Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet STM (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The main goal of this proposal, to propose self-adaptive thermal regulation systems that are smart, green, aesthetically pleasing and engineering applicable, is in line with the RePowerEU plan that efforts in saving energy and decarbonising heat. In this project, new thermal metamaterials are designed that integrates smart radiative cooling, high solar reflectance and customized colour, a multi-function design not previously available. Utilizing the metal-insulator transition of phase changing materials, the thermal metamaterial adapts its thermal emissivity smartly to different ambient temperatures, thus intelligently switching between “on cooling” mode in hot times and “off cooling” mode in cold times, which benefits creating comfortable household conditions and contributing to energy saving from an all-season perspective. Besdies, the thermal metamaterial can present vivid colours to satisfy aesthetic needs. Considering that thermally induced deformation can lead to structural failure of designed thermal metamaterials and affect their working life, mechanical robustness is also considered for scalable production and for real-world applications. A new inverse method is developed to accurately predict the structural deformation by eigenstrain reconstruction. On basis of this, mechanical stability strategy is proposed to eliminate the deformation, which pushes the smart regulation system closer to real-world application. The proposed design is estimated to save at least 134 €/year for a single family in Besançon, Franche-Comté, France. The resulted energy savings not only bring economic benefits but also contribute to environmental preservation and climate change suppression by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This project can create significant impact in household energy saving and industrial heat management sectors.

Mots clés : thermal metamaterial radiative cooling

Participants :
- Université de Franche-Comté (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 211754.88 €
Projet SYN-CROSS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The project aims to advance theoretical and practical knowledge in psycholinguistics and developmental neuroscience, focusing on symptoms of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Specifically, I will investigate underlying cognitive factors of syntactic difficulties manifested by children with DLD. I will test the project's hypotheses regarding the inflexibility of statistical learning of syntactic structures in DLD. To this end, I will examine the production and comprehension of relative clauses (RCs) in Italian- and Polish-speaking children with DLD. The RC is a subordinate clause that exhibits different syntactic structures in Italian and Polish. Therefore, the cross-linguistic study will provide a quantitative analysis of local linguistic elements that signify thematic role assignments in RCs and distinguish between Italian (IT) and Polish (PL). Additionally, I will analyze the global RC sentence structure, including length, complexity, and the distance related to syntactic movement. This linguistic analysis will further allow testing of the hypothesis that basic cognitive components and their interactions contribute to the errors typical for children with DLD. Specifically, based on linguistic analysis, I will test neuropsychological hypotheses that the following cognitive elements contribute to DLD deficits: i) executive control, triggered by the probabilistic properties of word/morpheme flow within the sentence; ii) performance in encoding rare linguistic elements, as reflected in inflectional suffixes; iii) working memory load, related to sentence length and syntactic movement. The achievement of the project's aims will impact the international research community by providing new insights into the cognitive aspects of language skills, particularly the development of specific grammatical-syntactic constructions. Finally, the results of the project will be relevant to clinicians in designing targeted, more effective therapeutic programs for children with DLD.

Mots clés : developmental language disorder, syntactic errors, linguistic analysis, statistical learning, executive functions

Participants :
- University School for Advanced Studies - IUSS Pavia (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 209483.28 €
Projet PepMach (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Abuse and overuse of antibiotics has led to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is a major global health concern. In the EU, there are around 30,000 AMR-related deaths per year, and the incidence of AMR is on the rise; experts have predicted a loss of 10 million lives by 2050. One of the reasons to find alternatives to tackle this grave and complicated health challenge is that only very few antibiotics are discovered and those in the pipeline do not have the ability to circumvent AMR development in microbes. Thus, there is a need for discovery of novel antimicrobial agents that can take the place of conventional antibiotics. In comparison to conventional antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) especially bacteriocins, are effective in rapidly eradicating microbes, thereby reducing AMR-related issues. Hence, the proposed project aims to identify ideal AMPs that can eradicate pathogens and reduce the emergence of AMR. The approach will be to mine the sequences of the most dominant commensal genomes to identify suitable candidate AMPs. The identified AMPs will be stored in an online catalogue which can be leveraged by researchers working in the same field. Furthermore, the anti-pathogenic ability of the selected AMPs will be confirmed through in-vitro techniques followed by studying their AMR developing propensity. Additionally, genes leading to AMR will be identified and knocked out to study the effect on AMR. Furthermore, the synergistic activity of the identified AMPs along with antibiotics will also be studied. These objectives will be achieved by using advanced computational and machine learning techniques followed by in-vitro techniques. The project will lead to discovery of AMPs with least AMR developing propensity and will also provide information about putative AMPs that can be developed along with Toscana Life Sciences (TLS) Foundation (industrial placement) to explore their therapeutic potential.

Mots clés : antimicrobial peptides, antimicrobial resistance, human microbiome, antibiotics, sequence analysis, genome, data mining

Participants :
- Toscana Life Sciences (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Bodø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 283438.8 €
- Edmund Mach Foundation (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet StoneCau (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The project sheds light on socio-economic developments in the southern Caucasus during the Late Chalcolithic – a turning point on the pathway of human development, marked by the emergence of complex societies and early states within south-eastern Europe and south-western Asia. The study focuses on the nature and origins of the Leylatepe cultural phenomenon, which conveyed new trajectories in social differentiation, specialized craft industries, and interregional product exchange within the southern Caucasus and likely beyond, into the northern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, and Syro-Mesopotamia. Despite that, the current state of research on the phenomenon is troubled by a narrow scope of reliable fieldwork data, lack of well-dated contexts, and publication scarcity. The research is based on the analysis of ground stone tools retrieved from four sites located in present-day Azerbaijan and Armenia: Alkhantepe, Leylatepe, Janavartepe, and Teghut, which emerged as Leylatepe settlements at the onset of the Late Chalcolithic period, in different environmental settings. Late prehistoric ground stone tools remain greatly underinvestigated, even though they were integral to various subsistence and craft-related activities of agro-pastoral villages in transition to social complexity. An integrative approach is employed, encompassing complementary (microwear, experimental, technological, contextual) methods of functional analyses of the tools. The high-resolution excavations of German Archaeological Institute (Berlin) and the Institute of Archaeology, Ethnography and Anthropology (Baku) at Leylatepe and Janavartepe grant an unprecedented insight into the phenomenon. The project is designed to tap into that potential and, consequently, it will be the first to yield insights into daily lives, food choices, and technological preferences of the Leylatepe phenomenon, illuminating socio-economic dynamics within the Caucasian communities and their interactions with ancient Mesopotamia.

Mots clés : caucasus, chalcolithic, leylatepe, ground stone tools, functional analysis, microwear, use wear analysis, experimental archaeology

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université libre de Berlin (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet FRAGILEPRINTS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Ecosystems are deteriorating at unprecedented rate. Climate change is threatening their functioning and the vital services they provide to human societies, imposing an urgent need to understand how they are coping with and reacting to global change. The complexity of ecosystems, however, makes predicting their fragility a difficult endeavor. FRAGILEPRINTS: “Identifying fingerprints of fragility in complex ecosystems” focuses on a critical scenario in ecosystem degradation: large and abrupt transitions following gradual environmental changes, observed across ecosystems worldwide. Despite important progresses, key knowledge gaps remain in our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning these transitions, making them notoriously difficult to predict. Current research relates them to the presence of Multiple Stable States (MSS), with small perturbations able to induce large shifts from healthy, species-rich communities towards deteriorated ecosystem states. Understanding of MSS, however, is based on simple models that largely ignore the role of species diversity and interaction complexity, highlighting an extremely relevant gap in our capacity to uncover potential abrupt transitions in species-rich ecosystems. To address this gap, FRAGILEPRINTS will investigate the emergence of MSS in complex ecosystems by combining a novel bottom-up and top-down interdisciplinary approach: increasing complexity in few-species MSS models and adding structure to random high-dimensional complex networks. The combination of the two, each applying mathematical models and numerical simulations confronted with experiments and whole-ecosystem data, will allow the identification of fingerprints of ecosystem fragility: conditions, common across ecosystems, related to the presence of MSS and potential abrupt transitions. These results will be applied to generate a predictive tool with utility in prioritizing areas for conservation, mapping ecosystem fragility or restoring degraded ecosystems.

Mots clés : community ecology, ecosystem ecology, ecosystem fragility, resilience, stability indicators, complex networks, multiple stable states

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
- Université du Wisconsin (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ARIAH (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

A revolution in art happened in the 15th century: The transition from tempera to oil painting in Italy marked the beginning of the great period of Renaissance art and the creation of some of the most revered masterpieces of all time. Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci, are examples of artists who were shifting away from the use of predominantly egg-based tempera to the use of oil. But how did this transition occur? The simplistic assumption that pigments were solely either mixed with egg or oil-based binding media has been rejected. Artists continued to use egg in parallel or in combination with oil, and prepared paints and binding media of complex chemistry, which is still not understood today. The overarching goal of ARIAH (A Revolution In Art History) is to discover the atomic- and molecular-level chemical composition of mixed media paint layers (oil-protein mixtures) in original Renaissance artefacts and map the distribution of their constituents at the nanoscale, to understand the revolution of painting techniques in Renaissance Italy. The project will tackle this challenge by introducing, for the first time, high-resolution X-ray Raman Scattering (XRS), 2D and 3D XRS chemical speciation imaging, and scanning transmission x-ray microscopy in combination with mass spectrometry of painting samples. We will establish an analytical protocol based on the techniques, which will be released to the scientific community to serve as a benchmark for the molecular and atomic-level understanding of artworks. Atomic and molecular data will contribute to the most ambitious objective of understanding the materiality and the technology of the transition from egg to oil in Renaissance Italy. Results of this interdisciplinary research will be widely disseminated within the art history, chemical science and physical science communities by following an open access policy.

Mots clés : renaissance paintings x ray imaging x ray spectroscopy chemical speciation atomic and molecular level composition heritage science nanoscale characterization oil protein binders

Participants :
- Université de Pise (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 288859.2 €
- Université du Wisconsin (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet MIMOSA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The digitalisation of society is leading to the creation of virtual worlds where people can meet, work, and access services remotely. This calls for fast and reliable wireless connectivity to provide Internet users with a fully immersive experience. While Wi-Fi is ubiquitously being used for indoor connectivity, current networks are unable to fulfil the data rate requirement of emerging applications and the massive service request of the huge number of Wi-Fi terminals, which are growing at a rate of more than 4 billion devices per year. The multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology would theoretically make Wi-Fi able to meet such requirements by concurrently transmitting several data streams via multiple antennas. However, the airtime overhead imposed by the periodic exchange of control data for channel sounding – the procedure that enables MIMO transmissions – does not scale well with an increasing number of antennas. To address this daunting challenge, MIMOSA will lay the technical and scientific foundations of a new method for MIMO channel sounding that will drastically reduce the airtime overhead. MIMOSA will research and develop advanced signal processing and deep learning algorithms to customise the sounding to the specific MIMO deployment and propagation environment, while controlling the computational complexity based on the required communication performance. MIMOSA's sounding will enable the efficient implementation of large-scale MIMO, which allows serving multiple devices simultaneously without impacting the network energy budget. This will help reach the EU's Digital Decade target of providing all households with Gigabit connectivity through sustainable networks by 2030. The research will be conducted at Northeastern University (USA) and the University of Padova (Italy). MIMOSA's sounding will be designed and evaluated via extensive data-collection campaigns with custom testbeds and commercial Wi-Fi devices available at the two institutions.

Mots clés : wi fi, mimo, multiplexing, channel sounding, unlicenced spectrum, spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency

Participants :
- Intel (United States) (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Padoue (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 396991.08 €
- Université Northeastern (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet NONA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Nature conservation is facing major challenges. Biodiversity loss and climate change will alter ecosystems in ways that are difficult to predict. At the same time, advances in computing, genomics and synthetic biology offer new knowledge and tools for conservation biology. Together, these developments challenge traditional nature conservation strategies. This project focuses on engineered gene drives as an example of an emerging biotechnology which could be employed for nature conservation purposes. Engineered gene drives could greatly expand the spatial and temporal reach of genetic modification techniques, and thus provide new possibilities for intentional human influence over wild animals and ecosystems. Academic debate about nature conservation biotechnologies is a nexus where scientific and normative notions about human interactions with their natural environments and other living beings are negotiated. NONA explores how connections between ontological, epistemological and normative ideas are drawn in these debates. The aim is to achieve greater conceptual and argumentative clarity within this highly complex and contentious discussion. NONA will address two objectives: 1) to analyze ideas of nature in areas of molecular biology and ecology, which are relevant for the development and evaluation of gene drives; and 2) to analyze current debates in the environmental humanities about the objects, strategies and aims of nature conservation and to develop a conceptual framework for the normative evaluation of gene drives for conservation purposes. This requires that I gain further competences in the areas of environmental and technology philosophy and the history and philosophy of the life sciences. A further aim of the project is to foster close collaborations with researchers in the natural sciences, conservation practitioners and policy makers. The project has practical implications for international nature conservation and biotechnology governance.

Mots clés : environmental ethics technology ethics nature conservation biotechnology philosophy of the life sciences continental philosophy critical theory

Participants :
- Institute of Philosophy (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 207758.16 €
- Université Northeastern (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet NEUCODES (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Electronic skin (e-skin) is a fast-emerging soft system to provide tactile sensations like our own skin. However, most of the prototypes today focus on the integration of various sensors on flexible substrates, which can hardly be integrated neurologically onto biological systems nor used over a large area as sensing components for robots: this is mainly because of their mismatch in various aspects including mechanical softness, computing/encoding capability, power consumption.  This proposal aims to bring a step-change by developing an e-skin truly rooted in biological systems: the proposed e-Skin will respond to external stimuli (e.g., force) and encode the sensory information in the form of action potentials, just as the biological systems (i.e., sensory neurons) do. This will be achieved by innovative fabrication of neuron circuit arrays over a large area using nanomaterials, and further interfaced with tactile sensors, all on the soft substrate.  Such “bio-like” localised processing, offered by the soft system, greatly decreases the latency of the sensory data, necessary for the upscaling of the sensing pixels to achieve human-level tactile sensation. Furthermore, this paves the way for the interfacing between soft electronics and biology, triggering transformations in the next generation of neurorobotics, neuroprosthesis and interactive systems.

Mots clés : electronic skin, flexible electronics, neuromorphic hardware, tactile sensing, robotics, nanowires, 

Participants :
- Université de Sheffield (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 288859.2 €
- Université Northeastern (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €