ZUKOnnect and Herz Fellows

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Chemistry

Project: Electrochemically active, luminescent and biocompatible Polymer@Metal-Organic Framework Composites for potential biosensor applications

_{Due to the surging demand for point-of-care devices and significant technological uplift biosensors have gained a great deal of attention in the field of sensing. Being compact, fast responsive, and highly specific it has proven to be an effective tool in the sensing of various biological analytes. Deepanshu Bhatt’s research interest includes the usage of lectin-carbohydrate interaction for the fabrication of microbial biosensors. He is working on the topics of electrochemical and optical detections of nosocomial infection causing bacteria P. aeruginosa and E. coli using the sugar conjugated Metal organic frameworks. MOF is a hybrid material consisting of the linkage of the metal ion with an organic bridging ligand through coordination bonds having optical, electronic, and magnetic properties with tunable porosity and large surface area. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have rapidly emerged as important multifunctional mesoporous materials and works as a transducer in biosensor. He is an active researcher and contributes to various lab projects and as well helps fellow colleagues. He has good basic knowledge of nanomaterial synthesis and analytical instrumentation.}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 08/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Physics

Project: The Last-mile in Perovskite Light Emitting Diode (PeLEDs): Enhancing the Color Blue

_{Metal halide perovskites (MHP) have attracted tremendous attention in photovoltaic devices and light emitting diodes (PeLEDs) owing to their low-cost solution processing and excellent optoelectronic properties. PeLEDs showing infrared, red, and green emission demonstrate external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) over 20%, however, the EQE of blue PeLEDs is significantly lower (~5.5%) due to a defect density in blue emitters. Besides, the blue emitter also shows phase segregation due to migration of ions, generating defect states thereby leading to poor spectral stability. Further improvement in efficiency and stability of blue PeLEDs requires inhibition of ion migration and effective defects passivation. Here, we propose embedding MHP with long chain polymer, such as polyvinylpyrrolidone and ethyl cellulose to improve moisture sensitive MHPs, to inhibit ion migration, and to improve defect intolerance of (Cs/MA)Pb(Br/Cl) based blue PeLEDs. Polymer embedment in the bulk of MHPs would favour formation of smaller grain size, which can enhance carrier capture efficiency and thus the EQE.}

Herz Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of History and Sociology

Project: Digital financial service innovation for inclusion of women in the Global South: Examining mobile money use in Eswatini’s traditional informal markets in Manzini

_{The project explores the impact of mobile money- (a form of digital financial service innovation) use on the financial inclusion of women in traditional informal markets in Manzini, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). I examine how the day and mundane financial practices of the women affect how they perceive adopt and use mobile money in ways that links it to their cultures, traditions, taboos, kinships relationships (Kusimba et al. 2015) as opposed to the rhetoric of the financial inclusion Agenda. While its it is partly true that the intensification of digital money is reinventing the “social” and is reinvented by it in return by inserting sociality at par with market relations, conceptually, the extent to which this social character of money is represented in new digital currencies like mobile money is less understood specifically in informal settings. Important to note is that dominant discourses have focused on mobile money’s promise to expand financial inclusion (Beck, et al, 2007; Anderlone and Vandone,2010; Dermiguc-Kunt et al, 2018) through bringing the untapped market segments into mainstream finance as if the state of exclusion and lack of service thereof is a natural state in these communities. But this political process of banking the unbanked has failed to take into consideration the lived experiences of the local and the created nature of exclusion as its guiding principle thereby undermining the potential of studying the social life of such initiatives as mobile money in heterogeneous contexts. Therefore this study takes the women’s experiences as its starting point to understand financial inclusion from their perspective as mobile money generates new kinds of social and economic opportunity and vulnerability as well as a way of overcoming the constraints of time and space.}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Cell signalling data mapping into cell trajectories from live imaging

_{Understanding how cell signaling and tissue morphodynamics are coupled during embryogenesis is still an open question in developmental biology. Cell signaling and reaction-diffusion models have been extensively used to understand self-regulated pattern formation during embryonic development. However, due to the lack of experimental tools to simultaneously visualize tissue dynamics (i.e. cell movements) and signaling in vivo, these studies are restricted to time scales in which tissue morphodynamics can be neglected. To overcome this need, we propose developing a novel mathematical model that can estimate activation levels of different signaling pathways with high spatio-temporal resolution during early zebrafish development. Briefly, signaling data (i.e. extracted from immunostained fixed embryos) will be sparsely mapped the into single cell trajectories from the live imaging experiments (i.e. SPIM microscopy images). Then a statistical model based on random fields and an optimal linear predictor will be used to generate a continuous description of the signaling activation levels over time and space. The model will be applied to study some of the most important signaling pathways active during early zebrafish development, such as Nodal, BMP and FGF.}

Herz Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Manfred Ulmer Fellowship

Affiliated with the Computer and Information Science

Project: Development of continuous improvement QSAR models to predict sorption of organic pesticides in soils at field conditions

_{To reduce the economic cost and accelerate the environmental decision-making in soil pollution, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) proposed the use of Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) models that predict sorption coefficients using molecular descriptors of different organic pollutants to describe their environmental fate on soils. In my PhD research I generated QSAR models including pedodiversity and science-policy interaction, analysing reliability and applicability in specific environmental contexts, detecting three problems to assure a representative prediction:
(i) QSAR are reductionistic tools based only on molecular properties of pollutants, but soils are complex systems that require pedological and climatic information in different spatial and time scales to improve the predictivity,
(ii) the lack of consensus in literature makes the detection and validation of causal relationships difficult, and
(iii) the information is heterogeneous due to the diversity of assumptions and methodologies to define sorption coefficients and select potentially relevant soil-pollutant properties.
This work investigates possible solutions by answering the following open questions:
1) To what extent can we simplify the environmental dynamics of organic pollutants in soils? 2) Can we detect and estimate the causal relationships between endpoint and descriptors?
3) Can we extract reliable information from current soil sorption studies?}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Literature, Art and Media

Project: Studying literary adaptation for the gamebook format. The case of Apuleius' Metamorphoses

_{This project aims to study literary adaptation for the gamebook format. For that, it will be created previously a gamebook adaptation inspired by Metamorphoses, by Apuleius (c. 125 - c.170), written in English. Concomitantly with the rewriting and improvement of this interactive text, we seek to reflect on what new perspectives a classic text can gain through the literary adaptation in the interactive gamebook format and in what way. Huizinga (1971) and Caillois (1990) will be authors used to explain the concept of game; Iser (1996, 1999, 2002, 2013) will be chosen regarding the type of game promoted by literature itself; Silva (2019), finally, will explain what a gamebook is. In a short time, the project will raise the hypothesis that gamebooks coming from literary adaptations may contribute to the diffusion of literary works through their adaptation, being the new version of Metamorphoses, the first gamebook created from a text originally written in Latin. To conclude, this project will result in the most in-depth study ever done with gamebooks, which may bring this textual hybrid closer to academic studies.}

Herz Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Introduced plant-pollinator interactions in different anthropogenic landscapes

_{Plant–pollinator interactions are important as flowering plants require pollinators for pollination as well as most pollinators rely on angiosperms for food resources. Besides native plants, introduced plants may be key food resources for pollinators. Understanding the potential value of introduced plants to pollinators is urgently needed. However, introduced plants which are more attractive and may have larger flowers or more flowers per plant can outcompete native plants for pollinators. Little is known about introduced plant-pollinator interactions across anthropogenic landscapes, particularly in tropical orchards. Hence, information about which pollinators forage on introduced plants and how landscape composition influences plant diversity in tropical orchards are important for habitat management and pollinator conservation. This project aims (1) to assess introduced plant diversity in tropical orchards, (2) to identify key floral traits of introduced plants based on available taxonomic database and published studies, (3) to construct pollination networks between introduced plants and pollinators, and (4) to examine whether anthropogenic landscapes (proportions of surrounding agricultural and urbanized cover) affect the number of introduced plant species in tropical orchards.}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: The fitness consequences of collective coordination during predator mobbing

_{During the Herz Fellowship, Zou Yuqi will focus on collective predator mobbing. In social animals, collective decisions are a vital part of their daily live, including moving about and antipredator defense. Birds give diverse mobbing calls, presumably to recruit others and to coordinate collective predator mobbing. Individuals and groups likely vary in their collective decision-making during mobbing, but this aspect remains unexplored. The project will be carried out under the supervision of Dr. Michael Griesser and Prof. Iain Couzin.}

Herz Fellow from 07/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Identification of a Novel Strong Antifungal Polyene and Identification of the Lavendamycin Biosynthetic Gene Cluster of the Rhizobacterium Streptomyces sp. BR123 Isolated from the Rhizosphere of Helianthus Annuus from Pakistan

_{With the seriously emerging threat of multiresistant pathogens that cannot be treated with antibiotics in clinical use as well as the need to fight plant pathogens to ensure nutrition for the growing population there is a strong need to identify novel antifungal and antibiotic secondary metabolites. One possible source for promising microorganisms are little studied habitats. Therefore, I focused on the isolation and testing of Streptomyces strains from the rhizosphere of plants from different regions in Pakistan. From Helianthus annuus plants I isolated different Streptomyces strains that I screened for their antimicrobial and antifungal activity. The most promising five strains were chosen to be analyzed further. The cultivation conditions were optimized for antibiotic production. The supernatants were extracted and the resulting extracted products were subjected to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis as well as biological testing. From Streptomyces sp. BR123 I identified lavendamycin using LC-MS and NMR. In addition, this strain produces a polyene with a quasimolecular ion of 2072 that strongly inhibited the growth of the plant pathogenic fungus Fusarium solani and Fusarium oxysprorum. Because of its promising antimicrobial potential Streptomyces sp. BR123 was genome sequenced in order to both identify the gene cluster responsible for lavendamycin production and the gene cluster coding for the production of the unknown antifungal polyene to help its structure elucidation.
Aims:}

• _{Identification of the complete lavendamycin gene cluster}
• _{Structure elucidation of the novel polyene with strong antifungal activity}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Manfred Ulmer Fellowship

Affiliated with the Department of Chemistry

Project: Exploring Guanosine Based Scaffold for Bioinspired Materials for ‘Mineral Plastics’

_{The naturally occurring phenomenon of biomineralization produces extremely intricate and enthralling nanostructures in nature utilizing a variety of mineral salts. This project blends the concept of biomineralization with purine based supramolecular gels to produce hydrogels/organogels of enhanced efficacy. It will comprise of study of guanosine derived mineral incorporated hydrogels or organogels to be explored as ‘mineral plastic’ for their subsequent use as biodegradable and biocompatible materials. Mineral salts of Mg+2, Ba+2, Sr+2 and Ca+2 will be screened with the guanosine derivative. The resulting hydrogels/organogels will be characterized and analyzed for their rheological properties. The non-covalent interactions in the guanosine based gels would offer new and improved characteristics to gels and hence the consequent ‘mineral plastic’ as compared to the previously used covalently stabilised ones. The proposed materials would provide efficient, environment-friendly and sustainable alternatives for use in biomedical and energy applications.}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of History and Sociology

Project: Social control, hygienism and family law: transnational knowledge exchange between Brazil and the League of Nations (1919-1930)

_{This project investigates the transnational network of knowledge exchange regarding hygienism, health, and family issues that happened through Brazilian participation in the League of Nations (LoN). It aims to analyze how this knowledge exchange informed (or was informed by) discourses and practices of social control developed and employed by the Brazilian government and its policymakers. Part of these was directed towards more informal practices and discourses of social control, enforcing a hygienist project as means of socially “sanitizing” the nation altogether with a very ideological view of the desired model of family. These themes were heavily discussed in the LoN. This research, then, hopes to analyze the exchange processes within it that involved the Brazilian delegation and its collaborators}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Politics and Public Administration

Project: Hybrid Conflict Resolution in Rural Zimbabwe’s Customary Courts

_{The study concerns indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms in Zimbabwe’s rural communities. It engages with debates on decolonizing conflict resolution mechanisms in Africa. To put the study into context, from the 1890s onwards, contact with European institutions in Zimbabwe resulted in the existence of a dual legal system, namely: Roman Dutch law and customary law. The colonial government imposed a European legal system on Zimbabwe’s customary law (Holleman 1952). As a result, the colonial government nurtured a new system of addressing conflict until independence in 1980. Until then, addressing social conflicts was an area dominated by the European legal system. After independence, the new government re-institutionalized the dual system, but gave higher priority to the European legal system. Thus, again technically, the traditional system of conflict resolution continued to be compromised (Moyo 2014). Roman Dutch law operates outside the family and village system, thus alienating local people from their cultural resources despite the fact that the majority of rural people still have confidence in customary courts (Matavire 2012).}

Herz Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Linguistics

Project: Breaking Accessibility Barriers to Revaluate the Phonology of Bokyi

_{His doctoral research explores the phonology of a minoritized, endangered Niger-Congo language, Bokyi, for the purpose of documentation and classification. Due to its minority status within the Bendi phylum, Bokyi is under-studied, resulting in lack of standard orthography, linguistic description, and most notably, forced subsumption under language groups such as the Efiks and Ibibios in Southern Nigeria. His study draws on ethno-phonetic corpus to produce an inventory of Bokyi phonemes, syllabic structure, and tonal grammar; and to compare these with those of neighbouring languages (Ejagham and Bakor). This is particularly crucial for classification, as it is already observable that Bokyi exhibits nasalized phonemes and nasal prefixes – features most typical of Bantoid languages (cf. Crab 1967). On the analytical level, the study benefits from the synergy of phonological concepts such as the Optimality Theory (OT), and social identity theory to describe the language as well as establish its status as an independent system. Overall, the work revaluates Bokyi towards addressing its minoritized status, and more broadly, towards the linguistic empowerment of its speakers.}

Herz Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Project: Incremental algorithms with acceleration techniques for hierarchical optimization problems and its applications

_{We consider a hierarchical constrained optimization given as a problem of minimizing a finite sum of nonsmooth convex functions subject to the solution set of different kinds of subproblems. We investigate incremental methods for the considered hierarchical constrained optimizations and we show the elucidation of its practical applications in different disciplines}

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Physics

Project: Synthesis of highly efficient MOF and Perovskite composite for development of stable and efficient optoelectronic device

_{With escalating energy demands and the depletion of fossil fuel, the society requires alternative solutions for the sustainable production and storage of energy. Renewable sources, e.g., solar cells, windmills, and solid oxide fuel cells have become the technologies of future for the energy production. Batteries and supercapacitors are vital for the energy storage. Still, these energy consumption and production devices need further research and development work so as to meet the industrial specifications. Developing these devices is facing several challenge including their shape, size, cyclic stability, lifetime etc. and most of these challenges has its basic root on the type of material used in them. In this context exploring potential materials for energy harvesting and storage is one of the prime challenges. Since the beginning of 20th century, Perovskite compounds and their composites have been intensively explored to develops various energy devices, e.g., solar cells, LEDs and SOFCs, batteries, and supercapacitors. The motivation behind using Perovskite materials lies in their excellent physical and chemical properties, such as optoelectronic response, structural stability, thermal stability, catalytic activity, and simple synthesis. The properties of perovskite materials depend mainly on the arrangement of the atoms of different elements and by altering these atomic arrangements perovskite can exhibit impressive array of electrical, electronics, optical, chemical properties. Metal halide Perovskite (MHP) based solar cell (PSC) showed remarkable growth in research due to their highpower conversion efficiency (PCE) of 23%. This high efficiency is due to its tunable band width, ambipolar semiconducting behavior, superior electrical conductivity etc. Also, MHP is a direct bandgap semiconductor, which is due to the broad and strong light absorbance in the visible wavelength range. The excitons give rise to emission of strong photoluminescence at room temperature that can be changed by modifying organic molecules or halide anions, same as in the case of optical absorption. These optical properties make MHP suitable for a range of light-emitting applications, including lasers, light-emitting devices and optical sensors. Due to these vast spectrum of optical and electronic properties MHPs nanoparticles (NPs) has potential to replace organic lightemitting diodes (OLEDs) and silicon solar cells in the coming years.}

Herz Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department Computer and Information Science

Project: Various Colorings of Fractional Powers of Graph

_{The main goal of the on-site visit is to initiate the investigation of the relationship of (certain variants of) the chromatic number and NP-hard graph covering/decomposition problems. The chromatic number of a graph is the smallest number of colors needed to color all nodes in a given graph such that no two adjacent nodes share the same color. The chromatic number is an important graph parameter as it allows to characterize structural properties. For example, a graph with a small chromatic number can be decomposed into a small number of independent sets. We are interested in extending the knowledge about the connection of graph colorings and path cover or path partition of graphs. In particular, we want to study how (local) graph colorings can help to find better bounds for the k-Path Cover problem, and we would like to come up with bounds for the so called ordered chromatic number in special graph classes to characterize the decomposability of a given graph.}

Herz Fellow from 09/2021

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Politics and Public Administration

Project: Political Corruption: The effect of Party Nationalization

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2020

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Synthesizing priorities for bat conservation across multiple dimensions in the Anthropocene

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2020

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of History and Sociology

Project: Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity, city-scapes and urban form in Harare

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2020

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Biodiversity of the genus Trichoderma: Bioeffecacy Evaluation,
Bioactive Compound Characterizations, Optimal Mass Production and Product Development for the Biological Control of Coffee Wilt Disease (Fusarium xylarioides) in Ethiopia

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2020

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Diel variation in collective behaviour of fish

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 10/2020

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Project: Mathematical modeling and control of a transmission dynamics model for typhoid fever

AAA Fellow from 08 until 10/2019

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Literature, Art and Media Studies

Project: Global Midwifery Crisis

AAA Fellow from 07 until 09/2019

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Chemistry

Project: Construction of efficient and economical solar cells for solar harvesting

AAA Fellow from 08 until 10/2019

Responsibilities

Associated Fellow per AAA Fellowship

Affiliated with the Department of Politics and Public Administration

Project: The Family Reunification of Refugees in Brazil

Associated Fellow since 07/2019

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Linguistics

Project: Recognizing a user’s intent from his/her web search queries

AAA Fellow from 07 until 10/2019

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Departments of Literature & Politics and Public Administration

Project: “Abuse and humiliation” in the delivery room: The horror of obstetric violence in Ghana

_{Obstetric violence in a major health problem in both developed and developing countries (World Health Organisation (2015). However, the reality in those countries outside Europe, US, Canada and Australia is understudied. This research project examines the correlation between women's experiences of obstetric violence and the low facility-based deliveries and the high maternal mortality rate in Ghana. The quantitative (cross-sectional) research methodology will be used to collect and analyse data. The research findings will enable the Ghana government and other international organisations, such us the World Health Organisation (WHO) to understand the magnitude of the abuse and humiliation women face during delivery and its implications on women's health. This will assist stakeholders in developing policies and frameworks to curb the problem of obstetric violence in Ghana.}

Postdoctoral Fellow since 09/2020

ZUKOnnect Fellow from 08 until 10/2019