Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet MEMOF (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Electrolyte-gated redox transistors are an emerging type of device that has been gaining traction in neuromorphic computing research. Mostly based on organic polymeric mixed conductors, thin-film redox transistors exploit the soft nature of polymers to swell and accommodate gating electrolyte (ions) that modulates electrical current in the transistor channel. Although key to redox transistor operation, ion uptake is associated with extensive swelling, causing structural changes in the polymeric thin film that are detrimental to thin-film electrical properties limiting device lifetime and reproducibility. Conductive metal-organic frameworks (CMOFs) have been gaining more and more interest as smart functional materials. CMOFs are highly crystalline porous materials, comprising metal-organic ligand pairs that determine their structural, electrical, as well as other functional properties. These find application in electrocatalysis, battery and supercapacitor technologies. CMOFs intrinsic porosity offers well-defined ionic pathways that should allow ion uptake without structurally affecting the hole/electron-conducting properties of the thin film. Moreover, CMOFs have larger charge storage capacity than their polymer counterparts, promising a higher number of memory states per device which will result in an exponential increase of computational power. MEMOF aims at building Memristive dEvices based on conductive Metal Organic Frameworks that can surclass state-of-the-art polymer-based redox transistors in terms of device stability and performance. The major challenge of the project lies in synthesizing low-defect CMOF thin films through directed epitaxial growth on functionalized surfaces. Thanks to my expertise in the characterization of mixed conductors and transistor fabrication, and the training in MOF chemistry and crystal engineering, provided by Prof. Martí-Rujas, I aim to obtain robust redox transistors for neuromorphic computing.

Mots clés : conductive metal organic frameworks redox transistors memristive device

Participants :
- École polytechnique de Milan (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 188590.08 €
Projet SACforCO2 (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The increase in global energy consumption has been relentless as a consequence of population growth, higher living standards, and industrial expansion. This has caused, in turn, acute problems with the release of vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment, which is linked to ocean acidification, global warming and extreme weather conditions. Finding new routes to strategically capture, mitigate, and utilize CO2 is thus a priority.  The catalytic conversion of CO2 to chemicals is a promising pathway for transforming this “waste” into a precious platform molecule, but the approach is still in its infancy. The SACforCO2 project will decisively contribute towards this effort by designing a novel class of single-atom catalysts (SACs) for a new purpose: the conversion of CO2 to make higher alcohols. To this end, SACforCO2 will adopt an interdisciplinary approach which combines organoligand-based synthesis, advanced characterization, and a close synergy between experimental and theoretical research to gain a deep understanding of the N-based surface functionalization that guides single atom anchoring. By integrating SACs into 3D printed membranes, the project will also set up the technology for a cost-effective conversion of CO2 to chemicals. This will provide fresh perspectives in catalyst design and build bridges between fundamental efforts on materials and device engineering, achieving breakthrough performance under realistic conditions.  Furthermore, this action will establish an intra-European interdisciplinary network between emerging researchers in academia and industry, at POLIMI (Italy) and VITO (Belgium), and will allow an Experienced Researcher to consolidate a diverse set of scientific and soft skills, gaining cutting-edge research competences, new credentials in teaching and supervision, and the possibility for collaborations with a broad EU network. This will ultimately strengthen career prospects toward a scientific independence.

Mots clés : flow chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, single atom catalysis, green chemistry, co2 reduction, technical chemistry, chemical engineering, applied chemistry

Participants :
- Flemish Institute for Technological Research (Belgique) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- École polytechnique de Milan (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 188590.08 €
Projet UN-BIASED (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The UN-BIASED project aims at developing an innovative Scientific Modelling paradigm capable of mitigating potential cognitive biases affecting the modelling process in engineering applications. Nowadays, modelling is mostly a subjective process, strongly driven by the prejudice of the Modeller and anchored to the knowledge of well-determined pre-set physics. In practical applications, this often results into models affected by epistemic uncertainty. Data-driven techniques open the path for the construction of computerized models that are able to learn the physics underlying a complex system from the available data alone, requiring little, if not at all, subjectivity. Interestingly, these tools are generally used to obtain mere predictions and no credit is usually given to the possibility of translating the learned patterns and relations into interpretable theories and hypotheses. I propose to assess the physics learned by data-driven algorithms in terms of compliance with fundamental principles e.g., laws of thermodynamics, and to test them against a priori subjective hypotheses. This will expose differences between the actual experiment and the Modeller’s understanding of it. This allows for inverting the rationale underlying the classical modelling process, from a theory-to-data deductive assessment to a data-to-theory inductive inference. The ultimate goal is to advance the state-of-the-art by crafting a two-way modelling framework combining the hypotheses-driven and the data-driven approaches, to mitigate the consequences of biased modelling choices and improve the knowledge about complex physical systems. The proposed paradigm is not to be intended as a substitution of the classical Scientific Modelling method, but rather as an extension of it. The project is conceived with aerospace applications in mind, but the proposed methodology is straightforwardly applicable to the modelling of any physical problem of interest for the academy or the industry.

Mots clés : uncertainty quantification, model epistemic uncertainty, uncertainty mitigation, model validation, multi fidelity modelling, data driven modelling, scientific modelling, data science

Participants :
- École polytechnique de Milan (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172750.08 €
Projet Metagenome binning (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) obtained from metagenomics are of fundamental value to understanding diverse ecological niches of microbes such as the human gut, with applications in medicine, biotechnology, and climate science. However, the quality of MAGs constructed with state-of-the-art tools is often unsatisfactory and worse than the self-reported quality. The main source of error is binning, a computational step that groups sequences assembled from short sequencing reads (contigs) into species-wise bins. The two chief challenges are accurately binning (1) genomes with low abundance and (2) highly conserved regions. Due to cross-mapping of reads, the contigs from conserved regions appear to have abundances equal to the sum of the abundances of the related species or strains. As conventional binning tools all rely on clustering contigs according to their abundances across samples, conserved regions end up forming separate bins. Besides, most existing methods optimise quality measures (purity and completeness based on conserved marker genes) and assess the final quality on these very measures, leading to highly optimistic results. I aim to solve these problems by developing a binning algorithm that applies  i) linear mixture models using non-negative matrix factorization to account for cross-mapping, ii) Poisson statistics to accurately model low abundance, and iii) Bayesian statistics-based multinomial clustering to calculate bin numbers. Importantly, it does not require marker gene-based quality measures for binning. By improving the binning of low-abundance and highly conserved contigs, this approach should yield more high-quality MAGs, thereby enhancing a multitude of downstream metagenomic analyses for all areas of microbiome research.

Mots clés : metagenomics, binning tool, bioinformatics

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 189687.36 €
Projet ECOFix (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In recent years, membraneless organelles were shown to be intracellular liquid like condensates formed through phase separation. Following their discovery, they have been found across all kingdoms of life. For some of these organelles, a crucial role in cellular physiology has been determined, while for many others their true function remains unresolved. Recently, it has also emerged that the pyrenoid, which concentrates the CO2 fixation machinery of photosynthesis, behaves like a liquid non-membrane bound organelle in green algae. However, the pyrenoid and its forming protein EPYC1 undergo a complicated assembly in vivo, which poses a challenge for the functional understanding, engineering and transplantation of pyrenoids. Here I propose to use a bottom-up strategy to assemble and evolve pyrenoid formation de novo. To paraphrase the renowned physicist Richard Feynman – “What I cannot create, I do not understand” – I plan to mimic the formation of pyrenoids by fusing liquid-liquid phase separating (LLPS) intrinsically disordered peptides (IDP) to RuBisCO to create artificial pyrenoid-like condensates in vitro (objective 1). From the RuBisCO-IDP library, I will select the best performing condensate for transplanting into S. elongatus to generate an artificial pyrenoid. Subsequently, I will compare this strain with the wild-type and a carboxysome knock-out strain (objective 2). Finally, I will evolve the RuBisCO-IDP and the corresponding strain for enhanced photosynthesis (objective 3). My experiments will inform on the evolutionary differences between different carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCM), on the biochemical mechanisms underlying a liquid-liquid phase separated CCM and will show whether and how CCMs can be engineered towards improved photosynthesis. This project will lay the basis to realize strategies for increased CO2 uptake in phototrophs, thereby providing new options for a carbon-neutral bioeconomy and improved food productivity in the future.

Mots clés : carbon fixation, membraneless organelles, rubisco, intrinsically disordered proteins peptides, metabolic engineering, phototrophs, cyanobacteria

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 130385.52 €
Projet PCPNIHyp (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a devastating disease with 5-year survival rate of less than 7%. Existing treatments are limited because 90-100% of patients develop perineural invasion (PNI). PNI is associated with severe pain, poor prognosis, poor survival, and tumor recurrence, and involves nerve invasion by cancer cells, as a result of dynamic interactions between them and other cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Schwann cells (SCs) are part of this TME and are activated by cancer cells to become PNI promoters. To date, the question of how metabolic dysregulation generated by cancer cells, characterized by different levels of lactate and an acidic TME drives SCs-mediated-PNI remains unanswered. Taking account that PNI is still poorly understood and that there are no PNI-targeted diagnosis methods or effective therapies, this project pursues the study of the role of metabolic alterations induced by PDAC cells on SCs, and how that drives SCs activation and PNI. To achieve this goal, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) mediated hyperpolarization of metabolites as contrast agents that could be used later in clinical diagnosis without adverse effects will be used. Hyperpolarization by Para-Hydrogen-Induced-Polarization (PHIP) boosts the detectable NMR and magnetic resonance image (MRI) metabolites signals by a factor of >10000, it allows obtaining precise kinetic data on metabolites’ inter-conversion on short timescales, and the insights from cells can be directly translated into in vivo studies. All of this represents an advantage over standard biological studies, which often struggle to capture these types of events. Using NMR-PHIP technology with cellular and molecular biology-based techniques on SCs-PDAC cells co-cultures and on an in vivo PNI model, this project will contribute to identifying new predictive biomarkers for future monitoring and early diagnosis of PNI, as well as to the potential development of PNI-targeted therapies.

Mots clés : pancreatic cancer, schwann cells, metabolism, nmr, para hydrogen induced polarization

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 189687.36 €
Projet SAMap (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The life cycle of flowering plants includes a major developmental change known as floral transition, which occurs in response to endogenous signals or environmental variables [1]. During this transition, the shoot apical meristem (SAM), which contains a stem-cell niche, transitions from a vegetative meristem that generates leaves to an inflorescence meristem that initiates flowers. This identity change is accompanied by substantial morphological alterations, which transform the SAM from a small, flat structure to a larger, domed one [2]. Increasing SAM size at floral transition is proposed to allow more properly spaced flowers to be formed in the inflorescence, but the mechanisms underlying SAM doming remain poorly understood.  I hypothesize that SAM doming results from an extensive internal reorganization. To test this, I will characterize SAM morphology at the tissue and single-cell levels from confocal images of the SAM throughout floral transition. This analysis will provide a time-resolved morphological characterization of the internal organization. This will be complemented by an examination of reporter gene expression domains within the meristem. The studied genes will include WUSCHEL and CLAVATA3, which maintain the stem-cell niche, and genes related to floral transition such as APETALA2, which contributes to doming. Subsequently, I will develop a multicellular model of the SAM during floral transition and of the expression domains of those genes and investigate their relationship with tissue organization and the doming process. This study will provide an unprecedented quantitative characterization of the internal organization of the SAM and will elucidate how tissue internal reorganization affects morphogenesis.

Mots clés : arabidopsis floral transition, stem cell niche

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet ProgeroidNPC (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The nuclear lamina is a meshwork of lamin proteins that underlie the inner nuclear membrane and confer mechanical stability to the nuclear envelope. Mutations in lamins are associated with many disorders, including Progeria, a fatal premature ageing disease. In progeroid cells, expression of a truncated form of lamin A, named progerin, drastically deforms the nuclear envelope, causing premature cellular senescence. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear.  The nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) enable selective transport across the nuclear envelope. The diameter of the NPC central channel and the resulting nucleocytoplasmic exchange is governed by membrane tension, which is predicted to alter in the progeroid nuclei. Therefore, I postulate that the structural integrity of the NPCs is disrupted in progeroid cells, as a result of the deformed nuclear envelope, and/or direct interaction with progerin. This may lead to further deregulation of nuclear transport that potentially drives cellular senescence.  I aim to investigate whether the NPCs indeed undergo compositional and conformational change in Progeria patient-derived primary cells, and to what extent nuclear transport is impacted. To do so, I will apply in cellulo cryo-electron tomography to unveil the molecular organisation of the progeroid NPCs. I will further employ fluorescence microscopy-based cellular assays to identify proteins with nucleocytoplasmic mislocalisation. The proposed work will have three major significances: (1) To date, in cellulo structures of the NPCs in disease states have rarely been examined. Visualisation of the NPCs directly in patient-derived cells will provide pivotal insights into NPC biology. (2) Investigation of nuclear transport in progeroid cells will reveal the mechanisms contributing to premature ageing. (3) Since progerin is also produced during normal ageing, its mechanistic investigation may add to understanding of the natural ageing processes.

Mots clés : in cellulo cryo et, nuclear pore complexes, deformed nucleus, premature ageing

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet Spec4DeSal (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The world faces an escalating water crisis, with over two billion people lacking access to clean drinking water, which is further exacerbated by increased droughts due to global warming. Traditional desalination methods are notorious for their inefficiency and excessive energy consumption, which creates an urgent demand for sustainable alternatives. Interfacial solar vapor generation (SVG) serves as a promising solution to this problem. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanochannels are able to efficiently harness solar energy and have been identified as a transformative material for desalination in the SVG process. Despite this, the molecular-level mechanisms enhancing their SVG, particularly their interaction with water, remain unclear, necessitating the need for precise spectroscopic techniques to investigate their interfacial mechanisms. Second-order non-linear susceptibility (χ(2)) sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy emerges as an exceptional tool for unraveling the intricate details of molecular interactions at interfaces. While χ(2) SFG has proven invaluable in deciphering interfacial molecular interactions, it has limitations when probing interfaces hidden beneath thick infrared absorbers like water. To overcome this obstacle, we turn to interface-specific, heterodyne detected (HD) fourth-order non-linear susceptibility (χ(4)) spectroscopy, which employs near-infrared (NIR) light instead of IR. This makes it suitable for interfaces buried within thick IR absorbers that are transparent in the NIR region. Herein, I present a cutting-edge proposal for the development of a new and innovative HD-χ(4) spectroscopic technique to study MoS2 nanochannels used for SVG. HD-χ(4) spectroscopy can not only aid in desalination optimization, but also expand into challenging areas like the battery and electrochemical industries. This ambitious project aims to enhance our interfacial understanding, facilitating sustainable solutions amid water scarcity.

Mots clés : molecular spectroscopy, non linear optics, material science, interface science, nanochannels, solar vapour generation, technique development, instrument development, desalination

Participants :
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet MEMORY (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The cosmic web (CW) is a complex network of structures composed of galaxies, dark matter, and gas, formed of galaxy clusters connected by filaments. Low-mass groups and large-scale super-clusters have yet to find a place in the context of the CW. The best way to trace the CW is to use optical galaxy surveys to detect the filaments and X-ray data to detect the hot gas of clusters. The detection of groups and super-clusters requires high-sensitivity X-ray instruments due to the low density of their gas content and has so far been very difficult. The new X-ray telescope eROSITA has however produced X-ray data of unprecedented sensitivity, which allow the discovery of thousands of groups and hundreds of super-clusters. eROSITA opened for the first time the possibility for statistical studies of these structures in the context of the CW. My goal is to exploit the synergy between eROSITA and galaxy surveys to shine new light on the place that groups and super-clusters occupy in the CW. This study will improve our understanding of how filaments channel accretion onto groups and will show how a physical definition for super-clusters (whose definition has so far been empirical) can be achieved in the CW context. The study of the CW is entering a phase of increased interest thanks to recent wide-area galaxy surveys and new X-ray data. Investigations like this project are those that will pave the way for future experiments (e.g. Euclid, ATHENA). This research will provide a significant advancement to our understanding of the CW, structure formation, and galaxy evolution. With this research I will gain deep insight on how to integrate X-ray and optical data in the context of a large collaboration. This project will prepare me to better deal with the outcome expected from future galaxy surveys and X-ray telescopes and will make me more suited to become a group leader at an European institution.

Mots clés : cosmic web, x rays, numerical simulations, galaxy surveys, filaments, galaxy groups, superclusters, density field, galaxy environment, connectivity, cluster accretion history, cluster formation

Participants :
- Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich (Allemagne) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 189687.36 €