Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet EcoNoMy (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What is it like to live like common people in a Kingdom? The archaeology of Greece in the Late Bronze Age is dominated by the glory of the Mycenaean palaces and the rich warrior burials. The role of the non-elites remains at large an enigma, although recent research suggests that their contribution to the economy was much more critical than previously thought. EcoNoMy will apply a novel combination of bulk and single compound carbon and nitrogen amino acid isotope analyses from bone collagen, methionine sulphur isotopes, food and environmental debris from calculus, and proteins adsorbed to pottery, in order to shift the attention from elite burials to non-elite lifeways and construct an alternative narrative of the political economy. With this unrivalled integration of markers of subsistence, EcoNoMy will create a dynamic discussion on regional political ecologies and political economies and overcome the current stall in research, created by previous methodological limitations that offer a unidirectional -palatial- view of society. With a regional focus on Western Greece, where current excavations suggest the presence of a complex system of exchange with the Adriatic and the Balkans, EcoNoMy will be the first: 1. to offer this high-tech combination of methods to reconstruct for the first time the economic character of diverse, non-elite regions 2. to directly compare and contrast dietary evidence between individuals and their pots 3. to establish the applicability of this combined methodology in archaeology but also the relative merit of each method in relation to preservation and site particularities The outcome will place the applicant at the forefront of isotope researchers and ground truth an integrated analysis, which can be applied to all archaeological populations, while proposing an alternative archaeological narration that comprehends the role of non-elites in sociocultural development.

Mots clés : biomolecular archaeology, isotopes  subsistence, bronze age, greece

Participants :
- University of York (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet GRNHairCell (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What is the molecular basis for transcription factor (TF) specificity in different developmental contexts? This question is central to our understanding of development, and key to the development of effective regenerative therapies. My model system is the inner ear hair cell (HC), essential to hearing and balance. Very little is known about the genetic networks regulating HC development. To gain new insights, I developed during my PhD a new transcriptional programming strategy to promote in vitro HC differentiation, starting from pluripotent stem cells. In vivo Atoh1 is the only TF known to be necessary and sufficient for HC differentiation, but in vitro its overexpression induces neuronal rather than HC differentiation., I discovered that Atoh1 expression combined with two other TFs (Pou4f3, Gfi1) resulted in efficient HC generation. This work offers a new paradigm to understand the molecular mechanisms governing TF specificity in an important biomedical context. For example, how do Pou4f3/Gfi1 modulate Atoh1 activity to orchestrate a HC differentiation program? To address this question, I will exploit multiple approaches, such as genome-wide studies (RNA-seq and ChIP-Seq), bioinformatics analysis, in vitro stem cell differentiation systems and in vivo mouse models. The knowledge gained will help us to discover the causes behind the lack of HC regeneration in mammals, will inform therapeutic strategies to protect or replace HCs, and will uncover general principles by which the same TF can direct distinct cell fates.

Mots clés : inner ear hair cells, transcriptional programming, gene regulatory networks, in vitro cell differentiation, transcription factors, atoh1, pou4f3 and gfi1

Participants :
- University of Edinburgh (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet SHARE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What is the relation between empathy, our ability to experience and understand others, and emotional sharing? How do shared emotions and group membership affect or bias empathy? And can groups collectively perform, or be targets of empathy? As the first multi-level approach to the topic, the project SHARE will address this set of questions in relation to one another. It will integrate hitherto unrelated philosophical traditions, research strands and state-of-the-art empirical methods (phenomenology, social ontology, as well as social cognition research and social neuroscience). SHARE aims not only at a better understanding of the role of emotions in interpersonal and intergroup encounters. The project’s distinctively philosophical take will also allow for a systematic re-assessment of empirical data from the social neurosciences, and yield conceptual adjustments that challenge standard literature. Regarding its yet broader socio-cultural impact, the project will contribute to research on group membership induced biases, such as research on racism, intercultural differences in emotional behaviour, or 'emotional dialects', and the 'politics' of affective identity-building. I will significantly profit from the exceptional scientific resources of the host institution, the Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS) at the University of Copenhagen. CFS’s highly interdisciplinary research environment neatly dovetails with the project’s working hypotheses. CFS’s exceptionally wide research network, as well as the unique expertise of its director and my supervisor, Prof. Dan Zahavi, in both cutting-edge research on phenomenology of sociality, social cognition, and empathy, and in large-scale research management, will guarantee a timely implementation of the project, and promote my professional maturity. Thus, a two-year MSCA-fellowship will re-enforce my status as an independent scholar, ready to assume a permanent a position at a European university.

Mots clés : collective emotions, collective intentionality, empathy, phenomenology, social cognition, social ontology

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 200194.8 €
Projet HarmHoney (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When feeding on plants, animals ingest non-nutritive compounds produced by the plant which are converted by the metabolic activity of bacteria present in their gut and act on their physiology. Some of these phytochemicals, the flavonoids, provide health benefits in many species, but little is known about the modulation of their bioactivity by the gut microbiota. Here, we want to understand the importance of the gut microbiota in modulating flavonoids' effects on honey bee health under physiological conditions and after exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides. Honey bees are vital pollinators to our ecosystem and the current decline in their population is alarming. The neonicotinoids have been identified as one of the responsible factors. Using 16S rRNA sequencing and metabolomics approaches, we aim at identifying the combinations of flavonoids and gut symbionts promoting bee health and resistance to neonicotinoids. Bee health will be assessed both under laboratory and field conditions by measuring the survival rates, the activity of the detoxification pathway and the maturation speed because stressed bees have been shown to start foraging younger than healthy bees. The outcome of this project will be of interest for a large range of scientific communities from microbiologists to ecologists, both in fundamental and applied sciences. Promoting health by acting on diet and gut bacteria is a hot topic, as is the decline in bee populations. Dissemination of the results to the general public will be facilitated by the existing enthusiasm for these questions. The applicant will share her knowledge of the honey bee physiology and behavior with the host laboratory and will gain from its expertise in gut microbiota function. She will acquire the skills necessary to apply for junior researcher positions at the end of the fellowship and to focus her career on the importance of the gut microbiota and diet for honey bee health, both at the physiological and behavioural level.

Mots clés : phytochemicals, pesticides

Participants :
- University of Lausanne (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €
Projet CLIM4CROP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When provided in a climate-services context, seasonal climate forecasts can enable a more effective adaptation to climate variability and change, offering an under-exploited opportunity to minimise the agricultural impacts of adverse climate conditions. However, the development of seasonal prediction systems of climate-driven impacts on agriculture is still largely in the early stages, especially on a global scale. CLIM4CROP is designed as a multidisciplinary project aimed at exploring how to best exploit seasonal forecasts for crop management decision making on a global scale. This goal will be achieved through three specific supporting objectives: a) characterising the uncertainties in global datasets of climate observations covering the last three decades and providing data in near-real time; b) understanding the role of climate as underlying mechanisms driving crop yields, and thereby developing statistical models linking climate and yields; c) exploring the seasonal predictability of crop yields with the above-mentioned developed models and implementing a model suite operationally using the data available in near-real time. These objectives will be addressed by making use of the latest advances in climate information, including the most complete and up-to-date sets of seasonal forecast systems. The expected outcomes of this project are an improved understanding of the interaction between climate and crop yields, and new insights allowing more efficient crop management. This could prove useful to policy-makers and commercial entities in their decision-making processes. To this end, the transfer of knowledge to impact users is envisaged.

Mots clés : climate monitoring, crop yields, seasonal forecasts

Participants :
- Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet GRAPES (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Where do Cosmic Rays (CRs) originate? How do CRs interact with the environment during their journey to Earth? GRAPES aims at revealing the origin of galactic CRs, 100 years after their discovery, by achieving the most accurate description of CR propagation in the interstellar medium (ISM). More specifically: 1) What is the mechanism of propagation in the Galaxy? Measurements show fine structures in the observed CR spectra, but we have exceedingly simplified transport models. In view of the challenges that recent observations posed to conventional homogeneous CR diffusion models, we will develop the first self-consistent simulation of interstellar CR propagation, including non-linear processes, anisotropic diffusion and galactic winds. 2) Where do CR become extra-galactic? Understanding propagation at the end of the galactic CR spectrum is compelling towards the identification of galactic sources. We will provide an innovative approach able to describe at once the CR spectrum and anisotropy up to the knee energy attacking the pending theoretical and observational challenges. These questions are profound, challenging and appealing and can be efficiently pursued only through a new advance in the complex numerical modeling of galactic CR transport and by establishing a tight collaboration between communities involved in CR physics. We live in exciting years, since for the first time experimental techniques allow (or are going to allow) forefront questions to be tackled with the necessary sensitivity. The enormous discovery potential is further witnessed by the fact that the two most advanced experimental projects categorized by the European Astroparticle priority roadmap are specifically tailored to map the high-energy gamma (CTA) and neutrino (KM3NeT) sky with unprecedented level of detail. It is then the perfect time for a motivated and internationally experienced researcher (ER) to connect theoretical modeling and observations at a high level of physical complexity.


Participants :
- National Institute for Nuclear Physics (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 180277.2 €
Projet GEISIE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

While gender and ethnic diversity have increased in the workforce, the evidence is much less clear on whether there has been an increase in gender and ethnic integration, i.e., people actually working together across gender and ethnic lines. This project will analyse large databases (1) to assess trends in gender and ethnic integration in science, innovation, and entrepreneurship, (2) to understand the causes and consequences of gender and ethnic integration as well as potential barriers, and (3) to improve the methodology in the study of gender and ethnic integration and to develop indices that could be used to track changes. The project is specifically focused on European data and will consider issues related to differences in the level of integration within as well as between countries. Furthermore, the project will be able to analyze integration at multiple levels including team, organization, city, and field. The project will use large databases including PATSTAT, Microsoft Academic Graph, and government registry data, combined with name-matching algorithms to estimate the gender and ethnicity of the scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The results of the project are highly relevant for scholars studying innovation, entrepreneurship, social inclusion, social structure, and inequality. The results will also be translated into insights for managers to help them understand and possibly integration in their organizations, yielding greater creativity and innovativeness. Furthermore, the results are of interest to policy makers as increasing gender and ethnic integration within Europe would help European competitiveness as well as the cohesion of European societies.

Mots clés : ethnic integration, gender integration, diversity, science, research, innovation, inclusion, social structure

Participants :
- University of Navarra (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet ML4Catalysis (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

While machine learning (ML) methods are already commonly applied in heterogeneous catalysis, the use of such methods for the design of homogeneous catalysts is a largely overlooked field. A recent proof-of-principle study showed the huge potential of ML in homogeneous catalysis by demonstrating that activation barriers in a set of related transition metal (TM) complexes can be learned. ML4Catalysis has three objectives that go far beyond this state of the art: 1) Automation of quantum chemistry (QC) calculations by combining different existing computational tools in a unified framework, with the goal to create powerful high-level computational workflows in a synergistic way. 2) Going beyond the accuracy of density-functional theory (DFT), which is often inaccurate for systems with multireference (MR) character like TM complexes. To this end, we will develop an ML method that is trained to predict the difference between energies at the DFT level and at a more accurate multireference level. 3) A pool of entirely novel catalysts for a given reaction will be generated by using a variational autoencoder (VAE) architecture. A Gaussian Process (GP) model trained to predict key activation barriers on a subset of these complexes will be used to screen the remaining set for the most promising candidates. This approach will be applied to find novel CO2 hydrogenation catalysts, which are important for the creation of fuels and feedstock chemicals from natural resources. With its focus on catalysis and modern QC and ML methods, ML4Catalysis is highly relevant for two of the European Commission’s current priorities: “A European Green Deal” and “A Europe fit for the digital age”. The interdisciplinary project combines knowledge of the researcher on modern MR methods and the electronic structure of TM complexes with the expertise in automation, ML, and homogeneous catalysis at the host institution and will leave the researcher well-prepared for an independent career.


Participants :
- University of Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214158.72 €
Projet ICELANDIC SCRIBES (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

While much work has been carried out on medieval (including Nordic) manuscripts, literary patronage, and reading culture, less attention has been paid to these issues after the Middle Ages. While the introduction of print in the 15th century certainly altered literary production throughout Europe, its influence is now understood as less definitive than was once thought, and in Iceland especially, people continued to copy books by hand until the early 20th century, keeping alive medieval scribal practices long after they had ended elsewhere. By researching the creation of new copies of popular texts and their transmission in 17th-century Iceland, I will discover how the manuscripts associated with one man at the centre of an important scribal network are linked with both the small Icelandic community in which they were produced and the wider networks of literacy and reading cultures throughout early modern Scandinavia. My project will gain insights through study of the manuscripts themselves, their scribes and patron, and also the texts they transmit. As a cross-disciplinary investigation of the society and culture of post-Reformation Iceland, my work will advance our understanding of Icelandic literature and society, and bring new perspectives to the wider fields of socio-cultural history, the history of literacy, and the history of the book. Doing my research at UCPH, which has an unbroken tradition of work on Icelandic texts and manuscripts back to the 18th century, will allow me to gain new skills through training in electronic textual editing, and to produce a digital edition of an early modern Icelandic manuscript in its entirety, making my work widely accessible to diverse audiences, alongside more traditional methods of dissemination. As Danish is a major research language in my field, living and working in Copenhagen, with the daily immersion in Danish language and culture, will also enhance my skillset and advance my career prospects in my field.

Mots clés : iceland, manuscripts, scribes, literacy, early modern, textual editing, codicology, digital editing

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212194.8 €
Projet TRANSFORMERS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

While we continue to develop alternative and renewable power sources, the capture and sequestration of CO2 from flue gas in fossil fuel power plants and other industrial processes is one viable solution to decrease our CO2 emissions. CO2 can be removed from flue gas by chemical looping, where a material chemically reacts with CO2 and is treated at a later stage to release pure CO2 and regenerate the starting material. Limestone, CaCO3, is the oldest material to be used for this purpose. However, although limestone is abundant and cheap, the CO2 absorption capacity rapidly decays with use because of undesirable changes to the microstructure. The proposed work will prepare and investigate novel ternary metal oxide ceramics designed to be mechanically stable after repeated thermal and CO2 cycling. In particular, the proposed work will determine whether similarities in the crystal structures of materials (the atomic scale) before and after a transition will lead to robust microstructures (the micro scale) that will retain functionality – in this case, high porosity and CO2 sorption capacity. The complex crystal structures, rich phase space, and strong bonding networks available in ternary phases to be studied will lead to materials that are less prone to degradation. This evolution will be studied at the atomic level using in situ spectroscopic techniques, and the microstructure evolution will be studied using novel in situ X-ray tomography methods, which allow the 3D visualization of the microstructure in real time as the chemical transformations take place. These new approaches to material design will be immediately relevant to many other scientific fields where chemical transformations and mechanical stability are important, such as battery electrodes, solid oxide fuel cells, solid ion conductors, and catalyst supports, all of which suffer from performance loss over time due to microstructure changes.


Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €