Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet CICLE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The intracluster light (ICL) is defined as the luminous component of the clusters of galaxies which is formed by stars that are gravitationally bound to the cluster potential but do not belong to any galaxy in particular. Its properties give insights on cluster formation and evolution, determine the dynamical stage of the system, estimate its age, improve scaling relations, and constrain the cosmological parameters. Its study is limited because the ICL has a very low surface brightness and traditional techniques assume different a priori hypotheses that bias the final results. As a consequence, ICL studies are rare and often draw inconsistent (or even contradictory) conclusions and results. We developed and tested successfully the first algorithm to analyze images of galaxy clusters and measure ICL properties completely free of a priori assumptions, called CICLE. CICLE gathers mathematical tools of image modelling and characterisation, and algorithms of multiresolution analysis. Some of these tools were developed in-house and are multidisciplinar. Our goal is to carry out the first extensive, systematic, and consistent study of the ICL in groups and clusters of galaxies using CICLE and high-quality data from HST and the J-PAS project. We plan to split the study in three subprojects, according to the characteristics of the systems: i) massive clusters, ii) non-massive clusters and groups, and iii) fossil groups. This work would report: a) observationally, images and data of high scientific impact, attractive to different astronomical areas, b) analytically, new and versatile techniques of big data analysis, with potential to be widely used not only in Astronomy but also in other fields as Geophysics, Medicine, or Biochemistry, and c) scientifically, the first unbiased and large-scale characterization of the ICL and the discovery of the effect of this component on the process of formation and evolution of clusters of galaxies, still unknown.


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

The investigation of processes that trigger cross-species transmission (‘spillover’) is central to disease ecology and epidemiology. Many infectious diseases in humans and domestic animals have emerged from successful jumps from wildlife hosts. The interactions of coinfecting pathogens within the same host are considered to be important in these spillover processes. However, despite the relevance of coinfections, little is known about the copathogen dynamics in the wild. There is a need for general concepts and theories. “Ecodis” proposes to fill this gap by determining a conceptual framework for effects of copathogens on disease transmission in one of the world’s best studied parasite-songbird systems: the directly-transmitted Mycoplasma gallisepticum bacteria in House Finches. Using methods from disease ecology and human epidemiology, I (Dr. Heylen; the applying experienced researcher) combine experimental and field surveillance data to create models on cross-host infection risks. These innovative models will improve our understanding of the roles of coinfections in mediating pathogen establishment and persistence in novel host species and previously unexposed populations. I will be guided by high-profile scientists, Hens (Hasselt University) and Dobson (Princeton University), and benefit from their extensive networks to develop a set of crucial skills that boost my research profile and expertise in constructing/applying mathematical and theoretical models in disease ecology. Following the ‘One Health’ vision, this multidisciplinary and highly translational project will allow me to develop an international career as disease ecologist, and - in the long-term - to contribute to biodiversity and risk management programs in Europe and beyond.

Mots clés : disease modelling, disease ecology, infectious disease, evolutionary ecology

Participants :
- Princeton University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Hasselt University (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 240530.4 €
Projet BISTRO-LIGHT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The investigation of topological effects in photonic systems is a thriving field of research in the nanophotonics community. Suitably designed nanostructures allow the formation of novel states for light which are more robust against disorder and less sensitive to back-scattering, spurring academic fascination and helping to improve photonic circuitry technology. Recent advances have greatly expanded the variety of systems displaying topological effects: for instance it has recently been shown that the Aubry-André model, a one-dimensional tight-binding model of particles with a periodically-modulated on-site energy, inherits the nontrivial topological properties of a higher-dimensional topological insulator. In this Action, I propose to create a photonic realization of the Aubry-André model for near-infrared light with photonic-crystal structures and demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, the emergence of nontrivial topological properties. To reach this goal, I will theoretically develop the concept of “bichromatic” photonic crystals, i.e., dielectric structures with a specific spatial arrangement of the refractive index characterized by the superposition of two incommensurate periodicities. Such structures have the potential to combine topologically-protected propagation of light with the strong enhancement of light-matter interaction characteristic of nanostructured fields. Topological effects will be revealed by the formation of boundary states at the edge of the structure, which will be experimentally visualized with near-field scanning microscope measurements. The spectrum, the topological invariants, and the effect of nonlinearities will be thoroughly investigated. This Action will give me the opportunity of directly supervising an exciting research project from the conception up to the experimental phase, improving my professional capabilities and helping me to develop stronger ties with experiments.

Mots clés : nanophotonics, photonic crystals, quasicrystals, topological insulators, photonic bandgap, near field scanning optical microscopy, snom, nsom, optical nanostructures, optics

Participants :
- Delft University of Technology (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €
Projet KIRPAS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The inward rectifier potassium (Kir) channels belong to a family of integral membrane proteins that selectively control the K+ ion permeation in cell membranes. They are ubiquitously expressed throughout the human body and regulate the membrane electrical excitability and K+ transport in many cell types. The gating of Kir channels is modulated by various intracellular ligands, with phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) being an essential molecule to Kir channel activity in eukaryotes. The physiological importance of the Kir channels is highlighted by the fact that genetically-inherited defects in the Kir channels are responsible for a number of human diseases, such as Andersen’s syndrome (AS), Bartter’s syndrome, and neonatal diabetes, which are often chronically debilitating and for which there are no efficient therapeutic treatments. This project goals to obtain high-resolution structures of the human Kir2.1 channel wild type (WT) and an AS-causing mutant (R312H) located at interaction site of PIP2, in the presence and absence of PIP2 as well as the description of the molecular mechanisms allowing gating of the channels in the WT and mutated forms with/without PIP2 using advanced molecular dynamics simulations techniques. For this, this project proposes the integration of cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) combined with image analysis (single particle analysis or 2D crystallography) with a recently developed molecular dynamics simulations approach (MDeNM), which is a powerful tool to structurally characterize functional motions occurring over long time scales. The description of full gating mechanism of human Kir2.1 channel and the PIP2 role on its dynamics, as well as the understanding of the clinically-relevant disease-causing mutation impact on the structure, dynamics, and function of Kir channels can provide the structural basis for investigating potential rationally-designed therapeutic modulators for the AS treatment.

Mots clés : kir potassium channel, ion channel, andersen s syndrome, cryo electron microscopy, structural molecular biology, molecular dynamics simulations

Participants :
- Sorbonne Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 196707.84 €
Projet PSYCHOCONTEXT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The lack of contextualization of the science and applications of mental health is the source of a large part of its criticisms. From the lack of research on how social dynamics influence the well-being of citizens, to the gaps in research and coordinated implementation of different disciplines involved in mental health in a changing environment, there are still many limitations for a contextualised and integrated view. This project intends to offer a bottom-up, source-embedded appreciation of the need to effectively seek to contextualise mental health interventions and the professional and institutional barriers to this process at the international level, using participatory research methods with practitioners and users of psychological services as well as the general population trough personal as well as digital contact. The first milestone of the project will be an empirical study on how sociocultural dynamics impact psychosocial wellbeing and mental health integrating a website and a mobile application with face to face interviews. The second will intend to gather information on approaches already used which can be considered contextualised. The results of both milestones will be used to organise continuing professional development workshops with mental health professionals, in which focus groups will be used to explore the perceived need and institutional obstacles for contextualisation.

Mots clés : mental health, psychosocial wellbeing, sociocultural dynamics, service users, participation, citizenship

Participants :
- University of Barcelona (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 239191.2 €
- Yale University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet Pectin (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The large bowel is colonized by a community of microbes, the microbiota, which has a significant impact on human health and nutrition. The major nutrients available to these organisms are dietary glycans. Thus, glycan-based dietary and nutraceutical strategies can, potentially, be deployed to encourage the dominance of beneficial microbes within the microbiota, ensuring the microbial ecosystem has a positive influence on human health. This approach, however, is greatly restricted by a critical lack of understanding of the mechanisms by which complex glycans are metabolized by the microbiota. Significantly, the wealth of genomic/metagenomic microbiota sequence data now available, presents an exciting and unparalleled opportunity to make decisive advances in our understanding of glycan metabolism in the human large bowel. This project seeks to capitalize on this genomic information, in harness with recent functional data from the host laboratory, to understand the mechanisms by which pectin, the major component of the human diet that is metabolized by the microbiota. The data will inform novel prebiotic and probiotic strategies to maximise the impact of the microbiota on human health. At a generic level, understanding glycan resource allocation in the microbiota represents an excellent system for studying the molecular mechanisms that lead to the evolution of novel glycanase functions, which, in turn, will provide a robust functional context to bioinformatic-based predictive biology. The fellow is Italian and has recently completed her PhD student at the University of Lisboa, Portugal, with the project FP7 Initial Training Network termed WallTraC. The fellow has experience in high throughput protein expression, enzyme activity screening and structural biology. At Newcastle University she will have the opportunity to develop skills in adanced mechanistic enzymology, anaerobic microbiology, bioinformatics, in vivo bacterial genetic manipulation and microbial ecology.

Mots clés : glycosidases, pectin, human gut microbes, human microbiota, glycan degradation, plant cell walls

Participants :
- Newcastle University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet ToSubC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The last decade has witnessed a boom in offshore infrastructures, including not only oil and gas platforms and submarine pipelines due to the shift of energy exploration from onshore to offshore but also offshore wind farms, offshore electricity grid infrastructure, and submarine communication cables and routes. This boom significantly enhances the importance of the estimation of potential submarine landslides and their consequences. It is true that submarine landslides may have a unexpectedly long travel distance and damage infrastructure thousands of kilometers away. However numerical modelling of the entire process of submarine landslides is a long-standing challenge. In addition to constitutive models for describing both solid-like and fluid-like behaviour of sediments, it requires also advanced numerical approaches capable of tackling extremely large deformation experienced by materials as well as interactions between structures, seawater, and sediments. This project is motivated by these challenges and aims to develop innovative continuum models and numerical approaches for simulating submarine landslides and their consequences. A unified mixed Lagrangian finite element formulation will be derived for handling solid mechanics (infrastructure), fluid dynamics (seawater), and poromechanics (sediments). Viscoeplastoplastic constitutive models will be developed for capturing the solid-fluid transitional behaviour of sediments. The proposed formulation and models will be implemented on a high performance computing based numerical platform within the framework of the particle finite element method for fully coupled analyses of submarine landslides. The intended outcome is a computational tool that can simulate the complete process of real-world submarine landslides, ranging from the initiation of failure through the sliding process to the final deposition and predicting their impact on offshore infrastructures.

Mots clés : submarine landslides, numerical modelling, multiphysics modelling, constitutive modelling, geohazards, offshore infrastructure

Participants :
- CERCA Institution (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet GABASSEMBLY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The last decades of research have revealed that neuronal assemblies are fundamental units of brain computation and cognition. The mechanisms of assembly activity may be clinically relevant, because these cells have been shown to be altered in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and epilepsy. Despite the significance of assemblies, it remains unclear how these cells are orchestrated by GABAergic circuits. Here I propose to investigate the role of GABAergic cells in the activity of hippocampal assemblies using in vivo 2-photon calcium imaging and electrophysiology in awake mice. Thanks to a behavioural paradigm designed in the host laboratory, I will be able to discriminate whether the spatiotemporal patterns of GABAergic activity differ between a hippocampal internal mode (limited and constant sensory inputs) and an external mode (richer and changing sensory inputs). Immunohistochemistry will allow the identification of defined GABAergic classes. Next, I will test whether the activity of GABAergic cells is spatially or temporally correlated with the recruitment of hippocampal cell assemblies. Finally, I will investigate in vivo activity and role in assembly recruitment of a particular population of GABAergic cells. This consists of cells that are born early in development and that at early postnatal age exert a ‘hub’ function, namely they trigger powerful synchronisation of hundreds of cells and of network oscillations. Recent evidence has led to the hypothesis that this GABAergic population may play a critical role in the reactivation of cell assemblies during sleep or quiet wakefulness, a phenomenon that is important for memory consolidation. In summary, this project involves a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary approach at the boundary between cellular and system neuroscience. It may provide unique knowledge on the role of GABAergic cells in network mechanisms that are involved in cognition and that appear pathologically relevant.

Mots clés : gaba assemblies hippocampus oscillations imaging interneurons inhibition memory

Participants :
- Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 173076.0 €
Projet MicroTRASH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The later fourth and third millennium BC in Northwest and Northeast Europe are a period characterised by important social changes, such as the migration of peoples, the emergence of new hierarchies, new ways of treating the dead, and intensifying exchange networks. At the same time this period often represents the final stage of a long-term economical process, the transition from a hunting, gathering and fishing economy to a primarily agricultural way of life. Several recent findings however show that this is not a one-way process, and especially in coastal regions a much more complex picture must be envisaged, even for this final stage of the Neolithic. Two kinds of archaeological phenomena, both often overlooked in scholarly debates, characterise this complexity: the (shell)midden and the arable field. Within MicroTRASH, these two phenomena are studied from a microscopic and a biochemical perspective. The scientific methods of micromorphology and lipid biomarkers enable a detailed disentangling of midden accumulation, shellfish consumption and arable land management (including manuring and irrigation practices) during this period. Additional use of absolute dating techniques and statistical modelling generate an increased temporal framework. This allows for a better understanding of subsistence practices, their temporality and the interplay between agriculture and shellfish gathering. In doing so, MicroTRASH is providing a better picture of coastal communities and their particular ways of life in Northwest and Northeast Europe amidst of the large-scale social and cultural transformations.

Mots clés : coastal archaeology, archaeological science, neolithic, archaeological soil micromorphology, prehistoric subsistence

Participants :
- University of Groningen (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet HI-SiMed (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The left ventricle is the principal mechanical element of the human heart that propels blood to the systemic circulation. Its contraction is the result of an electrical wave propagation generated at the cellular level and is studied in the framework of cardiac electrophysiology. This science is nowadays mature and provides models to capture and reproduce the contraction/relaxation cycle of the heart that are used for a quantitative understanding of the heart functioning. However, these electrophysiology models do not include the hemodynamics caused by the ventricle deformation, thus neglecting the fundamental vortex dynamics taking place in the heart physiology, which generates stresses on the surrounding cardiac tissue. This project aims at connecting the electrophysiology and the fluid mechanics building an electro-fluid-structure computational model for the pulsatile flow in an animated left ventricle and elastic aorta. Biological heart conditions will be reproduced as close as possible by merging my electrophysiology code with the advanced fluid-structure framework of the Physics of Fluids group (PoF) at University of Twente (UT). The resulting multi-physics model will allow studying the accurate hemodynamics and cardiac tissue stresses generated in an animated ventricle. Building on my experience in vortex dynamics, we will correlate the topology of the vorticity structures with the heart functional pumping and then study how cardiac diseases such as myocardium infarction modify them, accounting for infarction location and sex differences. The outcomes of HI-SiMed will provide the medical community with an innovative and advanced tool that could open new horizons for the improvement of treatment outcomes. With this ambitious aim, the project will be developed in close cooperation with the cardiac surgeons already collaborating with the PoF.

Mots clés : bio fluidmechanics, cardiac disease, whole heart model, fluid structure interaction, electrophysiology

Participants :
- University of Twente (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €