Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet EcoFoams (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Plastics have been key materials to be aligned with the European Union´s Sustainable Development Goals. This promise stems from its lightweight, low-density nature while maintaining favorable mechanical, thermal, and insulating properties. Nevertheless, plastic production still lacks sustainability, primarily relying on fossil resources. Indeed, less than one percent of the annual plastic production (390 million tons), originates from renewable sources. This heavy reliance on fossil resources exacerbates global warming, as the extraction, production, and disposal of these materials release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Furthermore, in Europe, less than 20% of post-consumer plastic waste is recycled. In the realm of plastics, polymer foams merit special attention for their versatility, combining the main unique plastic properties while minimizing material usage. Foams serve two main purposes: flexible types for uses like packaging and cushioning, and rigid foams for insulation, construction, and high mechanical strength needs. Despite their remarkable properties, foam production relies on nonrenewable resources and toxic chemicals like isocyanates and phosgene. Additionally, their exceptional performance relates to their highly crosslinked nature, which also renders these materials challenging to recycle, or often, non-recyclable. The central goal of EcoFoams is to develop biobased foams that not only match the manufacturing process and performance of commercially available foams but also offer recyclability and reprocessability. To do so EcoFoams will explore the use of S-Alkylation Reaction to produce self-blown polycarbonate (PC) and polyhydroxurethane (PHU) foams without using toxic isocyanates. Dr. Gabriel Perli, under the guidance of Prof. Haritz Sardon, Polymat (University of the Basque Country, Spain), will endeavour to pioneer the EcoFoams that are both more sustainable and exhibit excellent performances.

Mots clés : material science, foam research, biobased foams, free isocyanate foams, self blowing foams, circular foams, high performance foams, molecular engineering, efficient design of monomers, foam industry

Participants :
- Basque center for macromolecular design and engineering polymat fundazioa (Espagne) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université du Pays basque (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165312.96 €
Projet E-Sprinkle (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

More than two-thirds of the global population will experience severe water scarcity by 2030. Water harvesting (WH) and managing strategies need to be developed urgently in Europe to face this challenge. Since climate change makes rain and drought unpredictable, water harvesting materials need to collect and release water with deterministic stimuli, as electricity. The applicant (Experienced Researcher, ER), during her PhD and first PostDoc, studied the interaction between water and conducting/semiconducting polymers. She worked on a conducting polymer with glycolated side chains able to undergo volumetric expansion driven by ions and water intake. She believes that such materials are promising for WH, as the collection and release is driven by an electrical stimulus. To increase the water stabilization and retention, she plans to synthetize a new class of polymers based on an electrical-responsive backbone and zwitterionic water-stabilizing side chains. To this end, the ER will be trained on design, synthesis and characterization of polymers at the host institution, the Basque Centre for Macromolecular Design and Engineering (Polymat), by Prof. David Mecerreyes, a leading expert in design and synthesis of innovative polymers. She will then fabricate a prototype that will be tested in a greenhouse on living plants during the secondment at the Linköping University (LiU) with the Electronic Plants group, led by Prof. Eleni Stavrinidou, an emerging expert on interfacing polymers and plants. Finally, the ER will spend a placement at the end of the fellowship at the PolyKey, a startup focused on sustainably scaling up laboratory polymerization processes. Dr. Andere Basterretxea, the CEO of PolyKey, will supervise the ER, training her on scale up procedures. E-Sprinkle will contribute to the scientific and personal growth of the ER, who at the end of this fellowship will be a highly specialized, competitive profile as independent research leader or as manager in industry.

Mots clés : conducting conjugated polymers, polyzwitterions, water harvesting technology

Participants :
- Polykey polymers sl (Espagne) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Linköping (Suède) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Basque center for macromolecular design and engineering polymat fundazioa (Espagne) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université du Pays basque (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226441.2 €
Projet SP-PVCB (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : TERMINATED

Languages vary regarding the basic word orders that they allow in a sentence – e.g., whether direct objects in them precede or follow the verb: English is a VO (Verb-Object) language and Turkish is an OV (Object-Verb) language. OV languages typically place verbs clause-finally, but, in fact, vary widely with respect to what material, if any, is allowed after the verb, and under what conditions. Surprisingly, the post-verbal clausal domain of OV languages remains severely understudied. I propose that the restrictions on post-verbal clausal constituents in OV languages can only be explained through the understanding of the role that prosody plays in them. According to this prosody-centric hypothesis, the availability and types of post-verbal constituents in OV languages are regulated by their prosodic properties (e.g., accented vs. unaccented). This approach is recent but has already produced fruitful results.  I will test this hypothesis on Basque, a minority OV language of Europe, surrounded by majority VO languages, Spanish and French. Basque is a uniquely fitting testbed for the prosody-centric approach: Basque dialects differ from each other in their prosodic properties and availability and frequency of post-verbal material. Neither the correlation between these two facts, predicted by the prosody-centric hypothesis, nor the interconnections between the syntactic, prosodic, and information-structural properties of post-verbal material in Basque or the role of contact with VO languages in shaping them have yet been investigated.  I will collect and analyze syntactic and prosodic data in Basque and compare them to those in other OV languages. Pursuing this research is critically important for linguistic theory: without it, our understanding of basic clausal syntax, and the changes it can undergo, is woefully incomplete. The societal impact – raising the awareness of minority language speakers’ about the workings of their native language – is also significant.

Mots clés : syntax, phonology, prosody, prosodic phonology, syntax prosody interface, verb final languages, ov languages, post verbal constituents, basque, language contact

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Partner, associated partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université du Pays basque (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 181152.96 €
Projet PROSPER (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Our lives are materialistically and perhaps literally wrapped in plastic since its use in 1940s and expected consumption would increasingly be 720 million tons by 2040. In 2018, the European Commission (EU) and the EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy established the main goals for plastic design, manufacture, use, re-use, and end-of-life management by 2030. Nearly 10 % municipal solid waste is plastic out of which nearly 20 % is being landfilled causing geological and environmental instability. In spite of numerous methods for recycling of plastic waste, only primary recycling (re-extrusion) and secondary recycling (mechanical) are well-established. The most challenges are in the large scale implementation of tertiary recycling (chemical recovery) and quaternary recycling (energy recovery) of plastic waste. Further, converting plastic waste into building block molecules, fuels and energy remains a substantial challenge. For these reason, depolymerization of plastic via arc plasma gasification and pyrolysis has been the attractive choice for researchers and technology developers. Armenise et. al. shows the highest cluster of research on pyrolysis of plastic has happened worldwide in last 2 decades. Design of a pyrolysis reactor and the fixing up of the process parameters have been the key bottleneck for the success of the efficient pyrolysis of plastics. Fluidized/ spouted bed reactors are the top most choices for the plastic pyrolysis process. A plasma reactor has shown significant improvement in the process intensification the for the better heat treatment resulting highly desirable organic products such as H2, CO, CH4, C2H4, C2H2 and other smaller hydrocarbons as the renewable energy source. A new Plasma assisted Spouted Bed Pyrolysis Reactor (PSBPR) will be designed and tested for cost effective deployment in industrial use.

Mots clés : spouted bed, fluidized bed, reactor design, pyrolysis, waste plastic, syngas, biomass gassification, waste treatment, environment protection, renewable energy technology

Participants :
- Université du Pays basque (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 181152.96 €
Projet RaDiCHAPDE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The core of this project is Geometric Measure Theory (GMT) in Homogeneous Groups. The PI suggests exploring exciting original research avenues regarding the interplay between the concepts of flatness, density, and regularity of measures, and their applications to the theory of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) and Free Boundary Problems (FBPs) in non-Euclidean spaces. The project’s potential for groundbreaking discovery is achieved by focusing on the investigation of i) the extension of the very classical density problem, whose solution in Euclidean spaces is codified in the celebrated Preiss' rectifiability theorem, to parabolic and Kolmogorov spaces; ii) the quantitative Reifenberg Theorem for measures in the parabolic space and quantitative dimensional estimates of the mutual singular set for the caloric measure in a two-phase problem; iii) the interplay between differentiability of Lipschitz functions and fine geometric properties of Radon measures in general Homogeneous Groups. As a byproduct of the study of iii), it will be obtained a converse to Pansu's Differentiability Theorem.

Mots clés : geometric measure theory, preiss s rectifiability theorem, free boundary problems, homogeneous groups

Participants :
- Université du Pays basque (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165312.96 €
Projet ASTERES (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

ASTERES aims to understand how astronomical knowledge developed in Alexandria from the works of Claudius Ptolemy has been transmitted during the 6th and 7th centuries in Europe and the Mediterranean World. Through an investigation of documents that had never been edited, the project considers the role of Greek as well as Syriac and Latin-speaking scholars in the circulation and reception of Greek scientific knowledge before the flourishing of sciences in Baghdad and the so-called Carolingian Renaissance. The traditional narrative considers Arab-speaking scholars, after the foundation of the Abbasid califate, to be the first heirs to the Alexandrian scholarship, coming up with Greek science only thanks to the mediation of Syriac translations. It is also widely believed that Latin-speaking intellectual circles in Western Europe would not have been familiar with Greek science before the Latin translations of Arabic texts produced from the 11th century onwards. The 6th and 7th centuries in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, have thus been traditionally described as “Dark Ages”. The aim of ASTERES is to write a new history of the forms and paths of transmission and study of the Alexandrian sciences, specifically astronomy, in the Early Middle Ages. It will investigate three sets of documents, including numerical tables, produced during this period. Two astronomical and chronological letters with tables of the Syriac scholar Severus Sebokht will be edited for the first time. Their study will help to understand to which extent Syriac scholars received Greek knowledge to create an original scientific production. The edition of the Latin tables of the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei aims at understanding how astronomical tables were transmitted and received in Western Europe before the 11th century. The study of the astronomical tables produced by the Byzantine scholar Stephanos will show how astronomers in Constantinople cultivated their Alexandrian scientific heritage.

Mots clés : greek astronomy mediterranean syriac sciences latin astronomy astronomical tables alexandria early middle ages

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet NUTRIclock (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The aging process is nowadays the major risk factor for chronic diseases. Understanding its mechanisms and developing interventions to modulate it constitute a major challenge in order to increase both our life and healthspan. The nutritional interventions have arisen as a potent instrument to influence aging mechanisms. However, the great variability of the effect of nutrition in different persons requires the development of proper tools to characterize the impact of a nutritional treatment. Here, we propose the development of NUTRIclock, an algorithm based on the latest advances in artificial intelligence and microbiome data directed to implement personalized nutrition by characterizing the effect of nutritional interventions on the aging process and health status of an individual. NUTRIclock will be the first algorithm designed to specifically address the interaction of nutrition with aging and the specific changes occurring in the microbiota.  We have conceived this project as the opportunity to develop an instrument useful to implement precision nutrition strategies. It will be highly translational both in the design of public health plans through the application of efficient and personalized treatments, but also for the development in the food industry of new products and approaches to enhance the precision nutrition field. The implementation of this project will require the combination of the expertise in biocomputing of the hosting group and my background in molecular sciences and aging signaling. Importantly, I will strengthen my current bioinformatic knowledge, increasing my capacity to develop scientific projects making use of this powerful tool. In addition, I will sharpen my communication skills, instrumental for the dissemination of our work to the scientific community and the society. This project will enhance my professional career and help me to become an independent researcher in the nutrition, aging and bioinformatic field.

Mots clés : nutritional interventions through precision nutrition approach

Participants :
- Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 186332.93 €
Projet SA-MXene-MOP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The EU has set a goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and has implemented an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2. The most eco-friendly solutions to tackle global energy and sustainability challenges are electrocatalytic (ECR) and photocatalytic (PCR) CO2 reduction into valuable products. Among the CO2 reduction products, formic acid (HCOOH) has diverse applications as a chemical feedstock, hydrogen storage material, methanol intermediate and fuel cell component. Despite advances in the field, there are still unresolved challenges related to slow electron kinetics, unfavourable product selectivity, and high operating cost. In this respect, single-atom catalysts (SACs) have unique performance due to maximum atom efficiency, unsaturated metal coordination, and the confinement effect, making them a promising solution. However, the efficiency and selectivity of SACs for ECR and PCR to HCOOH are still experimentally scarce. Therefore, tuning the electronic structure of SAC through their immobilization on 2D nanosheets is crucial for designing new catalysts. Accordingly, I plan to prepare novel non-noble metal SA-functionalized MXene-metal-organic polyhedral (MOP) assemblies to replace the state-of-the-art catalysts for efficient CO2 reduction to HCOOH. SA-MXenes can improve electron transport and CO2 capture during ECR and PCR. However, self-stacking of SA-MXene can limit electrolyte access and reduce active site utilization. MOP acts as a spacer to increase porosity and prevent restacking. SA-MXene-MOP, with ligands coordinated SA center will act as a photocatalyst. To ensure the successful implementation of project goals, I will conduct research at IEMN (CNRS & University of Lille) under Dr. Boukherroub's guidance. I expect the research findings will elicit noteworthy attention from academic laboratories across Europe and worldwide. This project will help me to enhance my academic profile, and establish a research group.

Mots clés : single atom catalyst, mxene, metal organic polyhedra, electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, co2 reduction

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet EVOCHIC (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Gene regulation is fundamental to biological diversity, driving differences between cell types within an organism and contributing to variation between species. DNA regions known as enhancers play a critical role in this process. Enhancers can be located millions of base pairs away from the genes they regulate, interacting with the promoters of these genes through 3D contacts within the nucleus. How enhancers find their target genes remains largely elusive. Evolution offers a unique “natural perturbation experiment” to study the principles of enhancer-promoter communication. Enhancers, and especially the sequences spanning enhancer-promoter contacts, evolve faster than the gene expression patterns they control. This raises important questions about the genetic and epigenetic factors that sustain and drive the evolution of long-range gene regulation. To address these questions, my computational project will leverage an unpublished, high-resolution dataset on enhancer-promoter contacts from five mammalian species and three tissues, along with corresponding genomic sequences, enhancer annotations, and gene expression data. My analyses will: (1) map how enhancer-promoter contacts co-evolve with genomic sequences, chromatin states, and gene expression, (2) establish how large-scale genomic rearrangements disrupt or constrain these contacts, and (3) develop and train deep learning models to predict DNA sequences underpinning the evolution of enhancer-promoter contacts. By integrating functional genomics, evolutionary biology, and machine learning, this project will uncover the mechanisms behind the evolution of long-range gene regulation, with broad implications for understanding non-coding genetic variation in evolution, disease, and synthetic biology. The fellowship will enhance my expertise in comparative genomics, 3D chromatin biology, and deep learning, while fostering new collaborations and bringing evolutionary insights to the host lab.

Mots clés : 3d chromatin architecture, enhancer promoter contacts, promoter capture hi c, gene regulation, machine learning, deep learning, evolutionary biology, comparative genomics

Participants :
- Imperial College London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €
Projet MIMoSeS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

To maintain homeostasis, cells utilize compartmentalization, traditionally achieved through membrane-bound organelles. However, recent discoveries have highlighted the importance of membrane-less compartments, known as biomolecular condensates (BCs), which form via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). BCs, rich in nucleic acids and proteins, create distinct chemical environments that regulate key metabolic processes and can be temporally controlled. Dysregulation of BCs is linked to diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Whilst the role of proteins in LLPS has been extensively studied, nucleic acids' contribution has been underexplored and attributed solely to electrostatic effects. More recently, it has been demonstrated that nucleic acid alone can drive phase separation, and G-quadruplex (G4), a non-canonical secondary structure, has been identified as a key element. G4s are formed in guanine-rich sequences and can act as crosslinking elements, promoting multivalent interactions required for LLPS. However, understanding the molecular mechanisms of RNA-driven phase separation remains incomplete. A key challenge is identifying mechanisms that reduce the critical concentration required for RNA-based phase separation, making models more biologically relevant. In MIMoSeS, I investigate the role of phospholipid membranes in promoting RNA condensation by selectively recruiting specific RNA secondary structures to their surface, thereby lowering the concentration needed for phase separation. While this mechanism is known for protein-based BCs, it is still underexplored for RNA. MIMoSeS will identify and describe the interplay of lipid membranes and RNA G-quadruplex structures as a putative mechanism for Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation and will provide new insights to study RNA biology from a fresh perspective.

Mots clés : liquid liquid phase separation, nucleic acids, phospholipid membrane

Participants :
- Imperial College London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 260347.92 €