the research group B-PHOT Brussels Photonics since 2011 where he obtained his PhD degree in 2014 in co-tutelle with Supélec.

Contact: [email protected] - 0468 153 482  - Twitter: @mvirte - https://be.linkedin.com/in/mvirte

https://b-phot.org/news/erc-color-up