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

Improving current biological wastewater treatment (WWT) plants towards more sustainable solutions is a priority of the EU (Water Framework Directive). Conventional activated sludge technology faces some challenges such as high O2 demand and inevitable CO2 emissions. Phototropic microorganisms offer a sustainable way of WWT by converting CO2 to O2 and valuable biofeedstock which can further be converted to bioenergy. Photogranules are compact spherical biofilms which contain high amounts of phototrophs in addition to heterotrophs. As a result, photogranule based WWT can couple CO2 and O2 fluxes from different microorganisms leading to an aeration free WWT. However, to utilize the true potential of this technology, revolutionary reactor designs together with more fundamental understanding on photogranulanation is needed. This work aims to intensify photobioreactors for WWT by using a multidisciplinary approach which combines microrhelogy and microbiology with mass and photon transport models. To have more control over growth and light, novel supports for biofilms will be designed. In addition, the project will explore the relationship between environmental conditions such as light availability and shear on microbial community composition and structure in complex phototropic biofilms by both microfluidic experiments and mathematical models. The information obtained from these studies will be translated to a macroscopic level using simplified transport phenomena models to design an efficient photobioreactor. The findings of this study will both advance our understanding of phototropic biofilms and pave the way towards industrial-scale sustainable WWT. With this project, I am aiming to combine my background on design and modelling of light-driven multiphase systems with the distinguished expertise of the host research group in WWT at TU Delft while acquiring further knowledge on mass transfer in photobiofilms during my secondment at ETH Zurich.

Mots clés : process intensification, biofilms, phototropic microorganisms, photogranules, wastewater treatment

Participants :
- Université de technologie de Delft (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203464.32 €
- École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich (Suisse) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet PROPATHIN (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Marine disease outbreaks can devastate populations, alter community structure and affect ecosystem health, which results in biodiversity loses and economic impacts on ecosystem services. Bivalves, which mediate ecosystem processes and functions and provide ecosystem services (e.g. food), harbour a wide variety of protists in their microbiome, including parasites and pathogens. Protist species produce important economic losses on the world’s leading shellfish industries due to parasitic disease outbreaks in bivalve hosts and the transmission of pathogens affecting human health. Although the economic implications of these outbreaks in shellfish aquaculture are significant, very little is known regarding their biology and ecology. In this context, PROPATHIN project is designed to advance our knowledge on marine and food-borne diseases caused by microbial eukaryotes (protists) associated to commercial bivalves, through the multidisciplinary study of protist-bivalve interactions at molecular, cellular and community level. I will employ recently developed molecular (metabarcoding) and ‘omic techniques (single-cell genomics and transcriptomics) coupled with traditional cell biology methods for diagnose of infectious organisms in multicellular hosts. I will assess the diversity, composition and dynamics of oysters and mussels pathobiome in the Ebro Delta aquaculture setting during a year cycle. Environmental parameters will be used to assess the dynamics of such hazardous protists related to seasonal changes. Further, we will sequence the genome and transcriptome of a protist parasite (including different life-cycle stages), from which very little information exists, revealing the genes involved in the infection of bivalve hosts. Overall, PROPATHIN will help us disentangle the nature and dynamics of such host-parasite relationships, crucial to prevent and mitigate their negative economic and societal impacts.

Mots clés : microbiome, protist invertebrate interactions, parasitism, pathogens, bivalves, molecular ecology, genomics, transcriptomics

Participants :
- Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 165312.96 €
- Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (Espagne) — Partner, associated partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ONESTEP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

As part of its Green Deal, the EU aims to decarbonize energy production by 55% compared to 1990 levels and must turn to renewable energy sources. While the northern European countries have some access to these sources, they do not have consistent amounts of sunlight for photothermal energy (PE) generation. Novel approaches are under development to allow these regions to benefit from solar resources. Solar radiation-induced boiling in nanofluids can be used for PE steam generation as it facilitates more efficient solar collector technology. However, knowledge of the mechanisms behind this boiling is severely lacking because the methods to measure these systems are inaccurate at scale and cannot be used for practical, opaque nanofluids, limiting the focus to macroscopic properties. Understanding these mechanisms is the key to advancing PE technologies. Therefore, this project endeavours to develop and use new methods to qualify and quantify the photothermal boiling process in nanofluids at the microscale. I will move from Canada to Europe to complete this ambitious project with three specific aims. First, I will characterize two novel candidate nanofluids: plasma-functionalized graphene and carbon nanofibers (mass-produced by the project exploitation partner). Second, I will develop new, distinct measurement techniques that separate this study from existing ones which only measure temperature and steam flow rate. One method will use bubble bursting acoustics to quantity the number and size of bubbles. The other will use a medical X-ray technique, computed tomography, to image photothermal boiling for the first time. Finally, I will perform boiling tests to determine potential mechanisms and extend the existing models. With these objectives fulfilled, new information and methodologies will be developed for future research, I will gain new skills and competencies to prepare me for a future in industrial research, and Europe will be ONESTEP closer to a greener future.

Mots clés : nanofluid solar collector thermosyphon photothermal boiling

Participants :
- Université de Rennes (France) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Bergen carbon solutions as (Norvège) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Collège universitaire du Vestland (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 263638.8 €
Projet DCMH (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The most promising carbonless fuels are hydrogen and H2/NH3 mixtures. Burners, reciprocating engines and gas turbines using these fuels can be designed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools, provided that an accurate chemical submodel (detailed reaction mechanism) is available. A comprehensive collection of hydrogen combustion experimental data was created 10 years ago by the hosting laboratory and published on the ReSpecTh.hu website. The initial aim of the project is to extend this data collection with all newly published experimental data. Also, further types of laboratory measurement results, like extinction limits will be added to the database. Then, a new base chemical kinetics mechanism for hydrogen combustion is set up, that uses the latest directly measured and theoretically calculated rate coefficients of the H/O system, and also takes into account the newly proposed mechanistic approaches, like new third-body efficiency parameters and a non-linear mixing model for these parameters, new diffusion parameters, and reactive termolecular reactions. The base model will be optimized using the updated data collection. The base model, the optimized model and all recently published hydrogen combustion mechanisms will be tested together using the whole data collection. It is expected that the obtained new generation detailed hydrogen combustion mechanism will provide more accurate simulation results compared to the currently available ones, especially under problematic conditions like high pressure, lean combustion and high water vapour concentration in the initial mixture. This mechanism will be an important ingredient of the CFD design of devices using hydrogen and H2/NH3 and H2/natural gas fuel mixtures.

Mots clés : hydrogen combustion detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms mechanism optimization database of experimental data

Participants :
- Université Loránd Eötvös (Hongrie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 157622.4 €
Projet ExploringCosmologies (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

This project offers increased understanding of arctic Indigenous cosmologies as a form of environmental knowledge and traces their significance for communities in times of environmental crisis. With a special focus on traditional Sámi cosmologies and Sámi contemporary art, the goal is to explore and trace the appearance of human and non-human protagonists within Indigenous stories, especially about the starry polar night skies. By reappearing each night, these more-than-human figures became haunting entities which provided abstract nature-human relationships with a concrete, sensual and alluring form. Today, Sámi artists refer to these haunting figures to draw attention to their troubled cultural history and the present reality of climate-affected regions. The integration of traditional, recurring ghostly figures from Sámi storytelling – that migrate between the celestial and the earthly, as well as the human and the non-human – stresses the urgency of changing the way humans relate to nature. What is more, these fascinating, haunting and visionary figures provoke speculative futures, in which nature is regarded as a non-human subject. As this concept is becoming increasingly crucial in eco-philosophical debates and policy decisions on environmental justice, this project aims to show that Sámi cosmologies – especially when mediated through art – can play a vital role in changing humans’ perspective on nature. In recent years, contemporary art has been called upon to give a sensual form to the abstract systematic connections of climate change; the extent of the current crisis is difficult for people to grasp. As a consequence, art is gaining a central role within our societies; it stands at the threshold between sciences, politics and culture. This project deals with art that is engaged in the severe environmental changes of this planet and that stands on the threshold between communicating urgency and being more than a mere messenger of environmental research.

Mots clés : environmental humanities, environmental arts, indigenous knowledges, posthuman, phenomenology, arctic

Participants :
- Université de Stavanger (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet mechVEP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Genome sequencing has grown exponentially, but determining the phenotypic consequences of mutations remains a key challenge in human genetics. Recently, unsupervised methods, which model the distribution of sequence variation across organisms, have emerged as promising tools for quantifying the clinical pathogenicity of variants, rivaling the accuracy of experimental approaches. However, these machine learning predictors fall short in discerning the effects induced by pathogenic mutations that impact on organismal fitness and drive disease. I propose to address this knowledge gap by combining the evolutionary-based variant tolerance predictors with protein folding models derived from energy landscape theory. In order to fold in biological timescales, an amino acid chain must minimize energy conflicts within it. In natural proteins, remaining conflicts can be measured with a transferable energy function, pointing out regions that did not evolve maintaining foldability, as active or binding sites. Incorporating this approach, I will focus on disentangling the biophysical ambiguity between the alteration of specific functions and local stability changes along proteins, firstly for single variants from which thermodynamic data is available for testing. Furthermore, I will integrate the folding and evolutionary models into a single algorithm to characterize and predict disease-driving mechanisms along the human proteome, a Mechanistic Variant Effect Predictor (mechVEP). Finally, I will apply this pipeline for investigating the epistatic and dominance effects of multiple mutations, paving the way for fine-tuning disease predictors for different ancestries. In summary, findings from this study will provide completely new insight into deciphering the underlying molecular mechanisms driving disease, opening new opportunities for diagnosis and therapy.

Mots clés : evolutionary medicine, protein folding, variant effect predictor, 

Participants :
- Centro de Regulación Genómica (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 209914.56 €
Projet HuPIPA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Type 2 diabetes (or T2D) is a heterogeneous disease that affects nearly 1 in 10 adults worldwide, directly causing 1.5 million deaths each year. Human genetics and single cell genomic studies show that abnormal pancreatic β-cell transcriptional programs play a crucial role in type 2 diabetes. However, we lack an understanding of how this is translated into impaired β-cell function or mass. Consequently, existing drug therapies for T2D aim to alleviate hyperglycaemia, but do not target causal mechanisms. My overarching goal is to understand variation of β-cell transcriptional states. I postulate that even if an infinite number of perturbations are conceivable, only a finite number of cell states exist. Identifying and characterizing major cellular states, by studying regulatory responses to perturbations could provide insights into T2D pathophysiology, and pave the way for disease-modifying strategies. The concept of Human Cell Atlas currently depicts the cells landscape under one theoretical average condition, and does not represent the broad range of possible cell states that exist in different conditions. I'll be extending this concept towards the production of a Human Pancreatic Islet Perturbation Atlas (HuPIPA), which has the potential to be the first atlas characterizing cell states dynamics through multiple perturbations. I will harness this resource to unravel T2D mechanisms and to discover candidate therapeutic strategies. To this end, I will design a large-scale single-cell multiomics experiment of human islets facing chemogenetic perturbations. I will develop a novel statistical tool for the analysis of single-cell multiomics data under a broad range of conditions, and perform an integrative analysis with T2D human genetic and single cell datasets. This project, at the junction of statistics, genetics and computer science, has the potential to provide new knowledge for a better understanding and treatment of T2D.

Mots clés : single cell analysis, type 2 diabetes, human pancreatic islets, regulatory networks

Participants :
- Centro de Regulación Genómica (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 165312.96 €
Projet CoralCellSeq (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Scleractinian corals are the main builders of the marine reefs that provide a home to roughly a quarter of all marine species. In addition, their photosynthetic symbionts contribute to Earth’s oxygen, absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and provide the coral host with most of its metabolic needs. Global changes drastically affecting ocean acidification and temperatures cause the breakdown of this symbiosis. This process is also known as coral bleaching, and it results in a mass decline in coral reefs. Despite the continuous efforts to study this phenomenon, our understanding of the bleaching process is so far limited. It is important to emphasize that different coral species, display distinct responses to stressors, with varying mortality rates following bleaching. Hence, in this action, I will utilize these differences in coral resilience (i) to characterize the cellular and molecular responses to stressors of three corals with different levels of bleaching resilience (Stylophora pistillata, Acropora millepora, and Oculina patagonica); (ii) to identify specific genes that might be key players in coral resilience, and (iii) to design and test pharmacological interventions to modulate coral resilience to thermal and acidification stress. To do so, I will expose corals to thermal and acidification stressors and use single-cell genomics approaches to measure and compare cell type-specific gene expression responses to stressors within and between species. These analyses will highlight candidate molecular pathways and cellular processes responsible for the high resilience of some of these species. Together, this project will provide a high-resolution molecular map of stony coral responses to climate change-related stressors, and it will help me, and others advance towards targeted interventions to ameliorate these effects.

