The approach fundamental research has been waiting for

The Excellence of Science (EOS) programme, created by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen (FWO), supports fundamental research projects jointly conducted by researchers from the Flemish and Francophone communities. Four of the projects selected to receive approximately €1 million per year over four years beginning in 2018 are coordinated by UCLouvain teams. Their challenges include opening the door to new physics, understanding antiviral immune mechanisms, creating a smart wireless network, and predicting climate change over the next ten years. 

A new physics

Prof. Fabio Maltoni, a researcher at UCLouvain's Institute for Research in Mathematics and Physics, studies the fundamental interactions that govern our universe: particle physics. Joined by researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles, The Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Ghent University and the University of Antwerp, he coordinates the be.h project. Its objective is to follow up the discovery of the Higgs boson, for which François Englert and Peter Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics.  

Two types of experiments are conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), using two particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Super Proton Synchrotron. CERN will explore the properties and interactions of the Higgs boson, including what happens when it interacts with known and unknown particles. The Higgs boson could be the so-called ‘mutual friend’, playing the role of indispensable messenger in opening the door to a new world. ‘The Higgs boson could act as a portal to a different reality,’ Prof. Maltoni says. Exploring this hypothesis could potentially shed light on the mysteries of the origin of dark matter and the mass of the neutrino, another elementary particle of the standard model. The search for other particles that are candidates for dark matter will also be on the experimenters’ list.  
The project’s strength is blending theoretical and experimental aspects. At UCLouvain, the team consists of three Belgian researcher who reached a milestone at LHC earlier than expected. In June 2018, they observed ttH production, the production of a pair of top-antitop quarks and a Higgs particle, the two most massive fundamental particles, in a proton-proton collision. Future data analysis will allow detailed study of the interaction between these two particles, and likely clarify many mysteries concerning our world and its evolution.

be.h project: the Higgs boson gateway to physics beyond the standard model

Virus: when the alarm sounds

Prof. Thomas Michiels directs the Fundamental Virology Laboratory at the UCLouvain de Duve Institute. The EOS project he coordinates, launched in collaboration with teams from Ghent University, the University of Liège, and KU Leuven, aims to understand how viruses bypass immune defences. More specifically, researchers are interested in the interactions between viral RNA molecules and the innate response of the host.  

Some viruses have a DNA genome and others have an RNA genome, but all viruses produce RNA molecules that can interfere with cell function and immune defence mechanisms. When a cell detects RNA, it infers a viral infection is present and triggers a defence programme to protect itself and neighbouring cells. But detecting a double-stranded RNA is extremely complicated, as normal cells also produce a small amount of double-stranded RNA. It’s absolutely essential that our cells not detect this endogenous RNA as the signal of a viral infection, otherwise they initiate an immune response that, if chronic, becomes catastrophic. For example, some people are constantly synthesising interferons, which causes serious developmental problems and mental retardation, and leads inevitably to premature death.  

‘What interests us,’ Prof. Michiels explains, ‘is the mechanisms that “size up” cellular proteins in a way that ensures the detection threshold is not reached in normal cells yet makes it possible to detect a viral infection.’ The researchers identified an enzyme that destabilises the endogenous double-stranded gene in order to prevent the response from starting, and other sensors of this double-stranded RNA, including an enzyme that activates when the production of double-stranded RNA signals an infection.

One of the strengths of the collaboration is the diversity of viral models studied: flaviviruses, such as Zika or dengue (KU Leuven), Hepatitis E (Ghent University), influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses (Ghent University), and a notorious DNA virus that produces double-stranded RNA recognised by the immune system (University of Liège). UCLouvain researchers focus on picornaviruses, especially Theiler’s virus, a negative RNA virus that causes persistent infections of the nervous system. It has the distinction of persisting in spite of an immune response, and produces small proteins that interfere with the functioning of cells and the innate immune response. ‘We’re trying to see how Theiler’s virus interferes with the immune system, while knowing that the virus is acting on cellular components that play critical roles in regulating cell function’, Prof. Michiels says. ‘Viruses evolve rapidly, replicate very quickly and mutate very easily, to go where it hurts. By studying how a virus interferes with cell function, one often comes to understand certain elements of the functioning of the cell itself.’

Project: Viral interference with RNA sensing and processing

An exceptional network

Our smartphone is constantly switching from Wi-Fi to 4G and vice-versa, two wireless networks that we couldn’t do without. But in the age of the Internet of Things, where more and more small smart devices are connecting to each other and connecting us to the world, the challenge is to design wireless networks that offer complementary services to sending files, communications and streaming. Prof. Luc Vandendorpe, an electrical engineer who heads the Wireless Research Group at ICTEAM, coordinates the project known as MUSE-WINET (MUltiSErvice Wireless NETworks), which brings together teams from UCLouvain, KU Leuven, Ghent University and ULB for a period of four years. His goal is to develop a multiservice wireless network that’s smart and modelled for the Internet of Things.  
 
‘We’re not trying to create what already exists, like 4G or 5G, and improve it’, Prof. Vandendorpe explains. ‘Our goal is to offer more personalised applications, compatible with the needs of connected objects.’ Their needs in terms of performance are energy and data transmission and communications, but also computation. All at the same time? Not so fast. These activities covet the same resources, making competition fierce. There will be sacrifices. The main task of UCLouvain researchers is to evaluate which combinations are achievable simultaneously and find multiservice limits. Energy transmission is one of the new services offered by this network. Radio signals would power, within a radius of a few meters, devices that are power-hungry and not equipped with batteries, such as safety sensors measuring movements within a crowd.  

Another service: computation. Today, smartwatch or smartphone geolocation is possible but the computations required to process the data limit the device’s autonomy. Prof. Vandendorpe's team imagined ‘outsourcing’ these computations locally via a network access point or base station (the equivalent of a modem), the algorithm being hosted in the cloud or the fog (an alternative allowing better reactivity). A prototype experimental base station is at the centre of discussions about testing several infrastructure methods. The missions of the other university teams, possessing expertise already demonstrated alongside UCLouvain during a previous joint research project, will be the following : KU Leuven will see to base station equipment and a large number of antennas; Ghent University will design nodes capable of consuming the least possible power; ULB will address localisation techniques. Will the 2.4 billion smart devices on earth in 2025 connect to the multiservice network developed at the university? 

MUSE-WINET (MUltiSErvice WIreless NETwork) project

Predicting ice melt more accurately

How to predict the climate events that will take place in ten years? Hugues Goosse, a climatologist and researcher at the Earth and Life Institute (ELI) and UCLouvain’s Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate, reveals the complexity of climate mechanisms, in which nature and man intervene. The EOS project he coordinates is called PARAMOUR, conducted in collaboration with teams from VUB, ULB, KU Leuven and the University of Liège, and focuses on the dramatic climate changes that have occurred in recent decades in the polar regions and predicting events in the near future.  

The aim is to understand the impact of interactions of polar environmental elements – ocean, terrestrial (ice caps) and marine ice (sea ice), atmosphere – and quantify the contribution of different mechanisms to observed disturbances. Coupled climate models will be created with the help of developers to represent polar environmental dynamics and interactions between all elements. To determine potential fluctuations and key climate indicators for the coming decades, both retrospective (1980-2015) and prospective (2015-45) simulations will be performed. The ultimate goal is to generate a model that includes interactions within the ice-ocean-atmosphere system over extended time scales, and that can predict events in future decades. However, as Prof. Goosse reminds us, ‘Before we can determine when a glacier will collapse, we must be able to understand the different mechanisms that provoked the changes that caused the ice to melt.’ The UCLouvain team will look closely at the evolution of the Antarctic Ocean around Totten Glacier, which has melted significantly in recent years.  

The project’s strength is undoubtedly pooling the teams’ expertise on the atmosphere (University Liège), ice (VUB and ULB), cryosphere-atmosphere interactions (KU Leuven), and the ocean (UCLouvain). By comparison, a typical project usually focuses on only one of these environments. While collaboration already existed between these experts, the project makes it possible to consolidate an ambitious critical mass. 

PARAMOUR project: Predictability and decadal-to-centennial polar climate variability: the role of multiscale interactions between the atmosphere, the ocean and the cryosphere