Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet RMCmplxPheno (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Recurrent miscarriage (RM) affects 1% of couples trying to conceive and has a wide range of negative physical and mental impacts yet still has few evidence-based, preventative treatments. RM is used as a catch-all term for an event with diverse underlying causes. Broad categorisation hampers research targeting specific causes that could identify potential therapeutic avenues. This generalisation compounds trauma for patients and the path to successful pregnancy is unclear. As a MSCA fellow at the University of Copenhagen, I will generate deeper understanding of RM aetiology by identifying granular subgroups of RM and elucidating their underlying biology. To do so I will: 1) Establish novel phenotypes derived from clinical data in electronic health records, including ultrasound images, and use these phenotypes to identify clinical phenotypes driving current miscarriage classification systems. 2) Apply hypothesis-free unsupervised machine learning to clinical data to disentangle complex phenotypes of RM into clinically relevant subgroups. 3) Employ genetic analyses to characterise biological pathways underlying these RM subgroups and identify potential therapeutic avenues. This fellowship will allow me to apply my skills and expertise in large-scale biomedical data analysis and genetics to a new field in which I will pursue a long-term career. In particular it will provide training in field specific scientific knowledge (obstetrics and gynaecology), cutting edge techniques (machine learning) and transferable skills towards scientific leadership (research management). Taken together the outcomes of this interdisciplinary research will have ramifications for researchers, clinicians and patients. For researchers, a granular understanding of RM and its causes will enable discovery of novel therapeutic avenues. For clinicians, it would assist clinical decision making towards personalised treatments. For patients, alleviation of trauma through empowerment with information.

Mots clés : recurrent miscarriage, reproductive health, genetics, machine learning

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173080.8 €
Projet TRAFFICKER (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

During the past two decades, millions of euros have been spent by national governments and international organisations on combatting human trafficking and on offering assistance to victims of trafficking. However, we know surprisingly little about the people who facilitate, manage and orchestrate human trafficking: the traffickers. But who are the human traffickers, if we look beyond the stereotypes? The TRAFFICKER project will answer this question and fill this knowledge-lacuna, by ethnographically investigating the business operations and social relationships of human traffickers, via the analytical concept of ‘social circuits’. The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two sites, in respectively one country of origin and one destination country of the traffickers: (a) the city of Galati in Eastern Romania, and (b) in prisons in Lisbon, Portugal, among inmates that are incarcerated for human trafficking. The TRAFFICKER project builds on my extensive research and fieldwork experience within the fields of transnational crime, third-party facilitation/pimping and sex work. This background is essential to the project, since it provides access to the necessary local networks, as well as providing the needed methodological knowledge and ethical awareness. The project illuminates: 1) How human trafficking is carried out by traffickers on the ground, and thus how national criminal networks make their illegal business transnational. 2) The ways in which the kinships relations and social relationships of human traffickers hinder or enable their transnational criminal livelihood. 3) The lives of human traffickers both during and after imprisonment and their navigation of legal and illegal work domains. This knowledge will not only be beneficial for the academic research community on transnational, organised crime, but also for stakeholders such as NGOs, policy makers, international organisations, governments and law enforcement, as well as for the wider public.

Mots clés : human trafficking, human traffickers, transnational organised crime, romania, portugal

Participants :
- Université de la ville de New York (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 286191.36 €
Projet POPARCH (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The linear one-dimensional (1D) DNA fiber inside each Eukaryotic cell nucleus folds into a precise three-dimensional (3D) structure, whose structural preservation is vital for correct cell homeostasis and gene-regulatory mechanisms. Previous studies showed that if 3D structure is altered, aberrant phenotypes and diseases can arise. However, little is known on how 1D variation can affect 3D genome variation. Although recently developed technologies allow researchers to generate data to characterize the 3D structural patterns, as of yet no studies have systematically examined how this affects inter-individual 3D variation. I hypothesize a substantial fraction of 3D genome structural variation is controlled through 1D variation, affecting gene expression, and lastly phenotypes. I will test this by quantifying 1D and 3D genomic variation from 100 individuals selected from a chicken cohort my host raised under extremely well-controlled environmental conditions, making it the largest study of its kind up to today, and the first to use an in vivo animal model. Then, computationally I will develop an analytical framework and produce a catalog of DNA sequence variants that condition 3D genome structure. Upon executing my research, I expect to provide a new explanation on how non-coding DNA variants can exert their effect, thus offer new testable hypotheses to researchers interested in genotype-phenotype transitions. This is a proof-of-concept project and, should I be correct, will open a door to expansion in other species, including humans, with a large potential use in medical genomics, thus facilitating pharmacological interventions by disentangling causal intermediate processes. By combining my 3D genomics expertise with the host’s population-statistical genomics knowledge, on his unparalleled cohort of chickens, I will develop unique expertise to place me as the pioneer of a completely new, multidisciplinary field.

Mots clés : chromosome conformation capture genotype phenotype gwas animal breeding snps

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet PreCODE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Colorectal cancer represents a major public health problem being the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The treatment management of the already developed disease is however often time-consuming, expensive and rarely 100% effective. Therefore, the goal should be to start diagnosing and managing the diseased state as early as possible when cancer is still curable. The early cellular transformation events remain poorly understood as cancer-associated mutations have been found to be surprisingly prevalent in seemingly healthy tissues, suggesting the requirement for a potent trigger mechanism. With this project, I aim to study the early colonic transformation via a completely unique hypothesis and approach. My strategy is built on the emerging new “injury-triggered fetal-like state” concept guided by my host lab and the hypothesis that oncogenic mutations require transcriptional reprogramming to a more susceptible fetal-like state to trigger transformation. This hypothesis relies on the fact that the fetal-like state is observed during injury and also in subsets of tumors indicating that cellular reprogramming could play a prominent role in promoting oncogenic transformation. As a primary model system, I will make use of my extensive experience with cancer modeling via 3D human-derived organoids and CRISPR technology, and elevate these techniques by the state-of-the-art expertise available at the host lab and/or institution, such as in vivo orthotopic cell transplantation, epigenetic profiling, advanced CRISPR-screening methodology and clinical collaboration. By bringing together such intelligent methodology, I will be able to effectively investigate the role of injury-induced cellular reprogramming in the transformation of human colonic epithelium. The results of this work will shape the future directions of my own prospective lab, but also cancer research in general, promising major new implications on early cancer detection strategies.

Mots clés : human, 3d colonic organoids, crispr, colorectal cancer, injury, fetal like state, epigenetics

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet FairER (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Most of us use technology related to natural language processing (NLP) such as Google Search or virtual assistants in phones and other devices on a daily basis. Large-scale pre-trained language models hereby play a crucial role as they often form the basis of those technologies. Those models are trained on a large amount of training data (e.g. the entire English Wikipedia and the Brown corpus) which makes it impossible to curate the training corpus and potential stereotypes and biases will be implemented into the model, often without researchers noticing. This can lead to problematic and unfair behaviour towards certain demographics, often those who already suffer from implicit biases in society.  With FairER, I aim to get a deeper understanding of the inner workings of these language models. In particular, I want to investigate how well their solution strategies align with those of humans and whether this depends on certain demographic attributes such as gender, race, age but also reading abilities and level of education. I will also probe those language models for fairness and inclusiveness, i.e., find out whether the performance of an NLP application depends on demographic attributes of the user. Furthermore, I will conduct this project in a multilingual setting and apply interpretability methods to better understand the rationale behind a model’s decision.  The main impact of FairER will be a better understanding of how language models treat different demographics. These insights will help to improve the fairness and inclusiveness of NLP applications. Furthermore, the datasets I will record and publish along with the code will encourage other researchers to replicate my findings and continue this line of research. Ultimately, this project will have both a scientific and societal impact on the NLP community and users of NLP applications.

Mots clés : natural language processing, fairness, trustworthiness, large scale pre trained language models, machine learning

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet GreenRubber (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Natural Rubber is a very important and widely used industrial raw material, which cannot be replaced by other equivalents because of its unique properties (e.g. durability and insulation). Synthetic rubber produced by petrochemicals, is not only detrimental to the environment, but also cannot replace natural rubber due to its lower quality. Therefore, for many industrial applications (e.g. in car tires), humankind still heavily relies on rubber extracted from the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. However, the demand of natural rubber is continuously increasing due to the fast pace of motorization in Asian countries, like China or India, while production is sensitive to disease outbreaks or weather conditions. For these reasons, to become self-sufficient in natural rubber is within the European strategic priorities. Thus, because both natural and synthetic rubber production is no longer sustainable, there is an urgent need to establish environmentally friendly methods for the synthesis of natural rubber, in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 9, 11, 12, 13 and 15). To meet this demand, I will apply an interdisciplinary approach to develop a yeast-based cell factory to produce high-quality natural rubber from cheap and readily renewable materials like sugar. My research expertise in molecular biology, polymer bioproduction, and biochemistry, make me the ideal candidate to implement this project. Combining my current knowledge, with the systematic education on metabolic engineering and pathway elucidation that will be provided by the host lab, I will build a unique profile as an expert in polymer bioproduction using microbial hosts. GreenRubber will help me develop and establish an independent international career on harnessing industrial microorganisms (e.g. yeast) to bioproduce polymers for high-end applications such as medical consumables.

Mots clés : metabolic engineering, plant specialized metabolism, synthetic biology

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 230774.4 €
Projet SYO (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

According to phenomenologists, empathy is the fundamental way we grasp others as experiencing expressive subjects. It is typically supposed that empathy requires a face-to-face encounter. When we are on Zoom together, instant messaging one another on WhatsApp, looking at Instagram posts or TikTok videos, how do we experience one another? Online do I only have indirect access to others or can I empathetically perceive them? When I wave goodbye to you in person, does my parting “see you online” make any sense? While there is much debate about whether the internet is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for sociality, such discussions fail to address the question of how we encounter others online in the first place. “See you online? A phenomenological investigation of the limits of empathy in the online sphere” will provide a phenomenological analysis of the structures of our online social experiences and explore the role empathy plays in online sociality. The investigation is underpinned by a novel methodological approach that integrates insights from the phenomenology of sociality and the philosophy of perception. The project will undertake a platform-sensitive analysis that aims to do justice to the complexity and plurality of our technologically mediated intersubjective encounters and produce: (i) a novel theoretical framework for analysing our online social encounters, (ii) a platform-sensitive taxonomy of online interpersonal experiences, and (iii) an analysis of the limits of the phenomenological concept of empathy by considering its application across various online platforms. To achieve the research objectives, the project is divided into three interrelated strands of inquiry: (i) perceiving the lived body online, (ii) sharing space online, and (iii) taking time online. In the shadow of Covid-19, where many of our social practices moved online, the need for a fine-grained, platform-sensitive analysis of online sociality is more pertinent and important than ever.

Mots clés : phenomenology online sociality empathy perception social cognition

Participants :
- Université de Copenhague (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet ecofem.indi (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

ECOFEMINDI investigates the relations between women and nonhuman world, importance of traditional ecological knowledge that women possess in indigenous societies and how this knowledge affects the role of women, their status and prestige in the household and the society they live in. After decades of discussions about nature/culture dichotomy and the dominant role of humans on nature and other nonhuman persons, today ecofeminists agree that there is also a parellel between the domination of nature and exploitation of women. Meanwhile, in the middle of environmental conflicts, political ontology discuss the need for pluriverse as a possibility instead of dualism of human and animals in Western world, taking indigenous ideas about their geography that involves nonhumans and master spirits more seriously. Siberia and Amazon regions often host the base for theoretical discussions about animism and nonhuman persons in literature. However, the gender perspective of these ontologies is hardly mentioned and this caused the human-environment relations being described rarely through the lens of critical feminist anthropology. Ecofem.indi aims to go beyond the literature that depict women only as victims of environmental degradation and asks if in societies where the separation of nature from the human world is not that strict, such as some indigenous societies, does this automatically assign women who are associated with nature to a higher status ? And secondly, do women have a different ontological perception about nonhuman world, beyond their subsistence roles? Ecofem.indi’s design is grounded in empirical and interdisciplinary research crosscutting the fields of environmental anthropology and gender to understand the dynamics of relations between women and nonhuman world. In order to answer the research questions, the project will use qualitative research methods of social anthropology in two indigenous communities in Amazons and Siberia with a participatory methodology.

Mots clés : ecofeminism, environmenral anthropology, political ontology, gender, participatory research, indigenous people

Participants :
- Institut universitaire de Lisbonne (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172618.56 €
- Université nationale de Colombie (Colombie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Centre for Research in Anthropology (Portugal) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet IRMA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

IRMA breaks new ground and proposes an innovative approach for the relational study of gender by investigating the relationship between masculinity, secularism and religiosity among Bangladeshi-origin Muslim men in different national contexts. An ideological tension between secularism and Islam plays a prominent role in the societal debate on gender, not only in Europe, where "Muslim men" are often a cause for concern, but also in Muslim-majority countries that experienced conflicts between secular state and political Islam, such as Bangladesh. This tension leads most men to frame their identifications according to a polarity between Islam and secularism, and to conceive of their own masculinity as incompatible with that of their counterparts, provoking heated controversy on issues such as gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, and posing a challenge that has found little response in academic research. Scholars have so far paid scant attention to the topic, producing poor empirical data, and rather devoting themselves to studying "Islamic men" as if they constitute a separate reality from the rest of society. In addition, the scarce research does not consider how migration impacts conceptions of secularism, Islam, and masculinities. IRMA remedies these shortcomings with a multi-sited ethnography on the relationship between secular (irreligious) and Islam-inspired (religious) masculinities in Bangladesh and among Bangladeshi migrants in Italy and Switzerland. The project investigates gender, secularism and religiosity in their interaction with socio-political determinants such as social class and sexual orientation, and with the position of social actors in the geographies of power, in order to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the complex and shifting interplay between secularism, religion and masculinities, and a non-ethnocentric understanding of how secularism and religiosity connect to gender equality and the rights of nonconforming people.

Mots clés : masculinity, islam, secularism, bangladesh, mobility, intersectionality

Participants :
- Université de Lausanne (Suisse) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Trente (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Rome III (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 297164.16 €
Projet TESTGR (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

General relativity (GR) is a very elegant theory from the conceptual point of view and a very successful one from the experimental side. However, there are several conceptual reasons, such as the singularity problem, that motivate the study of extensions of GR. The study of black hole physics will play a pivotal role in the understanding of new physics beyond general relativity. In fact, black holes hide in their interior theoretical evidence of the breakdown of GR and they are compact objects where strong gravity effects are nonnegligible. The research proposal "The End STate of GRavitational collapse: black holes or else? (TESTGR)" focuses on the study of several aspects associated with the black hole singularity problem looking for possible evidence of new physics beyond GR, to understand how the modifications would manifest and how to detect them. The proposed research comprises both theoretical and phenomenological studies. It is divided into 3 working packages (WPs) that are strongly interconnected but that can be studied independently. The first WP studies the mechanism leading to the formation of black holes mimickers. The second WP addresses crucial issues related to the viability and stability of the identified classes of spacetimes. Finally, the last WP focuses on the interplay with observations. This research proposal is particularly timing as the LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA detectors, the EHT, as well as the next generation of earth and space-based interferometers, will collect plenty of data in future years. This leads to a growing necessity for theoretical studies beyond general relativity to understand if the data contains evidence of new physics that can revolutionize our understanding of nature.

Mots clés : black holes singularities non singular spacetimes ultracompact objects beyond general relativity quantum gravity phenomenology event horizon telescope

Participants :
- Université Johann Wolfgang Goethe de Francfort-sur-le-Main (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 202125.12 €