Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet Precaution (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human decisions can be evaluated on whether they exemplify some precaution. For instance, the mayor was praised for being precautionary in reinforcing the dike along the river. Precaution has recently been raised at the level of a principle – the Precautionary Principle – which has acquired a widely recognized status in national and international law. This project conducts a philosophical analysis of conceptual and fundamental issues on the Precautionary Principle and on precaution more generally. I aim at understanding why being precautionary makes sense from a rational viewpoint, both at the individual (Objective A) and collective (Objective B) levels, and from an ethical viewpoint (objective C). - Objective A is to clarify the relation between the Precautionary Principle and decision theory more generally, by specifying whether there are inconsistencies or unnoticed linked between the two. I will investigate whether the Precautionary Principle can apply gradually, and whether it amounts to some uncertainty aversion or risk aversion. - Objective B is to understand what being precautionary as a group implies. I aim to specify on what conditions a group can be precautionary and consistent, or rational, in its judgments. My strategy is to extend the existing belief and probability aggregation theories, and state (im)possibility theorems. - Objective C is to determine what being ethically precautionary could mean. Since being precautionary for oneself may amount to impose risk on others, I aim to assess the particular ethical problems it may create. I shall proceed comparatively, starting from existing views in the ethics of risk. The project combines several methods: conceptual analysis, formal/mathematical modelling, the analysis of case-studies, and an innovative cross-fertilization of philosophical analyses of the Precautionary Principle with literature from several domains: decision theory (A), aggregation theory (B), ethical analyses of risk (C).

Mots clés : precaution, rationality, group rationality, decision theory, judgment aggregation, probability aggregation, ethics of risk

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet MicroCity (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human induced environmental gradients have a strong effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Despite the valuable ecosystem services (such as biogeochemical cycling and xenobiotic degradation) provided by microbial communities, environmental conservation policies usually neglect microbial diversity. This can be in part attributed to our poor understanding of microbial community responses to anthropogenic influences in natural landscapes. Urban ecosystems are key examples of environments that are strongly impacted by anthropogenic activity. In addition to our need to understand how microbial communities respond to urbanization, urbanization gradients are also excellent model systems to study how the taxonomic and functional diversity and composition of microbial communities respond to anthropogenic stress in general. In the here proposed project, we will study microbial communities in freshwater ponds located across well characterized urbanization gradients in Belgium. We will apply metagenomics in a molecular trait based approach in an effort to determine the influence of human induced environmental gradients on the biogeochemical cycling and xenobiotic degradation pathways in microbial communities. Also, we will analyse the role of the mobilome - mobile genetic elements such as plasmids and transposons - as a source of rapid evolution in microbial communities under anthropogenic stress. We will take a metacommunity approach in order to quantify the relative importance of local (environmental) and regional (spatial) processes in shaping bacterial communities across the studied gradients. Our proposed study is unique as it combines the nascent theory of evolving metacommunities with a high throughput molecular approach, metagenomics, to better understand the impact of urbanization on microbial community structure and function.

Mots clés : microbial communities, metagenomics, mobile genetic elements, metacommunities, catabolic pathways

Participants :
- KU Leuven (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172800.0 €
Projet UltraRamanomics (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cell-based organoids have recently emerged as a promising model system to recapitulate the structure and function of actual biological tissues and organs. These 3D self-organized multi-cellular tissue systems bridge the gap from cell to tissue/organ levels, providing bio-relevant model systems with foreseeable utility in drug discovery, regenerative medicine, and the study of disease pathogenesis, but the increased complexity and unique attributes of each system introduces new challenges in cell culture and experimental reproducibility. While organoids offer profound potential for applications in biological and biomedical research, their scientific value is limited by how closely they mimic the in vivo tissue systems they are intended to model. To achieve a successful organoid-based predictive model system, it is crucial to have a quantitative biochemical and structural analysis technique for single cells and organoids. In UltraRamanomics, I will develop a robust quantitatively-calibrated bioanalytical platform for high content phenotypic profiling of individual stem cells and hiPS cell-derived organoids, to allow direct structural and quantitative compositional comparison of organoid models in absolute biochemical measurements, thereby addressing the currently unmet analytical need. The platform will be based on micro-Raman spectroscopy – enabling direct measurements of the absolute biochemical composition of single-cells and tissue organoids with unprecedented spatial resolution – to provide a novel analytical solution to the existing gap in stem cell organoid research. This proposal takes full advantage of recent advances in ultraquantitative micro-calibration technology I developed during my PhD, quantitative volumetric Raman imaging (qVRI) methodology developed by the Stevens Group, and the organoid-on-a-chip platform in development at the Centre of Excellence Hybrid Technology Hub with the Krauss Group (Secondment).

Mots clés : organoids, stem cells, drug screening, raman microscopy, raman imaging, quantitative analysis

Participants :
- Imperial College London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet MULTIPREF (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human mate preferences can provide important insight into human social and sexual relationships; however, to date research on human mate preferences are typically based on sexual selection models derived from studies of non-human species to identify candidate characteristics that may influence preferences, and then studies only assess one or two of these characteristics at a time. This is problematic as this does not reflect the multivariate nature of human mate choice in reality. To address these limitations, I propose a research project that uses data-driven approaches to identify characteristics important to human mate preferences that entirely avoids the problem of selecting candidate characteristics based on inappropriate theoretical models. I also propose using powerful new computational methods to develop the first multivariate model of human mate preferences. First, I will use state-of-the-art statistical techniques developed in evolutionary biology to identify facial, body, and personality characteristics important for human mate preferences. Once these characteristics have been identified, they will be used as input into a large, iterative, online study using a technique that simulates the effects of Darwinian evolution on preferences. This project directly addresses difficulties in the field and will develop the first multivariate model of human mate preferences that will drive future research in the field.

Mots clés : human evolution, sexual selection, mate preferences, multivariate statistics, experimental evolution

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

Human peripheral vision is important for noticing stimuli and moving the eye towards them if more detailed vision is needed, for orientation and for the detection of movement and, generally, for the awareness of our surroundings. It has been shown that increased refractive error in the periphery can lead to a significant decrease in the detection of a stimulus. This functional limitation of vision can have significant implications in safety and efficiency in daily tasks, such as walking or driving. Peripheral refraction is also thought to play an important role in the emmetropization process and is a candidate for the mechanism causing myopia. Until now, however, there has not been conclusive evidence to fully establish the relationship between peripheral defocus and astigmatism with myopia, partially due to the lack of a clinical instrument designed to measure peripheral refraction. Furthermore, peripheral image quality deteriorates significantly after cataract surgery due to the high peripheral refraction of the intraocular lens implants commonly used. The proposed project concerns the design, built and subsequent evaluation of an innovative optical instrument and a corresponding method for the in-vivo, quick and accurate measurement of the central and peripheral refraction of the human eye. The instrument will have the potential to become a very valuable tool in ophthalmology, and specifically in the study of children myopia, but also in cataract surgery. The project will be carried out at the Athens Eye Hospital (AEH) and includes two three-month secondments, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and at King’s College London, UK.

Mots clés : peripheral vision, refractometry, myopia, physiological optics, ophthalmology, optometry

Participants :
- Athens Eye Hospital (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 153085.44 €
Projet ConservaTEAM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human population growth is placing ever increasing demands on using land for housing and for food and fuel production1. This demand is driving rapid land use change across much of the globe, in particular in developing countries, which poses a major threat to biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provisions. Simultaneously, climate is changing rapidly, and thus biodiversity faces the joint threat of land use and climate change; not only will species need to be able to persist in heavily degraded landscapes, but they are likely to have to shift their ranges through highly fragmented habitat patches embedded within a hostile matrix. A key role for applied ecology over the coming years will be to provide clear recommendations on how conservation activities can optimise the landscape structure such that as much biodiversity as possible is likely to be retained. There is a need for new tools that can help stakeholders, including land planners and managers, make informed decisions. In this project, I will use a novel, individual-based modelling platform, RangeShifter to test, in silico, the likely effectiveness of alternative future land management scenarios in terms of their ability to protect forest bird biodiversity. As a case study, the project will focus on the Eastern Arc Mountain Range (EAM) in Kenya and Tanzania, a region of exceptional biodiversity and endemism, but which has lost most (80 %) of its native forest cover. An important aspect of the project is that it seeks co-production of knowledge with stakeholders, who will be actively involved throughout in terms of developing and evaluating the effectiveness of alternative scenarios.

Mots clés : conservation planning, individual based model, participatory methods, stakeholder engagement, co production of knowledge

Participants :
- University of Aberdeen (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet HARA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human-Animal Relationships in Archaeology: World Views of Hunter-gatherers in Northern Europe (HARA) will provide important new perspectives on human interactions with animals in Northern Europe in the ethnographic present and the archaeological past. This will include innovative analysis of ethnographic materials from NE Russia and archaeological materials from the Baltic, including Europe’s largest Stone Age burial ground (350 graves), Zvejnieki in Latvia. HARA will focus on how animal remains, especially artefacts manufactured on animal remains, and animal iconography reflect human-animal relations. With the aim to develop new perspectives on human-animal relationships among hunter-gatherers in Northern Europe the project will utilise innovative analogies and theoretical frameworks derived from ethnographic analysis and new experimental archaeological approaches to artefacts manufactured from animal remains. The case studies will allow an assessment of changes in human-animal relationships during the introduction of domestic animals: a process which is widely considered to have been transformative of human society and human understandings of animals and has been a significant focus for research. The academic impact of this multidisciplinary project is therefore substantial. The applicant will move from her current position with the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb,Croatia to School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland. She will receive training in experimental archaeology and animal osteoarchaeology, the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, and in teaching archaeology as well as a formal introduction to the management and delivery of research projects. Completion of this project will allow the applicant to develop into a position of professional maturity with a specific and unique interdisciplinary set of skills and will be able to pursue an international academic research and teaching career in the field of human-animal studies.

Mots clés : archaeology, hunter gatherers, mesolithic, neolithic, ethnography, human animal relationships, world views, domestication, northern europe, animal remains, iconography, artefacts

Participants :
- National University of Ireland (Irlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187866.0 €
Projet CYCLOCARB (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide are disrupting the natural variations of the carbon cycle. Past climatic variations provide essential information on the carbon cycling and its associated climate changes to explore different scenarios from unrestrained to even decreased emissions of CO2. In the CYCLOCARB project, we will develop a semi empirical model of carbon cycling and climates over the last glacial cycle, a unique dampened natural analogue for expected anthropogenic forcing’s. This semi-empirical model will be constrained by an extensive database including indicators for temperature and ice volume (δ18O of foraminifers, sea surface temperature proxies) and proxies for global carbon cycling and partitioning between ocean, atmosphere and solid earth (δ13C of foraminifers, carbonate, organic carbon content in marine sediment). Temperature proxies’ records will help refining climatic sensitivity to greenhouse gases, and the temporal evolution of temperature pattern will shed light on the response of the oceans to climate forcing’s. The δ13C of the climatic system will be reconstructed and the effect of the biological pump quantified for the last 150ka, encompassing both a major emission event at termination II and some decreased CO2 intervals. Altogether, our climatic reconstructions and the semi-empirical model will improve our understanding of the natural response of the carbon cycling to anthropic changes. Moreover, CYCLOCARB will permit the quantification of carbon stocks in Exclusive Economic Zones, which could affect Europe national greenhouse gases inventories and marine carbon stock management.

Mots clés : paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, paleoecology, sedimentology, palaeontology, biogeochemistry, biogeochemical cycles, geochemistry, isotope geochemistry, limatology, climate change, oceanography, marine science

Participants :
- Aix-Marseille Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 277061.76 €
Projet IMPRINT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Humans acquire a complex community of intestinal microorganisms in early life (gut microbiota), which helps development of the immune system, and which may reduce risk of inflammatory disease. However, these complex microbiota-immune interactions in early life are underexplored and their subsequent influence on susceptibility to infection remains unknown. The Eberl lab recently reported that a temporary intestinal inflammatory state, termed the ‘weaning reaction’, occurs in mice during a specific window in early life (2-4 weeks) in response to the rapid diversification of the gut microbiota. During weaning, the gut microbiota and its metabolites induce a sub-type of T regulatory cells in the intestine (RORγt+ Tregs) which mediate immune tolerance throughout life. Suppression of the microbiota-induced weaning reaction suppresses RORγt+ Tregs and heightens susceptibility to immunopathology such as allergy and colitis in adulthood. However, it is unknown how the weaning reaction influences the later susceptibility and response to infection. IMPRINT will investigate how the gut microbiota influences the immune system in early life to regulate the response to infection in adulthood. Using mice, this project will evaluate the impact of suppressing the weaning reaction on susceptibility to Citrobacter rodentium infection in adulthood. Next, Treg depletion models will be used to examine whether microbiota-induced Tregs during weaning influence susceptibility to C. rodentium infection in adulthood. Finally, metagenomics, metabolomics and add-back experiments will be performed to identify specific bacteria or metabolites that promote induction of Tregs during weaning and modulate subsequent susceptibility to C. rodentium infection. By combining my skills in metagenomics and metabolomics with the host lab’s expertise in intestinal immunology, IMPRINT poses potential to uncover insights into early-life microbiota-immune interactions and the pathogenesis of infectious disease.

Mots clés : microbiome, microbiota, treg, th17, colon, short chain fatty acids

Participants :
- Institut Pasteur (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 196707.84 €
Projet TC-Evo (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Humans are equipped with a sophisticated immune system, especially adaptive immunity, which is characterized by the finest antigen specificity. The evolution of such fine antigen specificity across human lifespan is far from being known, although it is observe that the strength of the adaptive immune response varies throughout human lifetime. Published data suggest that T cells receptors (TCRs) continuously change their characteristics. I aim to provide fundamental knowledge on the evolution of T cell repertoires during immunologically-distinct phases of human lifetime by dissecting the evolution of the influenza virus-specific T cell repertoire in children, adults and elderly at the greatest level of resolution and technological innovation and link this to their TCR characteristics. At the Peter Doherty Institute, Melbourne, Australia, I will use state-of-the-art comprehensive immunological analyses to identify molecular switches, which I will use to establish an immunological model to predict the strength of the CD8+ T cell response. I will bring this cutting-edge multi-disciplinary platform to Europe (Sanquin, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) where I will use this platform to study the underlining mechanisms that drive tissue residency of T cells. I will gain knowledge and skills on studying TCRs, tissue resident T cells, bioinformatics and structural biology, while working in close collaboration with world-renowned experts in the field, namely Profs. Kedzierska, van Lier, Luciani, Gras, Beyer and Schulze. These state-of-the-art comprehensive immunological analyses will inevitably yield important insights into protective vs detrimental human immune responses, which will aid early interventions, treatment and help understand and overcome technical challenges of developing broadly-protective vaccines. The MSCA will strengthen my position as an independent researcher and will greatly increase my chances for a tenure-track/fixed position at an European research institute.

Mots clés : virology, immunology, evolution, cd8  t cells, influenza, bioinformatics, t cell receptors  tcr, aging, tissue residency, molecular gene profiles, honeymoon period of superior immunity

Participants :
- University of Melbourne (Australie) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Sanquin (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 249179.4 €