erc – Progress in Research

Exploring the properties of new catalytic reactors with structured conductive internals

Posted on 20/01/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

After more than 5 years of work, the INTENT project, which was hosted at the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Energy and funded by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), has achieved its main objectives: to explore the properties of new catalytic reactors with structured conductive internals and to demonstrate their potential applications in the intensification of chemical processes that are crucial to the energy transition.

A catalytic reactor is an appliance in which chemical reactions occur in ways and at speeds that are valuable for industry, thanks to the use of special materials called catalysts. The INTENT research team, coordinated by Professor Enrico Tronconi, has achieved significant results in this field of research, which will help to create a future of cleaner and more sustainable energy.

The project has already had an important impact:

the award of an ERC Proof of Concept Grant to the INSTANT project, which aims to utilise the results of INTENT for the industrialisation of an innovative compact reformer suitable to cogeneration systems (“combined heat and power”) for residential and small-scale uses;
the award of funding from the Ministry of Universities and Research to the projects BEATRICS (FARE) and PLUG-IN (PRIN 2020) on the basis of INTENT’s success;
the award of funding to the Horizon EU project EReTech and to an industry research project focussing on electrified methane reforming using the ohmic heating of structured catalysts, an innovative concept developed by INTENT;
the creation of a pilot plant at the Politecnico laboratories of the Bovisa campus with which to test INTENT’s new reactor concept in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on a representative scale, a rarity in the academic field;
25 scientific publications in the principal journals of the fields of Chemical Engineering, Energy and Catalysis (listed on the website), a patent and numerous invites to present the results of INTENT at international conferences.

The project website

The results of the project

TROPHY project kicks off

Posted on 28/09/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Activities related to the TROPHY (ulTRafast hOlograPHic FT-IR microscopY) project have officially started. TROPHY is a research project, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme, which aims to develop a novel label-free vibrational microscopy approach for cancer diagnosis.

Cancer diagnosis is traditionally done on intraoperative frozen tissue sections by post-surgical histopathologic analysis and, in selected cases, by elaborated and time-consuming molecular diagnosis. The analysis of the biopsy is performed through the staining of the tissue and the evaluation of the morphology of its cells under an optical microscope. This approach is neither fast nor quantitative, has an intrinsic variability in the interpretation depending on the experience of the histopathologist, and provides limited molecular information.

The microscope developed thanks to the TROPHY project will image molecular biomarkers with unprecedented speed and chemical selectivity for a rapid, precise, and non-biased tumor analysis. To this purpose, it will blend in a unique fashion elements of several microscopies developed in the past decades, namely photo-thermal infrared, Fourier transform infrared and Digital Holography Microscopy, bringing them to the unprecedented ultrafast timescale. It will also integrate Artificial Intelligence to produce fast results and assist in the tumour grading process even during surgery.

This microscope will be used to assist healthcare professionals during tumor biopsy diagnostics, provide an accurate diagnosis for curative oncosurgery, guarantee complete resection during intervention, determine the best therapeutic approach tailored to the patient, and identify resistant tumor clones under targeted therapy, paving the way for continual precision medicine in cancer.

The project is coordinated by the Politecnico di Milano with Prof. Marco Marangoni from the Department of Physics as scientific coordinator. The other project partners are Fundacio Institut de Ciences Fotoniques (ICFO, Spain), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, Italy), Lyncee Tec SA (LT, Switzerland), Universtaetsklinikum Jena (JUH, Germany), University of Exeter (UNEXE, UK), University of Cambridge (UCAM, UK).

ERC Consolidator Grant to Sara Bagherifard’s ArcHIDep project

Posted on 18/03/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The European Research Council (ERC), the European Union organization that rewards talented scholars engaged in cutting-edge research, is funding Sara Bagherifard‘s project ArcHIDep. The research project was selected from among more than 2,000 proposals received by ERC.This is a great result for the Politecnico, considering that this year only 11.8% of the projects submitted have obtained funding. In addition to this project, to date, a total of 49 ERC grants have been awarded to researchers from the Politecnico di Milano.

Sara Bagherifard, senior researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, will work on the ArcHIDep project: a revolutionary system of solid-state deposition to obtain heterogeneous materials with structured architecture on three scales: micro, meso and macro.

This ambitious goal is possible with the development of the cold spray beyond the state of the art, with analytical models, experimental tests and multi-scale computational models.

ArcHIDep will develop a framework, currently non-existent, that will allow the design and construction of elements capable of overcoming the limits connected to the current impossibility of combining conflicting properties, by the rational exploitation of raw materials and superior performance.

ERC Consolidator Grants are intended for researchers with at least 7 years of experience since obtaining their PhD and with a very promising scientific profile. These are scholars who aim to consolidate their independence in research, strengthening their research group and continuing to develop a career in Europe. Funding can reach €2 million per single project, for a maximum duration of 5 years.

ERC Consolidator Grants to Massimo Tavoni’s EUNICE project

Posted on 17/03/202206/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The European Research Council (ERC), the European Union organization that rewards talented scholars engaged in innovative research, is funding EUNICE, a project led by Prof. Massimo Tavoni from the Politecnico di Milano. The research project was selected from among more than 2,000 proposals received by ERC.This is a great result for the Politecnico, considering that this year only 11.8% of the projects submitted have obtained funding. In addition to these two projects, to date, a total of 49 ERC grants have been awarded to researchers from the Politecnico di Milano.

Massimo Tavoni, Professor of Engineering for the Environment and the Territory, has been awarded the grant for EUNICE, which aspires to correct the errors of the ensembles of climate-energy-economy models that study climate stabilization, and to develop methods to validate and confirm the intuitions of the scenarios.

The objective of the project is therefore to develop an innovative and integrated approach to quantify, translate, and communicate in an effective and timely manner the main uncertainties associated with low-carbon pathways and scenarios that explore very distant futures, renewing the methodological and experimental bases of model-based climate assessments.

EUNICE is a project of great relevance also for other research areas: the approach and innovations developed by EUNICE can in fact also be applied to other high-risk environmental, social, and technological assessments.

Its unique combination of computational and behavioural science and public engagement will be an important mediation tool in debates on fundamental decisions for our society, increasing confidence in and recognition of the scientific method.