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

Climate change is known to affect deaths and hospitalizations associated with heat exposure in Europe. Yet, despite a broad epidemiological knowledge base on the future impacts of climate change, few studies so far have formally attributed heat-related mortality and morbidity to climate change that has already occurred over the past century. ATTACH contributes to the closing of this important research gap, with a special focus on recent European heatwaves. The project will make use of death count and hospitalization statistics from major cities in Germany, and will combine state-of-the-art epidemiological approaches (time-series Poisson regression including distributed-lag non-linear models, and meta-regression techniques) with an innovative approach to climate impact attribution. This novel approach derives counterfactual climate data, mimicking a world without climate change, from detrended observations. In line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, effective communication and dissemination activities will ensure that results can be applied to improve adaptation measures for protection of population health from the adverse consequences of climate change. The institutional and training arrangements will guarantee an impactful knowledge transfer between the applicant and the host, opening up opportunities for fruitful collaboration at the interface of epidemiology and climate sciences. Overall, ATTACH will significantly improve the prospective of the applicant for developing a career as an independent research group leader in the field of climate change and health.

Mots clés : climate change, human health, climate impact attribution, heat, heatwave, mortality, morbidity, temperature

Participants :
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 174806.4 €
Projet ClimatCon (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Climate change is one of the key challenges facing the human race in the 21st century. To respond to this challenge new approaches to sustainable development combining mitigation and adaptation, which are referred to as climate-resilient pathways, are needed. The development of such approaches is one of the high priority areas of modern day research that will be addressed in the proposed action in the context of concrete infrastructure. The action aims to develop a comprehensive method based on an integration of the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) techniques for the evaluation of the whole life performance of reinforced concrete (RC) structures subjected to carbonation in conditions of climate change. To achieve this both experimental studies and numerical modelling are planned to be carried out. The method will take into account both adaptation and mitigation measures and due to numerous uncertainties involved in such analysis be based on a probabilistic approach. It will be applied to several case studies (i.e., typical RC members located in different climatic conditions) to examine the sustainability performance of different concrete types (traditional and ‘green’ with blended cements) and repair techniques. The method and other results obtained in the action will provide strong support for decision making regarding the sustainable development of concrete infrastructure.

Mots clés : concrete infrastructure, sustainability, climate change, carbonation, adaptation, mitigation, co2 uptake, life cycle assessment, life cycle cost analysis, uncertainty, probabilistic approach

Participants :
- Heriot-Watt University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet ClimateFinReg (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Climate change is one of the most pressing problems of humanity. And yet the carbon emissions have not decreased but increased since 2006. The present project presents a novel approach to achieve a global reduction of carbon emissions in the coming decades by harnessing the power of financial regulation. We will concentrate on the challenges to make this approach work, as well as on the opportunities it presents, to achieve a practical solution for this extremely difficult problem. We argue that financial stability regulation is sufficiently powerful to change the incentives for firms and reduce significantly their carbon footprints. The substance of the argument starts from the observation that financial systems are increasingly interconnected. This increasing interconnection has led regulators to give a larger role to a macroprudential approach in their activities. That is, they intend to reduce risks to the whole financial system, what they call “systemic risks,” rather than simply risks to individual institutions. Our work stems from a large emerging literature about contagion in financial networks, and will explore its implications for climate change mitigation and financial regulation. The substance of this project is to answer a series of questions about the viability and desirability of this policy. It will be structured around three work packages. WP1, will analyse the expected distribution of shocks that arises from climate change. It will also study their impact to the financial system. The other two works packages will explore two key determinants of adoption of the policy. In WP2 we explore the impact of the large uncertainty about the effects of climate change on the mindset of regulators. In WP3 we study the transmission of social attitudes and social norms into the decision processes of legislators and regulators.

Mots clés : financial regulation, social networks, contagion, experiments

Participants :
- Carlos III University of Madrid (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172932.48 €
Projet DIMPEL CAT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Climate change, increased energy demand, and greenhouse gases have major impacts on the environment. Following the recent International Climate Change conference in Paris, many nations have initiated measures to fulfill their agreements to reduce carbon emissions and promote renewable energy. In addition, EU Horizon 2020 has the major priority to invest funds in development of secure, clean and efficient energy methods. Currently, the most efficient way to produce the clean energy source H2 requires platinum. However, this metal is highly scarce and expensive. Carbon Dioxide conversion to synthetic fuels such as CO, formaldehyde is likewise mainly performed by expensive metals, and at high temperatures which are unsustainable. Therefore, there is a strong incentive to develop alternative, sustainable catalysts based on cheap, earth-abundant materials. In this project, we are going to use the diamonds as nano materials which can release electrons into solution upon illumination; the electrons can be used by the transition metal complexes for the production of hydrogen and to convert CO2 into valuable chemicals such as CO, formic acid. The inspiration comes here from the natures photosynthesis where the sunlight is harvested by plants to fix CO2 to valuable chemicals such as carbohydrates. Diamond is unique in its ability to produce solvated electrons directly into solution upon irradiation; these electrons are highly reducing and have capacity to activate CO2. This projects aims to improve the selectivity and efficiency of the reduction process by coupling the reducing electrons from diamond with the most effective transition metal catalysts from literature. Furthermore, this project will provide a new set of skills required for becoming an independent researcher in the highly important sustainable energy field.

Mots clés : diamonds, transition metal complexes, surface chemistry, co2 reduction, hydrogen production, photo and electro catalysis

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet CoL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Climates of Listening: Amplifying Pacific Experiences of Environmental Crisis (CoL) is the first practice-led research project to use sound and listening as a framework for expanding understandings of Indigenous Pacific human-environmental relations in the face of rapid ecosystemic transformation. Sonic practices such as storytelling, poetry, singing, music and listening are widely used in Pacific cultures to connect to, make sense of, and communicate knowledge about, the world. Drawing on these practices, this project innovates an interdisciplinary "sonic geography" to help scholars and advocates better conceive of the holistic, multifarious and hyperlocalised ways that environmental crisis is felt and attended to. In doing so, it expands existing literature beyond narratives of "vulnerability" and "resilience", and problematises the politics of representation and translation of Indigenous Pacific experiences into Western ideas and knowledges. CoL deploys ethnographic material from five frontline Pacific Island sites as a foundation for understanding and communicating Pacific Indigenous-environmental relations through written and artistic forms, including a research monograph, workshops, original sound art pieces and a research exhibition. Based at the world leading Centre for the GeoHumanities (RHUL) in the Department of Geography, the Fellow will be supported in a rich research environment. The Fellow's time at the CGH will not only enhance their trajectory as a research leader in their discipline of Geography, but will also advance their transferable research skills and build their Geography teaching profile. Through a comprehensive suite of research, dissemination and career training activities, this MSCA will greatly increase the Fellow's capacity to secure a permanent academic post in the UK or Europe.

Mots clés : pacific islands, human geography, environmental change, sound methods, sound art, research exhibition, indigenous representation, story telling

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet BioGeoInterface (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Climatic influences various natural phenomena and affect the overall environmental synergy. Precipitation pattern and temperature are among key phenomena that influence the soils and inturn life. Extended periods of droughts leads to loss of nutrition in soils and increases desertification of land. On the other hand, the increase in temperature (natural or anthropogenic activities) that lead to rise in temperatures in the geoenvironment will lead to unstable ground conditions. This situation is more detrimental in the presence of organic matter/organic soils and has been poorly understood. This study proposes to develop a novel technology to rejuvenate derelict soils by utilising native soil microorganisms and stimulating them with biowaste (such as biosolids), with an aim to commercialise the technology. These studies will require screening of the stimulants and the native soil microbes (consortium) that will be amended with a typical coarse-grained and fine-grained soil. Subsequently the efficacy of biomodification will be assessed based on several physical, and biochemical parameters relating to soil and plants. Further, through this proposed study a engineering behaviour of biomodified soils (organic soils) under elevated temperatures (ThermoHydroMechanical behaviour) will be carried out. This will a major step in this direction as till date the conventional practise has been to understand THM behaviour of soils without biogenic function. These efforts will be followed by developing a mathematical framework that can predict the holistic behaviour of soils under elevated temp. This study will be carried out by Dr.Shashank Bettadapura Subramanyam(ER), Prof.Xiaohui Chen(from UnivLeeds) will be the PI. This collaboration will significantly influence ER's competences in pursuing his interests and achieving career goals and enable a 2way transfer of knowledge between the ER & PI related to biogeotechnics THMbehaviour &numerical aspect in environmental geotechnics.

Mots clés : biogeotechnics, soil microbial interactions, soil rejuvenation, thm behaviour

Participants :
- University of Leeds (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet SilVerDBS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Closed-loop deep brain stimulation is a promising new treatment for several neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease. Closed-loop approaches offer the potential to not only match or even surpass the effectiveness of currently available treatments, but also promise longer battery life with fewer treatment-induced side effects. Despite preliminary experimental studies supported by computational analyses demonstrating its efficacy, there is no consensus on the best algorithm for controlling deep brain stimulation. This lack of a clear direction delays the implementation and clinical adoption of the technique. Moreover, without an understanding of the effectiveness of the various control approaches available, it is difficult to identify the most appropriate control scheme. To address this issue, this project aims to design a novel algorithm for closed-loop DBS and demonstrate that it outperforms the currently proposed approaches in terms of total energy use and symptom reduction. The demonstration will be conducted using a state-of-the art verification environment, where the proposed stimulation algorithms and their hardware implementations will be tested against a range of computational models of parkinsonian brain, providing objective measures of efficacy and efficiency of the proposed stimulation approaches.

