oceanography.dev | partners

oceanography.dev

#Oceanography | Applications

#SEA.AI | Detecting floating objects early | Using thermal and optical cameras to catch also objects escaping conventional systems such as Radar or AIS: Unsignalled crafts or other floating obstacles, e.g., containers, tree trunks, buoys, inflatables, kayaks, persons over board | System computes input from lowlight and thermal cameras, using Machine Vision technology, deep learning capabilities and proprietary database of millions of annotated marine objects | High-resolution lowlight and thermal cameras | Real-time learning of water surface patterns | Searching for anomalies | Distinguishing water from non-water | Comparing anomalies with neural network | Recognize objects by matching combination of filters | Augmented reality video stream combined with map view | Intelligent alarming based on threat level | Detecting persons in water | On-board cameras with integrated image processing | Providing digital understanding of vessel surroundings on water | SEA.AI App on smartphone or tablet

#SailDrone | Ocean Data Solutions with Autonomous Surface Vehicles

#Data Cosmos | MultiSatellite Data Platform | Open Cosmos

#Navy | Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC)

#Bigelow Laboratory For Ocean Sciences In Maine | Independent, nonprofit research institute

#Bermuda Atlantic Time Series Study | Collecting data on hydrographic, chemical, and biological parameters throughout the water column at multiple sites within the Sargasso Sea

#Argo | Collecting information from inside the ocean using a fleet of robotic instruments that drift with the ocean currents and move up and down between the surface and a mid water level | Floats (instruments) spend almost all their life below the surface | Observing ocean data related to climate change

#European Space Agency(ESA) | AIDMAP | AIR SOS | BLUE | DL4PlasticLitter | DOLPHINN | HyperDrone | MARLISAT | MUSS2 | Ocean Scan | Plastic Litter Project

#MDI | High Powered Optical Instruments On Floats

#University Of Technology Sydney In Australia | Research

#OceanCleanup | Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) cleaning and analysis

#ICEYE | Synthetic aperture radar (SAR)

#General Atomics | Air to Air Laser Communication System | Crosslinks from aircraft to other platforms such as unmanned aircraft, maritime vessels, and space systems

#SatelIoT | IoT connectivity over standard 5G NB-IoT

#WWF | Halting and reversing biodiversity loss | Conserving land, freshwater and ocean globally | Protection of intact ecosystems | Tackling unsustainable production | Eliminating subsidies harmful to nature | Reducing the unsustainable footprint of production and consumption

#Aqualink | Ocean conservation technology | Autonomous Surface Vehicle(ASV) kit | ROS | Pixhawk | NVIDA Jetson GPU | Solar powered smart buoy

#Seakit International | MaxLimer | Uncrewed surface vessel

#ESA | Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer | Ganymede | Callisto | Characterisation of the ocean layers and detection of putative subsurface water reservoirs

#University of California Santa Barbara | High Seas Treaty

#Pew Charitable Trusts | High Seas Treaty

#Marine Conservation Institute | High Seas Treaty

#Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) | High Seas Treaty

#OceanCare | High Seas Treaty

#Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research, and Education (COARE) | High Seas Treaty

#BirdLife International | High Seas Treaty

#IUCN | High Seas Treaty

#World Economic Forum | High Seas Treaty

#High Seas Alliance | High Seas Treaty

#Princeton University | Archeoligical Oceanography

#EuroGOOS | Operational Oceanography

#Intel | Neuromorphic computing

#NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | Ocean observations from space | The rate of sea level rise is increasing | NASA Sea Level Change science team | CNES | Annual sea level observations and future projections | Climate change is melting Earth ice sheets and glaciers | Measurements of sea surface height

#U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Radar altimeters producing more precise measurements of sea level | Observations from coastal surface based sources

#CNES | International Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission | Measuring the elevation of nearly all the water on Earth surface | Providing insights into how ocean influences climate change and the water cycle; how a warming world affects water storage in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs | Ka band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument

#University of Rome, Italy | Thule High Arctic Atmospheric Observatory in Greenland | Dirigibile Italia Arctic Station run by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in the Svalbard Islands

#World Meteorological Organization | Marine heat waves research

#UK Marine Biological Association | Marine heat waves research

#UN climate science body IPCC | Marine heat waves research

#Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute | Marine heat waves research

#US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Marine heat waves research

#Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil |Distribution of elements and nutrients that impact quantity and quality of phytoplankton in oceans

#São Paulo University | Bio-optics oceanography

#Maine In-situ Sound & Color Lab at the University of Maine | Statistical technique analyzing several variables—all the colors observed by MODIS—at once

#Advanced Navigation | AI-based marine navigation systems | AI-Based underwater navigation solutions and robotics technology | Hydrography | Underwater acoustic positioning solutions | Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) | Inertial navigation systems (INS) | Sidney, Australia

#SEA.AI App | Detecting floating objects early | Using thermal and optical cameras to catch unsignalled craft, floating obstacles, containers, buoys, inflatables, kayaks and persons over board

#Anybotics | Workforce App | Operate ANYmal robot from device | Set up and review robot missions | Industrial Inspection

#LookOut | AI vision system | Synthesized data from charts, AIS, computer vision, and cloud fusing it into one 3D augmented reality view | Connects to existing boat display | Mountable camera system to the top of any boat | Lookout App for laptop, phone or tablet | Infrared vision | Night vision sensor | Spotting small vessels, floating debris, buoys, people in water | Blind spot detection | Backup camera | Temperature breaks, bird cluster locations, underwater structures for anglers | Camera streaming over WiFi to phones and tablets on the boat | Over-the-air (OTA) updates | Marine-grade water-proof enclosure | Integrated with satellite compass | National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) communication standard interface | Multifunction Display (MFD) | Multi-core CPU driving augmented reality compute stack | ClearCloud service | NVIDIA RTX GPU for real-time computer vision | DockWa app

#National Technical University of Athens | MariNeXt deep-learning framework detecting and identifying marine pollution | Sentinel-2 imagery | Detecting marine debris and oil spills on sea surface | Automated data collection and analysis across large spatial and temporal scales | Deep learning framework | Data augmentation techniques | Multi-scale convolutional attention network | Marine Debris and Oil Spill (MADOS) dataset | cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch framework | NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPUs | NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program | AI framework produced promising predictive maps | Shortcomings: unbalanced dataset, marine water and oil spills are abundant, foam and natural organic material are less represented

#Scripps Institution of Oceanography | Part of UC, San Diego | Physical, chemical, biological, geological, and geophysical studies of oceans and atmosphere | Fleet of research vessels | Discovered new bacteria in ocean sediments capable of producing antibiotic molecules | Highlighted deep ocean as biomedical resource | Identified Cromwell Current

#National Oceanography Centre (NOC) | Marine science research and technology | Coastal and deep ocean research | Research ships | Autonomous underwater vehicles | Mission to advance oceanographic research and education | UK sites in Southampton and Liverpool

#High Seas Treaty | United Nations

#Open Ocean Robotics | Solar powered autonomous boats | Real time information to protect oceans | Sensors, cameras and communication devices capturing information | Solar powered boats can travel nonstop for months, without producing any greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution or risk of oil spills | ASVs (Autonomous Surface Vehicle) can monitor for oil spills, detect intentional dumping

#Orca AI | FleetView for fleet operators and management | SeaPod | Artificial intelligence-based maritime navigation assistant, watchkeeper | Automated object detection and prioritization | All marine object detection | Curbing marine mammal strikes | Reducing whale mortality rates

#SeaRobotics | Unmanned Marine Systems & Engineering | Autonomous Surface Vehicles | Sensor suites

#Syracuse University | Model calculatung the amount of free hydrogen gas produced and stored beneath the seafloor | Tectonic spreading rate | Thickness of serpentinized rocks | Serpentinized rocks: greenish-brown-patterned surface resemblung snakeskin -- have been chemically altered by water as lifted up by the spreading tectonic plates in Earth crust | Molecules of free hydrogen gas produced as by-product of serpentinization process | Stacey L. Worman, Lincoln F. Pratson, Jeffrey A. Karson, Emily M. Klein. Global rate and distribution of H2gas produced by serpentinization within oceanic lithosphere

#National Technical University of Athens | MariNeXt deep-learning framework detecting and identifying marine pollution | Sentinel-2 imagery | Detecting marine debris and oil spills on sea surface | Automated data collection and analysis across large spatial and temporal scales | Deep learning framework | Data augmentation techniques | Multi-scale convolutional attention network | Marine Debris and Oil Spill (MADOS) dataset | cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch framework | NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPUs | NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program | AI framework produced promising predictive maps | Shortcomings: unbalanced dataset, marine water and oil spills are abundant, foam and natural organic material are less represented

#Allen Institute for Artifical Intelligence | AI for the Environment | Robot planning precise action points to perform tasks accurately and reliably | Vision Language Model (VLM) controlling robot behavior | Introducing automatic synthetic data generation pipeline | Instruction-tuning VLM to robotic domains and needs | Predicting image keypoint affordances given language instructions | RGB image rendered from procedurally generated 3D scene | Computing spatial relations from camera perspective | Generating affordances by sampling points within object masks and object-surface intersections | Instruction-point pairs fine-tune language model | RoboPoint predicts 2D action points from image and instruction, which are projected into 3D using depth map | Robot navigates to these 3D targets with motion planner | Combining object and space reference data with VQA and object detection data | Leveraging spatial reasoning, object detection, and affordance prediction from diverse sources | Enabling to generalize combinatorially.| Synthetic dataset used to teach RoboPoint relational object reference and free space reference | Red and ground boxes as visual prompts to indicate reference objects | Cyan dots as visualized ground truth | NVIDIA | | Universidad Catolica San Pablo | University of Washington

#Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara | Building models linking nitrogen and silicon isotope compositions to biological processes and ocean circulation | Investigating how diatoms in Southern Ocean help to decode chemical signals | Providing insight into nutrient cycling and climate interactions from past glacial periods | Research cruise focused on collecting water and particle samples | Study how diatoms build nitrogen and silicon-rich shells | Understandung how isotopic signals are produced and preserved in fossils

#University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography || Investigating diatoms in Southern Ocean | Getting insight into nutrient cycling and climate interactions | Studying how diatoms build nitrogen and silicon-rich shells | Helping scientists build models linking nitrogen and silicon isotope compositions to biological processes and ocean circulation

#VORAGO | Radiation hardened and radiation tolerant microcontrollers and microprocessors | High-volume manufacturing to harden commercially designed semiconductor component | Empowers mission success | Radiation-hardened ICs that excel in extreme environments | ARM | Texas Instruments | Brainchip | Custom hardware and firmware solutions tailored to withstand extreme environments | Ensuring that mission-critical components remain resilient | Custom solutions, armed with space-grade electronics and an ARM Cortex microcontrollers | International Space Station: dies measuring the effects of protons and cosmic rays | Satelites: devices utilized in Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP) missions | CubeSats: ARM microvontroller | Semiconductor components and solutions for extreme temperature environments up to +200°C

#MemryX | Edge accelerated AI System software | SDK APIs for efficient AI processing | Hardware | Compile AI model(s) making executable file | PCIe or USB interface | x86, ARM, RISC-V processors | Windows, Linux operating systems

#Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) | Research

#NVidia | Dexterous robot development | Manipulating objects with precision, adaptability, and efficiency | Fine motor control, coordination, ability to handle a wide range of tasks, often in unstructured environments | Key aspects of robot dexterity include grip, manipulation, tactile sensitivity, agility, and coordination | Robot dexterity development for manufacturing, healthcare, logistics | Dexterity enabling automation in tasks that traditionally require human-like precision

#e-con Systems | Camera solutions for NVIDIA platforms | Full HD Global Shutter Camera for Jetson AGX Orin | Jetson AGX Orin: 64GB module, 275 TOPS with power configurable 15W and 60W | Multiple 4k ultra-lowlight camera for NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin | Global shutter | Rolling shutter | Autofocus and fixed focus | High resolution and frame rate | High dynamic range | High sensitivity in both visible and NIR regions | Superior color reproduction | MIPI and GMSL2 interfaces | Camera SDK configured to support Isaac SDK | Multi-camera support | NVIDIA Isaac GEMs ROS: GPU-accelerated packages for ROS2 application | Isaac ROS GEMs help to assess camera position with regard to its starting point | Isaac ROS GEMs empower robotic applications to maneuver and navigate through complicated environments | Installing ROS 2 requires Ubuntu 20.04 | Board cameras | USB 3.0 cameras | Autonomous mobile robots, autonomous shopping

#NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland | PACE mission | Ocean Color Instrument | Detecting more than 280 wavelengths of light | Finer detail | Better insights into ocean color and type of plankton satellite can spot | Dramatic improvements in the detection of zooplankton and phytoplankton | Captured swirling green phytoplankton blooms in Gulf of Maine in April 2024 | Such blooms fuel zooplankton like Calanus finmarchicus | Detecting better copepod Calanus finmarchicus in Gulf of Maine and estimating their numbers from space

#Norwegian Institute of Marine Research | Arctic Sea research

#Norwegian Polar Institute | Icebreaking research vessel Kronprins Haakon | Arctic Sea research

#Simrad | Marine Chartplotters | Autopilots | Radar | Beam sharpening technology | ZoneTrack | Halo Dangerous Target Alerts | Bird+ Mode

#OndoSense | Radar distance sensor | Sensor software: integrated into control system or used for independent quality monitoring | Object detection | Distance measurement | Position control | Agriculture: reliable height control of the field sprayer | Mining industry | Transport & Logistics | Shipping & Offshore | Mechanical and plant engineering | Metal and steel industry | Energy sector | Harsh industrial environments | Dust & smoke: no influence | Rain & snow: no influence | Radar frequency: 122GHz | Opening angle: ±3° | Measuring range: 0.3 – 40 m | Measuring rate: up to 100Hz | Output rate: up to 10 ms / 100 Hz | Measurement accuracy; up to ±1mm | Measurement precision: ±1mm | Communication protocol: RS485; Profinet, other interfaces via gateway | Switching output: 3x push-pull (PNP/NPN) | Analogue output: Current interface (4 – 20 mA) | Protection class: IP67

#Untether AI | Accelerating AI inference | PCI-Express form factor and power envelope | Over 2 PetaOps per card | Accelerator card | AI chip | Intel backef | Toronto, Canada

#Wartsila | Marine autonomy solutions

#Seaber | Micro-AUVs | Down to 300m depth |8-10 hours autonomy | Weighing 10kg | Measuring 1m long. | Commercial oceanographic applications | Surveillance

#OLogic | Robotics | Pumpkin Pi i350 EVK | Edge AI platform | Designed for mainstream AI + IoT applications | Vision and voice edge processing | Facial, object, gesture, motion recognition | LPR, voice activation and speed recognition | Sound isolation, bio-tech and biometric measurements

#Blue Atlas Robotics | Self-operating service robot that performs underwater surveys | Shared data platform collecting data from selected Nordic vendors of airborne and subsea drone systems | Sentinus 2 robot live-streamed high-quality underwater data during subsea surveillance operation using 5G in controller unit | Smultaneous aerial streams, enabling comprehensive surveillance solution that covered both above and below water | With minimal equipment, mission preparation becomes effortless, offering greater flexibility | Vision-lock to target for efficient mission ensuring the best quality of data | Point clouds | 3D models | Underwater assets managrment | Visual inspection outputs for vessel bottoms | In-water propeller inspections | Sea chest inspections | Inspecting bow thrusters

#GAM | Precision mechanical manufacturer of drive solutions used in automation technology | Engineering solutions for demanding environments | Robotic gearboxes | Servo-gearboxes | Precision spiral bevel gearboxes | Rack and pinion | Servo-couplings | GPL Robotic Planetary | GCL Cycloidal | GSL Strain Wave | Linear Mount Products for Cartesian Robots | Backlash <0.1 arcmin (6 arcsec) of gearbox, no adjustment necessary | Operation temperatures -40°C to 70°C (-40°F to 160°F) | 20,000 hours operational life | Torque 3500 Nm (31,000 in-lb)

#ARM | Advanced RISC Machines | RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computers | ARM processors for portable, battery-powered devices, smartphones, embedded systems | SoftBank Group | AI ecosystem | Renesas | ResCon Technologies, LLC | GitLab | Embedl | Mapbox | Roofline | ENERZAi | 221e | AnchorZ Inc | Excelfore | ax Inc | weeteq | Eeasy Tech | Cerence AI | u-blox | SECO | Klepsydra Technologies | Ampere Computing | Senary Technology Limited | Ceva | Sensory | GitHub | Raspberry Pi Ltd | Untether AI | Eyeris | AiM Future, Inc | Dori AI | DeGirum Corp | OmniSpeech | ADLINK | Yobe | SLAMcore | Elliptic Labs AS | alwaysAI | Edge Impulse | SoundHound AI | Cyberon Corporation | Qeexo AutoML | Fortifyedge | TERAKI | NVIDIA | Neuton.AI | Aizip Inc | BrainChip | Roviero | RelaJet | Visidon

#Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) | Advanced radar system | Dynamic, three-dimensional view of Earth | NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite | Detecting land and ice surfaces movement down to centimeter | Mission will help protect communities | Actionable information to disaster response | ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket | 464 miles (747 kilometers) above Earth | GSLV first mission to Sun-synchronous polar orbit | Two radar instruments: L-band system and S-band system | Monitoring planet land- and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days, including polar Southern Hemisphere | Helping researchers assess how forests, wetlands, agricultural areas, and permafrost change over time | Seeing through clouds | Monitoring planet surface during storms, in darkness and light | 39-foot (12-meter) radar antenna reflector | Mission managed by Caltech | NASA JPL leads U.S. component of project providing mission L-band SAR | NASA provides radar reflector antenna, deployable boom, high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem | ISRO provides mission S-band SAR instrument and calibrates, processes data , develops science algorithms | U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru leads ISRO components and provides spacecraft bus | Launch vehicle by ISRO Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre | Launch services by ISRO Satish Dhawan Space Centre | Satellite operations by ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network | National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination

#Reef Research | Mapping offshore seamounts in the Cayman Islands | Developing chapter for Cayman Islands Biodiversity Action Plan, resilience-based coral restoration | Discovery in CCMI Blue Carbon Offset | Biodiversity project to shed light on impactful climate-change mitigation strategies in small island states

#Metals Company | Polymetallic nodules | Contain four essential base metals: cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese, in a single ore | Formed over millions of years by precipitating metals from seawater and sediment pore water | Lie unattached to abyssal seafloor | Unlike land ores, do not contain toxic levels of heavy elements | Producing metals from nodules has the potential for to productize nearly 100% of nodule mass and design a metallurgical flowsheet that generates no tailings and leaves nearly no solid waste streams behind

#ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) | Laboratory of Physical and Spatial Oceanography in France | Satellites revealing the power of ocean swell | Ocean swells act as storm messengers | Swell can travel vast distances and bring destructive energy to distant coastlines | The greatest threat to coastlines often does not come from the storm itself, but from the long swells that carry wave energy far beyond the storm reach | French–US SWOT satellite dsta | Data from satellites such as SARAL, Jason-3, Copernicus Sentinel-3A and -3B, Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, CryoSat and CFOSAT | Observations to validate numerical wave models in extreme conditions, correcting existing wave energy calculations | Helping to protect coastal communities and marine infrastructure as climate patterns shift | Discovered more energy than expected is actually concentrated in dominant storm waves, rather than being distributed among the longest waves | Next step is to link the findings to climate change | Theory test done with modelling | SWOT combines traditional radar altimetry with wide-swath imaging to measure swell height, length and direction | Captureing swells as low as 3 cm | Revealing wavelengths of up to 1400 m | Very long swells carry less energy than assumed | More energy concentrates in the dominant peak waves | Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission were used in the study | Sentinel-6 mission measures significant wave height and wind speed, data that are used for near-realtime ocean forecasting

#Export-Import Bank of the United States | The official export credit agency of the United States | Supporting American job creation, prosperity and security through exporting | Issuing letters of interest for over $2.2 billion in financing for critical mineral projects | Supply Chain Resiliency Initiative (SCRI) to help secure supply chains of critical minerals and rare earth elements for U.S. businesses | Maintaining access to critical materials to secure U.S. jobs in sectors like battery, automobile, and semiconductor manufacturing | SCRI provides financing for international projects with signed long-term off-take contracts with U.S. companies, providing these U.S. companies with access to critical minerals from partner countries | SCRI: EXIM financing is tied to import authority and the financed amount depends on the amount of the off-take contract between the foreign project and the U.S. importer | Off-take agreements ensure that EXIM financing for critical minerals projects benefits American companies and workers | For U.S. domestic production in critical minerals and rare earth elements, EXIM can provide financing through Make More in America Initiative (MMIA) | SCRI: project must have signed off-take contracts that will result in the critical minerals and rare earth elements output being utilized in the United States, for products that are manufactured in the United States

#AGU | Southern Ocean Heat Burp in a Cooling World | Simulating several hundred years of net-negative emissions and gradual global cooling | Abrupt discharge of heat from Southern Ocean modeled | Global mean surface temperature increase of several tenths of degrees lasting for more than a century modeled | Ocean heat burp reasoned to originate from heat previously accumulated under global warming in deep Southern Ocean | Multi-centennial scale climate simulations | Question of the durability of oceanic storage of heat and carbon more urgent as ocean warming is accelerating | As atmospheric CO2 strongly decreases and atmospheric temperature declines, carbon and heat stored in the ocean start to return to the ocean surface | The majority of interior ocean waters ultimately returns to Southern Ocean surface and is reexposed to atmosphere in Southern Ocean | In Southern Ocean density layers outcrop at ocean surface, directly connecting surface to interior ocean thereby regulating oceanic exchange with atmosphere | Combined with persistent large-scale upwelling, Southern Ocean is prominent candidate for release of heat and carbon from ocean interior under reversal of atmospheric CO2 and global cooling | 40% of oceanic uptake of carbon | 80% of oceanic uptake of heat | Earth system model | Mass and energy conserving University of Victoria model UVic | Simulations of long time scales and carbon cycle feedbacks | UVic features atmospheric energy-balance model, ocean circulation and sea-ice model, land biosphere and ocean biogeochemistry with two plankton groups | Horizontal resolution: 3.6 × 1.8 | Ocean model; 19 vertical z-layers with increasing thicknesses over depths from 50m to 500m | Ocean Heat Release Causes Warm Period | Accumulated Heat Pushing up in Southern Ocean | Large-scale upwelling of deep waters in Southern Ocean keep surface temperatures comparatively cool | Southern Ocean serves as window to atmosphere, abruptly releasing heat during event and driving global surface warming and top of atmosphere energy loss, causing heat burp | Climate and Earth system models do not simulate changes in ice sheets and consequently miss the effect of freshwater input to ocean associated with ice sheet mass loss under global warming | Melt water discharge from Antarctic ice sheet triggered by global warming will have an additional, long-lasting freshening effect | Model used lacks a full response of the wind | Model also misses cloud feedbacks | Research underlines both importance of Southern Ocean in climate system and its response to changes in climate system beyond heat and carbon uptake under contemporary rising global temperatures | It is important to continue to improve process understanding of how waters return from interior Southern Ocean and what determines their properties | Interactive ice sheets needed | Observational data collection needed | Deep Argo observing waters below 2,000 m depths needed | Ack: research-unit Biogeochemical Modeling and funding by European Research Council (ERC)