Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet MicroSPARK (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A range of debilitating neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, arise from the formation of amyloidogenic protein aggregates. Molecular chaperones can counteract aggregate formation, but their molecular action mechanisms remain poorly understood. This is chiefly due to the fundamental challenge of resolving heterogeneous and dynamic aggregating protein species in the presence of chaperones. In order to address this challenge and to advance our knowledge of chaperone action, I propose establishing µSPARK, a novel technology that will allow, for the first time, the unravelling of the detailed microscopic mechanisms by which chaperones target and disassemble amyloidogenic protein species in heterogeneous mixtures at the single-molecule level. These new insights will become possible through the first-time combination and seamless integration of two advanced technologies: (i) Miniaturized fluidic sorting devices and (ii) single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy combined with three-colour coincidence detection. This will enable high-throughput single-particle interrogation of individual chaperone–aggregate complexes providing fundamentally new means for understanding key aspects of chaperone function. To demonstrate the new possibilities, µSPARK will be exploited to unravel the action mechanisms of heat-shock proteins in curtailing amyloid-β peptide and α-synuclein aggregation. This will provide new insights into proteostatic regulatory mechanisms in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The µSPARK technology will then be exploited to dissect—with high throughput and single-particle resolution—the molecular action mechanisms of small-molecule modulators that promote the inhibitory function of chaperones on protein aggregation. This will allow identifying new strategies to ameliorate aggregate toxicity and will pave the way for µSPARK to become a novel screening tool for drug development.

Mots clés : single molecule fluorescence, microfluidics, molecular chaperones, protein aggregation, drug discovery

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet MORDIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

A rapidly growing body of studies attribute mortality outcomes to thermal exposures, by empirically estimating reduced-form mortality responses to meteorological fields, usually ambient temperature. The research theme proposed in this project is motivated by the awareness that the human thermoregulatory system is a function of not just ambient temperature, but also other environmental parameters such as humidity, radiant temperature and wind. Correct characterization of the environment-related mortality relationship is vital not just in epidemiology, but also for climate-health impacts assessment, understanding the burden on health services, and the potential spill overs to labour productivity and the wider economy. This project will attribute mortality risk to multiple thermal stressors not previously examined in epidemiology and the wider climate-health impacts studies. The project will apply innovative approaches and for the first time, a comprehensive suite of thermal discomfort indicators, both under present climate and contrasting future socio-economic/climate scenarios. The transdisciplinary nature of the project requiring knowledge and training in subjects such as biostatistics, environmental epidemiology, human biometeorology, big data and climate modelling; will involve two-way transfer of knowledge between the researcher and the host institute. Results have the potential to: (i) improve the data and modelling approaches applied in existing environment-related morality studies at a global scale; (ii) facilitate better understanding of the population’s adaptive capacity to thermal exposures, accounting for age and gender; (iii) inform future public health responses at various national/international scales, such as urban planning, healthcare services, and investments in energy-health adaptation; and (iv) assist in government initiated National Adaptation Programmes. The project is in line with the broader EU strategy for ‘Climate, Environment and Health’.

Mots clés : climate change and health, human discomfort indices and mortality

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet NGECA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A remarkable feature of the brain is its ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Modulation of synaptic strength and neuronal circuitry underlies experience-dependent learning, and requires widespread changes in gene expression. Following neuronal depolarisation, intracellular signalling results in rapid induction of many activity-regulated genes (ARGs). There are numerous interconnected levels of gene regulation; one critical aspect relates to the three-dimensional conformation of chromosomes within the nucleus. Looping of genes to regulatory regions and to other genes is required for transcriptional activation in other cell types, but remains largely unexplored in neurons. In this proposal, I will investigate how the genome architecture changes during neuronal depolarisation, and how this influences activity-induced transcription and neuronal plasticity. I will first map the genomic interactions of ARGs in neurons before and after depolarisation. This experimental approach will allow identification of enhancer-promoter loops and multi-gene complexes in an unbiased manner. Single-cell imaging studies will be performed to quantify the frequency of interactions across individual neurons. I will use super-resolution microscopy to simultaneously analyse multiple loci with high precision, providing unprecedented detail of gene interactions in response to neuronal activity. Finally, I will use genome editing to disrupt specific chromosomal contacts and evaluate the transcriptional induction of associated genes. I will assess whether loss of genomic contacts affects dendritic growth, a process associated with neuronal plasticity and dependent on ARG induction, to understand the biological implications of chromosome looping. The aim of this project is to discover novel molecular mechanisms that govern transcription during neuronal activation, which is critical in experience-dependent learning.


Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet EnHydro (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A series of ground-braking experiments performed at 2005 showed that millimetric liquid drops can self-propel along the surface of a vibrating fluid bath, by virtue of a resonant interaction with their own wave field. Even more, they demonstrated a version of the famous single-particle diffraction experiment, where one droplet at a time passed through a single or a double slit. The resulting statistical behaviour for successive drops revealed the emergence of wavelike diffraction (single slit) and interference patterns (double slit), a feature previously thought to be exclusive to the microscopic quantum realm. Following investigations established hydrodynamic analogs of many more quantum phenomena with this system, including tunneling, quantized orbits, orbital level splitting, spin states, and more. As of yet, an analog of quantum entanglement remains elusive, but very recent results pave the way in that direction. EnHydro aims to establish entanglement measures in pilot-wave hydrodynamics through experiments with droplets confined to separate wells and their theoretical rationalization. Experiments to test Bell’s inequalities in this particle-wave-particle system are envisioned as well. Furthermore, physical analogies with quantum entanglement and with theories proposed to rationalize quantum phenomena at the atomic level will be investigated. The originality of this project also lies in its multidisciplinary character and the complementarity of two world-leading research groups in interrelating approaches. It combines a major experimental component using the state-of-the-art set-up available at MIT, with pioneering mathematical algorithms recently developed at ESPCI. The novelty of the proposed research is that it will extend the range of behaviours accessible to classical systems. It will demonstrate how two (otherwise) non-interacting particles (droplets) can communicate through fields of standing waves, which is an extremely novel communication protocol.

Mots clés : hydrodynamic quantum analogs, bouncing drops, quantum entanglement, bell s inequalities, non linear interactions, pilot wave theory, self organization, complex systems

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 257619.84 €
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet HQSTS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A speech analysis/synthesis method aims at representing a speech waveform, produced by a person speaking, as a time sequence of parameters. Based on this time sequence, the speech waveform can be resynthesized. The analysis/synthesis methods are cornerstones for many speech technologies (e.g. text-to-speech, telecommunications, voice restoration). For the majority of applications, these methods need to have two key properties: (i) a high perceived quality of the speech sound, and, (ii) a statistical characterization of the parameters' sequence necessary for statistical approaches, which have attracted great interest during the last decades in speech technologies. The current analysis/synthesis methods that provide a statistical characterization exhibit however a lack of perceived quality. This issue does not pose a problem in applications designed for noisy environments (e.g. navigation devices, smart-phone applications, announcements in train stations). On the contrary, it prohibits the use of statistical approaches in quiet environments, e.g. in the music, cinema and video game industries, where the listener is fully aware of all the details of the sound. This problem is mainly due to the lack of an accurate representation of the phase information and its correlation with the amplitude information. Indeed, recent phase processing tools allowed the description of the phase spectrum properties in a way that shows the drawbacks and limits of current analysis/synthesis methods. Additionally, these same tools are also promising means for modeling the phase information, which is paramount for good quality. The primary goal of the HQSTS project is to create a high-quality analysis/synthesis method that will broaden the applications of statistical approaches of speech technologies in quiet environments, where a high-quality is an absolute necessity.

Mots clés : statistical parametric speech synthesis, high quality audio, speech processing, voice and speech modeling, speech synthesis, quiet environment, statistical approach

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet CosmoDEC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A staggering amount of observational evidence, ranging from the study of the distribution of matter at large scales to galactic rotation curves, suggests the existence of an exotic form of matter. This alleged new component, which accounts for around a quarter of the energy content of our universe, is usually referred to as dark matter. The existence of this dark sector was also strongly supported by the fact that the sole gravitational interaction sourced by ordinary visible matter largely fails to account for structure formation in the early universe. Furthermore, redshift measurements of Type Ia Supernovae have shown that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, hence supporting the need for an additional dark energy component in the present-day observable universe. Thus, our current understanding of fundamental physics, encoded in the Standard Model of Particle Physics and the theory of General Relativity (GR), seems to suggest that we can only account for roughly 5% of the matter content of the cosmos, while the rest of it remains almost uncharted territory. The corpuscular theory of gravity offers a way to describe gravity in the strong coupling regime according to which GR completes itself in the UV through the process of classicalization. This pictures allows one to conceive the current cosmic expansion as driven by a ''cosmological condensate'' of gravitons. Besides, if one adds some ''baryonic impurities'' (galaxies and clusters) to this ''cosmological condensate'', then Milgrom's Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) naturally emerges, in the corpuscular framework, as the response of the condensate to the local presence of ordinary matter. The scope of the proposed research is to build on these premises by combining the general wisdom of effective field theories of gravity, focusing on its ultra-violet (UV) self-completion, and the idea that that the two dark components can interact and source one another.


Participants :
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191149.44 €
Projet DendroBAP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A vast number of human bone fractures rely on screw-fixated metal implants. While being effective, their rigid design, combined with open surgical conditions and general anesthesiology, make them poor candidates for thin or fragile bones, such as those that might be found in the elderly population. The proposal is intended to identify a minimally invasive surgical concept, based on novel bone adhesives (glues) for treatment of complicated bone fractures, under local anesthesia. This will be accomplished by developing a library comprised of a dendritic scaffold, a cross-linker and a fibre component. Upon mixing, the dendritic component is programmed to efficiently adhere to wet bone surfaces and on-demand react with the cross-linker to form a bone adhesive patch (BAP). The fibre component is embedded to produce BAPs covering a range of load bearing properties.

Mots clés : dendrimer, adhesive, bone, green chemistry

Participants :
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 185857.2 €
Projet LNLFB-Problems (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

A wide class of physical phenomena can be mathematically formalized as Free Boundary (FB) problems, usually described by a set of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) that exhibit also some unknown interfaces (the FB). The main goal is to describe as precisely as possible both the solution to the PDEs and the properties of the FB, an issue of significant theoretical complexity. In this project the Experienced Researcher (ER) presents different FB problems, depending on their nature: local/nonlocal and elliptic/parabolic. The first part is devoted to elliptic problems, with two objectives: the first one is to prove some quantitative regularity estimates for solutions to a class of elliptic semilinear equations related to Bernoulli one-phase type problems (local/nonlocal setting), while the second is to investigate the regularity/structure of the FB in a general nonlocal obstacle problem. Also the second part has two objectives (parabolic framework). The ER intends to study some nonlocal parabolic Bernoulli one-phase type problems. In this framework, the whole theory must be developed: the ER plans to study the existence of suitable weak solutions as well as their optimal regularity and the regularity/structure of the FB. The project contains innovative aspects, new techniques, and possesses a large number of applications to Physics, Engineering and Natural Sciences. The expected results are of great quality and will have significative impact in the PDEs community.

Mots clés : free boundary problems, nonlocal operators, elliptic and parabolic equations

Participants :
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €
Projet BESG (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

ABSTRACT: Lung cancer is the principal cause of cancer-related death around the world and has become more predominant among former than current smokers. Smoking, alcoholism, air pollution, occupational exposure are among the main causes of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLCs). It is difficult to simultaneously deliver therapeutics and nucleic acid to the target site. With the advancement of nanotechnology, a delivery system composing of cellular proteins which can bypass the reticuloendothelial system (RES) and have the ability to release payload at the specific target site is the necessity of the current era. Exosomes (Exo) are clinically acceptable, having protein membrane composition and the ability to deliver payload at specific target sites. Having endogenous origin, Exo evade immune recognition and clearance compared to exogenous nanovesicles. Exo are natural carriers of nucleic acids and they can be engineered to deliver siRNA as well as anti-cancer drugs. In this we propose the conjugation or covering of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) derived exosomes with HSP4 peptide (target specific to NSCLCs) and loading them with Gefitinib (GEF), an EGFR inhibitor and SPC24 siRNA (target for NSCLCs and metastasis). The delivery of GEF and SPC24 siRNA using bioengineered exosomes (BESG) will reduce their dosage; improve patient compliance and life expectancy of patients. BESG will be evaluated for their uptake mechanisms and their mechanism of action in cell culture models of NSCLCs. BESG will specifically target the NSCLCs and release its payloads at cancer site. The underlying mechanisms, pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and anti-cancer activity will be evaluated in xenograft model of NSCLCs using advance imaging technologies. The BESG developed during this program will have a clinical potential and the trainings obtained through this program will help in career advancement in the area of drug delivery and precision medicine.

Mots clés : exosomes, targeting peptides, non small cell lung cancer, sirna, gefitinib

Participants :
- Percuros (Netherlands) (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet ACCELERATE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

ACCELERATE will develop a rapid and affordable technique using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to retrieve climatic information preserved in the elemental composition of marine mollusc shell carbonates and establish standardised ways of applying this technique to coastal shell-midden deposits around the world. This will combine the disciplines of Laser Spectroscopy, Climatology and Archaeology to advance the reconstruction of climate change, exploitation of coastal resources and human-landscape interactions at an unprecedented scale and resolution. Anthropogenic shell deposits are found in their thousands across the globe over the last 100,000 years. Locked within the shells are climatic records with a high resolution. This crucial information is currently inaccessible due to expensive and laborious techniques, resulting in small, unrepresentative studies and a lack of comparability between them. ACCELERATE will resolve this by developing LIBS, which will allow rapid chemical analyses, increasing the cost efficiency by a factor of 20, resulting in large datasets. The project will place the ER on an excellent career path because a) the developed method will be in high demand, b) the novel and interdisciplinary nature of the project will attract a wide network of collaborators, and c) the relevance to sites from different continents and periods will allow for wide dissemination of results. This will lay the foundation for affordable and comprehensive climate studies world-wide, which is closely related to Horizon 2020 policy priorities to understand and adapt to climate change. ACCELERATE will make use of the outstanding experimental and cutting edge research facilities at the host institution, IESL-FORTH, to develop an efficient method of producing climate data. The ER and FORTH will exploit and integrate their international contacts covering all continents to develop an international network and the foundation for comparative studies on a global scale.

Mots clés : palaeoclimate, shellmidden, trace elements, palaeotemperature

Participants :
- Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 152653.2 €
Projet AJAPP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

AJAPP investigates the integration of religious minorities amid the rise of nation-states in Central Europe in the late modern period. Specifically, AJAPP focuses on political representation of ancient Judaism by Catholics, Jews, and Protestants throughout Prussia, Austria, and Bavaria in the course of the 19th century. The goal is to understand how portraits of the past reflected both the concerns and the conditions of modern times and, in turn, how these portraits impacted contemorary debates on issues of national, cultural, religious, and ethnic identity. It analyses how political and social differences - as opposed to strictly ethnic or cultural ones - as well as subtle prejudices manifested themselves in discussions of the past, how boundaries were made within a shared tradition, and how identities were configured in regional and national entities. This period is especially imortant as this was a time when distinct regions were negotiating their political relationships to one another (often with violence), when public discourse was debating which communities had which stakes in and rights to the political realm, and when the past became especially contested territory for determining which groups were insiders and which ones were outsiders. Given the current rise in regionalism, nationalism, and right-wing extremism across Europe, AJAPP addresses a central problem palpable on the local, international, and global levels today. It reveals how implicit assumptions inscribe the conceptualisation of the past, which then find their way back into the present.

Mots clés : historiography, intellectual history, history of scholarship, institutional history, reception history, antiquity, modernity, judaism, protestantism, catholocism, 19th century, modern europe

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €