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

Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD) affect more than 11 million people in Europe (~3.4% of the population). Basic research in the field is conducted in animal models, using conditioning tasks, and then translated to humans. However, this translation is limited by multiple factors, and one reason is that animal research uses objective behavioral and physiological measures, which is very different from human research based on conscious subjective reports (i.e., craving). A solution to this disconnect is to study human conditioned responses implicitly, without participants’ conscious cognitive control. In my previous research, I have developed novel procedures to measure implicit Pavlovian conditioning. Through 3 experiments I will use these techniques to study implicit reward and aversive sensitivity across the alcohol use spectrum. The first objective is to study the implicit processes characterizing hazardous drinkers and students diagnosed with AUD (WP1). The second objective is to better understand the neural and behavioral correlates of implicit learning (WP2). As part of this multidisciplinary project, I will develop my skills as a scientist; I will learn new experimental techniques (i.e., EEG) and obtain experience in longitudinal research. I will also gain leadership and management skills as an independent researcher. Prof. Wiers, the supervisor of this project, is a leading expert in addiction and implicit processing. Under his mentorship, I will increase my knowledge about addiction research and create academic relationships with his network of collaborators. The findings and publications generated through this project can significantly impact the addiction field, increasing theoretical understanding of AUD and providing us with novel clinical and diagnostic tools with large societal and clinical impact. I will use this project as foundation to gain the skills and experiences necessary to in the future lead my own laboratory on cognitive psychology and addiction.

Mots clés : addiction, alcohol use disorder, implicit learning, consciousness

Participants :
- Université d'Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203464.32 €
Projet Scar-Facebook (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The interactive forms of mass communication that characterize digital platforms of social mediation such as Facebook and Instagram intersect the institutional life of current democracies on multiple levels while serving as powerful ?echo chambers? for a plethora of rather controversial populist political agencies. As shown by the Ph.D. dissertation I have defended at the University of Toronto in 2019, this is especially true within subaltern social spaces such as those punctuating the urban peripheries of Naples, Southern Italy. There, far-right movements and criminal organizations regularly employ the online social media to elicit consent amid the local poor and establish dynamics of political patronage with them. How do legal and criminal processes of digital networking cooperate in the entrenchment of populist politics within the most socially vulnerable areas of current democracies? How do these processes impact the socio-cultural lives of the Neapolitan poor in terms of political mobilization? What public policies and social interventions could challenge the conditions of structural violence and indirect governmentality engendered by these populist processes of digital mediation in Naples and beyond? My project will respond to these questions by providing ethnographic insights on the informal dynamics of digital mediation co-involving current Neapolitan gangsters, populist institutional operators, and their lower-class publics. I will conduct this project through innovative qualitative methods of socio-cultural research, which will integrate the ethnographic techniques I have learnt and practiced during my previous anthropological studies with the online techniques of ?net-nographic? analysis informing the fields of digital media studies and digital humanities. I plan to do so through my engagement with the University of Amsterdam. As such, this project will also allow me to be reintegrated within EU academia after ten years of scholarly work in North America.

Mots clés : organized crime, populism, digital media, informal politics, subaltern politics, naples, italy

Participants :
- Université d'Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187624.32 €
Projet LE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

This project will perform a realist analysis of emergency politics. More specifically, it will give a realist account of what states of emergency reveal about the nature of political legitimacy. This will be achieved through a mixture of history of political theory, critical analysis of competing recent approaches to emergency, and an empirical study of the political crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At present, political realists controversially argue that emergency politics expose how liberal theories of legitimacy are excessively divorced from reality. Their argument, however, remains underdeveloped in three key respects. In the first place, they seek to ground their claims in a broadly Nietzschean worldview, yet they do so in a manner that conspicuously jars with what Nietzsche himself writes about situations of emergency. Second, the realist literature fails to critically engage with recent liberal theories of emergency (and vice versa). Finally, realists neglect a wealth of relevant literature in jurisprudence, which has not yet been brought to bear on the debate in political theory. By addressing each of these lacunae, this interdisciplinary project will formulate a robust realist theory of emergency, one that will then be empirically applied to the states of emergency declared in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the project will be published in the form of a monograph.

Mots clés : realism emergency legitimacy democracy rights nietzsche

Participants :
- Université d'Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187624.32 €
Projet REPORT-IT (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Current artificial intelligence (AI) surpasses human-level performance in a vast range of tasks. However, its decisional processes are opaque, referred to as the AI interpretability problem. Humans, on the other hand, can verbally describe their decisional processes and strategies. The accuracy of these reports varies, especially in complex environments. Yet, people often come up with reasonably accurate explanations for their decisions, thereby allowing knowledge transfer in society. However, the mechanisms of accurate verbal report generation remain unclear. Therefore, the main research objective of the REPORT-IT project is to study how humans generate adequate reportable knowledge during learning through experience. Inspired by the recent findings from research on metacognition (i.e., insight into one's own cognition) and cognition-emotion interaction, I will test the novel hypothesis that metacognition and learning-related affect support the emergence of reportable knowledge. In two experiments modeling complex learning environments (implicit category learning and probabilistic reward learning tasks), I will track the development of metacognition, affect, and reportable knowledge over time. This will allow me to evaluate the temporal relationships between these components and predict the emergence of reportable knowledge. In the final step of the project, I will study the behavior of deep neural networks (DNNs) in the exact same tasks and test whether DNNs can generate temporal patterns of metacognition and affect, as observed in humans. Thereby, the REPORT-IT project combines my expertise in implicit learning and affective science with expertise in neuroscience of consciousness and DNNs at the host institute (University of Amsterdam). This way, REPORT-IT will contribute to understanding how people generate reportable knowledge and, at the same time, provide new approaches for explainable AI.

Mots clés : implicit learning, consciousness, category learning, explicit learning, reward, affect, pupillometry, explainable ai

Participants :
- Université d'Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203464.32 €
Projet HL-EXURB (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The so-called fourth industrial revolution, with its transformation of economic production and social life, has coincided with the further urbanization of the world population. At the same time, however, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, an intriguing migration from urban to non-urban areas seems to be emerging. Millennials in particular—a group of the population now between their late 20s and 30s and known as "digital natives"—are leaving the city. With their new lifestyles forming at the nexus of urban, rural, and digital spatialities, these ex-urbanites are altering non-urban places due to their cultural, creative, and digital capital. Combining digital research with an ethnographic study of the ex-urban community settled in Turkey, this research will explore new hybrid lifestyles created by ex-urbanites and examine their cultural impact on non-urban areas. Additionally, by implementing the cultural impact analysis in three different European non-urban areas, this research will offer an innovative design of cultural impact analysis for non-urban areas. A significant impact beyond academia will be created through the proposed workshop and the toolkit. WP1 identifies the lifestyle practices, values, and amenities of exurbanites. WP2 explores how ex-urbanites' lifestyles connect urban, rural, and digital spaces. WP3 determines cultural impact indicators for non-urban areas, and WP4 implements the cultural impact analysis in three different non-urban areas of Europe. WP5–7 constitute project management tasks, training, and dissemination activities.

Mots clés : hybrid lifestyles, non urban areas, ex urban communities, cultural impact analysis

Participants :
- Université d'Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203464.32 €
Projet MINIMA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The navigation of microorganisms in porous environments has received much research attention not only because of its relevance to many ecological, medical, and technological situations, from soil bioremediation to pathogenesis, but also as a representative problem in the recently emerging field of active matter. Taking soil as an example, such a hierarchical complex porous structure presents multiple challenges to navigating microorganisms, but we still lack a comprehensive mechanistic model that could solve the active navigation problem of microorganisms in such environments. In this project, I aim to uncover navigation strategies of microorganisms in features of different length scales, focusing on their swimming in porous structures and sliding on rough surfaces. Leveraging a cross-disciplinary approach by combining microfluidics, advanced optical microscopy, computer-assisted image analysis, and numerical modeling, I expect to extract a general criterion for the optimal spreading by microorganisms in porous media, and to discover underlying microbial feedback mechanisms in relation to their porous environments. The results of the proposed research will be of interest not only to the fundamental physics of "active matter under confinement", but also of practical relevance to soil bioremediation, biomedical micromotor and antimicrobial surfaces development. This project will provide a solid opportunity to build my multi-disciplinary research profile and experimental skills, ultimately bringing me significantly closer to my career aspirations of being an internationally visible independent researcher.

Mots clés : active soft matter, porous media, transport phenomena, confinement, microbial ecology

Participants :
- Université du Luxembourg (Luxembourg) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191760.0 €
- Université Heinrich Heine de Düsseldorf (Allemagne) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ScreenRca (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The future warm climate is predicted to reduce crop productivity by decreasing the CO2 fixation in photosynthesis, which is a concern for global food security. CO2 fixation in photosynthesis is mainly constrained by an enzyme, Rubisco. Rubisco has several inefficiencies, including inhibition of its active sites by sugar-phosphate derivatives. Rubisco inhabitation reduces photosynthetic CO2 fixation and, hence, crop productivity and resource-use efficiency. The removal of such inhibitors to restore rubisco activity needs interaction with enzyme rubisco activase (Rca). Rca is a crucial heat-sensitive enzyme determining the efficiency of CO2 fixation by Rubisco and, hence, crop productivity and resource-use efficiency. Consequently, Rca is a promising target to develop productive and resource-use efficient crops for the future warm climate. The limited evidence suggests that exploitable diversity in the speed of rubisco activation and heat stability of Rca exists in nature. However, this diversity is largely unexplored, thus hindering our efforts to use Rca in crop improvement. To fill this gap, ScreenRca will identify and characterize fast Rubisco activating and heat-stable Rca in warm adapted C4 grasses - grasses with C4 type of photosynthesis. Specifically, ScreenRca will use diverse accessions of C4 model grass Setaria viridis and C4 model crop Sorghum bicolor adapted to a range of temperature gradients. These C4 accessions will be exposed to short- and long-term warm environments to identify novel, fast Rubisco activating and heat-stable Rcas using an intradisciplinary approach melding physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and synthetic biology. Further, these novel Rcas will be characterized to uncover underlying mechanisms responsible for the efficiency in rubisco activation and heat-stability. These novel Rcas will have utility to develop climate-resilient, productive, and resource-use efficient crops.

Mots clés : rubisco activase, high temperature, sorghum, photosynthesis, crop productivity

Participants :
- Université de Lancaster (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université Heinrich Heine de Düsseldorf (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 189687.36 €
Projet SR-XTRS-2DLayMat (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The research and development of novel layered and 2D materials is at the center of a focused interest in the material sciences. The large photon coupling of their excitonic excitations and their varying degrees of localization, control over coupling to other degrees of freedom as well as novel spin- and momentum-dependent properties arising from symmetry and topology have made 2d materials a desirable platform for the development of new applications ranging from new photovoltaic and optoelectronical devices to spintronic and "quantum", i.e. coherent, data transport and storage devices. Since the coupling of electronic states to other material degrees of freedom, e.g. lattice, excitonic or spin-polarized states, might lead to desired or undesired behavior in these materials, powerful time-resolved experimental methods are needed to disentangle and understand their electron dynamics and achieve the implementation of the desired applications. The ultrashort timescales that govern electron dynamics warrant the application of novel methods such as XUV transient absorption (XTAS) or XUV transient reflectivity spectroscopy (XTRS), which achieve temporal resolutions on the natural timescale of electronic motion, i.e. attosecond timescales. Time-resolved core-level spectroscopy using attosecond pulses from high harmonic generation (HHG) offers intriguing opportunities to study the electron dynamics with high energy-resolution and unprecedented temporal-resolution with element-specific insight into the material's band-structure. The major goal of this proposed work is the advancement of XTRS and its application to study excitations in layered materials down to the few-layer limit. A novel interferometric and heterodyne approach to overcome existing limitations of XTRS will be developed and applied to a series of materials, where time resolved studies will lead to desirable insight into the ultrafast coupled dynamics of carriers, excitons, their spin and the lattice.

Mots clés : attosecond science, high harmonic generation

Participants :
- Forschungsverbund Berlin (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 265647.84 €
- University of California System (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ETICAN (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Over the last 30 years, researchers have shown that tumor cells not only need to accumulate oncogenic genetic alterations, but also rely on permissive cues from a surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) for malignant progression. However, reconstructing the tumor niche in vitro has not been easy due to the complexity of its intertwined physico- biochemical properties and the limitation of the available biomimetic scaffolds. Furthermore, preclinical studies have mainly focused on druggable targets at the intracellular signaling level and overlooked the implication of the ECM. To overcome these hurdles, we will unravel the ECM mechano-chemical contribution in tumorigenesis and its continuum interaction with tumor cells in 3 steps. First, we will deconstruct bladder cancer ECM through in-depth analysis of its physical and biochemical features. This will provide us a blueprint to follow, in order to build a tailored microenvironment for bladder tumoroids. Then, we will reassemble ECM properties in a new generation of tunable materials, functionalized with ECM proteins secreted by bladder cancer cells in vitro. Using our developed tumoroid model, we will finally chart the reciprocal crosstalk between extracellular cues and transcription factor EB (TFEB), an emerging oncogene and regulator of tumor microenvironment. By bridging the gap between ECM and TFEB regulation, we anticipate to catalyse the success of cancer prevention and therapy leveraging new druggable targets at the level of the reciprocal feedback between the evolving ECM and tumor cells.

Mots clés : ecm, tumoroids, tfeb, microfluidics, precision medicine

Participants :
- Institut Gustave Roussy (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet PSOECNs (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Future advanced brain-computer interfaces, wearable and implantable bioelectronic devices, prosthetics, and intelligent soft robotics will require the ability to process signals in a highly personalized and localized manner, which will involve fully integrated electronic circuits within the nervous system and other living tissues. To achieve this goal, it is imperative to develop energy-efficient intelligent electronics that have minimal device/circuit complexity and ion-based transducing and operating mechanisms akin to those observed in biology. The use of Silicon-based devices and circuits presents several limitations. Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) represent a rapidly advancing technology that plays a pivotal role in the development of next-generation bioelectronic devices. However, a notable limitation of OECTs is their typical operation in aqueous electrolytes, which can lead to undesired crosstalk between different devices on the same substrate, impeding their seamless integration into large-area arrays. Therefore, it is hard to develop neural networks based on the current OECTs. Solid electrolytes offer a promising solution to these challenges. In this proposal, I design a photo-patternable solid electrolyte to develop solid-state OECTs. The aim is to directly pattern the electrolyte using sequential ultraviolet light-triggered solubility modulation. We plan to use UV-sensitive PEGDA to directly pattern the hydrogel without requiring photoresist or lift-off processes. The PEGDA network will be covalently crosslinked after UV exposure to form a hydrogel network. The strong intermolecular interaction between the two networks will allow the UV-exposed regions to resist subsequent water development, while the UV-unexposed regions will remain water-soluble. This approach will enable the creation of smaller-size, large-area processing OECT devices, ultimately facilitating the development of OECNs with sizes approaching that of biological neurons.

Mots clés : organic electrochemical transistors, solid state organic electrochemical transistors, bioelectronics, organic electrochemical neurons

Participants :
- Université de Linköping (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 206887.68 €
- University of California System (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €