Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet SupraCopCat (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Novel robust catalysts are key to improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of industrial processes, which provide crucial chemical intermediates/products in modern society. Catalysts development is traditionally a time-consuming step because it requires synthesizing and testing a large number of systems. Supramolecular catalysis can help suppress this bottleneck because it implies simple mixing of components from an existing library. In this project, we will merge the frontier concepts of supramolecular catalysis and cooperative catalysis aiming at developing efficient supramolecular cooperative catalysts. In this concept, two different catalytic units will be connected onto a supramolecular polymeric helix, so that they will work cooperatively to promote enantioselective Michael addition and asymmetric hydroformylation with good activity and excellent selectivity. Advantages compared to classical covalent catalysts will be: i) the possibility to easily tune the structure of the catalysts (e.g. the distances between the catalytic centers) by changing the nature of the building blocks, ii) the control of the configuration by changing the handedness of the helices, iii) the possibility to use chirality amplification effects. This research programme is set to be undertaken at the world-class research institution, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, with an excellent reputation and infrastructure. Through collaborating with host, the candidate will acquire a number of technical and transferable knowledge (i.e. a new research field, leadership skills). The ground-breaking results achieved in this project will be patented and then disseminated by different effective channels (i.e. publications, conferences, web resources), which will not only establish a new career perspective for the candidate, but will also further advance Europe’s capacity for innovation.

Mots clés : supramolecular catalysis, supramolecular cooperative catalyst, asymmetric catalysis, supramolecular polymer, chiral helice, enantioselective michael addition, asymmetric hydroformylation

Participants :
- Sorbonne Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 185076.0 €
Projet MUSAL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Novel techniques will be developed to model the mechanics of porous media and elucidate wave propagation characteristics in these complex two-component heterogeneous materials. This will establish a more rigorous theoretical framework and provide deeper physical insight than currently possible. The applications and natural occurrence of such media are widespread, with important applications in acoustics, bio-mechanics, geophysics and engineering. Within this proposal, two areas of application will be explored in collaboration with non-academic partners. Firstly, results will underpin methods to better control environmental noise. As can be seen from the EU’s Policy on Environmental Noise this is an issue of significant concern, the policy stating that “The largest impact of environmental noise is on annoyance and sleep disturbance, health effects of noise to which more than 30% of EU population may be exposed. The external costs of noise in the EU amounts to at least 0.35% of its GDP, but much higher values may be found as new findings become available. In general, it is considered amongst the most relevant environment & health problems, just behind the impact of air quality.” The methods developed will have significant application to acoustic optimisation and control. Besides acoustic optimisation, determination of wave characteristics and better modelling of porous media have profound implications in modelling bone. Bone is a heterogeneous material with a complex hierarchical structure, occurring in two main forms, a dense solid and a porous medium filled by a viscous marrow. The EU’s Executive Agency for Health and Consumers estimates that 22% of the EU population experience long-term muscle, bone and joint problems, from which significant economic and social issues result. The results we will obtain, and resulting methodologies established, will have far reaching implications for the detection and monitoring of a number of chronic bone and joint conditions.

Mots clés : porous media, heterogeneous materials, elastic waves, dispersion, phononic bands, asymptotic homogenisation, floquet bloch theory

Participants :
- Keele University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet HHGhole2 (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Nowadays x rays play a unique role in understanding the electronic and nuclear structure of atoms, molecules, materials, or systems in solutions, and also in following their fundamental transient dynamics. X-ray applications have high impact on society, ranging from medical and security to cutting-edge research on Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Material Science. The advent of X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) is a giant step in the advance of x-ray techniques, adding a high degree of coherence compared to synchrotron sources, and delivering pulses with enough intensity to develop novel techniques without precedents. A prominent example is the study of biomolecular systems with coherent diffractive imaging. Coherent diffractive imaging, among other applications, requires the sample to absorb a significant number of photons, limited by the inflicted damage. Radiation damage is, in fact, far from well understood due to the complexity of the physical processes that are in play. It is also a universal phenomenon, with important consequences in biological systems. Hence, radiation damage has become one of the most interesting fundamental problems to investigate. In this project we propose to develop novel approaches to time-resolve radiation damage processes in molecules by using High-Harmonic Spectroscopy (HHS). HHS is a technique that has already been used to study molecular valence dynamics with atomic spatial resolution and attosecond time resolution, and we plan to extend this method. Hence, this proposal aims to develop numerical methods for feasible experiments at XFELs by combining the expertise of the host group (well recognized by developing theoretical methods for High-Harmonic phenomena) and the Experienced Researcher (coming from a leading US group in radiation damage research at XFELs), with support of a European experimental group led by Prof. Jon Marangos (at Imperial College London, a world leading group in HHS) where a secondment will take place.

Mots clés : x ray free electron lasers, strong field physics, high harmonic generation, inner shell dynamics

Participants :
- Universidad de Salamanca (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet MAPS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Nowadays, a rising interest is moving towards the fifth generation (5G) of wireless mobile communication, as numerous devices and different heterogeneous networks will be interconnected, guaranteeing zero-distance connectivity between people, devices and objects. To deal with the ever increasing data traffic demand and the low power consumption requirements in the perspective of a sustainable growth, smart solutions have to provide energy- and cost-efficient services. In this context, the massive antenna arrays deployment in base stations, access points or smartphones, appears like a viable solution to meet these new challenges. Besides communication, the availability of such a technology can also allow other interesting applications such as accurate simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) performed by a personal radar integrated in smartphones, enabling new services in the device-to-device communication. In addition, the interrogation of tagged objects placed in the environment through radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology will allow a mapping of the real world into the internet space, enabling environment-related applications and constitute the so called smart space within the Internet of Things concept. Moreover, the reduced wavelength at millimeter-waves (mmW) paves the way for packing a large number of antenna elements into a small area, overcoming the difficult integration of laser-based or mechanical steering devices into mobiles. In this context, the project addresses in a unified framework the problem of achieving environment 3D mapping and objects identification by means of massive antenna arrays embedded on smartphones, which have the capability to learn from the environment and consequently continuously improving their performance. An offline-demo, exploiting real measured data performed during the project, will be realized in order to show the main achievements and performance guaranteed by the proposed system.

Mots clés : massive arrays, smart radar, millimeter waves, backscattering rfid

Participants :
- Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 129807.0 €
Projet NeCOL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Nowadays, intelligent systems based on deep learning (DL) are latent in many aspects of our society. But the use of inadequate neural networks (NNs) architectures and the high computational costs required by DL limit its widespread use. Thus, advanced optimization methods (such as metaheuristics) may be applied to improve common DL methodologies, which in general use gradient based methods and apply complex engineering by hand. This project aims to define an efficient DL methodology, which is named Neural CO-evolutionary Learning (NeCOL), based on the marriage between co-evolutionary algorithms (CEAs) and recurrent NNs (RNNs). NeCOL will be used to automatically define RNNs of high (unseen) efficiency and efficacy, which will be adapted to explicit needs. It will be applied in two use cases of the highest value and relevance in EU: cybersecurity and Smart City. We focus on RNNs because they are applied to non-stationary data streams, as in our use cases. Despite EU efforts, China and the USA are the most productive countries in DL. Thus, EU must try harder to lead this compelling domain. This MSCA will support the candidate to master this new cutting-edge world-wide research, which will contribute to EU excellence and competitiveness. It will allow the candidate to get exceptional trainings from world class experts at the prestigious MIT that will be exploited at UMA and the priceless supervision of Prof. Alba (UMA) and Prof. O’Reilly (MIT). The applicant is the appropriate choice to successfully accomplish this research because he has a valuable expertise in modeling hard-to-solve real-world problems (as it is the case of RNNs optimization) and addressing them by using metaheuristics. The expected early high scientific impact of this research in the EU will open up the best possible career opportunities for him, preparing him to overwhelmingly compete for a solid permanent position at UMA and other possible destinations (even industry).

Mots clés : evolutionary algorithms, co evolutionary algorithms, machine learning, deep learning, metaheuristics, optimisation

Participants :
- Universidad de Málaga (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 239191.2 €
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ErgThComplexSys (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Nowadays, networks of interacting systems appear in many areas of Science such as physics, chemistry, biology and also engineering and the human sciences. Examples range from solid state physics, to astrophysics, reaction-diffusion equations, transportation systems, the Internet, social networks, opinion models, etc. This vast spectrum of applications has stimulated a broad interdisciplinary endeavour to predict and control the behaviour of so-called "complex systems", namely large ensembles of units coupled through an intricate interaction web. While various theoretical and computational approaches to these systems have been developed, from the mathematical perspective, their analysis remains extremely challenging. Very little has been accomplished, especially as the description of the dynamical mechanisms underlying overall functioning is concerned. The proposed project aims to develop a novel rigorous approach to describe the emergence of global behaviour in complex heterogeneous systems, given their microscopic constituents such as individual dynamics and interaction nature/structure. At the interface between pure and applied mathematics, our approach will rely on results from abstract ergodic theory, especially as they have been recently obtained for non-uniformly hyperbolic systems, to address concrete mathematical models exhibiting real-world features.

Mots clés : ergodic theory, dynamical systems coupled on networks

Participants :
- New York University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 257619.84 €
Projet ResolvedJetsHIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Nuclear matter converts into a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in the course of energetic collisions of heavy nuclei. This transformation allows to study the strong interaction, as described by Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD), in dynamical conditions similar to those prevalent in the early Universe. The QGP behaves as a strongly interacting fluid, in consequence posing a challenge to established frameworks and calling for novel theoretical developments. A precise class of probes are the so-called "hard" probes and among them the formation of jets, sprays of hadrons created in the fragmentation process of a highly energetic quarks and gluons, are of special interest. The proposed project aims at advancing jet observables as theoretically well-controlled probes of the QGP. One of the key goals is to understand and numerically simulate the fragmentation process of energetic quarks and gluons into jets in heavy-ion collisions. In a second line of action we would like to address the nature of the QGP in realistic conditions by studying the active degrees of freedom released in course of the collision, and investigate their effect on jet observables. In accomplishing the proposed objectives, we will establish a clearer interpretation of experimental data from present and future particle colliders as well as bridging the insight from various theoretical attempts at describing the strong nuclear force.

Mots clés : heavy ion collisions, quark gluon plasma, jet physics, thermal field theory, effective field theory, confinement

Participants :
- European Organization for Nuclear Research (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 175419.6 €
Projet ISA-NPC-ASI (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : TERMINATED

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are fundamental supra-molecular complexes mediating the molecular traffic between nucleus and cytoplasm. They consist of over 1000 proteins that need to be assembled in a coordinated manner each cell division. Recent structural work has elucidated a considerable part of the NPC architecture, however how the NPC scaffold is assembled remains poorly understood on the structural and mechanistic level. Here I propose for the first time to arrest and structurally analyze NPC assembly intermediates. The proposed research aims to enrich the intermediates in genetically modified yeast using an anchor away approach. Subsequently the state-of-the-art Focused-Ion-Beam specimen thinning technology will be combined with cryo Electron-Tomography to examine the intermediates in their native context. The structures of the assembly intermediates will fundamentally advance our understanding of the NPC assembly mechanism that has been strongly implicated in cancerogenesis and various degenerative diseases. The proposed research thus holds great promise to enable the development of novel therapeutic compounds. This project will complement on my strength in using cryo Electron-Microscopy and expand it to in cell studies, hence providing me full professional independence. The supervisor Dr. Beck is very experienced in NPC structure research. EMBL is a well-established host institution and will provide me excellent training and infrastructure to conduct the proposed research. These two factors together constitute a robust basis to reach the goals of the proposal. Produced data will be made publicly available and dissemination of the results in conferences and to a broader audience is an integrated part of the application. In perspective the implementation of this exclusive method will allow investigating other large macromolecular complexes and their assembly paths in situ providing an appealing strategy for the European scientific community.

