The emerging field of nanotechnology offers clear prospects for next-generation chemical sensors. Nanoscopic devices, by the very nature of the size regime they exist in, possess enlarged surface-area-to-volume ratios as compared to their macroscopic counterparts. Therefore, if sensing is accomplished through a surface related process, such as surface adsorption or a surface chemical reaction, one naively expects a nanoscale sensor to enable enhanced sensitivity. In addition, most nanodevices require extremely low power and semiconductor nanodevices can be interfaced with enabling circuitry on the same chip. In short, integrating thousands, even millions of nanodevices on a single chip and realizing distributed sensing with ultrahigh sensitivity is within reach in the near future.The proposed project describes nanosensors for sensing a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are technologically and environmentally relevant compounds, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, halogenated hydrocarbons, and aliphatic hydrocarbons. The proposed nanosensors will be based upon nanoscale mechanical resonators – the so-called nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). With their high resonance frequencies, miniscule active masses and high quality factors, NEMS provide the ultimate platform for sensing applications; research in the past five years has clearly demonstrated the potential of NEMS-based sensing in the zeptogram level. Within the duration of this project, chemically functionalized NEMS sensors will be fabricated using standard semiconductor fabrication techniques. The fabricated NEMS sensors will be operated at room temperature to demonstrate sensing of important VOCs. The applicant, Dr. Kamil Ekinci, has been pursuing research in nanotechnology in the United States for the past decade and a half. If granted, the award will enable his reintegration to his home country, Turkey.

This project embodies four workshops on topics in which Europe has a strong interest and provide advanced training in modern topics in mathematic and computer science. The workshops in this series of events cover collective dynamics and new computational developments: Workshops 1 and 4 deal with topics in the development of information technologies, network stability and quantum computing, while workshop 2 addresses the theme of mathematical proofs of algorithms used widely in computer algebra. Workshop 3 is dedicated to the mathematical description of complex biological and biochemical systems from cells to the spread of diseases. The approach is creative and combines input from otherwise separated research areas. Thus coming together at the Lorentz Center is essential to the development of the field, the advancement of the research and the possibility for young researchers to gain insight and contacts beyond their own speciality. Young eligible researchers will receive the opportunity to discuss and collaborate with leading senior colleagues: All workshops involve a mix of junior and senior participants with the participation of junior researchers normally between 30 and 50%. Co-organisation of the workshops by young researchers is promoted. The workshops are run and hosted by the Lorentz Center at Leiden University in the Netherlands, in the open and stimulating spirit for which the Center has earned its reputation.

The EFSUPS proposal aims at the development of further vocational training for child minder and teachers at primary schools. This project will identify and evaluate existing information and already available training material to foster scientific understanding in kindergartens and primary schools based on the education for a sustainable development (ESD). It will focus on 'soil' issues. EFSUPS intends to develop the cur-riculum, simple experiments and practical offers for nature experience. The EFSUPS project will consider gender-fair didactics. This applies also to the development of gender specific teaching material and experiments. With the development of the teaching materials explicit attention will be paid to avoid reproducing stereotypes. Training seminars for teachers and child minders will be included as well as a compilation and the supply of the necessary materials, devices and aids for soil examinations, planting and animal ob-servations and experiments. By the means of the prepared material, teachers guide and toolbox the experiments can be converted in every school garden or school green and, in addition, in a close natural environment of the school or kindergarten. The developed teachers' guide will be translated in English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian and Hungarian and made available by a website. The core dissemination of project results will be accompanied by the 'Eurokids - the Ground Explorers', a working group formed by pupils from participating kindergartens and primary schools, exchanging their experiences in small articles, photo series or videos. The exchange of information on a school and pupil level gives the European dimension of soil problems an education oriented platform and fosters multidisciplinary and inter-cultural competences. Three national workshops - one in each participating country - support the dissemination of the results.

