Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet 4D lipid phase (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Lipid droplets (LDs) are neutral lipid (NL) storage organelles, central for cellular metabolism. Current models of LD biogenesis postulate that synthesis of NLs in the ER bilayer favors their phase separation, followed by bending of the bilayer and budding of the LD into the cytoplasm, coordinated by a specific, not fully characterized, molecular machinery. Understanding of LD biogenesis through direct observations at molecular resolution is critically lacking. A major obstacle is that conventional electron microscopy techniques, lending the required resolving power, do not preserve the detailed membrane architecture of the ER and the fine structure of the macromolecular machinery driving LD biogenesis. I propose an ambitious cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) study to construct 3D structural models representing the timeline of LD biogenesis in human cells. Using a combination of 4 key proteins tagged with fluorescent markers in cells stimulated towards LD biogenesis, I will stage and image all early events. As nascent LD intermediates are a priori nano-scale structures dispersed within the ER, accurate cryo-CLEM is crucial. I will address this technical challenge with two strategies: cryo-superresolution CLEM and genetically-coded multimeric nanoparticles as markers for cryo-EM. This project harnesses state-of-the-art methods to synergize physical chemistry, structural and cell biology. The high resolution and pristine structural preservation exclusively attainable with in situ cryo-EM will provide first direct observations of early LD assembly, allowing construction of comprehensive 4D models of intracellular lipid phase separation and LD biogenesis.

Mots clés : cryo correlative light and electron microscopy, lipid phase separation, lipid droplet biogenesis, endoplasmic reticulum

Participants :
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 162806.4 €
Projet QARGO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Lipid-based drug delivery systems have shown great therapeutic potential, in particular for tumor targeting treatment. However, the production at relevant scales of such therapeutic agents remains a challenge due to the empirical nature of their development, and limited quantitative understanding of their biophysical properties. Remarkably, cells heavily utilize lipid carrier trafficking to encapsulate and transport with great efficiency various biological components to targeted sites in the intra- and extracellular environment. Inspired by the robustness of cellular trafficking processes, this proposal aims to elucidate the biophysical principles underlying the biogenesis of functional lipid carriers, and thereby direct the design and production of biomimetic transport carriers for drug delivery. Bringing together a complementary team of cell biologists, biophysicists, and mechanical engineers, we will develop a unifying modeling framework of vesicle biogenesis, in constant dialogue with experimental investigations of the mechanisms at play. The objectives of our integrated approach are two-fold: (i) elucidate the quantitative biophysical mechanisms of transport-carrier biogenesis mediated by coat proteins; and (ii) provide a toolbox for model-based design of liposome technologies for therapeutic drug delivery. All together, this project has potential impact in fundamental biology - by providing a systematic framework to formulate experimentally testable predictions and develop new ideas to control cellular functions in health and disease – as well as in biomedical engineering – by offering in silico solutions to design and test biomimetic cargo-carrier production processes for therapeutic applications.

Mots clés : cargo transporter, copi, copii, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi, lipid membranes

Participants :
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 160932.48 €
Projet LPEMM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy (LPEM) is a state-of-the-art analysis technique for real-time observations of nanoscale processes in liquids. As a research tool, it is unique in its ability to observe material formation pathways in complex environments. Consequently LPEM is expected to solve grand challenges in materials science; however, several obstacles need to be overcome before this technique can fully impact the whole materials science community. In the proposal LPEMM, I intend to address these multidisciplinary problems through the study of an ideal, but industrially relevant material system, namely magnetite. Magnetite is the most magnetic naturally occurring substance on earth, and of great technological interest in areas such as water purification, biomedicine and data storage. The magnetic properties of magnetite are determined by particle size, shape and organization, which in Nature is controlled though the process of biomineralization. In Magnetotactic bacteria biomineralizations occurs in confined, complex compartments called magnetosomes. I will replicate this environment inside the electron microscope and record the process with nanometer resolution, providing the first ever real-time videos of the magnetite formation. In collaboration with an industrial partner FEI Company, I will determine optimal microscope configuration and imaging conditions for LPEM based on particle motion, contrast and liquid layer thickness. The proposed research will provide a unique insight into magnetite biomineralization allowing the design of new synthetic routes to form magnetite under ambient conditions, with control over particle size, shape and organization. In a broader context summation of this research will provide a clear platform for the investigation of material formation in complex environments by LPEM; thereby obtaining unprecedented details on the formation pathway and establishing new synthetic routes to complex materials.

