Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet DFLOW (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Duality For Logic on Words (DFLOW) The mathematical theory of Stone duality underlies a deep connection between syntax and semantics in logic and theoretical computer science, and allows for powerful applications in both of these research fields. The aim of this project is to apply the topological methods provided by Stone duality to the study of the expressive power of logic in describing formal languages of both finite and infinite words. During the outgoing phase of the project, at the Mathematics Department at the City College of the City University of New York, the applicant will perform an in-depth study of profinite semigroups and their applications in formal language theory, through the lens of Stone duality and finite model theory. In particular, recent insights from duality theory will be applied to obtain tractable combinatorial descriptions of the free profinite objects for logic fragments of varying expressive power. During the return phase to Europe, to the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, the applicability of duality theory will be extended to streams and data words. To this end, the knowledge and skills obtained during the outgoing phase will be combined with the existing local expertise on logic and coalgebra in Amsterdam. During both phases, the hands-on research training will be complemented by training activities to further enhance the applicant's skills in networking, collaboration, teaching, communication and management. The project, taking place at the interface of mathematics and computer science, has the potential to make a significant impact in three different ways: by advancing the research on Stone duality and formal language theory, by facilitating a new collaboration between the European host institute and a world-leading mathematics department in the USA, and by establishing the applicant's position as a leading young researcher in his field.

Mots clés : stone duality, profinite algebra, semigroup theory, automata, coalgebra

Participants :
- University of Amsterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 242929.8 €
- City University of New York (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet PECaN (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Due to a high sustainability and to a straightforward tunability of the energy input (wavelength, redox potential), the use of light and electricity for the activation of organic molecules constitutes an attractive method in the toolkit of the organic chemist. Consequently, photochemistry and electrochemistry are both undergoing a renaissance in the recent decade, mainly in the form of photo- and electro- catalysis. Both of these activation modes share many traits, as they proceed via single electron transfer mechanisms. It is obvious that a method which would combine both photo- and electro- catalysis can take advantage from these similarities, while alleviating the problems encountered with application of photo- or electro- catalysis alone. Yet, combination of these two activation modes was seldom achieved so far. The objective of this action is to develop a catalytic system, which combines photochemical and electrochemical steps in order to achieve the required reduction potential for the activation of challenging substrates. The work will be initiated with a computational benchmarking study aimed at to identify the best available method for the theoretical prediction of redox potentials. This will allow for a rational design of catalytic systems, and eventually the tailoring of a set of new catalysts to specific photo-electro catalytic transformations. To achieve optimal reaction conditions, different cell designs will be tested for a photo-electrochemical test reaction. Finally, the optimized cell and the new catalysts will be applied in radical cyclizations of demanding substrates. The HI is able to provide both equipment as well as know-how in a broad variety of fields, which is imperative for such an interdisciplinary project. The project will boost the fellow’s research skills and help him to kick-start his independent research career in Slovakia.


Participants :
- Comenius University Bratislava (Slovaquie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 143364.48 €
Projet SMARTOURISM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Due to advances in technology, tourism has the potential to rapidly transform by means of a digital revolution into smart tourism (tourism that takes advantage of intelligent systems). This transformation of tourism has created opportunities for new levels of service and interaction with the environment for organisations and consumers. The transformation of tourism has created opportunities in new levels of communication, interaction and service between tourism small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consumers. In addition, these changes in the tourism industry can have an impact on SMEs’ competitiveness. The goal of SMARTOURISM is to test two models that analyse the effects of smart tourism on different aspects of consumers and SMEs. This research proposes two different lines of research: (1) The creation of an innovative model to analyse the impact of Smart Consumer Experience (SCE) on different aspects of consumers (behavioural intentions, word-of-mouth, stickiness to business, quality of life, shopping effectiveness and perceived risk). This model will also examine the moderating effects of the gender dimension; (2) The creation of a model to analyse the impact of the use of smart technologies on different aspects of tourism SMEs (service cannibalisation, co-creation, value offering) and their impact on the competitiveness of SMEs. Both models will be analysed in the USA context (outgoing phase). SMARTOURISM in the return phase will analyse both models in the European scope and will examine the differences between the countries (USA vs EU) and the actions that tourism SMEs should apply to improve their services with the arrival of new technologies (return phase). This study is relevant due to it allows us to determine the effects of the digital revolution in the tourism industry and, to leverage Dr. Díaz broad experience developing the impact of innovation in tourism SMEs, employees and consumers and, providing an opportunity to increase the competitivenes

Mots clés : marketing, tourism, value creation, consumer behaviour, quality of life

Participants :
- University of Castilla-La Mancha (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 257191.2 €
- California State University System (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet OpenInnovationImpact (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Due to both academic and family commitments over the coming year 1st October 2017 is the chosen indicative start date for this project

Mots clés : open innovation 2 0, responsible innovation, sustainability

Participants :
- University of Manchester (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet UBioRec (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Due to its fundamental regulatory role, molecular recognition has been extensively studied by both experiments and simulations. During the last 30 years impressive technical advances allowed significant progress in understanding molecular recognition mechanisms. However, the matter is far from settled and contradictory reports are still appearing in the literature. Lately, I have been studying these processes using a combination of computational and experimental approaches in different systems. Here I propose to study several representative model systems in great details, taking advantages of new force fields, DFT functionals and enhanced sampling algorithms recently emerged. These systems are small enough to allow the use of state-of-the-art simulation techniques; still they are sufficiently complex not only to mimic the behaviour of far larger systems but also to use apparently different mechanisms. Indeed, their molecular recognition needs complex conformational changes, the re-arrangement of water molecules in the binding cavity, and an active role of the ligand in the binding/release mechanisms. The overarching objective of my proposal is to learn the state-of-the-art enhanced sampling techniques developed at UCL and combine them with QM/MM approaches to: i) understand how bio-molecular recognition works in both isoforms, ii) fully characterize the thermodynamics and kinetic processes that govern them and iii) validate the computational approaches against high-quality experimental data. If successful, the in-depth understanding of the molecular binding mechanism will shed light on an intriguing and important biological system and provide a much needed benchmark to the computational community. This challenging but feasible project will have a far reaching impact on a number of H2020 priority areas, including drug discovery and bio-molecular engineering.

Mots clés : molecular dynamics simulations, free energy calculations, molecular recognition, drug design, biomolecular simulations, multi scale approaches

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet AvINFLUENZA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Due to its high prevalence among birds and high human fatality rate, avian influenza represents a serious and continuing pandemic threat, in particular via mutations that facilitate human infection, resulting in pathogenic strains. Mutations associated with human infection are concentrated in the PB2 subunit of influenza polymerase. This subunit is imported into the nucleus, where viral replication and transcription occurs, via a selective interaction with host importin-alpha proteins. Once in the nucleus, interaction of PB2 with another host protein called ANP32A, has been proposed to play an essential species-specific regulatory role. The behavior of PB2 in solution reveals a high level of conformational flexibility that is essential to function. In addition, intrinsically disordered domains of both ANP32A and importin-alpha are thought to play important roles in the interaction with PB2. This uncommonly high level of disorder presents particular challenges for standard structural studies. This project aims to characterize structurally two protein-protein interactions of the human-adapted PB2 subunit of influenza polymerase with these two human proteins: 1. Importin-alpha 2. ANP32A Highly dynamic complexes such as the targets of this proposal lie outside of the scope of standard methods of structural biology, and are therefore often not described. The high level of flexibility of these systems requires an innovative and integrative structural approach that will combine paramagnetic NMR with techniques such as ensemble methods to describe the conformational equilibria of highly dynamic systems, NMR relaxation dispersion and CEST, SAXS and single-molecule FRET. Through the structural and dynamic characterization of these interactions between human-adapted avian influenza polymerase and two human host proteins, we will contribute to a deeper understanding of viral replication, providing the basic information to facilitate the design of innovative drugs.


Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 185076.0 €
Projet BriCoFra (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

During World War I the English aeronautical engineer A.A. Griffith formulated a theory to explain failure of materials, based on the idea that crack growth is the result of the competition between the surface energy spent to produce the fracture and the energy stored in the uncracked region. Griffith's viewpoint, that by its own nature is variational, found a rigorous mathematical setting in the variational formulation for quasistatic evolutions by Francfort and Marigo, in 1998. Remarkably, this work provides a general framework for several problems in Fracture Mechanics, including post-Griffith theories, in particular the one due to Barenblatt. Griffith and Barenblatt theories differ in the surface energy dissipated in the fracture process: the first is proportional to the measure of fracture set (surface in 3d, length in 2d), the latter depends also on the amplitude of the opening between the two sides of the crack. Microscopically, in the first case (brittle fracture) any material point is either broken or sound, in the latter (cohesive fracture) restorative forces, depending on the opening, are present between the lips of the crack set. Particular choices of cohesive dissipation in the evolution may describe fracture by fatigue. Fatigue occurs when a material degrades by repeated loading and unloading. Fracture by fatigue is extremely dangerous and difficult to predict, since it happens in normal operating conditions without evident warnings. Moreover, it is responsible of about the 90% of failure occurrences. Despite its importance, both the mathematical and the mechanical treatment of fatigue by fracture are much less general than those for brittle fracture. Nevertheless, even the existence of quasistatic evolutions for 3d brittle fracture is still an open problem. This action aims both to prove such existence result with an innovative combination of two apparently alternative approaches, and to explore the rich field of fracture by fatigue.

Mots clés : calculus of variations, geometric measure theory, brittle fracture, cohesive fracture, fatigue, quasistatic evolutions

Participants :
- École polytechnique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173076.0 €
Projet DevBoundaries (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

During animal development, boundaries need to be reliably established between cell types to guarantee the physical and functional integrity of tissues. This process requires delicate orchestration of cell proliferation, differentiation and migration, and defects in tissue boundary formation are often linked with abnormal cell behaviours in diseases. Genetic programs involved in cell signalling and cell sorting across tissue boundaries have been previously identified, yet we still lack a systematic understanding of the mechanisms underlying boundary formation, because it has been challenging to analyse the coordination of gene expression, cell lineages and cell movement in space and time. In this study, I will probe the in vivo mechanisms of tissue boundary formation using the zebrafish embryonic shield as a model system. The embryonic shield in zebrafish embryos is an evolutionarily conserved “organizer” structure that is critical for setting up the overall body plan of the embryos. The shield region contains overlapping progenitor cells that give rise to various tissue structures whose boundaries form and sharpen during gastrulation. However, the formation of shield progenitor cells into compartmentalized tissues has been a process that is poorly characterized, and the molecular and biophysical mechanisms that coordinate cell differentiation and morphogenesis to establish tissue boundaries remain elusive. I will utilize multi-disciplinary approaches that combine live imaging, spatial transcriptomics and genetic manipulation to determine how shield cells differentiate and generate tissue boundaries. I anticipate identifying cellular and genetic mechanisms controlling boundary formation, and provide a comprehensive and dynamic atlas detailing cell lineages, cell movement and gene expression of early embryogenesis in vertebrates.

Mots clés : embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, cell fate specification, spatial transcriptome, live imaging

Participants :
- University of Basel (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191149.44 €
Projet LAWINE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

During last three decades, the Arctic has warmed faster than rest of the planet going through unprecedented physical changes as manifested by the record low sea-ice and snow areas in summer. Impacts of these changes on weather and climate outside the Arctic region, such as in northern Eurasia, might be substantial because the Arctic is an integral part of the global climate system. Potentially associated with Arctic warming, an increased occurrence of extreme events, such as heat waves, exceptionally cold winters and flooding, often of unprecedented strength and duration, has already been observed in the Northern Hemisphere during the last decade. Our main motivation is to reduce the potential damage by extreme climate events. For this, we propose to investigate teleconnections linking the ocean and land surface characteristics to the occurrence of extremes. We hypothesise that Arctic warming is affecting Eurasian climate extremes by teleconnections along with other regions, such as the North Atlantic and Pacific. However, our understanding of mechanisms of teleconnections is incomplete due to imperfect models and sparse observations. To address this gap, we will compare observations and climate model output and select the most realistic models in terms of their ability to represent teleconnections. To investigate mechanisms, we configure and execute climate model simulations. Results of our work will be used to improve models' prediction skill and to reduce uncertainties related to estimates of changes in climate extremes in Eurasia. The experienced researcher, Prof. Uotila, has an extensive experience in climatological research focused on the Southern Hemisphere using methods closely related to the ones proposed for this work. His supervisor, Prof. Vihma, is a leading expert in polar meteorology and climatology. Their partnership would help Uotila to integrate in the European climate research community.

Mots clés : sea ice, heat, cold, flood, draught

Participants :
- Ministry of Transport and Communications (Finlande) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 71747.1 €
- University of Helsinki (Finlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 119578.5 €
Projet CATKERB (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

During the course of this Fellowship a reductive cyclization cascade for dihydropyridinones, which consists of an iridium-catalyzed reduction to the corresponding electron-rich dienes and subsequent [4+2] cycloaddition (Diels-Alder reaction) will be developed. A first promising proof of concept study establishing the feasibility of this powerful transformation has already been carried out in the Dixon group; however further optimization by varying the solvent, the reaction time, the temperature or by using suitable Lewis acids is required to perfect the methodology. The additional use of chiral Lewis acid or chiral amine catalysts is also intended to develop an enantioselective variant of this method. The methodology development should then be completed by determining the substrate scope. The resulting azabicyclo[2.2.2]octene motif is an important structural component of various alkaloids. Therefore, this reaction cascade should then be used as a late stage key step in the total syntheses of the natural products catharanthine and keramaphidin B. Catharanthine is an important member of the large class of iboga alkaloids, which usually carry as common structural feature an indole or an indoline moiety. Catharanthine can be considered as a direct precursor of the dimeric Catharanthus alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine, both of which are clinically valuable agents in the treatment of cancer due to their ability to inhibit mitosis the formation of microtubules. The marine alkaloid keramaphidin B belongs to the manzamine family and shows cytotoxicity against P388 leukaemia cells in mice (IC50 0.28 μg/mL) and against epidermal KB cancer cells in humans (IC50 0.30 μg/mL). Structurally, keramaphidin B is a pentacyclic compound comprising two piperidine rings (one bridged and one unbridged) and two macrocycles. Furthermore, this alkaloid has two (Z)-configured and one triple-substituted double bond, as well as four stereogenic centers, one of which is quaternary.

Mots clés : total synthesis, catharanthine, keramaphidin b, iridium catalysis, reduction, cycloaddition

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet RW3D-US (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

During the fellowship, the experienced researcher Christopher V. Henri and his supervisors Anker Lajer Højberg and Jens Christian Refsgaard of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) will lead an effort improving the prediction of nitrate levels and of the production of nitrous oxide in soils by developing advanced and accurate modeling techniques. The widespread use of agrochemicals has led to the contamination of many surface and groundwater bodies around the world. Nitrate is a highly problematic contaminant due to its adverse effect on human health and on ecosystems. Understanding the fate of nitrate in the subsurface is, however complex. Indeed, the pollutant undergoes in many cases a sequential biochemically induced degradation, which will reduce levels but also produce nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Today, numerical models are essential in the management of such groundwater contamination. Yet, virtually all available numerical solutions for reactive transport in soils use Eulerian methods that present serious numerical issues, which significantly reduce their applicability. The proposed project will represent a breakthrough in our representation of reactive transport in unsaturated soils by developing a stable and reliable Lagrangian method able to simulate reactive systems as the Nitrate biodegradation. The method will also allow to identify key processes triggering reactions in soils, which is primordial to improve our management of groundwater contaminations and to better understand the implication that the subsurface production of nitrous oxide can potentially have on climate. The project will also allow the high-potential applicant to secure a position in Europe and the world-class host institution to maintain excellence through a series transfer of knowledge, training and communication strategy.

Mots clés : agricultural groundwater contamination, nitrate, unsaturated porous media, numerical solutions, lagrangian vs eulerian, denitrification, nitrous oxide

Participants :
- Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 219312.0 €