Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet LIGHTEST (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Neurological disorders are a global leading medical and societal challenge, affecting particularly the aged population. Because of the lack of efficiency of pharmacological options, alternatives such as electrical stimulation using implanted electrodes has gained popularity. However, this strategy lacks spatiotemporal control over the stimulation of specific neural circuits, of which no biochemical information can be acquired. Recent breakthroughs in non-genetic, light-mediated electrical stimulation have shown promising results towards minimally invasive devices with controllable performance following exposure to near infrared (NIR) light. The LIGHTEST project proposes an innovative neural interface constituted by electrodes combining graphene with upconversion nanoparticles (UCNP), which will convert NIR light into electricity with spatiotemporal control. We will use novel tools to screen formulated graphene-UCNP complexes and evaluate their biological interactions in the presence of NIR light (e.g. high-throughput screening, RNA sequencing). This project counts on the applicant’s knowledge in synthesis, characterisation and biological evaluation of graphene-based materials, alongside the expertise of Dr Lino Ferreira in the formulation of light-responsive nanomaterials and their in vivo interactions, in combination with the experience in optogenetic engineering and mechanistic understanding of light-mediated stimulation in the brain from Dr João Peça at the Host institute. This project will contribute to the establishment of the applicant in Portugal as an independent researcher in nanomedicine, which is a strategic field that will boost European competitiveness in the development of novel therapies and inspire new generations for a better healthcare.

Mots clés : optoelectronic stimulation, upconversion nanoparticles, neuromodulation, biocompatibility, near infrared light

Participants :
- University of Coimbra (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 159815.04 €
Projet COGNAC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Neurological disorders such as Autism Spectral Disorders (ASD) in children are lifelong conditions for which there is no cure,treatment options are very limited AND create huge burdens on children, families and society. Potential long-term consequences of poor cognitive performance and presence of autistic traits are poor social development, low educational achievement, diminished economic productivity and unemployment, mental health issues, and increased risk of antisocial behaviour. In the case of ASD, a lifelong disorder, there is no cure and limited treatment options are available. Therefore, it is essential to identify modifiable risk factors to prevent their onset and prevalence. Air pollution is postulated as a risk factor since it is believed to cause neuroinflammation, oxidative stress and neurodegenerative pathology. Traffic noise shows inconclusive associations with cognitive performance. The experience in cognitive and neurobehavioral development epidemiologic analysis and wide-scale modelling at the host institution, with different modelling approaches and existing models available for UK and London at the partner´s institutions, and the experience of exposure assessment methods of the fellow dovetail nicely to accomplish the goal of the COGNAC project. This is to explore the associations between air pollution and noise with cognitive performance and the presence of autistic traits in children using a large children cohort. The innovative aspects of this proposal are combining multi-pollutant and noise exposure, using very detailed maps of these environmental stressors and assessing effects at critical windows of exposure. The scientific impact of this fellowship results from the identification of the effect of air pollution and noise in cognitive development and the presence of autistic traits in children. The skills acquired in this fellowship will be decisive fo establishing me in one of the leaders in environmental health applied to neurocognition.


Participants :
- CERCA Institution (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet TFZN (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Neuromasts are the sensory organs used by fishes and amphibians to sense water displacement. Neuromasts contain hair cells that are very similar to our own inner ear cells. Unlike mammalian ear cells, bird and fish hair cells regenerate after ablated. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for the development and regeneration of the sensory organs holds the promise of treating deafness in humans. The study of neuromasts is also of advantage for basic science. With its three cell types, and 70 cells total, neuromasts are a relatively simple organ. They provide a good model to investigate unanswered questions about organogenesis: What makes cells proliferate during organ regeneration or development? What signals them to stop after normal organ size and cell number is reached? How is organ architecture – shape, cell placement, orientation– attained? Is it an intrinsic property of the interactions between its components (self-organization) or does it depend on external cues? I will establish a system for the production of neuromast organoids in vitro. This will serve to interrogate the role of self-organization in the process of tissue repair. I will also use a combination of single cell transcriptomics, fluorescence marker imaging, gene editing and pharmacological treatments to collect multidimensional data from cells during neuromast regeneration. The use of unbiased computational techniques derived from machine learning will help us untangle the molecular and cellular players driving cellular organization in this system.

Mots clés : zebrafish organogenesis neuromast regeneration

Participants :
- Helmholtz Zentrum München (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 162806.4 €
Projet NeuroSens (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Neuromodulation, such as that associated with paying attention, changes the way our brains interpret our sensory experiences. Understanding the neuromodulation of neural circuitry that integrates and processes incoming sensory input to generate a meaningful output remains a fundamental question in neuroscience. While the neuromodulator acetylcholine is shown to enhance sensory responses, the cellular mechanisms by which it mediates these effects are still poorly understood. Recent evidence suggests that the local subthreshold dendritic potentials, dendritic spikes, which are important in synaptic input integration, also play a key role in encoding feature selectivity, the ability of neurons in sensory cortices to be tuned to specific features of a stimulus. Interestingly, ion channels, such as potassium channels that regulate dendritic spikes are also shown to be modulated by cholinergic inputs. Here, I propose that acetylcholine modulates sensory processing via modulation of dendritic spikes. I will use a combination of state-of-the-art in vivo imaging, electrophysiology, pharmacology and optogenetics to test the novel hypothesis that acetylcholine modulates sensory processing by regulating dendritic spikes and thereby feature selectivity in mouse somatosensory cortex. The project will provide new cellular insights into a long-standing question on the mechanisms of neuromodulation of sensory processing. It builds on my expertise in neuroanatomy and physiology and will give me the opportunity to master advanced in vivo techniques in a host environment that is well known for their in vivo expertise and research into neuromodulation. Given my strong background in neurodevelopmental disorders, the project will push the knowledge frontier on neuronal processing and will provide a framework for research into basic mechanisms of sensory perception and their alterations in neurological disorders.

Mots clés : neuromodulation, sensory processing, in vivo, dendritic integration, somatosensory cortex, two photon microscopy, optogenetics, synapse

Participants :
- University of Bristol (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet Pain_App (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Neuropathic pain (NP) is a common symptom arising as a direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the somatosensory system. The traditional approach to manage NP patients is to initiate treatment with conservative pharmacological therapy before interventional strategies. However, first-line drug treatments have shown modest efficacy with less than 50% of pain relief. Since NP is present in ~70% of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI), people with this pathology represent a reliable population to study NP. Interestingly, previous studies have shown a clear correlation between NP and changes in electroencephalography (EEG), which is a good indicator of the state of the central nervous system. Hence, I hypothesise that NP episodes in SCI patients can be predicted based on the classification and identification of features extracted from EEG recordings in resting state and during an imaginary motor task. In recent years, digital health technology has emerged as a useful tool to improve data management strategy under the full control of the patient. In this project, I will employ state-of-the-art digital health technology (a smartphone app and a portable EEG) to collect data from SCI patients daily for one month, including pain self-assessment scales and physiological indicators. I will set up a digital-health-based study using a software platform already established by the host institution. The collection of these data will allow me to develop a personalised model to predict the onset of NP episodes using machine learning techniques. Predicting the occurrence of NP episodes will increase the medication efficacy, which in turn will prevent an aggressive development of pain events while minimising the side effects produced by excessive drug doses. The expected results of this project will remarkably improve the quality of life of SCI patients with NP.

Mots clés : neuropathic pain, spinal cord injury, digital health, machine learning

Participants :
- Malmö University (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203852.16 €
Projet Super-DENSE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Neutron stars are one of the most exciting nuclear physics laboratories in the Universe. With interior densities well above nuclear saturation density they allow us to probe conditions impossible to replicate on Earth. In addition the thermal energy of the star is negligible compared to the Fermi energy, and neutrons in the interior will be superfluid. Superfluidity affects the dynamics of the star, as now neutrons can flow relative to the ‘normal’ components of the star with little viscosity. A direct probe of such an effect is thought to come from pulsar ‘glitches’, sudden jumps in frequency observed in otherwise spinning down radio pulsars. Most theories of glitches are based on the idea that a large scale superfluid component of the star is decoupled from the spin-down of the ‘normal’ component, and its sudden re-coupling leads to a glitch. On theoretical grounds we expect this effect as a superfluid rotates by forming an array of quantised vortices, and these vortices are strongly attracted, or ‘pinned’, by ions in the neutron star crust (or superconducting flux tubes in the core). If the superfluid cannot expel ‘pinned’ vortices it cannot spin-down and builds up a lag with respect to the normal component, until hydrodynamical lift forces become strong enough to break the pinning. Despite the success of this picture in interpreting glitches, only recently has progress been made in quantitatively describing glitches with large scale hydrodynamical simulations, and statistics throughout the pulsar population with small scale quantum-mechanical simulations of vortex motion. This proposal aims to bridge the gap between these two scales by using inputs from quantum mechanical simulations to describe vortex unpinning in hydrodynamical simulations, which will include state of the art crustal physics and thermal conduction. We will thus quantitatively describe the response of the star to different kinds of glitches and obtain, for the first time, robust statistics.

Mots clés : neutron stars, pulsar glitches

Participants :
- Polish Academy of Sciences (Pologne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 146462.4 €
Projet HGRF-IFIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

New Radio Frequency (RF) High-Gradient (HG) knowledge and technology in normal conducting accelerator structures has been developed by the accelerator Physics community in the recent years in X-Band frequency. Significant progress has been made to understand the RF high-gradient behavior, breakdown phenomena and cavities conditioning processes, but extensive R&D is still needed in this very interdisciplinary and phenomenology research area. This project proposes the commissioning and upgrade of a novel high-power RF system in S-Band to perform systematic breakdown studies and conditioning of cavities in this frequency range, in particular interesting for medical applications. The main challenge is the implementation of a hard real-time control of amplitude and phase at microsecond scale of the pulsed megawatt RF power delivered to the structures under test. The power delivery has to be done under stringent controlled and automated conditions in order to perform the conditioning and avoid permanent damage to the structures. In addition, a power boost upgrade of the system is envisaged to reach the power limits that medical high-gradient structures need to be pushed to. A close relation with industry partners is to be carried out in order to commission the new solid-state power modulator and test structures. The outcome of this R&D project can be crucial to make more compact linear accelerators, resulting in lower cost and size, which can have a potential impact in several applications: hadrontherapy facilities based on linear accelerators, which will be emphasized in this project due to its advantageous features; industrial applications such as cargo scanning; or scientific applications such as free-electron-lasers and Compton sources.

Mots clés : high gradient, radio frequency, breakdowns, linear accelerators  linac, hadrontherapy, medical accelerators

Participants :
- University of Valencia (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet THERMES (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

New energy storage solutions and innovations play a vital role in fully realising solar energy potentials particularly in large-scale integration into future low-carbon energy systems. For concentrated solar power, one of key challenges lies in low-cost high-performance thermal energy storage. Latent thermal energy storage holds the key to resolving such a challenge and keeping energy supply over periods of inadequate irradiation. THERMES will develop a new generation high-temperature phase change microemulsion both as the latent heat storage material and heat transfer fluid for low temperature solar field of a dual-loop solar field system. The high-temperature phase change microemulsion is characterized by high energy density, enhanced heat transfer performance through the addition of nanoparticles, and cost-effectiveness due to the use of commercial grade paraffin as the latent heat storage medium. By integrating the expertise of the host and Dr. Wenzheng Cui, THERMES will combine cutting-edge experimental, computational and theoretical analysis methods to develop the next generation working medium for latent thermal energy storage in order to meet the key challenge faced by concentrated solar power and fill the research gap of lacking of knowledge on high-temperature properties of phase change microemulsion. This Fellowship will offer Dr. Cui an opportunity through mobility, diverse trainings for acquiring interdisciplinary expertise and transferable skills, and to two-way transfer of knowledge between him and the host. It will position him as an internationally-leading interdisciplinary academic in the research area of latent thermal energy storage for concentrated solar power. THERMES will aggrandize commercialisation of utility-scale concentrated solar power, provide adaptability and support solar energy integration in the energy system. Therefore it is in line with EU’s Energy Strategy and Energy Union for secure, competitive, and sustainable energy.

Mots clés : latent thermal energy storage, high temperature phase change microemulsion, dual loop solar field, functional nanoscale additives, concentrated solar power

Participants :
- University of Birmingham (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet UltracoldEDM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

New fundamental particles at high energy scales that have not been reached by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could explain the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry that cannot be understood by the Standard Model of particle physics. These hypothetical particles, if they exist, will introduce a tiny electric dipole moment on the electron (eEDM), which can be probed by extremely sensitive measurement of the electron spin precession in a huge intra-molecular electric field. Previous eEDM measurements using relatively warm molecules are all consistent with zero and are mainly limited by spin coherence and interogation time. Here we propose to measure the eEDM using ultracold molecular beams. We will apply polarization gradient cooling in the two transverse directions to reduce the temperature to below 50 microkelvin. This will significantly increase the number of molecules that can be detected in the forward direction and improve the coherence. We will also develop a new deceleration technique for molecules, called Zeeman-Sisyphus deceleration, to reduce the forward velocity of the molecules to below 30 m/s that allows around 0.1 s interogation time, 100 times longer than the longest in the current beam experiments, in the measurement apparatus. Together with other improvements on molecule production, initial state preparation, magnetic field shielding and control, and spin state detection, we expect that the eEDM can be measured at least 10 or 100 times more precisely than the state-of-the-art level. This will be a search for new particles responsible for matter-antimatter asymmetry and a test of new physics beyond the Standard Model up to a few 100 TeV. This energy range extends far beyond the kinematic reach of any existing and near-future particle colliders and lies around the favoured mass range of many supersymmetric models.

Mots clés : electron s electric dipole moment, fundamental symmetries, new physics beyond the standard model, laser cooling and deceleration of molecules

Participants :
- Imperial College London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet Safe and Sound Drive (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

New in-vehicle information systems and advanced driver assistance systems are currently being introduced in cars in order to help driving safely and energy efficiently. These systems help the driver to pay attention to critical events (e.g. collision warnings and blind spot information systems) or deliver important information (e.g. speed limits and navigation instructions). However, safety and environmental impact are most of all dependent on the behaviour and attitude of the driver. This proposal concerns the design of a serious game for cars that will help drivers to increase eco-driving skills, lower fuel consumption and encourage safe and environmentally friendly approaches to driving. Through his research, Dr Arne Nykänen has developed successful methods and procedures for efficient product sound design, already implemented at Volvo Cars and Scania. Anglia Ruskin University has leading expertise on creative and user-centred design, serious gaming, mobile applications and sound design for theatre and film. Combining this expertise enables the introduction of sound based serious gaming in cars. This provides a successful way to increase driving safety and decrease environmental impact of cars, by not only informing and warning the driver, but also changing attitudes and behaviour. The major outcomes of the project will be a demonstrator of a serious game implemented in a car, a mobile app publicly available for download, demonstrations at science centres in the UK and Sweden, 3 journal papers, participation in 4 conferences, and a new European expert network with partners from academia as well as car, game and audio engineering industry.

Mots clés : serious gaming, green driving, eco driving, driver assistance systems, sound design, mobile application

Participants :
- Anglia Ruskin University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 97727.4 €