Uni.lu Researchers Receive FNR ATTRACT Fellowships

The Luxembourg National Research Fund (Fonds National de la Recherche - FNR) has awarded FNR ATTRACT Fellowships to two researchers at the University of Luxembourg; Professors Lindsay Flynn and Etienne Fodor will strengthen the research units in social sciences and physics respectively.

Prof. Lindsay Flynn’s research project, "PRO-Active Policymaking for Equal Lives" (PROPEL), will investigate the relationship between housing policies and inequality. The theoretical framework is interdisciplinary, drawing on political science, sociology, demography and economics. She is joining the University of Luxembourg thanks to an FNR ATTRACT Fellowship endowed with €2 million (over five years).

Prof. Flynn explained: “My project takes a close look at different types of governmental housing policies across Europe and North America and the sometimes unequal ways they affect younger versus older generations, larger and smaller families and households with more or less disposable income. The more we know about the policy mechanisms that lead to unequal opportunities, the more we can root out those mechanisms and replace them with more equal ones”. 

PROPEL combines qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to study how housing policy regimes influence inequality within and between generations in affluent democracies. The project also considers how housing policies and housing markets interact with employment and pension policies to shape patterns of inequality.

The project is expected to be a scientific gain for Luxembourg because it will establish an interdisciplinary research group engaged in policy-relevant, high-quality research on the relationship between housing and inequality. It will also allow Prof. Flynn to further develop her considerable research skills and talents and to establish herself as a leading researcher in the field of welfare state development and inequality. 

The topic of Prof. Etienne Fodor’s research project, "Statistical Mechanics of Active Matter" (SMAC), is active matter, a novel class of nonequilibrium systems composed of self-propelled agents. His FNR ATTRACT Fellowship is endowed with €1.5 million (over five years).

While a plethora of collective states was discovered in active matter recently, the control of these states by external and internal influences is yet not well understood. Prof. Fodor’s project will employ and develop statistical mechanics concepts to identify possibilities of optimal control in active matter. Among the research goals are both fundamental theoretical physics aspects as well as possible applications such as active microengines.

Prof. Fodor explained: “As a result of this project, I hope to obtain a generic description to control the active systems in an optimal way. The motivation is to propose specific protocols, for example a change in cell dynamics between resting and moving states”.

A long-term application would be to control the collective dynamics of an aggregate of cells between a mobile state, where the cells are able to move rapidly within the aggregate, and a resting state where each cell remains fixed at a specific location in the aggregate. Thus, controlling cell motility in an epithelial tissue, for example, has the direct application of helping human skin to recover from certain injuries.

Prof. Fodor concluded that: “Luxembourg offers a very dynamic environment for the study of active systems. The physics of active and living matter has recently been identified as one of the priority research areas at national level, which clearly indicates a willingness to invest in this field. In this sense, the recent initiative 'Physics meets Biology' will make it possible to develop collaborations at the interface between these two disciplines, where active matter plays an important role, with a view to creating an internationally competitive research centre”.