The ToK - 4nEDA proposal aims to reinforce the competence in the area of High Performance Computing (HPC) hardware, software, and Grid middleware solutions at 'Politehnica' University of Bucharest, the best technical university in Romania. The transferred knowledge will be exploited by the local scientific community involved in a series of European research projects and multisectorial partnerships in the area of nanoelectronics. This interdisciplinary community committed to create an innovative platform for nano-Electronic Design Automation (nEDA). The local scientists have excellent result in their area of competence, however they need additional competencies in the complementary area of HPC, in order to fulfill their commitments with a relevant industrial impact. Tok will reinforce not only research, but also the capability of the host to provide training at the highest scientific quality. The research training in domain of Scientific Computation in Electrical Engineering (SCEE) and in broader area of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), at all levels: Bachelor, Master, Doctoral, and post-doc will be improved. The proposal was designed to have optimal size: project duration of 4 years, providing in this period 3 fellowships. The in-coming experts will cover the local need of HPC-ToK, during their stay of 2 years each. The content, methodology and management of the ToK are defined considering the state-of-the-art, real need and feasible expected outcome. The proposal matches perfectly the action objectives, providing an important added value for the host and Community.

Spintronics, in which electronics and magnetism are combined, is attaining an increasing amount of interest due to its potential in applications. The proposed project focuses on searching for novel materials aimed for future applications in spintronics using state-of-the-art computational methods. The emphasis is put on finite temperature properties using Monte Carlo simulations and on electronic correlations using the dynamical mean field theory and density functional calculations, as implemented in the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker (KKR) method. These methods will further be developed on the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer at the Research Center Julich. During the previous work the researcher has established his expertise in many areas of magnetism, including diluted magnetic semiconductors, magnetic multilayers, noncollinear magnetism and in statistical methods. With the proposed project the researcher shall complete his knowledge about magnetism and will learn more about electronic structure theory. He will learn a completely new field of strongly correlated systems. The interest in strong correlations in magnetic systems is increasing rapidly so that the researcher shall benefit a lot from the methods and problems that he will learn. The stay in Germany should create many new contracts for the researcher that will help him in his future work. The complementary skills like increased responsibility and independence of the research are very important in promoting further the scientific career of the candidate. The aspects of transnational mobility will result in the information exchange between Sweden and Germany and help in developing the European research area.

The German applicant achieved his Dipl.Phys. at the University of Hannover, working on magneto-optical trapping of 85Rb with Prof.W.Ertmer. He has graduated to doctor of the University of Amsterdam in the group of Prof.J.T.M.Walraven, where he developed scientific expertise in collisional and collective behaviour of ultracold thermal clouds and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of 87Rb. He now plans a project within the cold atom group at LKB/ENS in Paris. His program, elaborated with Prof.M.Leduc and Prof.C.Cohen Tannoudji, aims for studying BECs of metastable helium in a 3D optical lattice. Metastables have a unique feature due to their large internal energy, i.e. ionization by Penning collisions which allows highly sensitive detection. The primary goal is to study the real-time kinetics of the quantum phase transition from superfluid to Mott-insulator by monitoring the ion flux, caused by Penning collisions of atoms in each lattice site. Prof.G.V.Shlyapnikov in Orsay will provide theoretical assistance. The results will improve the understanding of the coherence of matter waves. For the success of this project the applicant will have to build up on his expertise and quickly advance to sophisticated methods, e.g. optical lattices, which offer perspectives in the domain of quantum computation. The cold helium group, one out of only 3 in the world with a helium BEC, has the appropriate infrastructure and funding for this 2 years project. Together with the female supervisor Michèle Leduc, the applicant will be involved in research management and supervise 2 PhD students, 1 postdoc and several undergraduates. His development will benefit from the excellent experimental and theoretical conditions at ENS and the shared expertise with the entire cold atom group, which hosts a number of young physicists from many international collaborations.

MicroElectroMechanical Systems, or MEMS, represent an extraordinary technology that promises to transform whole industries and drive the next technological revolution. These devices can replace bulky actuators and sensors with micrometer ¬scale equivalents that can be produced in large quantities by silicon micromachining. This reduces cost, bulk, weight and power consumption while increasing performance, production volume, and func¬tionality by orders of magnitude. MEMS improved functionalities and potential capabilities have brought in range many different application fields, including optical communications, medicine, guidance and navigation systems, RF devices, weapons systems, biological and chemical agent detection, and data storage. Because the field of commercial MEMS is still in its infancy, there is nevertheless an important issue for MEMS which still requires advanced research, i.e. MEMS reliability. Reliability is a particular challenge for MEMS because directly influences the acceptance, competitively and reputation of a technology. Many promising MEMS applications are to be found in safety critical systems and in harsh environments, where the cost of failure might be catastrophic. MEMS technology is evolving rapidly with the introduction of new processes, materials, and structural geometries. This brings many new failure mechanisms, which are poorly understood compared to the well known failure mechanisms for common integrated circuits. The grand objective of this Project is to develop and apply reliability procedure for micro-actuators during their chip-production and their long-term characterisation by the development of measurement and data analysis procedures, the proposition of novel optical instrumentation in experimental measurement for reliability, the development of hybrid numerical-experimental methodologies to increase the understanding of performance, and to support modelling of failure modes.

The proposal will lead to significant advances in the general area of QD research. Improving the understanding of current QD materials and devices is crucial towards enabling this technology to reach its full potential. This understanding will emerge from the extensive experimental program foreseen, which includes detailed gain and refractive index measurements as a function of temperature from 77K to above room temperature, femto-second pump probe spectroscopy to determine the fundamental timescales of these novel structures and careful analysis of the efficiency and transport properties of these devices to reveal their fundamental transport and loss processes. This information will greatly aid the development of new quantum dot material structures such as those based on Antimonide substrates and dot-in-a-dot structures. These materials will be the first of their kind in the world and the researchers role will be key in providing feedback to both fabricators and designers. Through this interaction, great progress will be made in the practical realisation of the great benefits of quantum dot materials and their extension to new wavelength ranges.

The applied science of addressing memory elements. Ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials are sometimes used as data storage media to encode information. I propose to investigate thin film heterostructure nanodevices in which these two ground states compete and cooperate to create extra degrees of freedom in the read-write process. Specifically, I am looking to encode information electrically and read it magnetically. This is because it is easy to write electrically and read magnetically, but the reverse statements are not true. I will therefore combine the best aspects of the existing technologies, namely, the electric-write process of FRAM, and the non-volatility and magnetic-read processes of disc-drives and MRAM. Two oxide materials systems will be explored by growing epitaxial films using pulsed laser deposition: 1)Multiferroic materials. These are single phase and ferromagnetic, ferroelectric and ferroelastic. It may be possible to address them both electrically and magnetically. 2)Ferromagnetic/ferroelectric heterostructures. By electrically writing information into a ferroelectric layer that displays strong piezoelectric effects, it will be possible to generate elastic strains that can be used to write magnetic information into an adjacent ferromagnetic layer. Nanoscale proof-of-principle devices will be fabricated in the new Cambridge Nanotechnology Centre from films of the above materials systems. A scientific study of mesoscopic texture will be simultaneously undertaken in the materials described above. There is now widespread interest in textures that extend over intermediate (sub micron) length scales. I will study such textures using the electron microscopy suite of the host institute. Exploitation. The research is novel becuase the materials systems required to co-host coupled ferromagnetic and ferroelectric order are in their infancy. I hope to develop such materials and take out patents once#

The inherent limitations of current semiconductor-based electronics regarding speed, scale and mode of operation have inspired much research in molecular electronics and photonics. Within this broad scientific field, nonlinear optical (NLO) and liquid crystalline materials are especially interesting. NLO effects allow the manipulation of laser light beams and can be used in electro-optical data processing, and also revolutionary all-optical technologies. Simple organic liquid crystals (LCs) have long proved useful, for example in display devices. We propose to synthesise two new classes of organotransition metal compounds designed to show very large NLO effects. The first group comprises amphiphilic ruthenium complex salts which are intended to form Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) or related thin films displaying bulk NLO behaviour. By depositing such films onto optically transparent electrodes, we aim to achieve the first convincing demonstration of reversible switching of optical properties via metal-based redox. The second group of target compounds are neutral ruthenium complexes that are expected to form LC phases. All new compounds will be fully characterised in-house using standard techniques including NMR and UV-visible spectroscopy and electrochemistry. The project also involves collaborations with leading research groups in Europe and the USA. Molecular optical and electronic properties will be measured in Leuven (Belgium) using hyper-Rayleigh scattering, and using Stark spectroscopy at the California Institute of Technology (USA). Various advanced calculations including time-dependent density functional methods will also be pursued with experts in Zaragoza (Spain). LB or related thin films will be fabricated in Leuven, and LC behaviour will be investigated locally with specialists in physics. This work is driven primarily by scientific curiosity, but the long-term goal is to create new materials which may be useful in future optical data processing devices.