Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet OPTOCODE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Hearing loss affects millions of people worldwide. In cases of pronounced cochlear dysfunction, an electrical cochlear implant (eCI) can partially restore hearing sensation by electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. Until now, the eCI is the most successful and broadly used neuroprosthesis, with more than 1 million users worldwide (WHO, 2021). However, eCI hearing is far from normal: eCI users can typically not comprehend speech in noisy environments, because the electrical signal spreads widely and excites a large number of neurons of the auditory nerve, which limits the number of separate perceptual channels.  Using optogenetics, it is possible to stimulate the auditory nerve using an optical cochlear implant (oCI). As light spread can be better confined in space, oCIs offer lower spread of excitation and, hence, greater frequency selectivity. This way, future clinical oCIs promise more perceptual channels, allowing for more pitch appreciation and better understanding of speech in noise. However, there are many challenges in the development of the oCI en route to clinical application. Importantly, we are currently missing a holistic assessment tool for preclinical efficacy which could serve oCI optimization. I will develop a set of methodological and computational tools to assess the oCI performance in vivo, in the Mongolian gerbil. First, I will use the brainstem responses to map the frequency activation of separate optical channels. Second, I will develop predictive models that derive the optogenetically and acoustically evoked responses of the midbrain, applying machine learning techniques. Third, I will use the above-mentioned tools to identify the optimal coding strategy for the oCI. This project will accelerate the development of the oCI, and provide benchmarking standards for the clinical trials of optical neural implants.

Mots clés : auditory system, hearing restoration, optical cochlear implant, electrophysiology, gerbil, inferior colliculus, binaural interaction component, optogenetics, predictive modelling, machine learning

Participants :
- University Medical Center Göttingen (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet PIPContactSite (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Plasma membrane (PM) Intrinsic Proteins (PIPs) are aquaporins that facilitate the diffusion of water through cell membranes. By regulating PIP activity, plant cells adjust water permeability rapidly and reversibly. PIP PM lateral diffusion is affected by the cell wall and actin. Also, PM-located PIPs interact with VAP27s at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–PM contact sites (EPCS). Evidence suggests that PIPs get organized in interaction with other cellular structures. However, the functional relevance of these interactions has not been extensively studied. The PIPContactSites project's main goal is to understand whether ZmPIP2s mediate PM interaction with other cellular structures (ER, cytoskeleton) and elucidate the physiological relevance of the contact sites under salt stress conditions. Our hypothesis is that PIP2 interactions on EPCS and with the cytoskeleton facilitate an efficient response to stimuli by participating in the structural organization of the cell. Our strategy integrates cutting-edge technologies for genome edition (CRISPR/Cas9) and real-time monitoring of interactions (split Fluorescence-Activating and absorption Shifting Tag) with advanced microscopy technologies (i.e., confocal super-resolution and Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy). The originality of this project is to consider PIPs as multifunctional proteins: channels and scaffold proteins. The MSCA fellowship, the great intellectual environment, the infrastructure and the administrative support at the LIBST-UCLouvain, the research and project managing experience of Prof. Chaumont, and my background in molecular biology will synergistically promote the success of the project. The host group will benefit from hosting an independent, creative, and highly skilled scientist. And I will gain experience and networking opportunities to shape my long-term objective of becoming a group leader.

Mots clés : endoplasmic reticulum plasma membrane contact sites, cytoskeleton, aquaporin, plant cell

Participants :
- Université catholique de Louvain (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 200600.92 €
Projet WRAPS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The polar oceans are hotspots for carbon cycling and burial. The coastal phytoplankton populations bloom provided by the iron, the main nutrient in polar waters, surging from the subglacial water systems. Retreating glaciers cause uncertainty to the future of the iron flux flowing into the oceans and, therefore, it is unclear how the warming climate impacts the carbon cycle in polar areas. However, methods for on-site in-situ monitoring that could gain sufficient temporally and spatially resolved information on the iron behaviour in glacial hydrological systems are either unsatisfactory or cumbersome.  The ambitious aim is to develop an optical measurement technique to monitor and quantify dissolved iron in glacial meltwaters. The objectives are to (i) introduce Shifted Excitation Raman Spectroscopy into on-chip waveguide Raman sensing to develop a portable but sensitive measurement device, and (ii) create an identification and calibration model that can quantify dissolved iron in glacial waters. The expected result is to establish an optical method that enable fast reagent free online monitoring of dissolved iron in glacial meltwaters that can be, in future work, made into a compact on-chip format.  Realization of the in-situ capable Raman sensors will enable collection of extensive data sets of meltwaters in the thawing polar regions. The data will help to quantify their impact on the polar carbon cycle and constrain climate models. The developed Raman sensor can be further applied on various environmental sensing needs, such a monitoring of agronutrient runoff to water systems. From my personal perspective, the obtained research experience and skills will help me to establish a career path on the field of environmental sensing that I am passionate about. The fellowship will give an opportunity to expand my environmental research network to span over the Nordic region and drive border-crossing experimental research of the carbon cycle and the climate change.

Mots clés : waveguide, raman, spectroscopy

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet CODE-V (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Capacity, Opportunity and Desire in Heritage Language Variation (CODE-V) offers a novel approach, never used in this capacity in this context before, to examine a significantly understudied natural laboratory population of heritage language bilingualism (HLB). Moving above and beyond the current state-of-the-art in HLB studies, CODE-V works with high-performing heritage language speakers (HHSs) and aims to understand the relationship between their heritage language (HL) competence and nature of their HL experience through the lens of their community center engagement patterns. Through its novel adaptation of sociocultural/educational framework, CODE-V examines this severely understudied HLB context, decoding in a systematic way: (i) formal and informal Capacity (C) development activities, social/cultural Opportunity (O) creation efforts, and individual/parental Desires (D); (ii) what underlying linguistic competence HHSs possess and (iii) how such linguistic competence develops and changes over time and across generations in relation to the relative weighting of linguistic and environmental factors (i.e., community center engagement) that predict their HHS status. CODE-V maintains that studying one extreme end of the HL outcome continuum will be a unique position to offer novel evidence addressing the variation in HL outcomes that has posed challenges to our understanding of native language acquisition and the role of input. CODE-V’s findings, both formal/theoretical, methodological and societal/sociolinguistic, will make significant contributions to a more complete picture of bilingualism, heritage language bilingualism more specifically, and its societal dynamics, for theory building as well as addressing HSs’ societal and educational needs.

Mots clés : bilingualism, heritage language speakers, predictive processing, sociolinguistics, input quality and quantity, community cultural centers, heritage language education

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet FORMALITAS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In this UCLouvain-based project, Claus A. Andersen will demonstrate the philosophical and historical importance of the “Formalist tradition” in Renaissance philosophy (esp. in the time span ca. 1480–1620). The concepts of identity and distinction are the key components in the “Formalist treatises” that enjoyed vast diffusion during the Renaissance, had roots in Late Medieval scholasticism, esp. in the works of the Franciscan Duns Scotus, and played a significant role in textbooks of scholastic philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Formalists discussed whether their doctrines constituted a discipline of its own, a “science of the formalities” that would correspond to what to-day goes by the name of “formal ontology”. The rise of a new metaphysical discipline needs to be part of what we know about the intellectual culture of the Renaissance. The Formalist tradition has mainly been studied through its strains of influence upon other scholastic currents of the Renaissance, but has not itself attracted the attention it merits. This project is innovative in its identification and elimination of this gap in our knowledge and in its focus on scholastic metaphysics during the Renaissance. The project will be supervised by Prof. Jacob Schmutz (UCLouvain); it is conceived as a part of an endeavor to establish an internationally attractive milieu for studies in Early Modern scholastic philosophy at UCLouvain and thus opens rich opportunities for future cooperation. The applicant and the supervisor share a deep interest in the intellectual culture in Early Modern religious orders and will together curate an exhibition in the Maurits Sabbe Library in Leuven that documents the intellectual culture of the Franciscans in Early Modern Leuven on the background of the wider Franciscan scholastic tradition. The project further includes a practical training programme, research articles, an online catalogue of Formalist literature, and a conference with a proceedings publication.

Mots clés : formal distinction, scotism, scotist tradition, scholastic philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, renaissance studies, 15th and 16th centuries, john duns scotus, franciscans, incunabula

Participants :
- Université catholique de Louvain (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191760.0 €
Projet REMFORCE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

In response to the escalating climate crisis, environmental activists are increasingly resorting to radical methods to pressure states into fulfilling their international climate commitments. This marks another chapter in the long history of transnational radical environmentalism. For over half a century, profound dissatisfaction with the consistent failure of states to uphold their international environmental responsibilities has driven some transnational environmental organizations to employ radical tactics in their pursuit of conservation goals. Consequently, these organizations assert that they have successfully halted underground nuclear testing, secured global whale protection, and conserved ecosystems, prompted state revisions of climate policies, and achieved numerous other environmental objectives.  While social science and legal scholarship have explored radical environmentalism from various perspectives, the scholarly debate mostly frames it as a social force grappling with the state's ongoing inability to fulfill its environmental promises. This project departs from this state-centric view of radical environmentalism. Utilizing the methods of social science and legal research, along with the theoretical framework of legal pluralism, REMFORCE seeks to uncover whether radical environmentalism of transnational environmental organizations has developed into a normative system of environmental enforcement parallel to the state-centric one. At the time of severe environmental challenges and the unprecedented disruption of the international legal order, REMFORCE aims to reconceptualize our understanding of the radical environmental movement as an auxiliary system of enforcement and provide deeper empirical insight into the role of radical non-state actors in the enforcement of international environmental law.

Mots clés : radical environmentalism, transnational environmental organizations, environmental enforcement, enforcement of international law, normative orders, non state actors, legal pluralism

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet CP20 (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The early twentieth century saw a major shift towards an interest in representing the experiences of the poor within British culture. This project develops an account of how this trend might be defined in relation to earlier nineteenth-century patterns, developing and scrutinising the hypothesis (founded upon Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism) that heightened levels of attentiveness masked a continued commitment to productivist values, deemed by Kohei Saito, Jason Hickel, and others to be socially and environmentally harmful. Using a mixed methods approach, combining computational criticism, archival research, and theoretical analysis, this project explores evolutions in early twentieth-century representations of poverty in Britain within the domains of literature and sociology. In the first instance, a digital corpus of representations of poverty is built and analysed to quantitatively analyse this trend. In the second, archival case studies of four authors (Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronislaw Malinowski, Charles Booth, and Storm Jameson) enable a more nuanced appraisal of these findings through close reading of neglected texts. In the third, a theory is developed concerning the relationship between poverty representation and productivism in the early twentieth century, indicating that popular literature and sociology played a key but under-acknowledged role in enabling the advancement of productivist ideology. Through an extensive range of dissemination, exploitation, and communication activities - including workshops, video content, and interaction with campaign groups - an effort is made to ensure that these findings broaden the scope of current inquiries into productivism and its associated harms.

Mots clés : english literature literary history interwar years productivism degrowth history of sociology social exploration critical theory michel foucault, storm jameson elizabeth gaskell

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet NABOR (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Understanding how morphologies from different languages co-exist in the bilingual brain is a central testing ground for theories of language in the brain. NABOR investigates the differences in interpretation and processing of native vs. borrowed morphologies in the context of language contact among bilingual speakers of Senhaja Amazigh (Berber) and Arabic in Morocco. Strikingly, Senhaja has borrowed a whole morphological word class, Arabic participles, used among other to express TAM (Tense, Aspect, Modality). We call them “Trojan Horse participles” as they are borrowed with lexical content (roots) and agreement inflection (morphology). To describe situations akin to this, Gardani 2021 uses the term co-morphologies. Here, two morphologies are used in parallel: one with native, and one with foreign lexicon. NABOR investigates whether co-morphologies are psycholinguistically different (in processing) from morphological borrowing, where foreign morphology spreads to the native lexicon. To what extent are identical chunks of grammar shared by two languages processed as belonging to one grammar? We will tackle this question on the basis of Senhaja TAM constructions employing participles. Such participles present an important testcase for understanding how bilingual grammar is organized. It is rare that linguists can study co-morphologies in the field. Various tests will be run to investigate the processing of co-morphologies. We will perform semantic analysis on narrative production, and psycholinguistic experiments on the processing of morphological agreement. This will provide a window into questions of grammar representation. Previous research on bilingual processing has focused on codeswitching, while the psycholinguistic status of co-morphologies has not been studied. The research questions are new, and fill a gap in our understanding of bilingual cognitive realities, while also expanding our understanding of underdocumented morphological systems.

Mots clés : bilingualism, language contact, contact linguistics, borrowing, tam, language change, morphology

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 267418.56 €
Projet VacLAS-Chip (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Microbiological research is concerned with studies of microbial gas consumption and production, which is tightly linked to natural greenhouse gas emissions, but also sinks. Currently, such studies require large and expensive instrumentation like gas chromatography systems, which also sacrifice the sample during each measurement. This affects the conditions of the sample, and yields unsatisfactory temporal resolution due to the need for sample handling. In this project, I propose to leverage the latest advances in MEMS and nanophotonics to develop the first chip platform integrating optical waveguides with micropumps, which will facilitate tuneable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) under vacuum and in closed valume without sacrificing the sample gas. With the addition of lasers and light detectors, it will enable inexpensive, low weight, portable devices for real-time, in situ trace gas detection. Such device will not only impact microbiological research, but also sensor networks much needed e.g., in cities for controlling the air quality.

Mots clés : micro electro mechanical systems, gas microfluidics, laser absorption spectroscopy, tdlas, gas spectroscopy, low pressure gas spectroscopy, mems pumps, micropumps, microfluidics, nanophotonics

Participants :
- Université Stanford (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 284179.68 €
Projet TomRis (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The project TomRis (Cross-linguistic influence in Third language acquisitiOn: Sentence processing and coMprehension by child heRItage bilingualS) advances our knowledge about the functioning of a child's multilingual brain and uncovers how a multilingual heritage speaker processes and comprehends a third language in real-time. TomRis is the first study to investigate how typological primacy and structural proximity between the involved languages affect cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the processing and comprehension of a third language during reading sentences. The question is whether the (mis)matched properties in morpho-syntactic structures in the prior languages, which are typologically close (Norwegian/ Dutch) to or distant (Turkish) from English, facilitate the processing of L3 English sentences or not. TomRis offers a groundbreaking approach to capturing the traces of L1 and L2 in processing L3 English by focusing on the same heritage language (Turkish) in two different linguistic contexts (Norway/ the Netherlands). Also, it keeps the task constant in obtaining offline (grammaticality judgement) and online (eye-tracking) processing data during reading. A further novelty in TomRis is the focus on two distinct development stages of language learning to compare the degree and source of CLI in L3 English processing and comprehension at different stages of acquisition. Also, I will match the participants not only based on their proficiency in the L3 (thus isolating potential effects of CLI from previously acquired languages) but also based on their language proficiency in the background languages. Gaining a deep understanding of the factors that facilitate or interfere with CLI in multilingual children is a good investment for the further development of the field. The results will be crucial for all who have to deal with the challenges of multilingual children's language learning such as language educators, policymakers, language therapists, and parents.

Mots clés : multilingualism, heritage language, cross linguistic influences, online processing, comprehension, turkish, norwegian, dutch, english, morpho syntax

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €