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

Coronaviruses (CoV) have been responsible for several severe viral outbreaks culminating in the current global pandemic. However, some viruses of this family are widespread and only cause mild conditions, like the common cold. The origin of the significant variation in the severity of the CoV-related diseases is still poorly understood. Recent studies have suggested that the strength of the interaction between the virus and the cell surface during the early stages of virus entry could play an important role. CoVs attachment to the plasma membrane is mediated by the specific interaction between the viral spike glycoprotein (CoV-S) and receptors found on the cell surface. In addition, several CoVs have been shown to interact with the cellular glycocalyx during the early attachment to the cell surface. In this proposal, I describe the study of the early entry mechanism of CoV-SARS, CoV-SARS2, and hCoV-NL63 which all target the same cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, while strongly varying in their pathogenicity. The study focuses on the dynamics, kinetics and strength of the interaction of these viruses with the cell surface. It employs an incremental approach, from the study of the bond between individual CoV-S and single membrane components to multivalent interactions between the virion and the cell surface. A wide array of biophysical (e.g. single-particle tracking, and optical tweezer) and biological (e.g. viral pseudotypes) techniques are used, combining the host’s and my expertise. This multidisciplinary project will result in a unique and comprehensive characterisation of the interactions taking place during CoV-entry, it will elucidate the difference between viral species, and it will give insights into the origin of the observed differences in pathogenicity. In addition, this work will strengthen and expand my experience and network in the virology and biophysics fields, significantly improving my career prospects as an independent researcher.

Mots clés : cov sars nl63 sars2 virus entry ace2 cov s spike optical tweezers tirfm spt hs gags

Participants :
- Umeå University (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191852.16 €
Projet COLEDISO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Corporate legitimacy, defined as the social acceptance of corporate behaviour, is constructed through a process of public deliberation. In recent years, social media technologies have enabled citizens to participate in this public deliberation by discussing, critiquing, and praising corporations. Management research about corporate legitimacy, however, has so far mainly taken into account the judgments of institutional evaluators, such as news media. By drawing on communication theories and an innovative method that combines sentiment analysis with discourse analysis of social media data, this interdisciplinary research project will examine thousands of citizens’ voices and their role in the process of legitimacy construction in digital society. The Researcher will be embedded within the vibrant research environment of the ETHOS Centre at the Cass Business School of the City University London, an institution with an excellent portfolio in education that is uniquely positioned academically and geographically. The research programme will provide access to academic expertise in an interdisciplinary environment as well as new research experience and training, providing an outstanding researcher with theoretical knowledge, methodological skills, and contact networks that will enable him to develop into a key contributor to international research in the interdisciplinary field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Thus far, the Researcher has published recent, high ranked journal publications that apply quantitative research methods. Through the acquirement and application of a qualitative method, more particularly discourse analysis, and collaboration with world-leading experts in legitimation processes, this research programme will propel the Researcher to the forefront of an interdisciplinary field emerging within management science and communication science. It will enable him to produce high quality research and to engage the general public with a lasting impact.

Mots clés : corporate legitimacy, social media technologies, news media, corporate communication, sentiment analysis, discourse analysis, discursive struggles

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet INSPiRE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Cost-benefit analyses are routinely used by policy makers when designing environmental policy to weigh the costs and benefits of different policy alternatives, and stated choice experiments are used to value the non-marketed costs and benefits included in such analyses. Standard practice in stated choice experiments is to create a hypothetical market environment in which people choose among competing policy alternatives under the assumptions that they have complete information about all available policy alternatives, and that they are perfectly rational and maximize utility based on a clearly defined set of preferences, which can be retrieved when needed in any choice situation. In reality, these assumptions are questionable. Drawing on accumulating evidence from economics, psychology and marketing, this project aims to understand how searching for information about policy alternatives affects stated preference formation, learning and choice, and the extent to which this can address hypothetical bias. The project develops a novel experimental procedure that addresses important issues in stated choice experiments and make significant and original methodological contributions that advance current practice beyond state-of-the-art in both experimental design and data analysis. Improving the reliability of stated choice experiments will lead to improved estimates of non-marketed costs and benefits included in cost-benefit analyses. Through a broad uptake and use of these methods by stated preference practitioners, and increased awareness among policy makers, the methodological developments in this project can lead to improved policy recommendations and implementation across the EU.

Mots clés : stated preferences, behavioral economics, discrete choices, choice modeling

Participants :
- University of Stirling (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet Colour cotton (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Cotton fibre is one of our most important textile resources. Most commercial cotton fibres are various shades of white but can be yellowish because of poor environmental conditions during growth or storage. A bleaching step is employed to address this issue during cotton fabric processing. After cotton fibre is spun into yarn, a dyeing process is applied to colour natural fibre to satisfy costumer’s demand. Additional industrial processes are needed to remove unfavourable natural colours and then add desirable colours to the yarn. Each step costs substantial amounts of energy but more importantly causes serious water and air pollution. More than 100 litres of water are required to dye one kilogram of cotton. The industrial effluents are rich in hazardous material. To address these issues, the proposed research will aim to bioengineer high value eco-friendly naturally coloured cotton fibre. Two overall strategies will be pursued. Firstly, by down-regulating key genes in the phenylpropanoid pathway, we aim to reduce fibre yellowish to increase fibre whiteness for the premium market. Second, by reorientating the metabolic flux from the phenylpropanoid pathway into a heterologously expressed betalain biosynthesis pathway, we aim to engineer novel natural colour cotton. The prospective products will significantly alleviate the environmental issues of the textile industry where 20% of global water pollution is produced and provide a biotechnological solution for a more environmentally friendly textile industry.

Mots clés : cotton, natural colour fibre, genetic transformation, genome editing, phenylpropanoid pathway, betalains

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet Adductomics (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Covalent modCovalent modification of DNA by exogenous genotoxic molecules can translate into gene alteration, possibly inducing carcinogenesis. The analysis of DNA modifications, referred to as DNA-adducts, is fundamental for assessing the mechanism of action of genotoxic molecules. Nowadays, high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) is one of the most promising technique for DNA-adduct identification. Despite DNA adductomics by HRMS is highly promising, it is a new born field, presenting several analytical challenges and requiring the development of sample preparation protocols, chromatographic and mass spectrometric methods, and identification approaches. So far the majority of DNA adductomics studies were done in vitro or in animals with few studies in humans. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered to be highly affected by exogenous genotoxicants. Smoking, consumption of alcohol, and meat intake only explain a minor part of sporadic CRC. The mechanism of DNA modification leading to CRC has not yet been elucidated but should provide new clues about causative factors. Therefore, a DNA adductomics approach will be used in this project. Hybrid ion mobility - quadrupole - time-of-flight HRMS instrumentation will be used to develop the analytical procedures using resected colon and colon biopsies as well as urine from subjects affected by CRC or familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), the last showing high adduct levels and very high CRC risk. High levels of DNA-adducts in FAP will increase chances of adduct identification. Urine will be used to identify DNA-adduct excretion products. The developed methods will then be used in a case-control human study with the aim of finding a correlation between specific DNA-adduct formation or specific excretion products and CRC, possibly identifying novel cancer risk biomarkers. Expanding the knowledge on DNA-adducts related to CRC could provide new opportunities for the design of more effective intervention and prevention approaches.

Mots clés : adductomics, high resolution mass spectrometry, method development, metabolomics, analytical chemistry, toxicology

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 207312.0 €
Projet GLOMAC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Covering 0.5% of the global coastal area, mangrove forests are among the most carbon-rich forests on Earth and account for >10% of total terrestrial carbon input to the ocean. As a result, mangroves provide a vital link between the terrestrial and oceanic carbon cycles and have been placed as a climate-change mitigation component on the international policy agenda. Despite their ecological and socio-economical importance, and the role they play in climate regulation, an increasing amount of evidence indicates that their geographic distribution is shifting in response to climate change, impacting human welfare, ecosystem functioning, and potentially also the dynamics of climate itself. I propose to study the GLObal-scale interactions between MAngrove forests and Climate (GLOMAC) by assessing, for the first time (1) the export, transport, and fate of carbon from mangrove forests in the ocean and its contribution to carbon sequestration in the global ocean and atmosphere and (2) the potential effect of climate change on the global distribution of mangroves and the role of different environmental factors therein. This ambitious goal will be achieved by (1) extending a novel global-ocean biogeochemistry model (ECCO-Darwin) with mangrove-ocean carbon fluxes derived from the first high-resolution (30 m) global mangrove canopy height dataset and (2) integrating mangrove habitat suitability estimates into a global-ocean dispersal model (ECCO-Dispersal). GLOMAC provides an important first step toward integrating coastal and global carbon cycles and will help improve understanding of the impact that global warming may have on the geographic distribution of mangroves and coastal ecosystem services. The resulting modelling tools can be refined upon availability of future data and will be useful and informative to studies in other coastal and marine ecosystems, global (blue) carbon programs, as well as the economic sector (e.g., fisheries, dredging, and marine engineering).

Mots clés : mangroves, modelling, carbon, ocean biogeochemistry, species distribution models, range shifts, dispersal, habitat suitability, climate change, coastal wetlands, remote sensing

Participants :
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 178320.0 €
Projet CreHack (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Creativity is an impressive cognitive ability that makes humans an extraordinary species. To face the timely challenges of our society, creativity is a critical and necessary skill that plays a game-changer role in innovation. Yet, the cognitive and neural mechanisms of creativity are still poorly understood. Formally, creativity is defined as the ability to produce an object/idea that is both original and efficient. Then, creativity should involve an evaluative process of efficiency and originality, interacting with a generative process that generates candidate ideas. Today, a unitary modelling approach is still lacking in the field of creative cognition, and the evaluative process has been poorly explored. Through computational modelling, this proposal aims at investigating the specific role of the evaluative component in the creativity mechanisms. This will allow untangling the different steps of the creative process. The project will use a novel experimental design to develop this model and investigate its neural validity through neuroimaging (fMRI). We expect the main output of this research program to be a neurocomputational model of creativity. We foresee two major impacts: to establish empirical foundations for a general theory of how humans produce creative ideas and to provide open tools to assess creativity in individuals. This proposal is in the position to make a major breakthrough in creativity research by providing a new framework for the investigation of creativity mechanisms. It combines the expertise of the experienced researcher on computational approaches linked to value-based decision-making with the host lab's strength on Neuroscience of Creativity, located in the Paris Brain Institute (ICM), the largest research institute for neuroscience in France.

Mots clés : creativity, value system, computational modelling, cognitive profiling, brain imaging

Participants :
- Institut du cerveau (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 196707.84 €
Projet CuDiCy (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

CuDiCy will investigate the cultural diplomacy (CD) of three states: the UK, Greece and Turkey, as it was practiced in Cyprus between 1945 and 1974. The action will be conducted by Dr. Maria Hadjiathanasiou, at the University of Nicosia (Cyprus), under the supervision of Hubert Faustmann, Professor of History and Political Science at the Department of Politics and Governance. Τhe action includes Secondments at the Embassy of Greece in Nicosia and, at the British Council in London. Timely and relevant, CuDiCy aspires to set a new paradigm in the growing field of CD, by becoming the study model for an innovative approach towards the exploration of external cultural influence in countries which accommodate ethnically diverse populations, for example Syria and Lebanon. It will contribute to the discussion about the conceptualisation of power, politics, authority and governance and, on the formation and transformation of identity. CuDiCy will achieve this by tracing and analysing the ways state and non-state cultural actors influenced the progress of events in Cyprus, from the end of the Second World War to the Turkish invasion. Time, location, concept and structure will be used as critical determinants to consider CD’s role. The methodology is crucial to CuDiCy’s main objective which is to expose the diverse and complicated functions, actions, visions and interpretations of what constituted CD during this period, to understand what its aim was, and to investigate how and if it accomplished its tasks. CuDiCy has a strong cross-sectoral multidisciplinary focus, involving the fields of History, IR, Political Science and the Humanities. It includes both the transfer of knowledge to the host institution and the training of the candidate in new methodologies and theoretical concepts. CuDiCy’s results will enrich and expand the discussion on global CD significantly, shedding light on a little researched region, with implications on what constitutes successful CD today.

Mots clés : cultural diplomacy, diplomacy, decolonisation, cyprus, greece, united kingdom, turkey, soft power, influence, power, control, culture

Participants :
- University of Nicosia (Chypre) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 157941.12 €
Projet CulTech (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

CulTech proposes a probabilistic and spatially explicit simulation-based study to test the roles of population fragmentation and coalescence to explain variability in the southern African late Pleistocene lithic record. It focuses on the interval c. 44 – 12 kcal. BP relevant to onset and maturation of the Later Stone Age (LSA). The project asks three key questions: Q1) To what extent is the degree to which southern African late Pleistocene LSA lithic assemblages differ as a function of space and time? Q2) Are these patterns of similarity/dissimilarity consistent with expectations derived from simulated population coalescence and fragmentation scenarios? Q3) How do these patterns change through time across the period c. 44 – 12 kcal. BP? It draws on a multi-variate dataset including radiocarbon dates and lithic technological data to develop a series of simulation and model-based approaches to examine the possible demographic dimensions of late Pleistocene technological variability in southern Africa. CulTech builds on a growing field of computational modelling and simulation-based approaches applied to studies of prehistoric cultural transmission. Simulation based approaches are efficient and can accommodate several variations in population size, density, structure, rates of interaction and mechanisms of cultural transmission. The project draws its principle datasets from southern Africa’s long history of LSA lithic research to evaluate the degree of fit between patterns in the region’s site spatial distribution, lithic data, and expectations from a series of simulations to generate expected population coalescence/fragmentation patterns and their effects on the lithic data. The outcomes of these models will contribute significantly to discussions about cultural transmission and population processes in hunter-gatherer societies. These topics are of relevance not just to southern Africa, but to human evolution and global archaeology in general.

Mots clés : lithic technology, population demography, cultural transmission, msa lsa transition, computer modelling

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet INVCULTURALDIPLO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Cultural diplomacy has gained extraordinary significance in European international relations since the end of the nineteenth century as countries faced challenges in their Empire and as military force on foreign soil became increasingly contested. This project examines the making of this new aspect of foreign policy from the late nineteenth century until the beginning of the Second World War, with a focus on three case studies: Britain, France and Germany. The US will also be analysed as a battled ground for the cultural diplomacies of these western European countries. Employing an interdisciplinary approach – drawing on diplomatic and political history, cultural studies, transnationalism and textual analysis, the project will examine a broad range of private and diplomatic documents, as well as published pamphlets and media sources. The project’s first objective is to evaluate why European countries turned to foreign cultural policies as a new element of their diplomacy. Secondly it aims to reassess the chronology of the rise of cultural diplomacy, which the historiography conventionally sets to the 1920s (when cultural diplomatic bureaux opened in European foreign offices). Thirdly the project aims to renew our understanding of the policy making practices in this domain. These objectives will be met by transcending bi-national approaches that dominate the historiography of cultural diplomacy to assess the influence of entangled national competitions and asymmetric ways in which France, Germany and Britain conceptualised the significance of culture for their European and transatlantic diplomacies. Building upon theories of new diplomatic history that have stressed the significance of non-state actors, this research also goes beyond Foreign Office-centred approaches to examine the role of civil society individuals (including emigrants and transnational networks of private citizens), in shaping this area of diplomacy.

Mots clés : history of international relations, european history, history of soft power, transnationalism

Participants :
- Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 184707.84 €