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

Although increasing women’s representation in political decision-making has the potential to significantly improve child health and development in LMIC, existing evidence is almost exclusively observational with little to know knowledge on the exact mechanisms linking both dimensions. To address this important knowledge gap, the EPOCH project will use a highly inter-disciplinary approach in combination with state-of-the-art quasi-experimental methods and detailed cross-national information of electoral outcomes with micro-data on child health and development. Strong evidence on the effects of women’s political representation on child health and development could be important for advancing the twin Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of ending preventable deaths of children under five years of age and ensuring women’s full and effective participation at all levels of decision-making. After working several years in the United States and Latin America, for the Marie Curie Reintegration Fellowship, the applicant will return to Europe to work at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute / University of Basel under the supervision of Prof. Günther Fink, a worldwide leading researcher on child health and development in LMIC. The applicant will gain knowledge of a new promising research field and gain new skills and competencies in the form of quasi-experimental methods for policy evaluation, publishing in high-impact general discipline journals, dissemination as well as writing of major grants. The applicant will enrich the host institutions by providing teaching and supervision activities as well as by fostering research collaborations with Latin America. The planned activities will position the applicant as a leading inter-disciplinary scholar of demography and population health with excellent prospects for attracting a major research grant, leading an independent research group and/or getting a tenure track position at a leading research university in Europe.

Mots clés : health, women, political, equity, children

Participants :
- Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 191149.44 €
Projet CONSUMEHealth (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Although modern consumer can make informed decisions about the types and quantity of food which are best for a healthy lifestyle, an increase in diet-related health problems -caused by unhealthy and over-eating– has been recorded in the European Union in recent years. The objective of this Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) is to understand what drives consumers to make healthier food choices and provide evidence-based recommendations for stakeholders and policy makers to develop and communicate innovative win-win solutions improving eating habits. This MSCA will consist of spending 24 months at Cornell University Food and Brand Lab (Partner Organization), under the supervision of Dr. Wansink who is a well-recognised Professor in the field of consumer behaviour. Behavioural economics studies through interviews, lab and field experiments (hypothetical and non-hypothetical) will be carried out. Workshops and courses on food consumer research methods will provide excellent training. Visits to conferences, stakeholders and other research centers (Michigan and Oklahoma State Universities), already scheduled, will be made. Finally, the return at the University of Parma will be instrumental in building on the expertise acquired to improve teaching abilities and to disseminate findings to several stakeholders by organising a workshop in collaboration with the European Food Safety Authority–EFSA (secondment). Inspired by the finding of his MSCA and striving to maximise the impact of the research outcomes, the candidate is planning to organise public engagement activities, to publish a book intended for the public and papers in highly ranked peer-review journals that will benefit food scientists, agricultural economists and policy makers interested in healthy eating habits. This proposal will be a tremendous opportunity for Dr. Sogari’s career, allowing him to be eligible for a tenure-track position at his home University and become a professional European researcher.

Mots clés : food psycology, healthy choices, choice experiments, qualitative research, food and behavior

Participants :
- Cornell University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- University of Parma (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 244269.0 €
Projet KinCoop (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Although social interactions in non-sentient beings such as plants might seem unlikely, there are good reasons to expect them to be important. Because plant populations are very often strongly genetically structured, with neighbouring plants frequently being relatives, their behaviour is expected to have been shaped by natural selection within this social context. Plants interact very strongly with their neighbours, and there is an increasing body of evidence showing kin recognition and cooperation with relatives, e.g., warning against herbivore attacks and reducing resource competition. However, little is known about how plants behave in a social context in terms of their reproductive strategies. This is surprising, because reproduction is a key life-history trait defining gene transfer, and thus is closely linked to fitness and to the evolutionary potential that will eventually determine the functioning and dynamics of plant populations and communities. Neighbouring plants commonly facilitate pollination. Therefore, the resources invested in floral attractive structures for one individual can positively impact individual fitness, but also the fitness of neighbours, increasing both individual and group benefits. Thus, natural selection should be expected to favour plastic adjustments of the resources allocated to pollinator attraction to the surrounding social environment. I will test this hypothesis, assessing how different social environments might influence optimal allocation strategies and the effect this will have on mating patterns and plant fitness. To address this objective, I will use an interdisciplinary approach that combines theoretical modelling and empirical testing, bringing tools from the sociological sciences to the study plant ecology and evolution. My project will contribute to our understanding of how plants cooperate during reproduction to alter plant population dynamics, with potentially useful outcomes for crop efficiency.

Mots clés : pollination ecology, facilitation

Participants :
- University of Lausanne (Suisse) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 272480.4 €
Projet ROBUST POLICY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Although the EU is on track to achieve the climate targets of “20-20-20”, there is an ongoing debate over whether a more aggressive emission reduction goal is needed to be set for 2030. The root cause of such debate is not only the lack of scientific understanding of climate change but also severe uncertainties about the pace of change and the extent to which it impacts human and natural systems. The policy implications of climate change uncertainty depend on the proper treatment of uncertainty in integrated assessment models (IAM) of climate change. There have been several attempts to incorporate uncertainty in standard IAM frameworks but the results vary widely across the models. This is in particular important for implementing effective mitigation and adaptation strategies within the EU which require a great deal of coordination among the member states with different levels of economic development and political incentives. The objective of this research is to develop a framework for robust climate policy making under uncertainty. During the first stage of this project I will conduct a through survey of current treatment of uncertainty in standard IAMs to obtain the best practices. In the second stage, I will develop a unifying framework for analyzing decision making under uncertainty in the context of climate change. I will adopt a robust optimization approach to assess climate targets and the optimal pathway to achieve those objectives. This theoretical framework then will be applied to the current and future EU climate targets and the results will be illustrated for climate policy making in Italy as a key Member State.

Mots clés : climate policy, integrated assessment modeling, uncertainty, robust optimization

Participants :
- Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 168277.2 €
Projet exciTitania (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Although titanium dioxide (TiO2) is widely employed in fields like photovoltaics and photocatalysis, the nature of its fundamental charge transfer excitations is still unknown. A deep understanding of the excitonic properties of TiO2 is of high relevance to achieve major advances in the aforementioned fields and may lead to the fabrication of new devices with enhanced performance in energy conversion applications. In this research proposal we address three important aspects of the excitonic nature of TiO2, which have been raised by recent experiments and whose investigation requires exhaustive theoretical efforts. The first aspect is related to an observed anomaly in the temperature dependence of the excitons in both the rutile and anatase polymorphs of TiO2. The dependence of elementary excitations with temperature is a main subject in condensed matter physics, and its study provides crucial information on the quantum many-body interaction and correlation. The second aspect is about the interplay between charge transfer excitons and coherent phonons in TiO2. The experiments indicate again an unexpected behaviour of the semiconductor material in this respect. Finally, we aim to study the q-dispersion of the excitons, which will provide insightful knowledge on how these quasi particles propagates throughout the crystal. The recurrent anomalous behaviour of TiO2 makes it an even more fascinating material than it is already considered, and its study could broaden its field of applicability in unimaginable ways. With this proposal, we intend to pave the wave for an exciting future of this versatile semiconductor, using state-of-the-art theoretical calculations in close collaboration with researchers conducting advanced spectroscopy measurements.


Participants :
- University of the Basque Country (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet INFLAMM-ALZ (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major public health problem with substantial economical and social impacts worldwide. Despite intense research, the pathological mechanisms of AD are still unclear. Under homeostasis, a delicate balance is struck between disposal of pathogenic proteins by the brain’s immune cells, microglia, and the inflammation produced by these cells. Indeed, during an acute activation, microglia are protective, but if microglia enter an over-activated state they can induce chronic inflammation through oxidative stress that in turn leads to neuronal damage. Thus, gaining data on the chain of events involved in microglial action is a prerequisite to understanding AD. This project is a large interdisciplinary collaborative effort involving well-established methods such as confocal imaging and transgenic zebrafish, with newly developed photopharmacological tools. Drs Kettunen, Grøtli and Andréasson provide the world-leading expertise required for the project. By coordinating this project, Dr Mourabit will gain invaluable experience in biomedical research, photochemistry, project management, supervision, and the production of scientific results. The novel photoresponsive probes used here will allow for photonic in vivo de/activation of microglia, generating new information on their spatiotemporal activity, in real-time. This state-of-the-art resolution of cell-tracking and control of microglial signalling will provide innovative data on the pathology of neuroinflammation. We believe this interdisciplinary team will push the boundaries of research in AD. This project has the potential to identify new treatments for AD, and influence the direction of neurobiology. This project will create a unique career opportunity for Dr Mourabit, enabling him to crossover from an environmental background to biomedical research. The marrying of such interconnected disciplines will help Dr Mourabit set the foundations of an eclectic and vibrant research group.

Mots clés : alzheimer s disease, pathology, inflammation, neurodegeneration, neurobiology, animal, behaviour, microglia, photopharmacology, transgenic, zebrafish, confocal imaging, learning, memory

Participants :
- University of Gothenburg (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173857.2 €
Projet MAP-AD (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major societal challenge, impacting up to one third of the population over 85 years old. The European Commission and various international bodies have repeatedly fostered research initiatives to prevent the development or stem the progression of the disease. Several recent phase 3 clinical trials have failed to show any efficacy in slowing disease progression, calling into question the current drug targets. This project will use genetic data to identify new AD-relevant molecular pathways and their associated drug targets. Given the increased risk of AD in women, we will apply our innovative analyses not only to autosomal variants but also to X-chromosome variants as well. The mechanistic effects of genetic variants on pathogenesis will be delineated using gene expression from post-mortem brain tissue and AD biomarkers derived from multimodal brain imaging studies. These in-vivo PET and MRI biomarkers are essential for enrolling patients correctly in clinical trials and assessing the effect of treatments on disease progression. We will assess whether a polygenic risk score, based on thousands of genetic variants, will be useful in predicting an individual’s clinical and biomarker progression over time. This project is markedly interdisciplinary in nature between its analysis of multimodal brain imaging and genomics data, and the combination of big data analysis guided by expert medical knowledge of the pathogenesis. Results have the potential to (i) identify new drug targets and (ii) strengthen clinical trial design, thereby speeding the development of drugs for the prevention and treatment of AD. This fellowship represents a unique opportunity to transfer knowledge and analysis methods of next generation genomics AD data from one of the leading US groups in integrating multimodal imaging and genomics data to the European AD research community.


Participants :
- Institut du cerveau (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 257619.84 €
- Stanford University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet Oligomers-MAS-NMR (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related neurodegenerative disorder responsible for about 2 million deaths per year. Despite tremendous progress in basic research within the last years, its efficient treatment and diagnostic tools are still lacking. The previous studies have gathered sufficient evidence of a causative role of the aggregates of two proteins - amyloid beta and tau - in the AD pathogenesis. Both of these proteins can form highly toxic oligomeric species, which are the primary suspects of AD-related neurotoxicity. However, due to experimental difficulties the detailed structural and functional characterization of the oligomeric forms has been a big challenge. In the proposed project we aim to build on cutting-edge technologies and novel approaches to obtain atomic-level structures and investigate interactions of the amyloid beta and tau oligomers. Thus, this multidisciplinary project will apply (I) cell-free protein expression and purification protocols for incorporation of various selectively 13C, 15N and 19F labeled amino-acids; (II) microfluidics in order to generate size-controlled oligomers (III) solid-state NMR (ssNMR) at fast magic-angle spinning (MAS) regime tailored for 1H and 19F detection schemes. The anticipated outcome of this will be a unique combination of approaches to study amyloid aggregates, which can be further used and adapted for studying other protein assemblies. The project results will form the basis of innovation in the treatment of AD as well as other tauopathies.

Mots clés : solid state nmr, fast magic angle spinning, amyloids, cell free expression, microfluidics, protein structure

Participants :
- Latvian Academy of Sciences (Lettonie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 140202.24 €
Projet TICKITS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Among hematophagous arthropods ticks transmit a large variety of pathogens with public health and veterinary importance. Tick transmit several emergent and re-emergent arboviruses across the world. In 2010, scientists discovered severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV), an emergent Banyangvirus (Phenuivirus) transmitted by ticks in Asian countries. SFTSV infection causes severe symptoms and can lead to the death in infected individuals. Novel vector-based control strategies require a more detailed understanding of the vector-virus interaction and the vector response to infection. Ripicephalius microplus ticks are vectors of SFTSV and as for many non-model arthropods we are missing basic genomic data, which makes tick-arbovirus interaction studies difficult. To overcome these limitations, the TICKITS (TICK cell Interactions with SFTSV) project aims to develop an innovative approach coupling transcriptomic and proteomics data from R. microplus cells during infection. This systematic approach will characterize SFTSV infections in their natural tick vector and will generate information on changes in vector cells both at transcriptome and proteome level. This integrative view of the host response will give us insights on targets that can be investigated using gene silencing approaches to determine their impact on viral infection. I choose to work with the Kohl and Brennan laboratories at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) in Glasgow, UK. Both laboratories excel in tick/arthropod biology and arbovirus infection studies and have all the tools necessary to carry out this work. By adding my molecular and omics expertise we aim to develop novel angles in tick research. Moreover, the data generated will provide a solid base for other projects to build on and develop comparative projects across species.

Mots clés : protein protein interactions, tick, arthropod borne bunyavirus, interactome

Participants :
- University of Glasgow (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet FreeMi (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Amphibians are currently suffering severe worldwide declines caused by chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). So far, disease mitigation strategies have taken a host-level approach, in which only the host-pathogen interactions have been considered. However, recent results have shown that disease dynamics can be affected by pathogen-environment interactions and underscored the importance of the host-pathogen-environment interplay. Indeed, in the field and laboratory, freshwater zooplankton was found to trigger Bd infection in two amphibian species by directly consuming Bd zoospores. This study raises the hope that chytridiomycosis outbreaks could be controlled in nature by natural augmentation of zooplankton. The project FreeMi aims at developing a safe and effective mitigation strategy targeting Bd at the habitat level. To achieve this aim, I will first identify whether amphibians are protected by the species richness, the overall abundance and/or a few key zooplankton organisms able to consume a high number of Bd zoospores. The samples will be collected from two regions: the Pyrenees and Germany. Then, I will identify the local species that are the most efficient at consuming zoospores. I will isolate these species and establish self-maintaining cultures in outdoor microcosms. Finally, I will test the efficiency of the cultures, in single as well as community trials, under biologically relevant conditions. Compared to other approaches, this highly innovative approach lacks the downsides associated with introducing non-native biocontrol agents (such as antifungal chemicals or non-native skin bacteria) in the environment. Moreover, it would allow to treat all amphibian individuals present at a site, of all species and from larvae to adults directly in the field, and therefore would be more cost-effective than individual treatment strategies.

Mots clés : biocontrol, fungal pathogen, batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, wildlife disease, disease mitigation, zooplankton, amphibian conservation

Participants :
- Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 171460.8 €