Within this project, the fundamental relation between string theory and gravity will be addressed from several completely new and so far unexplored points of view. The main topics of this proposal are:

- to explore the properties of the high energy behavior of strings and the relation between string scattering and UV completion by 
  classicalization,
- to investigate new stringy geometries, non-geometric string backgrounds and their new symmetry structures.
- to apply these ideas to open questions in cosmology (inflation and dark energy) and in particle physics (the physics at the TeV scale,   
  being tested by the LHC),
- and finally to study if gravity, space time and strings can emerge from a more fundamental underlying principle.

In this way the project aims to answer some of the central questions in physics, namely how matter behaves at very short distances, what is the nature of quantum gravity from strings, and what is the origin and the structure of our universe.