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

To properly function in daily life we need to interact with our surrounding world. How do these interactions forge our sensory cortices? And how does our visual cortex adapt in order to function in an altered environment? The proposed study combines functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and novel analysis of ecological real-life events with sensory-motor training in order to tackle these questions in both healthy and brain damaged individuals. We will use a specially designed virtual-reality-based prism-adaptation device (VR-PA) that creates a lateral shift in the user’s sensory experience, to probe experience-dependent changes in visual cortex functional connectivity. The VR-PA device will be used for rehabilitation of stroke patients suffering from an inability to attend stimuli in the left side of space (hemispatial neglect). We will explore the neuronal basis of this perceptual rehabilitation using functional connectivity methods in hemispatial neglect patients and in neurologically intact participants. We will use novel fMRI analyses to study how the severity of the perceptual impairment in neglect patients before treatment is reflected in altered pattern of intra-hemispheric connectivity in the primary visual cortex and in its connectivity with parietal areas. We will test whether exposure to VR-PA in healthy controls would result in a temporary imbalanced connectivity pattern, mimicking the patients’ condition. Conversely, in patients, VR-PA training, ameliorating perceptual deficits, would make connectivity patterns more similar to those of an intact brain. Multiple behavioural and physiological measures will be acquired during the training to identify key behavioural triggers of cortical plasticity. Combining the researcher's expertise in functional connectivity and the host specialization in multisensory-motor plasticity would create a platform for novel discoveries in the field of training-induced plasticity and its translational applications.

Mots clés : fmri, cortical plasticity, functional connectivity, resting state, naturalistic stimuli, hemispatial neglect, prism adaptation

Participants :
- University Hospital of Lausanne (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche), subvention : 187419.6 €
Projet V-HAB (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

To reach for a bottle (motor), we need to be able to identify its properties (attention) and know where in space it is located (3-dimensional (3D) vision). This cascade is however impaired in some developmental disorders of vision, like Paediatric Amblyopia (PA) or lazy eye. With this proposal, I first aim to gain insights in the underlying deficits of PA, by combining expertise from the vision sciences, cognition and motor control research fields. These insights will provide a deeper understanding of the core deficits of children with PA, and their inter-relationship. I will put specific emphasis on the study of 3D vision and its impact on selective attention and motor planning, as these have previously been understudied, despite their clear impact on vision and potential coexistence in PA. Second, I aim to test the efficiency of a novel, ethological, and engaging 3D games in a virtual reality environment to improve vision in children with PA. Thirdly, I will examine whether the improvements on vision are accompanied by changes in attention and motor control and which are the underlying brain mechanisms of such improvements. Lastly, by using artificial intelligence approaches on treatment outcome, I will be able to provide guidelines toward a personalized medicine tailored to the patient’s needs. To succeed in this project, I will (i) combine measures of the traditional basic vision tests with novel functional vision evaluation, (ii) quantify uni- and multisensory selective attention with behavioural and brain imaging (electrical neuroimaging) methods, (iii) integrate sensor-based measures of motor planning during reaching, (iv) develop a novel, efficient and ethological virtual reality training to recover 3D vision in children with PA. This project will accumulate clinically relevant results that will be disseminated to the scientific community and communicated to the clinicians and the children’s families through a variety of activities.

Mots clés : rehabilitation, virtual reality, motor control

Participants :
- University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €
Projet HisTORIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

To reduce Green-House-Gas emissions by promoting the use of sustainable energy (SE), the European Union (EU) has a target to achieve 20% share of renewable energy (RE) in gross final energy consumption by 2020. Among various options of SE, the EU has 33.3 GWth of solar thermal technology (a High Heat Flux Removing Device: HHFRD, one among the target groups of this project) saving 4.3 million tonnes of CO2 emission per year. However, the current research proves that the Two-Phase Flow Instabilities (TPFI) act as major hindrances in improving the efficiency of such HHFRDs. The TPFIs are known by large-scale fluctuations of flow causing pressure fluctuations, departure from a steady state, & mechanical vibrations to a system. Although the vast research on TPFIs began almost 80 years ago, the primary focus has been to identify the limits of conditions with & without oscillations & alternative control mechanisms. Today, to extract heat cost-effectively; force the HHFRDs to work in conditions close to these limits or even in the presence of TPFIs. However, the influence of such oscillations on the heat transfer (HT) is scarcely studied. Hence, the objective of this project is to quantify the influence of TPFIs on the HT & to provide a transient HT model to attain better & reliable control techniques. The ER (experienced researcher) will do this by combining experiments on HT during TPFIs in the experimental facility at the host & numerical techniques (LSSE: Least Square Spectral Element method) capable of dealing with the highly transient behavior of the TPFIs. The ER will learn new numerical method LSSE, experimental methodology & data acquisition technique. This will boost the ER’s present research capability (limited to numerical analysis) to experimental investigations of various RE technologies. The expected outcomes of this project are aligned with the H2020 call by saving 216 kilo tonnes (kt) oil equivalent of fossil fuel & reducing GHG emission by 575 kt per year.

Mots clés : two phase flow, heat transfer, flow oscillations, density wave oscillations, flow boiling

Participants :
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 208400.4 €
Projet MATISSE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : SIGNED

To understand our cosmic origins requires understanding the formation of the Galaxy, which in turn requires precise characterization of its fundamental building blocks: stars. The essential nature of this knowledge has driven the Gaia and TESS space telescope missions, but to take full advantage of this, our estimates of non-observable stellar properties must improve at pace. The proposed project uses the unprecedented data volume and accuracy from Gaia and TESS and the Experienced Researcher (ER), Dr Joyce’s knowledge of multiple theoretical dating techniques to derive the best ages possible for stars in the Milky Way. The ER will use stellar structure and evolution models, stellar oscillation programs, isochrones, and novel data science techniques to provide ages for oscillating binaries, metal-poor stars, Gaia benchmark stars, and exotic variables across the mass spectrum. Whereas most stellar modelers specialize in particular stars, the ER is unique in the breadth of her repertoire. Dr. Joyce’s theoretical expertise is the ideal complement to the world-class observers at Konkoly Observatory, whose interests also span a wide range of stellar types. Her supervisor and long-time collaborator, Dr László Molnár, is an expert in stellar variability, member of the TESS and Gaia consortia, and recently tenured academic at Konkoly Observatory, CSFK, an institution with which the ER has long-standing rapport and many other collaborators. The supervisor of her secondment at KU Leuven, Prof. Conny Aerts, is one of the founders and world leaders of the field of asteroseismology. The ER’s role on the development team of the widely used, open-source Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) program will allow her to build broadly applicable and freely disseminated tools with high efficiency. In return, Konkoly Observatory will benefit strongly from the presence of a MESA developer, thus facilitating the transfer of theoretical knowledge as well as technical skill.

Mots clés : stellar evolution, asteroseismology, stellar dating techniques, numerical modeling

Participants :
- Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Hongrie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 151850.88 €
Projet MAPS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

To what extent is human smuggling a criminal enterprise driven by solidarity and cooperation? This is the question that my project “MAPS – Migrants And People Smugglers” addresses through a comparative study – of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Central American smuggling corridors. Having almost concluded my research in the Eastern Mediterranean corridor, the project will concentrate almost exclusively on the Central American route in order to identify similarities and differences in the organizational structures of smuggling networks, the smuggler-migrant relationship, and the profile of the facilitators. MAPS seeks to make a contribution to studies on Human Smuggling and Irregular Migration, where there is a keen interest in – yet still insufficient knowledge about – the interaction between migrants and facilitators and where criminological perspectives still dominate the debate. MAPS adopts a critical perspective and departs from the idea that smugglers obey only to a profit making logic. Inviting instead for a more complex understanding of their roles, it argues that human smuggling is embedded within ethnic networks and local economies, which are grounded on deep notions of solidarity and reciprocity. By expanding current knowledge around smuggling and its related policies, the project also aims to provide an empirical platform for policy engagement. In order to achieve its research aims, I will be based at the San Diego State University (SDSU), located at the proximities of the US/Mexican border and renown for being a centre of excellence on migratory trends from Central American. Here, I will be trained in Critical Criminology, Hispanic Studies and Social Network Analysis under the supervision of Prof Sheldon Zhang. Upon returning to my European host institution, the EUI, I will bring my new skills and further improve my policy and dissemination training under the supervision of Prof Triandafyllidou at the Cultural Pluralism Area of the GGP (EUI).

Mots clés : smuggling networks, irregular migration, border control, eastern mediterranean, central america, crime, solidarity and cooperation

Participants :
- California State University System (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
- European University Institute (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 262269.0 €
Projet NapApps (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Today, knowing how to write a curriculum vitae is essential to getting the job you want, proving your knowledge and skills. Even if these two elements are now at the core of the public debate on meritocracy, their growing importance is the result of a historical process, made of political, social and cultural changes. The NapApps project aims to trace the origin of this process, through a comparative analysis of more than 700 spontaneous job applications from the Napoleonic era. It was Napoleonic France that spread through Europe the revolutionary model according to which public employment would be open to all citizens, without any distinction other than that of one's virtues and talents. Despite a growing historiographical interest in writing-to-the-power sources, used by the New Napoleonic History to assess the impact of Napoleonic reforms in Europe, no scholar has ever tried to exploit their richness through a quantitative approach. NapApps will fill this gap, being a pioneering project which applies statistical text analysis to a vast corpus of modern sources to reveal how people interiorised new values, starting to portray themselves and behave like professionals. Once collected, job applications will be fully transcribed and unified in a digital collection made available to the public. The statistical data and text analysis of this corpus will be achieved thanks to the specific training carried out at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at the University of Stanford. These new skills will be transferred at Ca’ Foscari University, where a master’s degree in Digital and Public Humanities has recently been created. Since I already have some digital skills, the new ones acquired through this project will complete my profile as a digital humanist, enhancing my career opportunities in Europe. Additionally, specific training on transferable skills, teaching activities and publications will contribute to my development as an independent researcher.

Mots clés : napoleonic europe, job applications, textual analysis, digital humanities, quantitative analysis, archival sources

Participants :
- Stanford University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 251002.56 €
Projet MACEA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Today, the savanna biome occupies ~50% of Africa’s land surface, and is associated with many mammal species specifically adapted to life in the savanna environment. The present project, MACEA, aims to document the appearance and expansion of savannas in Africa’s geologic past, and to evaluate their relationship with the evolution of modern mammals. Precisely, MACEA will assess savanna history in Africa via phytoliths, microscopic particles of amorphous hydrated silica produced in plant tissues and conserved in sediments post-mortem. A unique aspect of this study is that it will apply phytolith analyses for the first time to document paleoenvironments older than ~15 Ma in Africa, and to bring the great potential of phytoliths to bear on the question of savanna origins in Africa. The MACEA project consists of two phases: an outgoing phase at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), and a return phase at CEREGE (Aix en Provence, France). Both labs will provide all needed equipment, training, and expertise. Upon its completion, MACEA will have created new modem and fossil phytolith datasets, new modern phytolith calibrations, as well as new paleovegetation reconstructions at the scale of tropical Africa. Publications resulting from this study will be of interest to paleobotanists, paleomammalogists, paleoclimatologists, and those concerned with conservation of modem biodiversity in Africa.

Mots clés : africa, savanna, grass, mammals, biodiversity, evolution, phytoliths, paleovegetation, paleoclimate

Participants :
- University of Washington (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Aix-Marseille Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 246668.4 €
Projet WONT-HATE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Today’s digital media have a strong potential to strengthen women’s participation in political and institutional processes, but have also opened up new channels for gendered attacks against women advancing their way in the public sphere. WONT-HATE investigates phenomena of online misogyny, such as gender-based hate speech, rape threats and image-based sexual harassment, against highly visible, political and institutional figures in Europe. More specifically, WONT-HATE maps the multimodal discursive and rhetorical strategies of online hate against women in politics across four different linguistic landscapes and political cultures in Europe, namely Italy, Spain, France and the U.K. WONT-HATE is characterized by a multimodal critical discursive approach to cyberhate, entailing a quantitative and qualitative investigation of a corpus of Youtube videos and relative user-generated comments. WONT-HATE is to contribute to the current debate on the use of social media data for social research, providing new critical theoretical perspectives as well as a transdisciplinary methodology for data selection and collection and for the contextualization of the new dynamics of digital interaction. Two secondments, at the University of Vienna and Newcastle University, further contribute to establishing a dialogue on cutting-edge social media approaches across Europe. WONT-HATE is also to yield an open access database of online misogyny speech, encompassing its lexico-syntactic and discursive features in Italian, Spanish, French and English, to foster academic research and the advancement of software solutions to the issue. Exploring discourse as social practice, and refusing to treat the ‘online’ and the ‘offline’ as separate and independent realms, WONT-HATE tackles timely issues of digital security, gender-based violence and gender equality, in line with the gender-related objectives of the Horizon 2020 Programme and the EU Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality 2016-2019.

Mots clés : women politicians, gender discrimination, gender equality, online hate, online misogyny, youtube, social media studies, computer mediated communication, critical discourse studies, multimodality

Participants :
- University of Navarra (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet ARCATOM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Tomato is one of the most economically relevant crops in the world and is the main model system for fruit ripening studies at biochemical, genetic and molecular levels. In this climacteric fruit, a sudden increase in respiration takes place at the onset of ripening, usually in concert with increased production of ethylene that eventually impacts fruit color, firmness, taste, and flavor. During ripening, tomato accumulates high contents of health-promoting carotenoids (pro-vitamin A, antioxidants), which require a high production of carbon precursors and ATP. In this respect, both mitochondrial and chromoplast respiration have been proposed to play important roles in fruit ripening and carotenoid metabolism. The general aim of this project is to determine the contribution of mitochondrial respiration to the supply of energy and carbon for the production of carotenoids in tomato fruit during ripening. In particular, we will perform metabolomics of genetically modified tomatoes with altered mitochondrial and chromoplast respiration at different ripening stages. Furthermore, 13C- and 14C-labelling experiments will be performed to trace the fate of carbon from primary to secondary metabolites. In parallel, we will measure the relative glycolytic and TCA cycle fluxes and, for the first time in tomato, the in vivo activities of mitochondrial electron transport chain pathways by using the 18O fractionation technique. Combining these data with the analysis of transcript and protein levels of the main components of respiratory and carotenoid pathways and mathematical modelling will unveil novel metabolic checkpoints and connections between primary and secondary metabolism during fruit ripening. The generated new insights should contribute to the implementation of new biotechnological approaches to produce fruits with enhanced levels of carotenoids and other health-promoting secondary metabolites.

Mots clés : health promoting carotenoids, metabolomics, alternative respiration, tomato

Participants :
- CERCA Institution (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet ARTE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Topological quantum computation (TQC) deals with the transformations related to the overall shape (“topology”) of a quantum trajectory to perform operations on data and go beyond the limitations of quantum computation. It is a revolutionary technique because it will allow quantum operations to be error free and robust while taking advantage of the radically new approaches of quantum computation, which means smaller systems, less energy dissipation, and faster processing. TQC may be naturally implemented using atomic scale systems such as those created by atomic manipulations with scanning probe techniques. The present project is to lay the foundations to make TQC possible. These foundations are the discovery of new exotic states of matter by developing the science and technology of 1-D chains of magnetic moments on superconductors. This implies multi-disciplinary training in single-molecule chemistry, fabrication of superconducting materials, atomic scale magnetic devices and quantum-computation principles. The project is aimed at creating unique career perspectives by learning skills in the atomic engineering of topological superconductors which will grant Dr. Choi a leading independent position. Intersectoral secondments will be used to explore industry interest in developing TQC as a high-value added technology.

Mots clés : topological quantum computation, majorana bound states, atom manipulation, superconducting surface, atomic and molecular spin chains

Participants :
- CIC nanoGUNE (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 158121.6 €