Mots clés : in situ transmission electron microscopy, biominerlaization, nucleation and growth

Participants :
- Eindhoven University of Technology (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €
Projet GrindCore (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Liquid-assisted grinding (LAG) is a mechanochemical process in which a catalytic amount of added liquid tremendously accelerate the reaction kinetics, and often significantly alter reaction outcome. Due to high applicability potential of LAG and still a huge amount of ambiguities, it has become essential to improve understanding of reaction mechanisms at molecular level. Establishing a correspondence between solution and solid-state reaction mechanisms would enable utilisation of huge body of knowledge in the currently barely grazed mechanistic framework of solid-state milling reactions, which is a prerequisite for their systematic use and utilisation in Green Chemistry synthetic alternatives, which would be a critical requirement for any industrial application of LAG. This project should contribute implementation of MCh for a cleaner chemical laboratory and a sustainable, low-waste and low-emissions chemical and pharmaceutical industry. It is unacceptable that further development of such an important methodology depends on a mere trial and error or, at best, on the experimenter's experience and instincts. Here, recently developed techniques for in situ real-time monitoring of MCh reactions by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy will be employed to enable insight into uninterrupted reactions and thus resolution of mechanistic pathways and kinetics of the selected representative simple reactions. The obtained data will be interpreted with respect of properties of liquids added to LAG systems. It is expected that in this way the catalytic action of liquids in LAG reactions will be put to a firmer ground. The accumulated fundamental understanding of LAG reactions will be then applied to develop or improve Green Chemistry procedures for selected environmentally relevant processes and materials. This should consequently lead to optimisation of these processes, setting them ready for scale-up to ecologically friendlier, sustainable industrial processes.

Mots clés : mechanochemistry, solid state reactions, ball milling, liquid assisted grinding, green chemistry

Participants :
- McGill University (Canada) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Rudjer Boskovic Institute (Croatie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 243763.2 €
Projet LiBTR (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in many applications, such as the customer electronics, electrifying transport and energy storage systems. However, despite endeavour and progresses, the number of incidents and recalls related to LIBs are far rising. Abuse operations can result in heat accumulation and consequent thermal reactions inducing failure and thermal runaway (TR), followed by fires and explosions. The TR of one single cell in a pack can trigger a reactions chain in adjacent cells. As a result, TR propagation will occur in the battery packs. The TR propagation initializing from single cell companied with the reactions chain can activate the TR of entire LIB packs and surroundings, resulting in catastrophic fire and explosion incidents. The proposed research aims to develop and validate a predictive tool for TR propagation in LIB packs based on LibFOAM the single cell TR model developed by the host and FireFOAM, the fire simulation solver of open source CFD code OpenFOAM. The following specific research objectives are set towards achieving this goal: ⁃ Calibrate LibFOAM for predicting the onset of TR in a single cell under different failure modes and establish the key influencing parameters; ⁃ Extend LibFOAM by coupling it with FireFOAM to predict the release of gases prior to and fol-lowing TR initiation in the triggering cell as well as the subsequent ignition and combustion of the released gases to obtain the resulting thermal environment within the cell groups; ⁃ Further extend LibFOAM to predict TR propagation in battery modules and packs; ⁃ Validated the extended LibFOAM with experimental data in the literature and data to be generat-ed by the ER’s home institution as well as proprietary data from the UK Health and Safety Exec-utive (HSE) in an ongoing collaborative project; and ⁃ Use the validated LibFOAM to investigate the effects of different mitigation measures to inhibit TR propagation.

Mots clés : lithium ion batteries, electrifying transport, energy storage systems, thermal runaway, thermal runaway propagation, battery modules and packs, mitigation measures to inhibit tr propagation

Participants :
- University of Warwick (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 74352.8 €
- University of Surrey (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 150580.96 €
Projet NanoEvolution (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are considered a strategic candidate to achieve both significantly higher energy storage and better sustainability than current Lithium-ion batteries. They operate by converting sulfur into lithium sulfide and back on discharge/charge. However, practically achieved energies are far from theoretical values due to difficulties to load sulfur in high areal and volume density in the porous carbon cathode and to fully use it electrochemically. Current experimental techniques are strong in aspects, but fail to combine the required coverage of length scales ranging from sub-nanometers to micrometers in the crucial real-time in situ fashion. NanoEvolution aims to i) identify nanoscale structure-transport-performance correlations, ii) understand capacity limitations and reaction mechanisms, and iii) derive design criteria for improved Li-S battery performance. To achieve these goals, structure-sensitive in situ scattering and imaging methods during electrochemically operating custom-built in situ Li-S cells will be implemented. Specifically, in situ small and wide angle X-ray scattering (SWAXS) will be established and synergistically combined with nanoscale phase evolution modelling for data analysis. In situ nanoscale X-ray tomography will be realized to achieve continuous structural sensitivity from (sub-)nanometer (SWAXS) to sub-micrometer scales (tomography). The novel combination of modelling and structure-sensitive in situ experiments allows real-time detection of the Li2S/sulfur morphology and location within the nanoporous carbon electrode during charge and discharge, at length scales so far not accessible to other methods. This allows to determine the final cause for capacity limitation (mass transport vs. charge transport), ii) elucidate the nature of the multiple-step sulfur reduction (oxidation) reaction, and iii) derive design criteria for improved sulfur loading, capacity utilization, and power densities.

Mots clés : lithium sulfur batteries, in situ saxs, in situ tomography, imaging, reaction mechanism

Participants :
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191149.44 €
Projet URBANet (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Living in cities has been one of the most transformative innovations in human history: it has heavily impacted social and political interaction between people, and has significantly changed the relationship between man and his natural environment. Understanding why people in the past started living together in cities in the first place, provides crucial tools for the study of urban life from a comparative perspective. One of the earliest urbanised regions of Europe was Campania, in Southern Italy. The first traces of urbanisation date to the early first millennium BCE. Innovative archaeological research on urbanisation in Campania is still lacking. With the URBANet project, I propose an innovative approach to early Campanian urbanisation, informed by multidisciplinary perspectives. I start with the specific hypothesis that the processes underlying the formation of early urban societies in the past were social and political. At the same time, the topographical component was fundamental. Furthermore, early urban societies interacted with each other. This observation suggests, in addition, that urbanisation also rose as the result of connectivity and networks. I propose to verify the hypothesis with the collection and analysis of data, focusing on four selected case-studies. The innovative method combines qualitative (anthropological) methods with computed analysis (GIS and social network analysis). Training goals are set to bolster my research and project management skills. The expertise at the VU University in similar projects ensures the best possible institutional environment for the execution of the URBANet project.


Participants :
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €
Projet GloSoilBio (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Local biodiversity is being impacted by multiple drivers of global change, including land use change, climate change, and pollution. Yet, our understanding of how these multiple drivers interact to cause shifts in biodiversity is limited, and the data that is used in large-scale synthesis analyses are often heavily biased towards taxa such as plants, birds and some marine organisms. Although soils harbour extremely high levels of diversity and this biodiversity supports critical ecosystem functions and services, soil biodiversity is very rarely considered in large-scale syntheses examining biodiversity change. As a result, it is still regarded as a ‘black box’ in the context of global change impacts. Therefore, the objectives of the GloSoilBio project are to investigate how global change drivers interact to impact soil biodiversity and understand how different global change drivers are affecting diversity change over time. The results from this project should help to inform management of global change impacts on soil biodiversity and to address EU- and global-level policy goals relating to the sustainability of life on land.


Participants :
- Saint Mary's University (Canada) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 239817.6 €
Projet MOBILIMA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Located in Western Mali, at the junction with Senegal and Mauritania, the area of Kayes has a long history of sustained involvement in transnational migration, notably towards France. The region bears the material and social imprints of decades of international migration in its infrastructures, buildings, family relations, and local notions of success and failure. Though this migration and its social effects have been the topic of a wide range of studies, the local understandings and discussions of these dynamics have been under-researched. Dwelling on developments in anthropology and African studies that highlight the importance of local expressive practices, this project focuses on three arenas where emigration and, more specifically, return have been debated: a village created by returnees in 1977; a local radio initiated by emigrants in 1987; individual trajectories of returnees from France to one village. In each field-site, biographical narratives will be combined with corpora of local productions of distinct sorts: personal documents such as family letters or cassettes; public discourses such as listeners’ letters to the radio and songs; and personal archives including photographs. The project will discuss the issue of return, a heavily politically and morally loaded one, by bringing together the individual and collective stories of returnees from distinct generations (those returning as adults in the 1970s and those returning in the 2000s), and the public discourses of each time. It will also question the way it is currently memorialized. While contributing to anthropological discussions on return migration, the ambition of the project is also to offer a better understanding of a key zone of emigration to Europe. Since the European Union is committed to address the root causes of migration, and funds initiatives to prevent migration, providing knowledge on local debates on migration can offer resources for designing effective programs in this field.

Mots clés : migration, return migration, local radios, african expressive cultures, mali  west africa, soninke language

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173212.2 €
- Point sud (Mali) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet MALOT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Location of Things (LoT) is an Internet of Things paradigm for mobility analytics. In LoT, massive mobility data is being gathered, processed and transmitted among heterogeneous data nodes in a decentralized architecture. Traditional centralized data quality management techniques cannot cope with such characteristics of LoT, making the management of data quality for LoT a prominent challenge. In the project MALOT, the researcher aims at designing a set of new techniques that are particularly adaptive to the decentralized and heterogeneous LoT architecture for assessing and enhancing mobility data quality. Specifically, the research actions of MALOT include (1) a core model for assessing mobility data quality at decentralized and dynamic data nodes; (2) effective quality-aware data enhancement algorithms to handle the heterogeneity and inconsistency of LoT mobility data; (3) a mechanism for scheduling quality management tasks among relevant nodes in an efficiency-optimal fashion. With the research actions dedicated to decentralized modelling, heterogeneous data integration, and mobile task planning, MALOT will firmly strengthen the researcher's scientific skills and innovative competences. Through many inter-sectoral training and communication activities planned for the project, the researcher will have great opportunities to diversify his skillsets and enhance his future career prospects. A two-way knowledge transfer is guaranteed since MALOT combines the researcher's expertise in mobility analytics and the participating organizations' expertise in big data management and decentralized information systems. Committed to the mobility data quality management for IoT-like architecture, MALOT is not only expected to benefit the academic development of the host and the researcher but will contribute to Europe's IoT innovation and applications.

Mots clés : data quality, mobility data, data management, internet of things, location based services

Participants :
- Aalborg University (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 219312.0 €