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

The co-evolution between hosts and their parasites is one of the most fascinating examples of evolutionary adaptation. However, there is a paucity of information on how the human immune system co-adapts to the parasites phenotypic plasticity, and how it dynamically rearranges its molecular phenotypes aiming to counteract the pathogenic threats. Hence, many therapies for the treatment of intracellular bacteria-related infection (e.g., tuberculosis) are currently obsolete, especially because of the rise in drug resistance. In this framework, the main goal of my proposal is to decipher the unexplored phenotype ‘bar-codes’ of host-pathogen interaction, in order to reversely engineer a drug delivery platform aiming to target infected cells only, and to eradicate intracellular parasites. The final aim will be that of eradicating the severe intracellular pathogens Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), as it is the major cause of mortality related to bacterial infection worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation, in fact, approximately one-third of the world’s population is asymptomatically affected by TB, with about 9 million new cases of per year (of which 11% are children under 15 years), and 1.4 million of deaths. Despite decades of control programs, TB is still second only to HIV as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent (the average killing rate of TB is 3 people per minute). This project will thus explore the molecular bases of Mtb-host interaction. These investigations will be used to engineer 'super-selective' polymeric nanoparticles targeting infected cells only (thus avoiding side effects), and to eradicate intracellular parasite. This will be done while adopting strategies that counteract the development drug resistance. Hence, this project will avoid falling in what has been called as the potential new ‘Dark Middle Age” era of lack of antibiotics.

Mots clés : tissue engineering, 3d cell cultures, tuberculosis granuloma, phage display, infection bar codes, host pathogens interactions

Participants :
- Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet lidBathy (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The coastal science community currently lacks insights into the rapid morphological evolution of sandy beaches during extreme events. Sediment exchanges occurring between the subaerial and subaqueous regions of the beach are poorly understood, which is explained by the difficulty in measuring the seabed elevation under broken waves with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolution. The lack of datasets which capture beaches morphological evolution limits the development of accurate numerical models for the morphological evolution of beaches and hence our capacity to predict their long-term evolution. To overcome these challenges, this project will develop lidBathy, a bathymetric inversion tool which uses high-resolution 2D lidar scans of surf zone waves. Lidar scanners have the unique capacity to directly measure both the intertidal beach topography and the sea surface elevation at high spatial (O(cm)) and temporal (O(s)) resolution. Long-range lidar and bathymetric data collected at Narrabeen (Australia) and the Field Research Facility (Duck, N.C.) will be used to validate lidBathy. Lidar data collected at these two sites during past storms will be used to create an unprecedented dataset of beach morphological evolution, in both the subaerial and subaqueous regions, during extreme events. This project will characterize sediment exchanges occurring between the swash and the surf zones by studying the role of surf zone wave properties, water levels, swash statistics and time-varying beach slope. This will provide the first study into the response of the beach system to extreme events at high spatial and temporal resolution at the two most heavily monitored sites worldwide.

Mots clés : surf zone, non linear wave dynamics, beach morphological response to storms, coastal extreme events, depth inversion

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 220958.88 €
- UNSW Sydney (Australie) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet CHAMPAGNE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The coherent extreme ultra violet (EUV) pulses produced via high harmonic generation (HHG) in gases are now the main workhorse for various applications of atomic physics and physical chemistry. As the generation efficiency is very low, the number of applications is limited by the low EUV photon flux. The main ambition of this project is to perform a coherent parametric amplification of the EUV pulses in order to significantly increase the EUV photon flux. Such an achievement would be an enabling technology causing a breakthrough in the field of atomic physics, physical chemistry, biology, material science and probably other fields as well. Applications suffering from poor signal/noise ratio will become widespread as they will not be limited anymore to research labs where the EUV sources are optimized daily. Moreover, higher photon flux opens completely new physics, as the EUV nonlinear optics becomes widely accessible and two-EUV-photon absorption turns out to be routine. Very recently a theoretical study was published on high order parametric generation based on the same number of infrared photons absorbed as in “standard” HHG. However, in contrast to HHG, 3 photons are emitted. We have already obtained preliminary data that suggest the presence of EUV photons of slightly lower energies than those originating from HHG. The photon energy difference corresponds to two photons from THz part of the spectrum and is in agreement with the theory. In the project, we identify our major objectives as work packages: WP1: Detection and optimization of the parametric EUV signature in HHG EUV spatially-resolved spectra. WP2: Study on detection of the THz field originating in HHG. WP3: Injection of externally generated THz beam to boost the high parametric process leading to amplification of EUV.

Mots clés : high harmonic generation, high order parametric amplification of euv

Participants :
- Czech Academy of Sciences (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 154720.8 €
Projet SUPER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The collective body of the Pharmaceutical industry and the Green Chemistry Institute of American Chemical Society defined radical chemistry without tin as one of the “key green chemistry research areas” in our time. While the toxicity of tin reagents is a clear disadvantage, the unique reactivity and selectivity they offer does not have any analogy in polar reactions. Photoredox catalysis is currently emerging as an environmentally benign entry to radical chemistry, and as a research area that offers many opportunities for the discovery of novel reactivity. Hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) is a particularly important concept within radical chemistry, a concept in part been explored with photoredox catalysis. Generation of HAT active radicals by means of photoredox catalysis have typically been performed via oxidation of suitable precursors. However, for many applications, this well-established approach experiences a general poor substrate scoop and is not compatible with further development. An alternative approach, initiated by reduction of suitable precursors is underdeveloped. This project aims to address this gap in the synthetic methodology by developing suitable photoredox auxiliaries able to mediate HAT initiated radical cascades. This strategy will provide easy access to N-centered radicals from simple starting materials, which in turn provides a unique opportunity to study and map the reactivity of N-centered radicals. This research action will ultimately give an unprecedented access to pharmaceutically relevant pyrolidines and broad classes of pyrrolizine and indolizidine scaffolds.

Mots clés : photoredox catalysis, hydrogen atom transfer, heterocycles

Participants :
- University of Gothenburg (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 185857.2 €
Projet Amicrex (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The combination of biomass valorisation, process intensification and green technology is an attractive research challenge for the European Community being in line with the “Resource-efficient Europe” flagship initiatives by optimizing the use of material, energy resources and gaining valuable products with lower impact on our environment and health. The AMICREX project accepts this challenge and aims to develop an integrated process design for future industrial implementation, where by-products from agro industrial processes (e.g. carrot peels) can be valorised by recovering high- value nonpolar components (e.g. carotenoids, well recognized natural pigments and widely used in the food and cosmetic industries) through a microwave intensified microemulsion extraction process. The AMICREX concept can be extended to address the challenges proposed by extraction of nonpolar metabolites, especially carotenoids, from other renewable biomass sources (e.g. Microalgae). The key aspects of the proposed technology are 1) avoid the use of hazardous organic solvents in nonpolar compounds’ extraction by using microemulsion as extraction media, and 2) improve extraction kinetics by microwave cell disruption method in order to liberate intracellular compounds and make them available for the subsequent extraction process. The research will first focus on the evaluation on the laboratory scale microwave cell disruption and subsequent microemulsion extraction processes of the characterized biomass. Based on the so obtained process and system specifications the small scale process is aimed to be turned into an industrial design concept through process modeling and simulation. The satisfactory implementation of the project will be achieved by filling the gap between multidisciplinary fields of natural sciences and engineering. Moreover, the interdisciplinary scenario between biomass cell disruption, extraction process and microemulsion technology will be established.

Mots clés : microemulsion extraction, carotenoid, process development, microalgae, carrot peel

Participants :
- Fraunhofer Society (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 171460.8 €
Projet SEMSUBSET (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The combination of phrase-structure syntax and model-theoretic semantics have led to a powerful, general model of language. However, previous research has not sufficiently explained how syntactic structure and structural differences across languages relate to mathematical operations on meaning: some constraints observed in the language implementation of these operations are a consequence of the language form, while others can come from human reasoning processes, beyond language. This project investigates this domain from the perspective of partitives and the formal subset relation. Nominal partitives as 'two of the beans' explicitly express the subset relation in English. Other Romance and Germanic languages have similar, but not identical forms: e.g. in German genitive case can be used. Pseudo-partitives like 'two cups of beans' share many of the lexical items of partitives, so if structure and meaning are projected from lexical items, both need to be considered in parallel. Partitives are interestingly more constrained than the subset relation. For example, they express only proper partitivity: 'Two of her parents' is odd. We explore the boundaries between linguistic competence and other cognitive systems, with one leading question: what is the source of these constraints? We adopt the methodology of syntax and semantics, with an experimental component. The issue is addressed pursuing three goals: i) on the basis of syntactic cross-linguistic variation, we build a syntax/semantics for partitives; ii) we establish which constraints come about from the format and from standard interpretation rules; iii) we specify pragmatic or other general cognitive limitations in the processing of the subset operation. The project contributes to integrate syntax and semantics with the cognitive sciences. Furthermore, it requires the acquisition of new skills by the researcher in formal and experimental semantics and pragmatics, fields of excellence of the host institution.

Mots clés : partitives, pseudo partitives, quantitatives, subset, quantification, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics

Participants :
- Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 159460.8 €
Projet LEAD (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Cofund Postdoctoral programme
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The competences for performing top-level research and research leadership is growing in complexity. There is a demand for creative, interdisciplinary and innovative researchers, led by open, inclusive and collaborative research leaders. This requires a new and dedicated approach for strategic career development, especially in the transition from research talent to research leader. The ‘postdoc to research LEADer programme’ will address the individual needs of 16 talented researchers, holding a PhD degree followed by 2-5 years of research experience. Our VISION is to empower the fellows to become the next generation of creative, critical, open, collaborative, responsible and inclusive research leaders, in or outside academia. The Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC), University of Copenhagen is a centre of excellence in biomedical research, aiming to offer outstanding research training. BRIC will together with several partner organisations TRAIN, NURTURE and CHALLENGE the fellows to develop an individual researcher and research leader profile. LEAD will offer the fellows attractive employment conditions and 3-year contracts with BRIC. The recruitment will be based on transparent, merit-based selection, involving external experts from academia and industry, ensuring selection of diverse talent. Our AIMS are to 1) Ensure transparent merit-based selection, 2) ensure a supportive framework for conducting transformative, interdisciplinary biomedical research, 3) support development of excellent research leadership competences and transferable skills and 4) support the researcher’s strategic career development according to individual goals. LEAD will equip the fellows with excellent research abilities, strong leadership competences and a broad transferable skills-set, which will broadly increase their employability. Our ambition is that the fellows after completion are enabled and inspired to apply for their first research leader position in or outside academia.

Mots clés : biomedicine, research leadership, pharmaceutical industry, biotech, empowerment

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 1765440.0 €
Projet NEXUS-DRR (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The complex interactions of the food-water-energy nexus have become prominent in academic and policy discourse addressing issues of resource security, equitable access, and resource interdependencies. The nexus has gained particular importance in terms of vulnerability to natural hazards since these can negatively affect the long-term availability of resources and pose a major risk to resource security. Building long-term resilience to resource insecurity requires interconnected solutions that also take account of particularly vulnerable groups such as youth. NEXUS-DRR offers a novel and interconnected approach by linking nexus thinking with disaster risk reduction. This MSCGF investigates threats to the food-water-energy nexus from the perspective of local knowledge and social practices of Brazilian youth in marginalized communities that are affected by environmental hazards such as floods and landslides. Using participatory research methods such as citizen science, it explores young people’s everyday lived experiences and practices related to the nexus. It investigates their understanding of the nexus, their access to and their use of resources as well as their knowledge of the causes of nexus threats and future scenarios. Moreover, it explores the social practices that young people have adopted to reduce their vulnerability in terms of resource insecurity, and investigates how youth knowledge and their social practices can be valued for the development of public policies. Through joint supervision, mentoring, career and interdisciplinary skills development at the beneficiary, the University of Birmingham (UK), and the host university, the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), this MSCGF significantly strengthens the Fellow’s profile and career opportunities as an internationally recognised researcher of excellence in applied nexus, resilience, and environmental youth research.

Mots clés : food water energy nexus, disaster risk reduction, resilience, youth agency, social practices

Participants :
- University of Birmingham (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 270327.36 €
- Methodist University of São Paulo (Brésil) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet eGALISM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The complex interplay between the interstellar medium (ISM) and the stars that it gives birth to is central to studies of galaxy evolution. The properties of the ISM, and especially its capacity to cool, determine when and where star formation occurs. Those properties are well-known in the Milky Way but not in external galaxies. Only recently has the extragalactic community dedicated effort to obtain very rich archives of the ISM tracers (dust, CO and now [CII]) from both space and ground based observatories, but we currently lack a detailed multi-wavelength and multiphase modeling that can exploit the data in a self-consistent way. The goal of this proposal is to characterize the ISM properties, physical conditions and structure, in nearby spiral and dwarf galaxies. For this, I will exploit the spectral and spatial information of those state-of-the-art observations, in particular from the Herschel, Spitzer and SOFIA telescopes, and build multiphase radiative transfer models to interpret the data and disentangle the main ISM phases present in those galaxies. I will analyze the effects of physical scales and of environment such as metallicity, SFR, AGN activity on the derived ISM properties in order to calibrate [CII] and CO as precise diagnostics of star formation. One of the main objectives is to better understand the physics and origin of the emission of [CII] in galaxies, as it is becoming a workhorse diagnostic in galaxies of the distant universe. This innovative project will be carried out at CEA (France) where it will be integrated in the existing expertise on the dust, Local Group and distant galaxies, and numerical simulations. This complementarity is essential to achieve the ambitious goals of this project and provides a unique opportunity for knowledge growth.

Mots clés : galaxies, star formation, interstellar medium, ir mm observations, radiative transfer

Participants :
- Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173076.0 €
Projet NANOBreg (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The complexity of autoimmune responses is a barrier to the design of strategies that can selectively purge the immune system of autoreactivity without impairing systemic immunity. Recently, Santamaria et al. have shown that nanoparticles (NPs) coated with type 1 diabetes (T1D)-relevant peptide–MHC (pMHC) complexes can restore normoglycemia in diabetic animals by blunting the diabetogenic autoimmune response without impairing systemic immunity. pMHC class II-NP therapy functions by expanding, in an epitope-specific manner, autoantigen-experienced T-regulatory-1 (TR1) CD4+ T-cells that inhibit the recruitment of other autoantigenic specificities by: (1) suppressing autoantigen-loaded antigen-presenting cells in the pancreatic lymph nodes (PLNs); and (2) promoting the differentiation of B-cells into B-regulatory cells. Importantly, they have shown that human T1D-relevant pMHC class II-NPs also promote human TR1 CD4+ T-cell formation in NSG mice engrafted with peripheral blood mononuclear cells from recent onset T1D patients. Here, I propose a multidisciplinary approach to test the following hypotheses: (1) Breg formation is driven by a cognate interaction between TR1 cells and autoreactive B-cells; (2) TR1-derived cytokines play critical roles in TR1-driven Breg conversion in vivo; and (3) the B-cells that are recruited to the PLNs of pMHC-NP-treated humanized NSG mice are enriched for Breg cells. Furthermore, I will work with the enterprise SEPMAG, to design a scalable magnetic separation device for future clinical development of these compounds. Collectively, NANOBreg will provide new insights into the biology of the TR1-Breg regulatory pathway and will enhance our knowledge on the mechanisms of action of this novel therapeutic approach. In addition, it will address a manufacturing bottleneck by bridging academic research with the manufacturing industry while enhancing my career development in an area of huge potential growth and translational significance.

Mots clés : autoimmunity, type 1 diabetes, nanomedicine, nanoparticles, peptide major histocompatibility complexes, regulatory t cells, regulatory b cells, transgenic mice, lineage tracing

Participants :
- Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 158121.6 €