Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ACTICIPATE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Humans have fascinating skills for grasping and manipulation of objects, even in complex, dynamic environments, and execute coordinated movements of the head, eyes, arms, and hands, in order to accomplish everyday tasks. When working on a shared space, during dyadic interaction tasks, humans engage in non-verbal communication, by understanding and anticipating the actions of working partners, and coupling their actions in a meaningful way. The key to this mind-boggling performance is two-fold: (i) a capacity to adapt and plan the motion according to unexpected events in the environment, (ii) and the use of a common motor repertoire and action model, to understand and anticipate the actions and intentions of others as if they were our own. Despite decades of progress, robots are still far from the level of performance that would enable them to work with humans in routine activities. ACTICIPATE addresses the challenge of designing robots that can share workspaces and co-work with humans. We rely on human experiments to learn a model/controller that allows a humanoid to generate and adapt its upper body motion, in dynamic environments, during reaching and manipulation tasks, and to understand, predict and anticipate the actions of a human co-worker, as needed in manufacturing, assistive and service robotics, and domestic applications. These application scenarios call for three main capabilities that will be tackled in ACTICIPATE: a motion generation mechanism (primitives), with a built-in capacity for instant reaction to changes in dynamic environments; a framework to combine primitives and execute coordinated movements of head, eyes, arm and hand, in a way similar (thus predictable) to human movements, and model the action/movement coupling between co-workers in dyadic interaction tasks; and the ability to understand and anticipate human actions, based on a common motor system/model that is also used to synthesize the robot’s goal-directed actions in a natural way.

Mots clés : humanoid robotics, action anticipation, motion primitives, motion coupling, sensory motor control

Participants :
- University of Lisbon (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 100397.25 €
Projet SNANeB (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Humans represent numbers on a left to right oriented mental number line, with small numbers located on the left and large ones on the right space. It has been suggested that the left-to-right orientation of the mental number line emerges as a result of exposure to formal instruction. Recent evidence has shown that pre-verbal infants and non-human animals associate numbers with space; suggesting that the spatial numerical association (SNA) originates from pre-linguistic and biologically determined precursors. Numerical knowledge constitutes a domain-specific cognitive ability, with a dedicated neural substrate located in the parietal cortices. The challenge at present is to explain how this neural substrate can determine a left-to-right orientation of the SNA, which is the main aim of this project. Here I will study the neural correlates of SNA from a comparative perspective, using domestic chicks and rhesus monkeys as animal models. Both species master numerical skills and have been used to understand the neural basis of cognitive processes. I will use paradigms which allow to test the presence of any facilitation to respond to small numbers on the left space and to large numbers on the right space. The neural correlates of SNA will be studied in monkeys employing a repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), to understand whether neural perturbation could affect SNA, and in chicks using non-invasive techniques -e.g. monocular occlusion- to disentangle the engagement of each hemisphere in SNA. Overall this project will help in determining the neural basis of SNA. A better understanding of neural representation of numbers will permit optimized designs of clinical applications to enhance numerical comprehension. This might provide a valuable intervention for infants with potential problems in mathematical comprehension, as occurs in Williams syndrome or dyscalculia.

Mots clés : numerical cognition, mental number line, spatial numerical association, domestic chicks  gallus gallus, rhesus monkeys  macaca mulatta

Participants :
- University of Padua (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 244269.0 €
- University of Pennsylvania (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet COVADIS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Humans routinely make complex decisions between alternative courses of action. How our brains enable us to do this is a fundamental question in neuroscience. A central hypothesis is that the brain represents the motivational relevance of the choice options by means of value signals. However, it has remained elusive how the brain computes such values for multi-dimensional options and how it flexibly adapts them to different contexts. This lack of knowledge has strong implications for society, since it prevents us from adequately treating psychiatric behavioral control disorders that affect the lives of millions worldwide, and since it hampers the rapidly growing artificial-intelligence industry trying to develop agents that are truly capable of autonomous value-based decisions. This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary action will take an important step towards deciphering the neural code for value through the combined use of methods from cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling, and behavioral psychophysics. Specifically, I will create an experimental setup for the study of value signals, reveal the computational and biological principles of the neural code for value, and synthetize the results into a comprehensive report on a biologically plausible model of the brain computations underlying value processing. My training in decision-making, neuroimaging, and computational modelling make me the ideal person for this action. The state-of-the-art and interdisciplinary research facilities of the Zürich center for Neuroeconomics at the University of Zürich make it the ideal host institution. At this pioneering lab, I will be trained in cutting-edge decoding methods for neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation, statistical and computational skills, and in communicating the results of this interdisciplinary work. This will boost my ability to lead my own laboratory as an independent researcher in clinical and decision neuroscience.

Mots clés : decision making, choices, value, population code, computational model, non invasive brain stimulation

Participants :
- University of Zurich (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €
Projet Huntingtin hPSC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Huntington's disease (HD) is a rare neurodegenerative autosomic dominant disorder that causes severe motor dysfunction and cognitive deficits. Although HD main symptoms are manifested at mid-life, increasing evidence suggest that early neurodevelopmental defects may contribute to the late pathology. HD is a monogenetic disorder caused by a CAG repeat expansion inside the huntingtin gene (Htt). The functional role of Htt has been widely studied as a pro-survival anti-apoptotic factor, a regulator of vesicular trafficking along microtubules, a transporter of proteins between nucleus and cytoplasm, and a transcriptional role, however it’s main role in the brain during development and later adulthood is still poorly understood. Recently, genetic mouse models have shown that the loss of huntingtin from the brain at an early stage of development results in mitotic neural progenitor defects that disrupt cell fate in the cortex. In addition, the same study showed that loss-of-function of huntingtin specifically in early born neurons showed neuronal migration and neuronal dendritic arborization defects. However, to date, no studies have addressed and dissected the different roles of the human huntingtin protein in human cortical and striatal development specifically in different cell populations, or the effects of early phenotypes caused by loss-of-function of huntingtin in the late neuronal function. Here, I will study and dissect the function of human huntingtin during human development using human pluripotent stem cells (PSC) differentiated towards cortical and striatal neurons. Through this project I will generate several conditional knock out and full knock out human PSC lines to remove Htt expression specifically from different neuronal cell populations. Overall, all these analyses will give an overview of the developmental changes occurring in the absence of Htt function during cortical and striatal differentiation and neuronal maturation.

Mots clés : human pluripotent stem cells, 3d neuronal differentiation from hpsc, huntingtin function, crispr, cas9 mediated htt conditional ko generation, huntington s disease

Participants :
- University of Milan (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 180277.2 €
Projet HUNTINFISH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Huntington´s disease (HD) is one of the nine neurodegenerative diseases (ND) caused by (CAG)n trinucleotide tract expansions that encode abnormally long polyglutamine (polyQ) tracts. The common features shared by many ND are the misfolding and aggregation of toxic proteins. Thus, HD recapitulates features of other, more complicated ND. As HD is an autosomal dominant disorder, modeling this disease in vitro and in vivo is straightforward. Unfortunately, HD is, to date, incurable and there are no drugs or therapies that are known to slow or prevent the disease. Thus, the strategies proposed in this project, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the zebrafish as model organism to study human diseases, will allow me to gain a deeper understanding of its pathogenesis, and to generate tools to accelerate the development of new therapies. Moreover, my findings may have relevance to other ND. First, I propose to generate new zebrafish transgenic lines expressing different forms of human huntingtin (htt) (wild-type/mutant, full-length/exon1) fused to the photoconvertible fluorescent protein Dendra in whole body, neurons or glial cells using the UAS-GAL4 system. Next, I will validate the construct integration in the fish genome and characterize the transgenic lines. After that, I will use these new generated models to study the life cycles of the previously mentioned forms of htt in vivo, and I will examine their clearance kinetics in vivo in different tissues in the context of inhibition/stimulation of autophagy or ubiquitin-proteasome pathways. Moreover, I will assess the role played by the inflammasome in the context of the neuroinflammation present in HD. Finally, I will use these new zebrafish lines to test novel therapeutic targets recently identified in the host lab, in order to develop new treatments for HD.

Mots clés : zebrafish, huntington s disease, neurodegenerative diseases, autophagy, ubiqutitin proteasome pathway

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

HyLITE (Hydrophobic Ionic Liquid Technologies) aims to enhance established European strength and capability in the research and development of ionic liquid materials by targeting to production of new ionic liquids with specific, tailored, properties that are technologically functional and environmentally acceptable and can be manufactured from sustainable resources. Optimised atom efficient synthesis will produce new hydrophobic ionic liquids that contain only carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms and so have low environmental impact and can be used as non-polluting extraction solvents in liquid/liquid separations springboarding sustainable innovation within industry and academia.

Mots clés : liquid liquid separations, sustainable synthesis

Participants :
- Queen's University Belfast (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet VSHER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Hydrogen (H2) will play a central role in the future global energy economy. It is therefore of utmost importance to develop economic routes for the production of H2 to make it more attractive as energy carrier medium in the future. Particularly, Co and Ni based compounds have gained attention for molecular H2 catalysis lately. Co glyoxime and pentapyridine coordinative complexes as well as Ni phosphine compounds are promising candidates exhibiting high catalytic activity in both electro- and light driven H2 catalysis in water. Nevertheless, for technological application the catalysts have to be immobilized on electrode surfaces. The adsorption strongly alters the catalytic reactions, which is still not clearly understood. To investigate the adsorbed catalysts, advanced spectroscopic methods are required that are able to provide sensitive information on the catalytic reaction at a molecular level. The aim of this proposed research is to investigate the heterogeneous catalytic reaction mechanism of Co and Ni mediated catalysis using an innovative combination of potential controlled confocal resonance Raman and ATR FT infrared absorption spectroscopy assisted by electrocatalytic methods and DFT calculations. For this, the three mentioned types of catalysts will be adsorbed on metal oxide surfaces and their catalytic reactions spectroelectrochemically and electrochemically investigated. Special emphasis is led on the role of heterogeneous electron and proton transfer steps on the overall heterogeneous catalytic activity compared to the homogeneous case. Through variation of the electrode material, the modulating material/catalyst interaction is aimed to be investigated in detail. In the outcome, the results will afford a comprehensive picture of the mechanism of metal catalysed HER.

Mots clés : hydrogen, molecular catalyts, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, vibrational spectroscopy, raman, electrochemistry, metal oxides, tio2, cobaloximes, ni bisdiphosine

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet Green-Combustion (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Hydrogen is enjoying a renewed and rapidly growing attention in Europe and around the world. The most important advantage of hydrogen usage is that it does emit greenhouse gases. The EU's priority is to develop renewable hydrogen where the H2 is produced from the electrolysis of water, with the electricity stemming from renewable energy. This meets the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. There are two options for hydrogen usage. One is the drop-in approach, where only a limited amount of H2 can be added to the fossil fuel to reuse the existing chambers, due to the very different properties of H2. However, this option still emits a large amount of greenhouse gases. The other one is to redesign the existing chambers to burn substantial H2. The most challenging issues for burning substantial H2 are the strong differential diffusion and its induced instabilities. The state-of-the-art combustion model cannot capture these phenomena with accuracy, particularly when they further interact with turbulence. The aim of this proposal is to develop and validate such a model to close this gap. The model will be based on a flamelet approach, and a novel machine learning technology will be introduced to consider the differential diffusion (objective 1). To model the positive and negative curvatures in the unstable premixed H2 flame, a novel flamelet model will be developed based on the detailed a priori and a posteriori analyses of the state-of-the-art DNS datasets (objective 2). Finally, the developed flamelet model will be extended to LES with the differential diffusion and curvature related sub-grid scale (SGS) effects being considered with the artificially thickened flame (ATF) model. Particularly, the SGS effects will be considered by modifying the efficiency function. LES will be conducted for the DNS configuration and a turbulent methane flame with substantial H2 addition using the developed flamelet model coupled with the modified ATF approach (objective 3).

Mots clés : combustion modeling, hydrogen combustion, numerical simulation, flamelet model development

Participants :
- Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 178320.0 €
- Institut national des sciences appliquées de Rouen Normandie (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet The MERIT study (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Hyperglycaemia during pregnancy is a major factor leading to adverse pregnancy complications, and future maternal and offspring diseases. Growing diseases such as obesity and T1DM -hyperglycaemic states- increase this susceptibility to later disease; which can be transmitted to subsequent generations. To find strategies aimed at breaking this intergenerational cycle, which is aggravating the disease burden of this and next generations, is a high-priority within the European Policy Framework. Exercise has been recently proposed as a mean to better control short-term glycaemic responses such as postprandial glucose and glucose variability, and thus reduce adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes. However, it remains unknown which timing of exercise is more effective to optimize postprandial glycaemic control in healthy and impaired metabolic conditions during pregnancy. The mechanisms underlying these benefits also remain to be established. The MERIT project will investigate which timing of exercise (at lunch or dinnertime, and before or after the meal) is more effective to optimize postprandial glycaemic control in healthy, obese and T1DM women during pregnancy. To obtain a mechanistic insight, the muscle molecular signature related to these metabolic responses will be explored, as well as the related muscle molecular changes induced by exercise. This new knowledge on the muscle molecular signature, changes and functionality, will be generated by using last-generation technologies, and cutting-edge bioinformatics analyses. Lastly, the role of the muscle molecular machinery and glycaemic excursions on placental phenotype, and the muscle-placenta crosstalk will be investigated, which further highlights the novelty of this project. Working under the supervision of Prof. van Poppel and Prof. Desoye will boost the fellow´s scientific career development and professional maturation as an independent researcher, in addition to help him setting this pioneering field in Europe.

Mots clés : pregnancy, exercise, postprandial glucose, exercise timing, glycaemic control, metabolism, mrna, muscle, placenta

Participants :
- University of Graz (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 174167.04 €
Projet MINDSHIFT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Doctoral Networks - Joint Doctorates
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Hypertension is the key determinant of cardiovascular disease and the No.1 ‘silent killer’ of humans worldwide. Despite progress in understanding the causes of hypertension and improvements in clinical management, >85 million people in Europe suffer from cardiovascular disease, costing the EU €210 billion/year. Currently, there is a crucial gap in understanding the dynamic interactions between vascular and endocrine pathways in hypertension. Such knowledge would facilitate redefinition of hypertension subtypes to improve current prevention and treatment. MINDSHIFT will offer a top-level interdisciplinary research programme to bridge this gap, using an integrative framework approach fed by new data and insights from cutting-edge experimental and clinical studies. To enable this advance, MINDSHIFT will implement and run an innovative EJD-programme, combining first-class scientific research with in-depth professional and transferable competence-skills trainings. ESRs will develop the integrative and entrepreneurial capacities that hypertension research demands by nature. Above and beyond, the programme will challenge the ESRs to build their capacity for self-directed learning, career development and personal-professional leadership. The highly capable academic and non-academic partners in MINDSHIFT have co-designed an extraordinary high-quality programme of research projects and network-wide training elements, to achieve the required and sustainable impacts on the ESR careers, scientific results and ITN-wide learning and innovation. Based on the excellent synergies and shared commitments, the MINDSHIFT consortium seeks to establish a European School for Hypertension Research, to propel future health science and industry towards more effective prevention of and cure for this silent killer.

Mots clés : high blood pressure, vascular disease, endocrinology, obesity, bioinformatics, self directed learning, health technology, biomarkers, competence, organisational learning, leadership

Participants :
- Maastricht University (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 1062479.52 €
- University of Padua (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 522999.36 €
- Université Paris Cité (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 824406.12 €
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 250904.88 €
- University of Glasgow (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 1212690.24 €
- Autonomous University of Madrid (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 250904.88 €