Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet CoSiLiS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The main objective of the CoSiLiS research action is developement and exploitation of light sources delivering ultrashort pulses in the single-cycle regime, i.e. the pulse envelope duration is no longer than a single oscillation of the optical carrier wave. This will be achieved using recently discovered temporal dissipative soliton formation in microresonators with high optical Q-factors and anomalous dispersion. The ultrashort pulse formation is guided by the strong Kerr nonlinearity in tight confinement waveguide structures. Balancing the parametric nonlinear gain and the waveguide loss along with the nonlinear pulse compression and dispersive pulse spreading in the resonator leads to the formation of soliton pulse trains with repetition rates in the microwave to terahertz spectral region. Advanced dispersion engineering techniques, such as hybrid strip-slot waveguides will be implemented to generate fully coherent pulse trains with super-octave spectral bandwidth directly from a continous-wave laser in the integrated photonics platform and compress them to pulse durations equivalent a single optical cycle of the carrier wave. Such ultrafast and broadband light sources bear tremendous application potential in biological and chemical spectroscopy applications. Furthermore, the proposed research action aims to bridge the topical fields of attosecond science and integrated photonics by providing sources of ultrafast phase controlled photonic waveforms capable of initiating and probing dynamics on the one-femtosecond timescale of its asymetric electric field crests. As a proof-of-principle experiment we intend to measure light-field driven electric currents at microwave repetition rates using an integrated photonics source.

Mots clés : kerr, solitons, frequency combs, mid infrared, multidimensional

Participants :
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191149.44 €
Projet REPANCAN (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The main objective of the REPANCAN is to integrate Jelena Grahovac, PhD at the Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, as a leader of a project that will address an urgent unmet need for new treatment strategy for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). PDAC is one of the most lethal types of cancer in the world, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 5% and an increasing incidence rate. Research on PDAC is limited and progress in patient survival has not been made in the last 40 years. To circumvent the high costs and long development times for new oncological drugs, the REPANCAN project will use the drug repurposing concept and establish a novel use for a class of nischarin (NISCH) receptor agonists. NISCH receptor itself has been shown to be a tumor suppressor in breast cancer and its agonists hold promise for targeting several aspects of the PDAC pathology: cell invasiveness, survival, metabolism, and the microenvironment. To address the acute demand for novel PDAC therapy, the REPANCAN project will integrate the bioinformatic, molecular and cellular research with the retrospective patient study though 3 research objectives: 1) Examination of levels of NISCH in patient tumor samples and in vitro model systems, 2) Establishment of mechanisms by which clinically approved NISCH agonists can limit PDAC growth and 3) Retrospective analysis of effects of NISCH agonist treatment on PDAC progression in patients. To strengthen the competence of Dr Grahovac and use cutting edge technologies in REPANCAN, a secondment at Dr Peter Carmeliet’s laboratory at VIB-KU Leuven is planned. REPANCAN will establish a novel prognostic marker, novel drug target and a ground for repurposing of low-cost drugs proven to be safe in one of the most lethal and understudied types of cancer.

Mots clés : pancreatic cancer, drug repurposing, nischarin, metabolism, microenvironment, ex vivo organ culture

Participants :
- Institut za onkologiju i radiologiju Srbije (Serbie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 140021.76 €
Projet Sewage Sludge in PC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The main objective of the proposal is to design a flow chart for the valorisation process of sewage sludge (SS) waste stream from municipal water treatment plant origin, (code 19 08 05, in accord with 2014/955/EU Decision), and its subsequent use as supplementary cementitious material (SCM). The End-of-Waste (EoW) criteria is applied, in the first stage, by assessing of the potential organic and inorganic hazardous constituents content and manner of their removal or inertization (by optimized incineration process, mainly). Secondly, in order to generate a final SS ash (SSA) by-product of constant physical-chemical properties, apt to be used as a SCM, an adequate analysis of its main chemical components (SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3) is provided, according to EN and ASTM requirements and testing to quality standards, with a special consideration of eventual pozzolanic activity. Once the classification of thus obtained SCM is carried out as active or non-active addition, its performance in the Portland cement (PC) based binders is studied. The manufacturing of new PC/SSA cements and its resultant products, concretes and mortars, is focused from the following principle perspectives: mechanical compressive and flexural strength efficiency, volume soundness and chemical durability in front of chemical aggressive media like sulfates, chlorides, sea water action, etc. Finally, an impact assessment of the proposed EoW procedure is evaluated taking into account its legal, economic, market, social and environmental aspects. The current proposal seeks to address regional work programme of sustainable energy development in Central Poland by putting forward an idea of the local residual materials management, once converted into by-products, to manufacture concretes and mortars in the same conditions and with identical constructive uses that PC ordinary concretes and mortars, nowadays, dictated by environmental and economic questions, principally, in the most of industrialized EU countries.

Mots clés : sewage sludge ash, portland cement, by products

Participants :
- Centrum Badań i Innowacji Pro-Akademia (Pologne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 134462.4 €
Projet Dr VCoach (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The main objective of this project (DR VCoach) will be the following: “Design and implement a robotic coach able to propose a proper exercise schedule based on human directives, monitor the exercise performed by the patient/elder and correct it in case of mistakes”. The output of the project will be a robotic coach to assist the elders during their daily physical training. The robot will be able to understand verbal commands from the user (e.g. what will be the training schedule of today? Today I feel tired, can we do a lighter training?), to define the sequence of exercises to be performed, to show the exercises to the user (with a verbal description and performing them by it-self), to monitor the user performing the exercises using RGB cameras, to eventually find some errors in the execution and to suggest a correction to the mistake. The whole system can be divided into four modules: - Speech module: This is the module in charge of the vocal interaction between the robot and the elders. - Exercise scheduler: The role of this module is to break the selected exercise into atomic actions, and send these actions to the Error detector and Action recognition and prediction modules. - Error detector: The Error detector module analyses the results coming from the Action recognition and prediction module based on the required actions received by the Exercise scheduler. After evaluating the performed action, the module sends an evaluation report to the speech module in order to inform the elder. - Action recognition and prediction: This module has the dual task of recognising the action performed by the elder using the RGB videos coming from its embedded camera, and predicting the future viso-proprioceptive stimuli based on the action that is being performed. The system will be implemented on Zora (a NAO robot with a software layer to make it usable by non ICT people).

Mots clés : action prediction, deep neural networks, convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural network, predictive coding, human robot interaction, active ageing, robotic coach

Participants :
- University of Cagliari (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 171473.28 €
Projet MIDIDP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The main purpose of this project is to create a realistic agent-based model to simulate the spread of infectious diseases such as measles, influenza, etc. in European and neighboring countries with their possibly under-vaccinated refugee populations. The model will be built upon two large-scale modeling platforms Framework for Reconstructing Epidemic Dynamics (FRED) and the Global Epidemic and Mobility Model (GLEAM). First we will create and curate realistic synthetic populations including residents and refugees by using various data sources such as Integrated Public-Use Microdata (IPUMS), Synthetic Populations and Ecosystems of the World (SPEW) for resident populations and World Health Organization, nongovernmental organizations, and country governments for refugees and relocated populations. Our model, with its forecasting capability of outbreaks, will help policy makers to mitigate outbreaks by assessing possible intervention mechanisms such as better handling refugees, vaccinations, school/workplace closures, antivirals, and social distancing methods. This project with its planned training program will help the researcher to transfer his knowledge in network modeling and analysis into a new field of large-scale agent-based modeling and simulation in a new institution in Turkey where there is a great need for these methods in public health.


Participants :
- Istanbul Medeniyet University (Turquie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 157845.6 €
Projet DIVAS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The main target of the DIVAS project is the design and development of a low-cost opto-electronic interrogator for distributed vibration detection on standard communication optical fibers, based on Phase-OTDR technology (Phase-sensitive Optical Time Domain Reflectometry). This system is compatible with communication optical fiber devices, and it takes the advances of this innovating field. It will be developed through custom design of a set of electronic and optoelectronic components. Its distributed feature allows the collection of vibrational information along the entire optical fiber length, which is equivalent to thousands and thousands of inline sensors. This feature combined with extreme sensitivity, makes this interrogator an efficient low-price option in vibration detections. For reasons of cost effectiveness, communication optical fiber lines are, normally, adjacent to strategic buildings such us railway, gas, and petrol lines; using one of the available redundant optical fibers, it is possible to retrieve vibrational information for seismic security or for civil structural health monitoring. Using also specifically installed optical fibers, this interrogator may have a wide range of applications from environmental protection purposes (such as terrestrial fauna and marine life protection), to control of intrusions in a wide area (e.g. military context) or, finally, for security purposes such as monitoring nuclear power plants (in order to know if structural damages are approaching before a leakage occurs). The project aims for the development of a compact portable prototype, ready for field tests, which will be tried on at least in one civil engineering application (structural health monitoring), in collaboration with the academic partner. With the help of the industrial partner, the prototype will be adapted for the production line to reach the market with a competitive cost that will ensure its widespread dissemination in all possible fields.

Mots clés : optical fiber sensor, distributed sensor, phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometry  phase otdr, vibration measurements

Participants :
- National Hellenic Research Foundation (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 164653.2 €
Projet HimFunDiff (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The major aim of the proposal is to obtain novel insights into the ability of plant species to adapt to changing climatic conditions by exploring their functional differentiation along natural gradients. Specifically, I propose to elucidate adaptive strategies of long-lived shrub-line forming species with contrasting strategies to changing climatic conditions (in natural experimental settings). The study will allow disentangling the independent and combined effects of temperature and water availability on functional traits (morphological and biochemical) without confounding effects of other factors. The study will also enable to analyse the direction and magnitude of shift in trait values (as per trait driver theory) along climatic gradients and elucidate the relative role of various factors (e.g. climatic, spatial, organisational) causing functional trait variability (e.g. intra-individual to inter-population). We will get insights into specific traits that are favoured at particular climate (e.g. at colder and drier, colder and wet etc.). Further, combination gradients and virtual transplant experiment will allow to verify the direct link between species traits and climatic conditions, at short and long temporal scales, respectively. In addition, the project will allow to test if the functional responses of single species to climatic variability can be generalized to whole communities. This fellowship will be a perfect stepping stone in achieving my career goal to become a researcher at the top of the interdisciplinary field of population and community ecology in climatically heterogenous and diverse high elevation ecosystems. My quality as a researcher will be improved by the new skills and deepened knowledge that I will acquire at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany.

Mots clés : climate change, environmental gradients, local adaptation, eco metabolomics, dendrochronology, functional traits, himalaya, alpine environments

Participants :
- Czech Academy of Sciences (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 156980.64 €
Projet ORRmetIR (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is critical in fuel cells (FC), batteries and corrosion. Sluggish kinetics of the ORR remains a key barrier to efficient electricity generation in FC operating on renewable fuels such as hydrogen or alcohols. Poor understanding of the ORR mechanism has hindered development of cost-effective and improved FC catalysts. This project aims to bring about a step change in development and understanding of ORR catalysts by (i) synthesising metal nanoparticles with a strained surface structure, and (ii) developing and implementing new in situ and operando infrared (IR) spectroscopic techniques to understand how strain impacts the ORR mechanism. Novel strained core-shell Pt-based catalysts will be developed, featuring a core of inexpensive metals including Ni, Co or Cu. For the first time, insight into the ORR mechanism for supported electrocatalysts under realistic catalytic turnover will be gained by modifying an approach to combining IR spectroscopy and electrochemistry developed in the Vincent group. The University of Oxford is uniquely suited for this ambitious project: the applicant will be hosted in a strong research culture in catalysis, have access to state-of-the-art research infrastructure and technical expertise in spectroscopy and materials characterisation and industrial collaborations. The fellow will receive broad-ranging training in the synthesis of catalysts and surface characterisation. The host team will benefit from her skills in in situ vibrational spectroscopy, especially spectral interpretation of ORR intermediates. This highly interdisciplinary project combines nanomaterial synthesis, spectroscopy and electrocatalysis, and has strong potential for generation of intellectual property and commercialisation of new catalysts for FC, aiding knowledge transfer between academic and industrial sectors. This will increase Europe’s competitiveness in FC and electrocatalysis, supporting Horizon 2020’s Energy Security goals.

Mots clés : spectroscopic techniques, electrochemistry, interface chemistry, fuel cell, oxygen reduction reaction, reaction mechanism, nanomaterial synthesis and characterisation

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet ECOSEA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The pace of change in the World oceans is ever quickening. For instance, increasing quantities of contaminants are found in marine food webs, exposing top predators to high doses of them through food ingestion. Contaminants decrease fitness in vertebrates, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood, which limits the ability to predict potential long-term effects on their populations. Contaminant accumulation is thought to impose direct and indirect costs to vertebrates, through increased energy demands for detoxification mechanisms, or disruption of energy metabolism. Other impacts could be mediated via increased susceptibility to disease. Yet, the energetic consequences of contaminants on vertebrates have been largely neglected in wild animals, especially in combination with disease. This project will quantify the effects of natural (mercury, Hg) and man-made (perfluorinated compounds, PFCs) contaminants on the energy expenditure of a seabird species that frequently suffers from severe infections of gastro-intestinal parasites: the European shag. Hg and PFCs concentrations will be measured in blood of individuals with different parasite loads, and their free-ranging energy expenditure quantified using miniaturised data loggers. This project is the first mechanistic investigation of the potentially interactive effects of contaminants and disease on energetics of free-living seabirds. My knowledge in ecotoxicology, together with expert mentorship of the Host and Partner Organisations in seabird bioenergetics and parasitology, will guarantee high-quality results. The combination of cutting-edge techniques in bioenergetics and parasitology with ecotoxicology will greatly enhance my research profile. This multidisciplinary project is highly relevant for the EU Marine Directive and is a priority under Horizon 2020. Ultimately, it will disentangle how contaminants may act in association with disease and impact animal populations through a hidden energetic cost.

Mots clés : mercury, perfluorinated compounds, bioenergetics, energy expenditure, stable isotopes, parasitism, disease, biologging, phalacrocorax aristotelis

Participants :
- University of Liverpool (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet Sus.Post-Med (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The phenomenon known as the English Agricultural Revolution (18th century) brought significant technological changes in farming practices, such as breed improvements and adoption of more efficient breeding strategies, which are not only the foundation of modern food production systems, but also fundamentally changed human life and shaped our current relationship with animals. This project will use pigs, one of the most common domestic animals, often associated with cultural choices and social status, as a proxy to investigate A) how changes in pig management, which originated and developed in England, spread to Continental Europe and B) the way in which pig husbandry practices were influenced by, and adapted to, the changing economy and society that characterized the transition between the Late Medieval and Early Modern period (1400-1800 AD). This will be done by comparing data from England, where the Agricultural Revolution began, and Bavaria in southern Germany, chosen due to a strong tradition of pig husbandry during the Medieval period and a lack of studies on this topic, making it the ideal ground for investigation. This project will identify the reasons, timing and geographic variation in the response of pig husbandry practices to socio-political changes including the progressive intensification of production, changes in pig size and shape, the generation of intensive sty-keeping feeding regimes and the introduction of new pig stock. To achieve this, the project will undertake a thorough investigation of pig body size and shape; combine biometrical data with Geometric Morphometric analysis to establish if genetically different stock was introduced; complement the zooarchaeological data with stable isotopes analysis to investigate changes in the way pigs were managed; and strive to understand the chronological and geographic variability in the consequences of the transition from the Medieval period to the early Modern age, precursor of the contemporary world.

Mots clés : zooarchaeology, stable isotopes, geometric morphometrics, biometry, late medieval, early modern age, england, southern germany

Participants :
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 162806.4 €
Projet ROBOTTOPES (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The plan of the project is to extend momentum polytope theory for the standard momentum mapping three different scenarios: (1) the case of contact hamiltonian systems; (2) the mathematical description of nonholonomic (robotic) systems and (3) multisymplectic field theories. The state of the art of research on momentum polytopes has been primarily focussed on the theoretical aspects rather than interdisciplinary research and applications, so this work will open up new grounds of research. The study of general multisymplectic manifolds is not only crucial to understand dynamics but is also of great independent interest e.g. for the quantisation of mechanics or field theories.

Mots clés : symplectic geometry, motion, robotics, wheel movement, mathematical modelling

Participants :
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 160932.48 €