Mots clés : nuclear pore assembly structural intermediates, focused ion beam, cryo electron tomography and subtomogram averaging, in situ visual proteomics, conditional depletion by anchor away

Participants :
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 159460.8 €
Projet CROWDASSAY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Nucleic acids come in many forms aside from the Watson-Crick duplex. For example, guanine-rich DNA strands can form G-quadruplex structures, which have become attractive targets for small molecule ligands. It is now proven that G-quadruplexes can form in cells. Today most biophysical and structural studies on G-quadruplex folding are carried out in dilute aqueous solutions, but recent works suggest that the folding of some G-quadruplexes may differ in a crowded environment such as the cell environment. In the same way, most in vitro ligand binding assays are today carried out in dilute aqueous solutions. The aim of the project is to assess whether and how the folding pathways of G-quadruplexes differs in dilute and crowded conditions, and whether the community should revise the experimental design of ligand screening assays. We will focus on mass spectrometry-based assays, which have the unique advantage to give a direct read-out of ligand binding stoichiometry, quantity, and the variety of structural ensembles hiding behind the free and bound nucleic acid. The research program involves (1) developing mass spectrometry in more “native” conditions in the sense that we will add co-solutes to mimic cellular crowding, (2) comparing the G-quadruplex folding pathways in dilute and crowded conditions, by combining for the first time mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and single-molecule FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer), and (3) evaluating the impact of crowding on both traditional melting assays and mass spectrometry-based ligand screening assays. Our project will contribute to unveil fundamental principles of nucleic acid folding. It will also foster collaboration between three European institutes specialized in complementary biophysical and structural approaches to study G-quadruplexes. Finally, our project will also contribute to society by improving analytical approaches that are highly relevant to pharmacology.

Mots clés : nucleic acids, g quadruplex, folding, biophysics, ligands

Participants :
- Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173076.0 €
Projet LTCpolicies (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

OECD countries face the aging of their population, a demographic trend that will amplify in the next decades. This causes a substantial increase in the number of the disabled elderly, who require assistance with activities of daily living. Reconciling the societal concern for ensuring appropriate long-term care (LTC) to the disabled elderly and the pressure on public spending is a major challenge that all OECD countries struggle with. Governments aim at containing rising LTC costs by setting eligibility criteria and cost-sharing rules; such measures may however impact the efficiency and equity of LTC policies. How does the design of LTC policies affect LTC use at both the individual level and across population groups? And what are the downstream effects LTC use may have on health and health care use? This proposal aims at providing robust empirical evidence on these questions by making use of conceptual and measurement tools from applied economics. Identification of causal relationships will be achieved by exploiting quasi-experimental variation in LTC use and innovative individual-level data, which combine survey and administrative sources. My research will yield three main contributions to the economic literature and to our understanding of LTC policies. First, I will provide unprecedented insight on the impact of co-payments on nursing home entry in a European country, namely the Netherlands. Second, I will assess whether the under-use of LTC may deteriorate health and increase health care services. Finally, I will provide a comprehensive assessment of socio-economic inequalities in the use of LTC and its financing in France. This proposal tackles research questions that the international literature has left pending, in the context of two countries whose ongoing policy debates on LTC embody the trade-off faced by all European governments. It thus aims at contributing to evidence-based decisions in the field of LTC.

Mots clés : long term care policies, population ageing, health care use, health inequalities, equity, efficiency, financial incentives

Participants :
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187572.48 €