Mots clés : single cell atlas, non model organism

Participants :
- Centro de Regulación Genómica (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 181152.96 €
Projet Weathering AC-UiS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The planetary scale of environmental and climatic complexities, and the anxieties of global crises prompted by threats introduced by the spectre of the Anthropocene have brought scalar imagination at the forefront of historical writings. One of the well-known ironies of the climate crisis is the fact that, despite its planetary and temporal scale, its effects manifest themselves in everyday experiences of seasons and weather. Weathering Colonial Calcutta introduces nuances of material, cultural and political systems into historical examinations of how communities and social groups understood, coordinated and responded to climate and the weather. It presents an urban, material and cultural history of colonial Calcutta as a story of changing ideas about, and everyday experiences of the weather. It aims to reframe histories of Calcutta by examining the place of the weather, seasons and climate in cultural and political expressions, public and domestic spaces, and material culture. The research takes two distinct yet interrelated approaches to writing a history of the social construction of “weather”. The first theme examines the shifts in knowledge of Calcutta’s “weather” (noun) through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this sense, the research offers critical insights into the insistence with which Calcutta’s weather, seasons, and climate forced themselves on scientific and social viewpoints, and modes of cultural activity. Second, the project traces the concept of “weather” as a transitive verb — “to pass through and survive” — and explores the braiding of daily lives and “weathering” practices as embedded in the creation and maintenance of racial, class and social thinking and practices. Overall, the project takes the evocative history of the weather into politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from science, literature, art, architecture, urban planning, and technologies to race, religion, environment, gender and culture.

Mots clés : colonial history, calcutta, colonial india, weather, climate, climate history, environmental history, cultural history, history of science and technology, urban history, social history, postcolonial

Participants :
- Université de Stavanger (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet GRABEn (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The richest archive of archaeological and environmental information in any site is not the artifacts or the buildings, but rather the soil and sediment which cover them. The sediment matrix of ancient cemeteries is a complex archive of socio-cultural and environmental change, an archive which is often overlooked by researchers. GRABEn employs a diverse methodological and theoretical toolkit to reconstruct burial traditions from sites in Greece, Denmark, and Norway. The proposed project employs a diverse toolkit of geoarchaeological techniques including: elemental and mineralogical analysis (via X-Ray Fluorescence, Fourier Transform Infrared Analysis) microscopic analysis (Thin Section Soil Micromorphology and Scanning Electron Microscope) and luminescence profiling (Portable Optically and Infrared Stimulated Luminescence) to reconstruct the soil environment of graves, and the sequence of human actions and natural processes which created them. GRABEn will address the formation of cemetries at three levels: the planning, construction, and use of the cemetery itself, the excavation and use of the graves themselves, and the soil environment of the graves and how it impacts the preservation of skeletal remains and important biomolecular evidence such as DNA and isotopes. Importantly, GRABEn will address a wide variety of burials including stone-lined and soil pits, burials with and without a coffin, historic and prehistoric (Bronze Age), and Christian and pre-Christian. This novel and innovative project encompasses both cooler wetter climates and warmer drier climates, allowing for better observation of how variations in the speed of decay affet the burial processes and the preservation of the burial. This data will be used to better understand variations in community practices of burying the deceased and re-using the graves, as well as the soil conditions of the cemetery and how they impact the preservation of the remains and other evidence of funerary practice.

Mots clés : burials soils environment geoarchaeology preservation

Participants :
- Université de Groningue (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187624.32 €
- Université de Stavanger (Norvège) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €