NOMIS Research Projects
NOMIS research grants support unconventional research projects led by researchers who have demonstrated exceptional scientific capabilities and leadership. The grants enable scientists to spearhead pioneering research to answer bold questions and advance yet unexplored approaches across scientific and academic disciplines. We award research grants to investigators with an excellent track record in leading groundbreaking, high-risk basic research.
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
— 2027
Details
The Question
Imagine you receive this message from a friend: “It finally happened, I got the confirmation letter in the mail this morning, let’s go out tonight to debrief.” As soon as you read this, your brain starts building a complex model: You might immediately know that your friend is talking about a job offer they have been waiting for, for over a year, and that they will be both excited and nervous, because the job means moving countries and their partner doesn’t want that; you might immediately think about whether you can move your 6pm yoga class tonight to go and meet your friend, or whether it might make sense for you to pick them up from home on your way back from work, or whether they are working in their office today.
When we talk with our friends, listen to the news or make plans with colleagues, our brains make sense of these complex situations by using background knowledge to create rich and powerful inferences about the mental states of other people. We are constantly reasoning about the things they know, their likely goals, whether to trust another person, whether to change our minds and when to make new plans together or seek new information.
This kind of social reasoning is central to human life and vital to the buildup of knowledge and cohesion in social discourse. Without reasoning about other minds, our ability to learn and share information would be critically limited, yet these core cognitive processes go beyond what contemporary models in modern cognitive science and neuroscience are capable of capturing. Even the most powerful modern artificial intelligence systems lack many aspects of social reasoning, and we currently lack models and methods that would help us to address this fundamental limitation.
The Approach
The project How Reasoning About Other Minds Supports Human Culture: Large-Scale Experimental Simulations of Cultural Evolution With Human Participants aims to fill this gap by conducting large-scale behavioral experiments in which people engage in social interactions with strangers to solve problems, make plans and discover new concepts together. These experiments will leverage new methods in experimental psychology to create situations that expose the rich structure of human social reasoning, and leverage computational methods to extract structure from large-scale behavioral data. Using modern experimentation, the project’s researchers will be able to construct networks of interacting participants who learn from each other over time, and study the evolution of participant behavior in micro-societies.
The experiments will generate large-scale datasets that can be used to test the predictions of formal computational models of social reasoning, and to improve machine learning systems that currently lack many forms of social reasoning. These insights will not only help us understand one of humanity’s key cognitive skills, but will also help to inform the design of digital systems that better support constructive discourse and learning in modern digital discourse arenas, such as social media platforms and conversational AI systems.
The How Reasoning About Other Minds Supports Human Culture project is being led by Bill Thompson at the University of California, Berkeley (USA).
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
— 2029
Details
The Question
The transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of life on Earth. It has been suggested that this transition may have begun when single-celled organisms failed to undergo complete division, resulting in daughter cells that remained interconnected through their cytoplasm. Notably, multicellular organisms initiate their development with a fertilized egg that undergoes a series of rapid cell divisions, which in some species are incomplete. This process bears a striking resemblance to the proposed mechanisms that led to the emergence of multicellularity. However, it remains unclear how these incomplete divisions can produce cells with distinct forms and functions — an essential characteristic of multicellular organisms.
The Approach
To address this question, the project Cytoplasmic Self-Organization in Early Animal Development will investigate how cells acquire distinct forms and functions in embryos undergoing either complete divisions (ascidians — the closest invertebrate relatives of vertebrates) or incomplete divisions (zebrafish — a popular vertebrate model organism) at the onset of their development.
The researchers’ initial observations suggest an intriguing possibility: In embryos with incomplete divisions, the cytoplasm can self-organize into cell-like compartments that exhibit characteristics typical of intact cells. This implies that the formation and differentiation of cells in multicellular organisms may be driven by this self-organizing property of the cytoplasm rather than solely by the mechanisms of cell division. This hypothesis will be tested through experiments that modify the extent of cell division in both zebrafish and ascidian embryos, exploring whether and how cytoplasmic self-organization can compensate for the lack of division in these scenarios.
The project is being led by Carl-Philipp Heisenberg at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).
Feature image: Nuclei visible via DAPI staining (Photo: Heisenberg lab).
Details
The Question
How do we see in 3D? How our brain does this remains a mystery. All the brain receives are two 2D images on the retina, and yet it somehow constructs a single unified 3D percept. While we know how we would design a visual system with these inputs, the reality is that human 3D vision doesn’t behave as we would expect.
Solving this question has a number of significant implications. First, it helps us to understand the human brain. 3D vision is one of the classic paradigms through which general principles about the brain are formulated and tested, from single-cell recordings in the 1960s, to computational approaches in the 1980s, to probabilistic models in the 1990s. Second, public health. Roughly a billion people worldwide (one-eighth of the world’s population) have 3D vision deficits, so understanding the mechanisms underpinning 3D vision is key. Third, artificial intelligence. We are able to act and navigate in the 3D world in a way that far surpasses existing AI with a fraction of the computational power. How does the human brain do it? Fourth, virtual and augmented reality. We can only build a convincing virtual replica of reality if we know what is required to convince human vision in the first place. Fifth, art, architecture, and spatial design. They all appeal to principles of how we perceive the 3D world.
The Approach
The New Approach to 3D Vision project seeks to unravel the seemingly simple question of how we see in 3D. To understand any system, it is helpful to understand what inputs it responds to. The 3D Vision researchers will thus begin by testing how different visual inputs lead to different 3D visual experiences through behavioral experiments. For example, 3D vision isn’t informed by eye rotation, a mechanism that was thought to be important for linking the retinal image to the world. More recently, the project’s principal investigator developed the “Linton Stereo Illusion” to show that 3D vision directly responds to the projections on the retina rather than reconstructing the position of points in the world.
Once these distortions of visual space have been appropriately quantified, the researchers will build computational models of human 3D vision, collaborating with Nikolaus Kriegeskorte at Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
Finally, they will look for evidence of these processes at work in specific regions of the brain. Bringing together 14 researchers from the US and Europe, the 3D Vision PI will lead a Generative Adversarial Collaboration titled “Is V1 a Cognitive Map?”
The New Approach to 3D Vision project is being led by Paul Linton at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University (New York, US).
Feature image: Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink exhibition, Thomas SG Farnetti. (Source: Wellcome Collection [CC BY-NC 4.0])
Details
The Question
A first line of defense against pathogens, innate immunity is essential for life, providing an immediate but nonspecific response through physical barriers, immune cells and various proteins. It recognizes and responds to a broad range of microbial threats using pattern recognition receptors to detect conserved pathogen-associated molecular patterns.
This complex response demands precision. The activity of innate immune signaling must be properly regulated to orchestrate a transient and balanced response. Errors in controlling innate immunity can lead to disease: Inflammation caused by the aberrant activity of innate immune receptors is now being viewed as a major driver of several human diseases as well as natural aging. But the exact functioning of the innate immune response is still not fully understood.
“My inspiration to pursue basic research stems from a combination of curiosity, a passion for discovery, and the desire to contribute to the foundational understanding of biological phenomena.”
—Andrea Ablasser
The Approach
The Exploring Innate Immune (In)activities project aims to systematically study molecular checkpoints that control innate immune function. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers seek to identify allosteric sequence motifs within immune receptors and signaling proteins that limit overall activity and control the strength, duration and resolution of immune responses. They will use a combination of structural biology, in silico protein prediction algorithms, biochemistry, and cellular assays to establish a mechanistic understanding of allosteric control at a given site and will classify via in-depth phenotypic analyses in cells and in vivo their impact on cell state and tissue inflammation. The project seeks to generate insights into the rules that govern the functioning of innate immunity and to establish the landscape of the regulatory, evolutionary and therapeutic potential of immune signaling pathways.
Exploring Innate Immune (In)activities is being led by Andrea Ablasser at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL; Switzerland).
Feature image: Airyscan imaging of innate immune stimulated HeLa cells with the nucleus marked in blue.
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
Details
The Question
Messenger RNAs (mRNA) were discovered in the mid-20th century as molecules that copy the genetic information from DNA in the cell nucleus and carry it to the cytoplasm for protein synthesis. Even today, mRNAs are depicted as simple, short linear chains of nucleotides. Yet, this is misleading, as it does not convey the considerable physical length of these nucleic acid polymers, their propensity to fold, and their existence within diverse and variable protein coatings.
Over the course of its life cycle, every mRNA within eukaryotic cells assembles a complex and dynamic protein coating. These supramolecular assemblies, called messenger ribonucleoproteins (mRNPs), protect the integrity of the mRNA, aid in transport and control the spatiotemporal translation into protein. This is especially important in neurons, in which the unique morphology requires that specific mRNAs travel to the most extreme ends of the cells, the axon terminals, for local translation at the synapses. This spatial choreography supplies the synaptic structures with the proteins needed to sustain the signal that directs activities such as proper brain development or storing memories. Despite their importance in gene expression processes, and in contrast to other classes of RNPs such as ribosomes and spliceosomes, the makeup and transformations of individual mRNPs remain a mystery.
“Understanding the architectural principles of mRNA particles will inform us how the fragile genetic information carrier, mRNA, can safely traverse the crowded and extensive cellular environment of neuronal cells, ensuring that precise protein synthesis occurs only upon reaching the correct location.”
—Elena Conti
The Approach
The research project Visualizing the Messenger: Deciphering the Architecture of Neuronal mRNA Particles at the Atomic Level aims to discern the structure and biochemical nature of mRNPs in the brain throughout the mRNA life cycle. Recent breakthroughs in ad hoc biochemical approaches pioneered by the Conti research group have minimized issues with mRNP fragility and variability, allowing for the isolation of endogenous intact mRNPs.
The project will employ genetic editing to enable strategic molecular cloning in a scalable platform with human induced pluripotent stem cells to extract and analyze large quantities of physiological assemblies in their entirety. The researchers will characterize the protein and mRNA content of selected mRNP targets and study their intra- and intermolecular interactions using mass spectrometry and RNA sequencing. The structural organization of the mRNPs will be determined through cryogenic electron microscopy and electron tomography, aided by computational approaches. Elucidating the structure of these mRNPs will provide insights into the mechanisms with which they function in neuronal processes and will facilitate a molecular understanding of how mutations in mRNP components lead to neurological diseases.
The Visualizing the Messenger project is being led by Elena Conti at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) in Munich, Germany.
Feature image: Structural basis for the assembly and recognition of modules in mRNA ribonucleoproteins (mRNPs).
Details
The Question
How do human beings’ experience of pictures, such as individual artworks or cultural styles of pictorial representation, shape the ways in which people see the natural and social world beyond pictures? Understanding this experience has the potential to impact fields ranging from education and clinical psychology to social behavior and ethics, marking a significant shift in how we understand the relationship between pictorial art and visual perception.
It has been argued that things in the world — objects and states of affair — come to resemble pictures of them that people have already seen in the past. Objects, then, become partly “depictured”: A real landscape might become Cézannesque when shaped by one’s viewing of pictures of Provence by Paul Cézanne; a real cityscape might look Mondrianesque if one has been affected by Piet Mondrian’s abstract figurations of New York City. This concept has radical implications for models of perception and cognition, as well as for theories of aesthetics and representation. But it has rarely been stated systematically by art historians, though it is implied throughout their work — some of the best accounts come from art critics, such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (who promoted Cubism), and writers such as Marcel Proust.
“If pictures change the way we naturally perceive the world around us, then many educational and other implications arise. As individuals, we benefit from being explicit about the visual assumptions we’re always making, often unaware of their origins in pictures we’ve seen. Collectively, when we try to recognize other people’s points of view — as a matter of social and moral responsibility — we’re possibly partly recognizing their pictorial experiences. Therefore, understanding their pictures is a crucial way of understanding their identities.”
— Whitney Davis
The Approach
The project Depictured Worlds: The Perceptual Power of Pictures will study “depicturation” from several points of view. The Depictured Worlds research team will identify likely art-historical cases of depicturation in the history of modern Western arts in their global dissemination, and build additional examples from indigenous, ancient, and/or non-Western arts. By conducting interviews with experts, the researchers will obtain perspectives from human evolution and prehistory, perceptual and cognitive psychology, and sociological and anthropological studies of visual culture. They also will investigate topics including the global dissemination of picture making in prehistory, the historical consequences of schematic and naturalistic styles of depiction, and the variety of social expectations for the perceptual power of pictures.
The project aims to provide a critical history of the concept of depicturation, to assess its usefulness in and implications for disciplines of visual studies in the widest sense, and to explore theoretical models and empirical investigations that might clarify it analytically and test it experimentally. Considering that the perceptual experiences of long-ago populations are not directly accessible, the researchers will explore algorithmic and/or computational approaches that might model complex processes of depicturation in a population.
Depictured Worlds is being led by Whitney Davis at the University of California, Berkeley (US).
Feature image: Brush-and-ink painting of the Derwentwater, England, by Chiang Yee, c. 1925. The art historian E. H. Gombrich used Chiang Yee’s pictures to argue that his perception of landmarks in Britain was shaped by his Chinese training. Is this reasonable?
Details
The Question
Celebrating victory — often depicted in a graphic and crude manner — is one of the most recurrent motifs in amateur soldier photographs of World War II, the largest global conflict to date and the first that was widely documented. Taking trophies from the battlefield is a universal and timeless human practice; as object and medium, however, photographs add an entirely new dimension to this phenomenon. Soldiers created and circulated photographic displays of triumph, transforming the experience of armed conflicts into a shared, intimate and eminently visual event.
The collaborative interdisciplinary research project Trophy Photographs: Performative Transgressions of Ordinary Soldiers in World War II considers “trophy photographs” taken by Axis and Allied soldiers in a transnational perspective as a distinct photographic genre and social practice that shaped not only the servicemen, but also their larger societies. Comprising 15 scholars, collectors and artists with diverse backgrounds, interests and specializations, the research team argues that trophy photographs hold historical, sociological and political meaning and reveal new aspects of essential social and cultural practices of warfare. Their inherently performative quality and evocative power transform trophy photographs into a weapon in their own right, with far-reaching consequences even today.
The Approach
The team’s collective effort to understand the history and meaning of trophy photographs in World War II requires reconsideration of the complex relationships between artifacts and actors; photographers and spectators; and past, present and future societies. As products of the interaction between their content (diegesis, or the space of the image) and their context (extradiegetic circumstances, or external and historical factors that can and do change), photographs not intended as trophies can become them.
Meanwhile, those photographs created to commemorate triumph might unintentionally become documents of atrocities. It is therefore necessary to explore the legacies of trophy photographs, as they construct alternative realities that soldiers and their communities later perceive as truth. Capable of keeping the past alive, trophy photographs often trigger contradictory memories and narratives, providing a sense of pride while also transmitting trauma across generations.
By examining World War II-era photographs and historical visual practices, the Trophy Photographs researchers are developing hermeneutical tools to dissect trophy photographs of past, current and future conflicts. The primary goal of this collaborative research is the creation of a photo textbook written for a broad audience that explores and reflects on the interplay between scholarly inquiry and the ethics of showing. This transdisciplinary approach aims to better comprehend present-day amateur war photographs circulating on social media and to generally deal with warfare in a more critical and conscious manner.
The Trophy Photographs project is being led by Elissa Mailänder at Sciences Po Centre for History in Paris, France, and the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany, and by Tom Streuber at Tom, Dick & Harry GmbH in Berlin, Germany, and the Centre Marc Bloch. The research team includes Petra Bopp, Martin Dammann, Margaret Hillenbrand, Marianne Ingleby, Iain Johnston, Daniel H. Magilow, Regina Mühlhäuser, Malu Mühmer, Ulrich Prehn, Mary Louise Roberts, Sven Saaler, Yuki Tanaka, Jan Wenzel and Jialin Christina Wu.
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
— 2026
Details
What can we learn from art and architecture? How do buildings and artworks relate to and create connections with their surroundings? Sites are seen as intersecting and overlapping zones of historically sedimented as well as current and emerging factors. Focusing on selected works and projects in art and architecture since the 1970s, the research project Site Complexes: Models of Responsive Practices for the 21st Century aims to describe and evaluate the transformation of sites performed by specific artworks and architectures through the unfolding of this complex of conditions.
Site Complexes is exploring the processes by which the works, designs and buildings connect the set of conditions that determine their sites to an only partially defined future. These processes are models of responsive practices that do not attempt to adapt a site to predefined principles but rather react to and learn from its complexity. The researchers are investigating these processes as different ways of dealing responsibly with ecological, social, infrastructural and other layers that define a shared reality.
Based on the detailed descriptive recording of the selected objects and processes—what has happened, what is happening, when and where—the team is highlighting the specific methods and techniques of artistic and architectural intervention. The research aims to demonstrate the model character of the singular cases that form the project’s material and thus to detect and demonstrate patterns of an organized interplay between site-conditioning and site-transforming factors, which can be compared with each other. The individual studies, developed in constant collaboration, will thus establish a typology of site complexes and of their “responsible” artistic and architectural transformation.
This typology serves to communicate the research team’s findings in the interdisciplinary exchange of art and architecture as well as in public discourse on the qualities of future developments. Contributing basic research on the concept and concrete procedures of site-responsive practices, the project seeks to encourage dialogue across disciplines, including sociology, urban studies/urban anthropology, environmental sciences, human geography and postcolonial studies, as well as fields of practice, such as cultural heritage, materials research and redevelopment issues. Site Complexes is exploring the possibilities for a responsible coexistence on our ever-changing planet.
Site Complexes: Models of Responsive Practices for the 21st Century is being led by Sebastian Egenhofer at the University of Vienna, Austria, and Stefan Neuner and Susanne Hauser at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany.
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
— 2026
Details
Francesco Petrarca’s Canzoniere, a collection of 366 poems written in 14th century Italy, is arguably the most influential book of love poetry ever written. Known as the “Father of Humanism,” Petrarca popularized the sonnet form, which traveled across Europe and beyond in centuries to come. The cultural, religious and aesthetic assumptions behind the poems did not always adapt themselves easily to foreign tongues and traditions, and the ways in which Petrarch’s poems entered into both European and non-European contexts has created some of the most interesting and complex love literature across the globe.
Petrarch in Global Translation: A Genealogy of Western Love is a collaborative humanities project across languages and national borders that is investigating the foundational conception of Western love as codified by Canzoniere. The project is exploring, for example, the extent to which Petrarchan norms are useful and adaptive models outside of Western contexts. By re-engaging the practice of Petrarchism, which has spawned centuries of literary production and critical reception, Petrarch in Global Translation proposes a simultaneously theoretical and experimental, historical and systematic approach to identifying the dominant “poetics of love” in the Western tradition.
Using the central tool of translation, Petrarch in Global Translation will develop an innovative global approach to Petrarchan poetry as a grammar of love. An initial team of 12 collaborators from countries across Europe as well as the US, Argentina, Iran, China and Japan will translate the same group of Petrarch’s poems from Italian into their respective languages to create a shared textual corpus for subsequent investigations.
The Petrarch in Global Translation project is being led by Ramie Targoff at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, US, and Judith Frömmer at the University of Vienna, Austria.
NOMIS Researcher(s)
NOMIS Project 2024
— 2026
Details
Groups of people often encounter difficulties when working together. In many situations, people prioritize their self-interest, which can undermine efforts to benefit the group as a whole, as seen in problems like traffic congestion, public-health failures and climate change. Even when individuals want to act for others, they may struggle to find the best course of action when confronted with social dilemmas where the interests of the individual and the group are not aligned.
The Addressing Collective Action Problems With Machine Intelligence project aims to explore how machine intelligence can help address these challenges in human collective action. While people currently use AI mainly for individual convenience and self-interest, collective-action theory suggests that machine intelligence optimized for public goods may require a different design concept than those intended for individual goods. The project seeks to identify the differences and clarify how social interactions and technology can work together to foster the emergence of social order. It focuses on how this process relates to collective action and the resolution of social dilemmas.
The Addressing Collective Action Problems project will develop and conduct controlled experiments in which many human participants interact with each other with and without the support of machine intelligence in specific social contexts, such as online messaging and driving coordination. The experimental findings will be verified through empirical studies on real-world AI applications. Ultimately, the project aims to demonstrate how machine intelligence can be used as a tool for social interventions that translate knowledge of computer science and AI into helpful practices for public goods.
The project is being led by Hirokazu Shirado at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, US).
Details
What makes our species unique? The answer to this fundamental question must ultimately lie in our genome, and specifically in genetic changes found only in present-day humans and differing from the genome sequences of Neandertals and Denisovans, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans. Genome comparisons have revealed some 35,000 such sequence changes, but the far greater challenge is to identify which of these genetic differences had truly functional consequences. The project A Molecular View of Human Uniqueness aims to answer this key question.
Using information from Neandertal DNA fragments carried by present-day people, the research team will perform functional analysis of the differences that are likely to have affected metabolism and brain function in modern humans as well as the changes that are specific to Neandertals and Denisovans. This work will contribute to our understanding of the biological functions that distinguish modern humans from their closest evolutionary relatives.
The Molecular View of Human Uniqueness research project is being led by Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in collaboration with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Okinawa, Japan.
Details
Are people a threat to nature, or are they part of nature? Are the natural environment and its objects valuable primarily because they are essential for human survival, or are they valuable in and of themselves? These questions have occupied environmental ethicists for decades, but they also are relevant in a practical context: To develop visions for a sustainable future in Western societies.
The Beyond Intrinsic and Instrumental project combines environmental philosophy with methods from the social sciences to connect ethical arguments for nature’s consideration with the actual human–nature interactions that shape people’s lives. The empirical (social science) aspect of the project aims to achieve a better understanding of what “nature” means to members of different social and professional groups in industrialized countries. What do they value in nature? How and why do they value it? And what norms do they themselves follow in their interactions with nature? In a previous project, the researchers analyzed the values and nature concepts of mountain farmers and identified meaningful interactions with domesticated and wild animals as well as landscapes. The Beyond Intrinsic project focuses on bird watchers as a group with a different—leisure-based—relationship to nature.
As part of the philosophical branch of the project, the team will develop relational arguments for the protection of nature. The reasoning is based on the assumption that respect for nature can take different forms, ranging from the human withdrawal from ecosystems to considerate interaction with natural processes to support for threatened nature and restoration of destroyed nature. Interviews with mountain farmers and bird watchers as groups that have close relations with nature provide examples for how people can and do interact with nature. These data serve as a starting point for the more general philosophical discussion. The researchers are using the concept of relational value as the value that people assign to natural objects in particular human–nature relationships to connect their empirical work with their philosophical arguments. Ultimately, the project will generate proposals regarding what can and should be a sustainable place for humans in nature in Western societies of the Anthropocene.
Anna Deplazes Zemp is leading the Beyond Intrinsic and Instrumental project at the University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. The project is also being supported by the University Research Priority Programme on Global Change and Biodiversity and the UZH Foundation.
Research is the vital expression of humankind’s most important qualities: curiosity and imagination.
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