Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet INMARE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The key goals of the INMARE project are: a) the training of a talented and experienced researcher, Dr Eneko Axpe, in the science, technology and industrial application of magnetic nanomaterials and drug delivery systems. The host and partners have critical knowledge and expertise in these fast growing fields. And b) the design, fabrication and (further) development of a minimally invasive, externally triggered, on demand drug delivery system. This interdisciplinary training program includes fabrication and full characterization of injectable nanocomposites, development of physical models of the drug diffusion in hydrogels, and application of AC magnetic fields for drug delivery. Such a program will support the talented researcher, who has already gained expertise in the area of nanomaterials for biomedical applications during his postgraduate career, in his endeavour to increase his exposure to both academic and industrial collaborations. To further his career in biomaterials, Dr Eneko Axpe envisions pursuing an extensive study of smart materials and their in vivo applications, fields which the partner at Stanford University and the host group at UPV/EHU have a world-recognized expertise in. Additionally, through a secondment at AstraZeneca, his industrial co-partner, he will receive further training in pharmacokinetics and the commercial applications of health products. The applications of this project are vast, ranging from medical treatments of chronic diseases such as cancer, to a basic understanding of the physics behind drug diffusion, which attest to its interdisciplinarity and high impact. Moreover, it will provide Dr Eneko Axpe with the opportunity to increase his supervision and teaching experience, gain project and intellectual property management expertise, research funding and proposal writing skills. Multidisciplinary activities will assist the experienced researcher in acquiring necessary competences and reaching professional maturity.

Mots clés : drug delivery systems, injectable hydrogels, nanomaterials, magnetic materials

Participants :
- Stanford University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- University of the Basque Country (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 239191.2 €
Projet SPAFIL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The key goals of the project are: (1) the training of a talented, independent researcher, Dr Amos Martinez, to become a successful leading scientist in the fast growing field of science, technology and industrial applications of fibre lasers, (2) exploring new ways to exploit two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, in photonics through femtosecond laser nanostructuring and developing new classes of light sources for applications in optical communications, medical imaging, industrial manufacturing and metrology. This multidisciplinary project has great implications on laser science, nanotechnology, material science and graphene technologies such as graphene plasmonics, metamaterials, phononics and electronics, and will involve both fundamental and applied research. The interdisciplinary training scheme is designed to enhance Amos’s expertise in photonics, strengthening his skills and helping him establish a research career in Europe. It covers component design and implementation, theoretical analysis, mathematical modelling and nanomaterial characterization. To assist Amos in reaching professional maturity and increase his exposure to academic and industrial collaborations, he will receive training on intellectual property management, funding and proposal writing, commercialization, business and finance management, and supervision and teaching. Secondments in academic and industrial co-hosts, with Prof. James R. Taylor (Imperial College, UK), Prof. Zhipei Sun (Aalto University, Finland), Xtera Communications (UK), Chromacity Lasers (UK) and Optoscribe (UK), are arranged to pursue scientific objectives, maximize Amos’s learning experience, expanding his network in Europe and maximising impact of research and training on EU industry. Exploiting his editorial experience at Nature, Amos will give seminars on effective scientific writing and engage with the public through outreach activities of the Physics Factory and the International Year of Light 2015.

Mots clés : graphene photonics, fiber lasers, nanostructured graphene

Participants :
- Aston University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet WOMLEAD (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The lack of women in leadership is a concern raised by several multinational organizations including the UN and the European Commission. Research suggests that women’s underrepresentation is partly attributable to stereotypes regarding female leaders. Despite the persistence of these stereotypes, leadership scholars have shown that women are in fact, more skilled than men at almost all attributes that distinguish excellent leaders from average/poor ones. In an effort to lessen the gender gap in leadership, the current project seeks to solidify “the business case” for increased women in leadership, by developing and testing hypotheses to demonstrate that women’s leadership advantages result in increased customer service. Based on research on servant leadership, which focuses on altruistic values that engage followers in relational and emotional dimensions, so they are empowered to grow, I propose that servant leadership will positively relate to subordinates’ soft skill development and that this relationship will be stronger among female leaders. Further, given the research linking soft skills to customer service, I propose that subordinates’ soft skill training will mediate the relationship between servant leadership and customer service. While I will publish theoretical and empirical studies based on this research in scholarly journals, a distinctive feature of the proposal is dissemination to non-academic stakeholders. I plan to lead seminars in the business community to share the practical implications of my findings. The pinnacle of my communication efforts will be creating a Women’s Leadership Centre at USE that I will lead after the fellowship period. To prepare myself, I will carry out a secondment at an academic institution that has a diversity centre and at a non-academic organization focused on gender equality, to acquire knowledge about the pressing research issues facing European working women and to learn how to develop and sustain the centre at USE.

Mots clés : leadership

Participants :
- Universidad de Sevilla (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 216165.6 €
Projet CycloCarbonCatenane (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The last 35 years have seen many advances in the field of new carbon allotropes, from fullerene chemistry to carbon nanotubes and graphene. Inspired by the huge impact of these new forms of carbon, we aim to create new carbon allotropes through the synthesis of cyclic molecules, cyclocarbons composed of only sp-hybridized carbon atoms, which are stabilized by the encapsulation of several macrocycles to form catenanes. The proposed project combines recent advances in polyyne chemistry (the field of the applicant's PhD) with supramolecular chemistry to create and study novel compounds: cyclocarbon catenanes. This project will include extensive synthetic work to find the most efficient working scheme for the formation of a stable cyclo[40]carbon catenane with suitable macrocycles. Dicobalt complexes will be incorporated into the polyyne precursors to form masked alkyne equivalents (MAEs). Active metal template (AMT) cross-coupling and/or homo-coupling reactions will be applied with MAEs to synthesize polyyne rotaxanes with suitable macrocycles on the polyyne thread. Cyclo-oligomerization using another AMT coupling, under high dilutions, is expected to yield a cyclo-tetramer, which can be unmasked to afford the target C40 catenane. The electronic nature of the target compounds will be studied using a range of techniques, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, UV-vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, electrochemistry, as well as time-resolved IR and Raman studies, additionally characterized with X-ray crystallography in the solid-state. These efforts will focus on exploring structure, reactivity, and physical properties of cyclocarbon molecules, to determine experimentally whether they are acetylenic or cumulenic in their ground states and excited states.

Mots clés : carbon allotropes, carbon rich compounds, polyyne, cyclocarbon, catenane, rotaxane, active metal template coupling

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet CM_GF (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The last decade of research in enteric virus infection produced a body of compelling evidences that challenged the paradigm of the single infection unit, where a single virus is able to elicit infection of a target cell. Instead, observational studies of infection in vivo and in vitro suggest that enteric viruses travel in groups: in vesicles with inverted phosphatidylserine topology or at the surface of commensal bacteria. It has been proposed that both strategies increase locally the viral multiplicity of infection, thus favoring viral complementation of defective genomes. There is a lack of knowledge on the biological relevance of the so-called multiple infection unit (MIU) as it has not been mechanistically studied in physiologically relevant model of the GI tract. In addition, the MIU is a strategy employed by all the enteric viruses so far tested, therefore it might represent a valuable target for the design of broad spectrum therapeutics. The central hypothesis of this project is that targeting MIU will inhibit enteric virus infection ex vivo and in vivo. My model of enteric virus is human norovirus (HNoV) for its clinical relevance and for its well described interaction with commensal bacteria. In work package (WP)1, to gain insight on the biological relevance of MIU in ex vivo physiologically relevant models, I will test the hypothesis that MIU increases HNoV infection in human intestinal enteroids. In aim 2, I will develop an in vitro screening platform by pulldown assay with His-tagged HNoV virus-like particles to i) screen for small molecules inhibitors of the infection and ii) identify bacterial species that are bound to HNoV in stool derived from healthy volunteer and diseased patients (i.e. inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn) . In aim 3, in order to provide evidence that targeting MIU blocks viral infection, I will test the efficacy of the small molecules identified in aim 2 in the ex-vivo model established in aim 1 and/or in-vivo, in a murine model.

Mots clés : trans kingdom interactions, enteric viruses, glycans, antivirals

Participants :
- University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- University of Lübeck (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226010.88 €
Projet YOUPEACEBUILDER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The lasting separation between Turkish and Greek Cypriots on the small island of Cyprus has long been one of the contentious issues of the Eastern Mediterranean. Much effort and energy has been spent trying to find a comprehensive resolution to the dispute. However, the rationale behind the strategy of conflict resolution, which has been mainly based on negotiations between subsequent leaders, remains problematic. The lack of (or limited) direct involvement of societies, particularly disengagement of young people, who have lived in an ethnically divided country since they were born, has prevented mobilization of Cypriot youth in their search for communication and interaction. However, current peacebuilding efforts on the island still focus on reaching an agreement between leaders instead of finding ways to engage the youth of both sides, who are expected to live together despite the fact that they have never experienced it before. As McEvoy-Levy suggests “a peace agreement’s endurance depends on whether the next generations accept or reject it, how they are socialized during the peace process, and their perceptions of what that peace process has achieved.” As the most recent addition to the international community’s repertoire of conflict resolution methods, peacebuilding simply refers to a comprehensive process that tries to remove the root causes of a conflict. According to Lederach, the actors at the national and international top levels are involved in negotiation and peacemaking, while the grassroots, bottom-up level are aiming to promote peace and reconciliation at local and society level. Thus, the linkage between the top and grassroots levels, in which middle-level process aims to facilitate, is essential for an effective and sustainable peace. This research proposal aims to discover, observe and reshape the correlation between youth and peacebuilding particularly in the Cyprus case by borrowing Lederach’s approach on peacebuilding.

Mots clés : peacebuilding, the role of youth, the cyprus dispute, conflict transformation, peace studies

Participants :
- Coventry University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet NEOEARTH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The late Neoproterozoic Era marks some of the most important changes in the biogeochemical evolution of our planet. During the late Cryogenian,Ediacaran and Early Cambrian Periods (ca. 650–520 Ma), our planet was marked by a global icehouse event (‘Snowball Earth’), a rapid rise in oxygen content of the atmosphere, evolution of animals and complex life forms and the amalgamation of the Gondwanian supercontinent, which formed the earliest ‘modern’ style mountain belts with the deep burial of continental crust resulting from massive continental-continental collisions. So far, biogeochemical modelling, geochemical analysis and general circulation climate models (GCMs) have linked all these key events to plate tectonic processes. However, there is yet to be a fully complete linked tectonic-biogeochemical-climate model, where geologically grounded parameters are passed directly into both biogeochemical and GCMs, principally because there is no full tectonic model of this time. Recent advancements in plate tectonic modelling have produced models that map the explicit kinematic evolution of plate boundaries and tectonic plates back to 1 Ga. Using this model as a foundation, I propose to construct secondary tectonic parameters (palaeobathymetry, palaeotopography, carbon flux) of the world between 650 and 520 Ma in order to act as a series of boundary conditions for a GCM and biogeochemical model. The GCM is constructed using the surface conditions from the tectonic parameters (palaeobathymetry, palaeotopography, continental positions) to produce surface temperature and hydrological estimates at key time intervals. These estimates, along with carbon flux estimates—calculated using the same plate model—are used to derive self-consistent biogeochemical cycles (e.g. O2, CO2, P cycles) which can then be evaluated against independent proxies from the geological record, allowing us to independently evaluate the impact of tectonic drivers on these pronounced global events.

Mots clés : plate tectonics, neoproterozoic, snowball earth, biogeochemical box model, animal evolution

Participants :
- University of Leeds (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet P2Med (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Cofund Postdoctoral programme
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The latest developments in biomedical research have shown a shift toward a patient-centred medicine that allows for more tailored or personalised interventions. While this approach allows for more innovative solutions in diagnostics and medical treatments, it also requires a different set of skills for biomedical researchers. The generalisation of the use of –omics technologies, together with the access to vast amounts of patient data through ICT solutions and Big Data techniques, require specific training to ensure that researchers and medical doctors can make the most of this wealth of resources. Within this context, the Maimonides Biomedical Research Institute of Cordoba (IMIBIC) has designed the Fellowship Programme for Personalised and Precision Medicine (P2Med), a new fellowship programme to provide excellent researchers relevant, top-notch training and opportunity to carry out forward-looking research in the field of personalised and precision medicine, which is set to become the standard of medical practice. P2Med is based on individual-driven mobility and aims to increase trans-national and inter-disciplinary mobility of researchers. P2Med will offer one call for proposals for a minimum of 6 fellows based on an Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment process in line with the recommendations of the European Charter and Code for Researchers. P2Med will contribute to improve the career prospects of experienced researchers in the field of Personalised and Precision Medicine, through individualised Career Development Plans with a focus on transferable and multidisciplinary skills that are characteristic of this field. Skilled researchers will be able to achieve higher impact of their research results, improving health services and creating innovative products. This will contribute to boost a knowledge-based economy and society in Andalusia, increasing Europe’s competitiveness in biomedical research.

Mots clés : biomedicine, personalised medicine, precision medicine

Participants :
- Fundacion para la investigacion biomedica de cordoba (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 662040.0 €
Projet OPTiAGE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The lifespan of genetically identical organisms varies depending on the environment they are exposed to. A well-known example is the extension of lifespan by nutrient restriction, as observed in animals as diverse as nematodes and rhesus monkeys. Why does the lifespan of animals change with environmental conditions? Is there an advantage to living longer when food is poor, and to living shorter when food is plentiful? Evolutionary theory, known as the disposable soma theory (DST), proposes that organisms age due to the accumulation of damage. According to theory, aging can be delayed by continuous damage repair, but such repair requires resources which are then unavailable for other tasks, such as reproduction. The DST therefore postulates a trade-off between longevity and reproduction dictated by the limitation of available resources. The optimal allocation of resources to self-maintenance depends on the environment. In particular, increased allocation to self-maintenance is predicted to maximize fitness when nutrients are scarce. Combining theory and experiment, I will investigate how the optimal allocation of resources to self-maintenance depends on nutrient availability using the nematode C. elegans as a model system. I will quantify the partitioning of resources between self-maintenance and reproduction using isotope labelling and kinetic modelling, and modulate resource allocation using available genetic alleles and directed mutation. Employing a competitive growth assay, I will test if fitness depends on resource allocation by an inverse U-shaped function, as predicted by theory and examine how the optimal resource allocation depends on nutrient availability. I will thereby assess if worms adapt their rate of aging to maximize their fitness in different environments. Ultimately, the proposed combination of mathematical modelling and developmental genetics will pave the way for a new line of research using optimality principles to study organismal development.

Mots clés : optimal control, quantitative biology, fitness

Participants :
- Friedrich Miescher Institute (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 187419.6 €
Projet REZONABLE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The liver is a crucial organ in metabolism and removal of waste products from the body. Hereto, the liver parenchyma receives a mix of nutrient-rich blood from the portal vein and oxygen-rich blood from the hepatic artery. Blood flows through the sinusoids and leaves the liver via the central and hepatic veins. Hepatic sinusoids are highly specialised channels in which hepatocytes are organised in zones according to their position relative to the portal and central veins. They are lined with a specified, fenestrated, discontinuous endothelium. Many drugs (e.g., chemotherapeutics) and toxins cause damage to the sinusoids that may lead to liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. Formation of new sinusoids is an indispensible step for liver regeneration. Furthermore, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) produce agents that stimulate hepatocyte proliferation. Time-dependent expression of different proteins in the developing liver is important for sinusoid formation. The host lab found that the transcription factor Zeb2 (also known as Sip1) is highly expressed in LSECs in the developing and adult liver. Furthermore, its expression in adult LSECs is mainly in those from the pericentral zone. We hypothesize that Zeb2 is a transcriptional determinant of LSEC specification, zonation, maintenance and regeneration. Here, we aim to: (i) evaluate whether/how Zeb2 contributes to LSEC specification and zonation; (ii) establish a role for Zeb2 in LSECs in adult mice; (iii) assess its role in sinusoidal regeneration during liver disease; and (iv) estimate the therapeutic potential of Zeb2-treated endothelial progenitors in recovery from liver injury. To address these aims, we will use a multidisciplinary approach based on lentiviral overexpression in cultured ECs, transgenic mice lacking or overexpressing Zeb2 in ECs and transplantation of ECs pre-specified towards LSECs. These studies will allow us to evaluate the potential of Zeb2 as a novel target to stimulate liver regeneration.

Mots clés : endothelium, liver disease, sinusoids, vasculature, transcription factors, zeb2, blood outhrowth endothelial cells, regeneration, transgenic mice

Participants :
- KU Leuven (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 160800.0 €