Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet App-Marie (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Urgent actions are needed to recover marine ecosystems from damage caused by human activities. The global aim of App-Marie is to study the joint effects of microplastics (MPs) and the chemical chlorpyrifos (CPF), two of the main stressors in our oceans, in different scenarios of climate change, using embryos of the sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus). This will be achieved by combining molecular and biochemical techniques together with bioassays that will allow to assess their impact at a molecular, individual and population levels. We also aim to develop a standard protocol for performing bioassays to simultaneously test several toxics/stressors and apps able to analyse multifactorial data obtained and to predict their impact at the different levels of organization. The project will be carried out by Dr Bertucci in a highly recognized institution, Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), under the supervision of Dr Bellas. Additionally, two international companies with great experience in the fields of energy and petrochemistry (Shell) and plastics (AIMPLAS) will act as collaborators providing their guidance to ensure the deliverables of the project meet the requirements to be used by industries. Dr Bellas is an international leader in marine contamination and MP pollution, ensuring an outstanding training environment for the ER. On the other hand, the deep background in comparative endocrinology and molecular biology of the ER will ensure the two-way transfer of knowledge. While completing the project, the ER will acquire diverse state-of-the-art skills and interact with international industries, expanding his scientific and personal horizons to become an independent researcher. All resources arising from App-Marie (protocols, apps) will be used to create a research framework of special interest for researchers/companies/governments to analyse and share their own data, ultimately helping decision making towards the best Approach to Protect the Marine Ecosystems.

Mots clés : predictive ecotoxicology, microplastics, ocean warming, ocean acidification, pesticides, multi stressor environment

Participants :
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 172932.48 €
Projet VEHICULA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

VEHICULA is a study of vehicles as means for elite self-representation and the visualization of social hierarchies in the late Roman empire: its aim is to produce a comprehensive study of cultural history, which will be of interest to those in all fields of classics and history. In late antiquity, the increasing hierarchisation of society was matched by a need for the visualization of its structure: every citizen was bound not only to occupy his or her own place in society, but also to exhibit the distinguishing features of his or her rank, in a way that could be immediately clear to every viewer. Vehicles were among the most impressive signs of social and economic power; but they are also one of the most underestimated by modern scholars. The use of elaborate vehicles was the principal means for elite self-representation in public spaces, where the prestige and power of a nobleman was made clear by the lavish parade by which he was surrounded while moving through the city. The project will address several categories of visual and written sources, combining the competences and methods of archaeology, art history, classical philology, and literary criticism, and exploiting their results through the lenses of social history and the history of ideas. The innovative focus on vehicles will help clarify some characteristic developments of late antique culture and society in different contexts in which vehicles played a key role, including: the evolution of pagan theology and rituals; the establishment of a bureaucratic structure for central and territorial administration; the construction of gender identity among the elites; the competing modes of elite self-representation (senatorial, military, ecclesiastical) in the public and private sphere; the establishment of the Christian Church as a new centre of power alongside and competing with the traditional ones; the survival of Roman institutions and their insignia in the transition from antiquity to the middle ages.

Mots clés : late antiquity, elite self representation, social history, roman empire, rituals and ceremonies

Participants :
- University of Edinburgh (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet VINe (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

VINE seeks to disentangle the multidimensionality of the risk of social exclusion, focusing on vulnerable populations; specifically, those individuals who are in a fragile condition with regard to integration into the domains of well-being (family, labour market, welfare state). Using EU-SILC microdata, the project analyses the interactions between social vulnerability and different individual characteristics that might magnify it. Secondly, the project intends to study how, and in what ways, these individual characteristics combine to determine economic insecurity at household level. The main contribution of this project is proposing an analysis of how the institutional context as well as individual characteristics affects individual risk of living in vulnerable households, from a comparative and multidimensional perspective. By comparing six European countries, as representatives of different institutional environments, the VINE project aims to deliver a better understanding of the causes and mechanisms that determine both men and women’s exposure to social vulnerability. The innovation herein is the assumption that gender is the main analytical dimension in interactions, when theorised according to the intersectional perspective. With a multi-dimensional explorative analysis, and multinomial logistic regression, the analysis will lead to the development of a synthetic indicator of economic insecurity at the household level, permitting assessment of its interactions with specific individual vulnerability profiles. The final aim is to disentangle factors informing individual’s exposure to different degrees of social vulnerability, analysing their consequences and household’s economic insecurity, and possible influences from the institutional context. Thanks to this project, the ER will fill her gap in quantitative research analysis and she will be able to empower her professional profile compete for tenure-track position in the international academic labour market.

Mots clés : social vulnerability, intersectionality, gender

Participants :
- Autonomous University of Barcelona (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet SUPER2D (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Van der Waals heterostructures, in which graphene and related 2D materials are mechanically superimposed in a stacked structure, represent a versatile platform to obtain materials with unique properties. These artificially-assembled materials will revolutionize a number of research fields directly linked to applications, such as information and communication, and ultimately everyday life. In this context, molecules are particularly attractive, since the almost-unlimited degrees of freedom in chemical design offer the possibility to confer ad-hoc functionalities to 2D materials, paving the way to novel and unexplored areas of physics and materials science. The researcher aims to impact this rising field by using metal-organic networks based on lanthanide ions and organic ligands self-assembled on the surface of 2D materials. In the resulting hybrid heterostructures, the metal organic network will determine a periodic modulation of the surface potential, due to charge transfer and molecular dipoles which occur at every node, forming a superlattice with unique electronic and optical properties. Moreover, the lanthanide ions, which possess high magnetic moment, will confer new magnetic properties to the 2D materials thanks to the proximity effect. The researcher proposes to investigate these electronic, optical and magnetic phenomena through a combination of different surface science techniques, which will provide a comprehensive understanding of the hybrid heterostructures. SUPER2D is a multidisciplinary project which combines the surface-science expertise of the Host institute (Centro Fisica Materiales) with the competences of the researcher in magnetism and molecule/2D materials interfaces. The overall mission of the fellowship is to train the researcher to become an independent scientist through the achievements of well-defined scientific objectives and the development of managerial and outreach skills, preparing him for a leading position in academia or industry.

Mots clés : 2d materials, metal organic coordination networks, proximity effect, superlattice, self assembly, scanning tunneling microscopy, photoemission spectroscopy, graphene, rare earths

Participants :
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet HESFIRE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Vegetation fire patterns depend on environmental drivers that are expected to change in the future, including climate and the expansion of agriculture and associated fire practices into natural ecosystems. In return, fires have a major influence on vegetation distribution, the carbon cycle and climate. It is important to anticipate the result of these interactions on future ecosystem dynamics and carbon emissions, and to integrate these outlook when designing societal strategies for climate mitigation. Such an integrative approach is especially relevant to terrestrial policies (e.g. REDD), which could drastically modify global landuse patterns and thus the anthropogenic footprint on fire regimes. In a first stage of the proposed research, we will improve our understanding of fire drivers through innovative observation data assimilation methods. We will focus on depicting the influence of climate and fuel on fire intensity, and of human activities on fire incidence, which are well-recognized research priorities. In a second stage, we will deploy this knowledge in multi-disciplinary settings to provide the first assessment of future fire regimes under economic, agricultural and climate scenarios. We will use existing and new scenarios from integrated assessment models with particular attention to design experiments of maximum relevance to the environmental policy commitments of the European Union.

Mots clés : fire regimes, fire intensity, fire modeling, ecosystem dynamics, redd policies, climate mitigation, economic modeling, integrated assessment, human earth system

Participants :
- University of Lisbon (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 148635.6 €
Projet PROVE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common, deadly condition affecting more than 1 million europeans, with 500.000 related deaths in EU per year. Many risk factors are established, but it is not known what triggers a VTE event, which hampers development of predictive and therapeutic measures. Hypoxia is known to play a major role in thrombus formation, but via which mechanisms is unclear. PROVE will be conducted at the university of Tromsø, using state-of-the-art equipment in a world-class thrombosis center of excellence (TREC) to uncover how hypoxia contributes to thrombus formation, with an emphasis on immunology and extracellular vesicles (EVs). TREC is composed of three units, combining epidemiology, clinic, and laboratory research, to conduct interdisciplinary, cutting-edge, research. PROVE will add aspects on immunology and EVs to TREC, two fields with greatly increasing importance in thrombotic research. PROVE will address three research objectives: (i) To unravel processes and pathways triggered by IH in intravascular cells (i.e. endothelial cells, monocytes and platelets); (ii) To define the characteristics and procoagulant activity of cell-specific EVs derived from intravascular cells activated by VTE-associated stimuli including IH, (iii) To comprehensively compare cell-specific EVs isolated from plasma of VTE patients and healthy subjects, towards future development of diagnostic tools and improved treatment regimens. This will be achieved by substantial characterizations and functional test of human cells and blood samples from both healthy individuals, and VTE patients. This will result in powerful data sets from protein expression analysis, and RNA sequencing, but also functional experiments to define effects of hypoxia on coagulation, and initiation of thrombi. The long term goal of PROVE is to improve diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, to reduce the substantial suffering and costs of VTE.

Mots clés : thrombus, thromboembolism, venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, hypoxia, intermittent hypoxia, exosomes, extracellular vesicles

Participants :
- UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214158.72 €
Projet ReproMech (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Vertebrate eggs can induce the reprogramming of transplanted somatic nuclei to enable the generation of all cell types of a cloned organism. However, the efficiency of nuclear reprogramming is low, and only a small proportion of the nuclear transfer embryos generated from differentiated cells reach a reproductive adulthood. How the egg achieves the erasure of the previous somatic cell identity and the establishment of totipotency only in some instances remains a question of fundamental importance. Epigenetic modifications were shown to be major roadblocks to reprogramming, but how these roadblocks resist removal by the egg factors and how they are instead propagated during early embryonic cell divisions to induce inappropriate expression of genes in nuclear transfer embryos is not known. This proposal aims at identifying the molecules in the egg that a) help to overcome the epigenetic barriers during successful reprogramming events and b) cause resistance when reprogramming fails. We will then c) interfere with these mechanisms to improve cell fate conversion. The gained molecular insights into cell fate reprogramming via the natural activities present in the egg can then be utilized to develop efficient reprogramming strategies for therapeutic purposes such as enhancing regeneration or improving cell replacement therapies.

Mots clés : nuclear transfer, mechanisms of reprogramming, cell fate stability, epigenetic memory

Participants :
- Helmholtz Zentrum München (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 162806.4 €
Projet STARSS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Viable experimental techniques able to reveal and quantify protein-protein interactions and protein conformational changes can have a significant impact on cell biology and drug discovery. Fluorescence anisotropy (FA) has been widely employed in biomedical research as a tool for high-throughput screening applications, to study the binding of small molecules to protein and characterize protein-protein interaction. Despite the enormous potential of the FA technique, the major limiting factor is the inability of probing the system past the fluorescence lifetime, which in the most favorable cases lasts for a few nanoseconds, setting an upper limit to the time scales that can be addressed with the technique, which translates in an upper limit of few nanometers of molecular size. Reversibly switchable fluorescent transitions have the potential to revolutionize the capability of FA tools for the study of large molecular aggregates, overcoming the limits imposed by the finite fluorescence lifetime, and providing a practical and highly sensible way of measuring rotational diffusion processes with a practically unlimited upper bound on molecular sizes. This proposal aims to develop a novel fluorescent anisotropy technique, named Super Time-resolved Anisotropy with Reversibly Switchable States (STARSS), designed to measure rotational mobility all-across the time scale from nano- to micro-seconds, which will enable to discern clusters from free rotating molecules in situ and with high angular precision. The coupling of STARSS observables and microscopy will provide a powerful tool to reveal the dynamics of protein complexes inside the compartments of living cells, shedding new light on a multitude of biological processes.

Mots clés : fluorescence anisotropy, super resolution fluorescence microscopy, reversible photoswitchable fluorescent proteins, resolft, sted, rotational diffusion, high throughput assay, ribosome biogenesis

Participants :
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191852.16 €
Projet MMXVI (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Viral diseases represent one of the world’s highest socio-economic burdens. Increased global trade and travel, climate change resulting in shifting viral vectors, and the emergence of new and often deadly viruses is inevitable. Therefore, detailed understanding of the complexity of virus particles and the development of new model systems to study them, will be essential to develop new research, diagnostic, and therapeutic tools. The structural changes that occur during the initial contact between a virus and its host remains one of the major challenges in infection biology. Until recently, the investigation of viral nano-architecture and dynamic changes that occur in virus particles during the infectious lifecycle was limited to methods, such as EM, with no capacity to capture dynamic events or define molecular specificity. The goal of the proposed project is to create a new minimal model of virus infection based on cell-derived membrane blebs. The model will be amenable to novel super-resolution microscopy (SRM) methods that allow the visualization of viral structures at resolutions of tens of nanometers. Recently developed analytical tools like single-virion averaging allows the generation of precise models from hundreds of events. This affords unprecedented insights into the biological and biophysical requirements of virus infection. Furthermore, we aim to investigate the dynamics of virus architectural changes during the first stages of infection, particularly at the membrane level, by combining single-molecule techniques with our new model-system. While initially aimed at investigating protein structure-function relationships within the prototypic poxvirus, vaccinia, the model system and imaging developments outlined will be broadly applicable to a wide range of biological systems including other viruses. Thereby, this proposal looks to advance the field of infection biology into the nanoscale.

Mots clés : virus host interaction, membrane organization and dynamics, super resolution microscopy, single particle tracking

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet INTERACT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Viruses are nano-sized, genome-filled protein containers with metastable mechanical properties. They form by spontaneous self-assembly inside the crowded, heterogeneous environment of the infected cells. While structural characterization of viruses is becoming increasingly more refined, essential questions about the viral life cycle remain unanswered up to date. This includes: (i) how do the capsomeres (capsid proteins) rearrange during the infection cycle of a viral capsid? (ii) What are the interaction forces responsible for successful infection of viral capsids? (iii) Which kinetic parameters govern this process? To address these questions, the present proposal aims to understand the physico-biology behind the binding of viral capsids to their host cell membrane using human adeno virus as a model system. To accomplish these goals I will investigate the structural and mechanical properties of those proteins forming the viral capsids and measure the binding force to the targeted cell membrane. High-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) will allow me to directly observe the ensemble of proteins in action at high spatio-temporal resolution and under near-to physiological conditions. At the same time Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy (SMFS) will allow to measure directly the magnitude of forces involved in the interactions. Having access to the information on structure as well as to the unbinding dynamics of the capsid proteins, I will be able to build a kinetic model of the first steps of viral infection at the single-molecule level.

Mots clés : physical virology, virus cell interaction, viral infectivity, nanomechanics, bionanotechnology, human adeno virus

Participants :
- University of Groningen (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 177598.8 €