Projects

There has been a fast development of new technological devices to monitor glucose levels, matching the ubiquitous dissemination of digital connectivity and social networking. The increase in social, educational, and age disparities among patients, more information on the web and social networks, and the development of better technological devices created a new environment characterized by several challenges. Unfortunately, the ecosystem for treating patients within this new reality has not changed, and there is a need to develop a better understanding of the real value generated by technologies in terms of the patient's behaviors and their decision processes to achieve higher levels of patient empowerment for Type1 and Type 2 diabetes prevention since they have related to different methods of risk perception. These challenges highlight the need to estimate the value offered to each patient by technology to achieve patient empowerment for more efficient prevention. NEODIPPE is born to pursue a crystal clear mission: to explore and identify the best use of technological developments to empower patients to prevent and treat diabetes, which implies innovating the traditional paradigms of health services from occasional appointments to networking monitoring and empowerment, supporting the processes of decision making and proposing new approaches to clinical practices, health organizations, and public financing in terms of the latest needs, resources, and preferences of the patients.

The project aims to shed light on the differences in the national regulation of children’s autonomous decisions. There are still considerable differences as to the regulatory approaches and preconditions for autonomous decisions of minors in Europe. The approaches largely foresee autonomy of minors based either on an individual assessment of their capacity to understand or on their age, with context-related differences. In order to understand national approaches, renowned national experts from 11 selected countries will contribute to the project, in addition to the project leaders, by reporting on the legal situation in their respective legal orders. The results will be discussed during the project and made available to the research community.

This project aims at enhancing expert workforce and digitalization in the field of fault diagnosis, condition- based maintenance of wind turbines and related components in the partner institutions by bringing innovation in higher education teaching and learning methods in wind energy and applied artificial intelligence for maintenance decisions, increasing its relevance for the labour market and the society as a whole. The project will help partners in Vietnam and Thailand to produce in-house human resources in the field of condition-based maintenance of wind energy, making both the countries independent of external consultants. The main objective of the project is to implement real problem-based teaching and learning methods in the curriculum of higher education institutions (HEIs) of the partner countries. The expertise and know- how of the EU partner universities and their long- term teaching and research in this field would make this project objective achievable. Moreover, this project will build the capacity to produce graduates with independent, global insight, interdisciplinary expertise, competence in wind energy, and intercultural expertise. The project will also help the EU partners to renew their education in renewable energy and build a sustainable flow of students in both directions.

The project aims to investigate and compile a report on men’s responses to diversity interventions and gender equality practices in Nordic workplaces.

The overall objective of the original CHIRALFORCE project is to demonstrate enantiomer separation in a compact, on-chip, photonic platform that is fabricated using standard silicon-based technology. This CHIRALFORCE2 hop-on project enhances the original project by providing automated in-line platform for the analysis of chiral separation for this CHIRALFORCE photonic chip. Separation of enantiomers from mixtures is essential, especially in early phase drug discovery processes when many mixtures need to be separated. CHIRALFORCE aims to revolutionize the field of chiral chemistry by introducing a radically new strategy for separating enantiomers by using chiral optical forces in silicon-based photonic integrated waveguides to separate enantiomers. The successful implementation of CHIRALFORCE project (development of separator chip) relies on fast and accurate feedback on the enantiomer separation. However, current state-of-the art technologies for checking the enantiomer separation: e.g. circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy or High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) lack off-the shelf capabilities for rapid in-line separation monitoring that is needed in CHIRALFORCE project. CHIRALFORCE2 addresses this need by providing a platform for in-line monitoring of the chiral separation down-stream from the CHIRALFORCE separator chip. We use interdisciplinary approach combining automation, electronics, optics and IT disciplines. The monitoring of in-line chiral separation will be achieved by CD-spectrometry or absorbance detection depending on the microfluidic and optical requirements from CHIRALFORCE project. Both scenarios are supported by designated software for the signal analysis and feedback.

CRASHLESS aims at radically new cross-layer reliability and self-health awareness technology for tomorrow's intelligent autonomous systems and IoT edge devices in Estonia and EU. The enormous complexity of today's advanced cyber-physical systems and systems of systems is multiplied by their heterogeneity and the emerging computing architectures employing AI-based autonomy. The setups, such as autonomous swarms of robotic vehicles, are already on the doorstep and call for novel approaches for reliability across all the layers. Continuous self-health awareness and infrastructure for in-field self-healing are becoming an enabling factor for new IoT edge devices and systems on the way to market. The new deep-tech by CRASHLESS equips engineers with design-phase solutions and in-field instruments for industry-scale systems and, ultimately, facilitates the user experience of the system’s crashless operation. The results are to be validated in close collaboration with Estonian companies.

DNA replication is one of the major targets of cancer therapies, as cancer cells tend to proliferate faster than normal cells and are generally more prone to replication stress. Most of our current knowledge about DNA replication initiation, or origin firing, currently comes from model organisms, such as yeast, but their applicability to the human system is limited. It is important to study replication initiation in human cells in order to be able to exploit the findings in cancer therapies. The main objectives of this project are to identify novel players in various stages of human replication initiation and characterize the non-catalytic roles of DNA polymerase epsilon and protein Timeless in replisome assembly.

The environmental impact of the pharmaceutical industry is a huge problem. The production and use of pharmaceuticals cause high CO2 emissions, contamination of soils, biota, and water, and even dangers to human health through carcinogenic impurities. Especially the use of solvents is a major problem. The European Green Deal has led to strict regulations on environmental pollution by the pharma industry, causing manufacturers to move outside of the EU due to the high costs associated with green pharma. This results in supply chain fragility and low crisis preparedness in Europe. New methods to produce pharmaceuticals in a green, efficient, and economically friendly way are required. The IMPACTIVE project brings together the expertise and knowledge from two COST Actions and will develop novel green methods to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) using mechanochemistry as a disruptive technology (as acknowledged by IUPAC). Mechanochemistry uses mechanical processes, such as ball milling, twin-screw extrusion, resonant acoustic mixing, and spray drying, to induce chemical reactions. The advantages of mechanochemistry include: no solvent use, high efficiency, low costs, and reduced energy use and CO2 emission. Upon completion of the project, we will provide proof-of-concept at a small pilot scale of the use of mechanochemistry to produce 6 APIs from 3 different families of compounds. Based on a recent study, switching to mechanochemistry can reduce terrestrial ecotoxicity and CO2 emissions by more than 85%, while production costs were reduced with 12%. The results of the IMPACTIVE project will thus enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to move back to Europe while minimizing environmental pollution.Through our strong dissemination and communication strategy we will ensure that the project´s results are shared with scientists, the pharmaceutical industry, and stakeholders from regulatory and public authorities to achieve maximum impact.

The PSYR-IR project zooms in on occupational safety and health, with a particular focus on mental health and worker well-being. It is our aim to identify the broad challenges and issues at play, as well as their underlying drivers, across all EU Member States and all economic sectors. This will be done by implementing an overarching conceptual framework on OSH and linking it with the existing empirical evidence and the policy/regulatory context (e.g. legislation, collective bargaining, etc.) on mental health in EU workplaces. Next to this overall analysis, identifying specific groups at-risk on the EU labour market, we also focus on the mental health of two predetermined target groups: frontline workers (in the female-dominated public health sector) and on-location production workers (low-skilled blue collar workers in the male-dominated private sector). Furthermore, the project will consider the interplay between psychosocial risks and mental health and well-being across economic sectors in the EU27, with separate case studies at the level of the participating EU Member States. Besides identifying challenges and drivers, the project wants to understand what actors can play a role in addressing them, at different levels (EU level, national level, sectoral level, company level) and what policies, practices, tools, actions and initiatives can be or are being adopted. Specific attention will go to the role of the social partners and of social dialogue (collective bargaining), and to worker participation in OSH matters. The project will also identify good examples to inspire policy- and decision-makers at different levels. Methodologically, the project will combine desk research, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and dissemination techniques. To do so, we bring together partners with expertise on OSH, industrial relations, or both, from countries in different European regions representing different institutional and industrial relations regimes.

The FINEST Twins project will build a multidisciplinary smart-city Center of Excellence that will match the leading smart city research centres globally and focus on all five key domains of clean and sustainable smart city development: mobility, energy and built environment glued together by governance and urban analytics & data management (research streams). The FINEST Twins will have a globally unique focus on developing user-driven clean and sustainable smart city solutions that are “cross-border-by-default” in the context of emerging twin city between Tallinn and Helsinki

Active mobility is an accessible, healthy and green mode of transport. In the BSR dark winters, with snow and rain, active mobility usage drops. To increase Year-Round Active Mobility (YRAM), suitable infrastructure and equipment must be in place, and citizens need to see it as an attractive and safe option. Public Authorities responsible for urban design, mobility planning and road maintenance do not currently give special consideration for YRAM. Out of tradition, mobility and road planning is still largely focused on cars, and cycling and walking planning typically targets daylight and warmer weather conditions. By learning about the benefits and opportunities through accessing new tools and evidence-based recommendations on YRAM, planners can implement the right interventions to increase AM use all year round, contributing to low carbon mobility systems. BATS supports local and regional authorities to design and implement policies, infrastructures and campaigns that effectively promote Year-Round Active Mobility (walking and cycling in adverse light and weather conditions). Our two solutions will be co-developed and tested in 7 BSR countries and transferred to neighbouring cities and regions. Solution 1: a YRAM Technical Toolkit, helps planners to Diagnose YRAM issues, develop Intervention Strategies and Monitor progress. Solution 2: a Citizen Activation Guide for YRAM helps planners understand and prioritise user groups and deploys effective campaigns to promote AM use.

The goal is to study new solutions & principles for electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) with significantly improved metrological and functional characteristics, like higher measurement accuracy, resolution and speed, lower power consumption and wider frequency and dynamic ranges. New solutions enhance the existing and enable new applications of EIS in healthcare, biology and industries. The principles & solutions to measure biological & physiological properties of organs, tissues and microorganisms/pathogens, as well as of composites, alloys etc. are the subjects of the research. Unique low-cost low-power miniaturized high-resolution and flexible measurement components with various connectivity (IoT, BAN etc) will be created by new EIS groundings. An important R&D aspect is synchronous signal processing and communication in EIS sensor-arrays. Research aspects: sampling theory AI/ML) and metrology (eg novel calibration techniques, methods of implementation in biology and medicine.

Enhancers are short distal cis-regulatory DNA regions that drive expression of a gene. However, enhancers do not function exclusively as DNA entities. Activated enhancers are transcribed by RNA polymerase II (RNAPII), which produces enhancer-derived RNAs (eRNAs). Production of eRNA creates additional trans-regulatory mechanisms facilitated by DNA-RNA, RNA-RNA, or protein-RNA interactions. Due to eRNAs’ fast degradation rates, and lack of robust and standardized sequencing methods, reports about the molecular nature of eRNA molecules and their processing are conflicting, making mechanisms of gene regulation by eRNA controversial. Even less is known about co- and post-transcriptional processing of eRNA. This project aims to overcome the controversy and fill the knowledge gap by studying a well-defined experimental system, cultured rat cortical neurons, and activation of immediate-early gene (IEG) response, perturbing the core eRNA endonuclease and combining this with eRNA-tailored sequencing, computational and biochemical methods. The developed integrative approach will reveal molecular features of eRNA molecules and their precursors genome-wide, opening the opportunity to study eRNA biogenesis to further understand molecular mechanisms behind the eRNA-mediated gene regulation.