Mots clés : closed loop control, deep brain stimulation

Participants :
- National University of Ireland (Irlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 184590.72 €
Projet Schizo-EPICOG (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Cognitive deficits represent nuclear symptoms of schizophrenia and are considered prognostic factors of the disease. Moreover, they are resistant to the currently available treatments and it is clinically suspected that atypical antipsychotics might worsen cognitive conditions of schizophrenic patients. Preliminary data indicate the involvement of epigenetic regulation of histone deacetylases (HDACs) in this effect and the possibility of neuroinflammmatory activity as the inductor mechanism. In the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia a double-hit phenomenon has been suggested. Thus, a prenatal priming event that would induce vulnerability is followed by a second stressful hit in peripuberty. Physio- and psychopathology could emerge from these mechanisms through neuroinflammatory hyperactivity. The aim of the present project is to study the relationship between cognitive deficits and neuroinflammatory activity in a traslational "double hit" mouse model based on the maternal inmmune activation during gestation followed by social isolation at puberty. In this animal model will be evaluated: 1) Gene and protein expression of inflammatory signalling proteins, HDACs and the status of histone acetylation; 2) Cognitive and psychotic status by means of validated behavioural tests; 3) Modulation of cognitive responses by chronic treatment with the antipsychotic clozapine, the HDAC inhibitor SAHA and the inflammatory activity inhibitor minocycline. Cognitive responses will be related to neuroinflammatory alterations at molecular level. The findings in the animal model will be compared with those obtained in the study of neuroinflammation markers, HDACs expression and histone acetylation status in postmortem human prefrontal cortex of subjects with schizophrenia under antipsychotic treatment or drug-free conditions and matched controls. In these subjects the possibility of an excess of inflammatory activity associated to antipsychotic treatment will be analyzed.

Mots clés : schizophrenia, cognition, animal models, epigenetics, human brain, antipsychotics

Participants :
- University of the Basque Country (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet CovDecRND (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Combinatorial geometry is a very active field where most problems have real life applications. The study of multiple coverings was initiated by Davenport and L. Fejes Toth 50 years ago. In 1986 J. Pach published the first papers about decomposability of multiple coverings. It was discovered recently that besides its theoretical interest, this area has important practical applications. Now there is a great activity in this field with several breakthrough results. The goal of this proposal is to study cover-decomposability, polychromatic colorings and related notions for different geometric and abstract families of sets under various additional conditions, especially random perturbations.

Mots clés : geometric hypergraphs, cover decomposition, polychromatic coloring, probabilistic methods

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet FraxiFam (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Comparisons among whole genome sequences allow us to survey differences in gene content among organisms, and hypothesise patterns of gene gain and loss through evolution. Rates of gene flux appear to be surprisingly high, and many genes are unexpectedly unique to species (“orphan” genes). In plants, increasing evidence suggests that genome evolution has been shaped by multiple rounds of whole genome duplication (WGD) after which many duplicated genes are lost, but some duplicates are retained and diverge. The extent to which novel genes arise due to WGD, tandem duplications, horizontal gene transfers, or de novo, remains an open question, especially in plants where WGD seems to be such a pervasive feature of evolution. Our knowledge is hampered by the fact that until now we have been limited to comparisons of whole genome sequences in plants that are highly diverged from one another. This means that the early consequences of gene duplication, and the early divergence of duplicated genes, have not been studied on a genomic scale. This project will use a new dataset, generated by the host lab, containing the whole genome sequence of every species within a plant genus (the genus Fraxinus – ash trees). As well as having inferred WGDs in its ancestry, this genus contains species that have undergone recent WGD. We propose to conduct a comprehensive analysis of gene and gene family evolution in this genus, compiling a major public database of Fraxinus gene families (FraxiFam). Using this data we will conduct the first genome-wide and genus-wide study of gene content evolution, allowing us to study the early stages of gene sequence and gene content divergence. We will test hypotheses about: (1) the primary drivers of gene content evolution, (2) the repeatability of patterns in gene loss and retention after WGD, and (3) the early evolution of orphan genes. This research will contribute to attempts to develop ash trees resistant to ash dieback, for EU ecological restoration.


Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet CR-PHAGOCYTOSIS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Complement-mediated phagocytosis plays a crucial role in bacterial killing. Activation of complement yields a variety of opsonin molecules that can rapidly coat bacterial surfaces, which interact with complement receptors on neutrophils to facilitate phagocytosis. However the molecular details and functional outcomes of these interactions are not well understood. In the proposed work, we aim to elucidate the molecular details of complement opsonin-receptor interactions. We have developed a novel model for examining molecular complement interactions, by site-specifically attaching complement opsonins to bacteria-sized beads in their correct orientation. We will, for the first time, be able to adequately characterize complement opsonin-receptor interactions at a molecular level. This methodology will also be extended to two model gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Group B Streptococcus (GBS), in which complement opsonins will be site-specifically attached to their cell walls. Using wild-type and complement receptor (CR) knockdown neutrophils, we aim to determine the roles of opsonin-receptor pairs in neutrophil activation and bacterial killing. Finally, we will use our model systems to examine the synergy between antibodies and complement in neutrophil phagocytosis. The proposed work will provide a comprehensive picture of the role of complement in neutrophil phagocytosis. As the role of complement in human disease is becoming increasingly apparent, the need for new therapeutics is imminent. The work proposed herein paves the way for several therapeutic applications, including targeted complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) immunotherapeutics in cancer and complement inhibitors for a wide array of age-related, autoimmune, and rare/neglected disorders.

Mots clés : complement, phagocytosis, neutrophil, gram positive bacteria, opsonization

Participants :
- University Medical Center Utrecht (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €