The Climate and Atmosphere Research Centre (CARE-C) of The Cyprus Institute has announced its coordination of the new Horizon Europe Project named ‘Doctoral Network on Atmospheric Dust’ (Dust-DN), which secured funding of 3.5 million under the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks programme.
A press release by the CyI says the initiative was awarded with full marks within a very competitive evaluation and selection and aims to train the next generation of scientists in the field of atmospheric dust.
The press release explains that despite its obvious presence in the atmosphere, the fundamental properties of atmospheric dust remain poorly understood, limiting our ability to develop accurate models and harness the societal benefits of better predictions.
The Dust-DN project aims to bridge this knowledge gap by creating the first doctoral network dedicated to atmospheric mineral dust on a European scale, combining expertise and multidisciplinary approaches.
Dust-DN will address critical gaps in research objectives such as advancing the understanding of the fundamentals of dust microphysical properties and processes, identifying the influence of source regions on atmospheric dust properties, assessing the socio-economic impacts of dust on health, aviation, and energy production and investigating dust within the global climate system.
The Dust-DN project brings together 8 core partners and 15 associated partners, including 5 non-academic institutions, ensuring a broad range of expertise and facilities to address the complex challenges posed by atmospheric dust.
The core participating institutes are The Cyprus Institute (CyI) – Project Coordinator, the University of Évora (UÉ) from Portugal, the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) from Greece, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) from Spain, the Technical University of Darmstadt (TUDa) from Germany, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) also from Germany, the University of Reading (UREAD) from United Kingdom, and the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos – World Radiation Center (PMOD-WRC) from Switzerland.
The Dust-DN project kickoff meeting will take place on 20 January and participants will present the project’s objectives, methodologies, and timeline.
( Source : CNA)