Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet FIRS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The Late Antique and Early Byzantine periods are crucial ones for the understanding of Sicily's socio-economic and cultural evolution from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Recent research has shown that the island still played its centuries-old role then as a Mediterranean linchpin, and this realization has awakened scholars' interest for a period that has been dogged by an adverse historical bias (one of perceived ‘decline and decadence’) for a long time. A raft of new data from archaeological excavations and field surveys have sketched the outlines of the nuanced complexities of Sicilian society and its vibrant economy at this period, and its integration into multiple Mediterranean trade routes. Despite some progress overall, delay in the publication of old excavations, the paucity of syntheses available, and the difficulty in accessing existing datasets, are a hindrance to resolving some key problems about this important transitional phase in Sicilian history. For this reason, many scholars believe that a new multidisciplinary analysis of the period is essential. The FIRS project therefore focuses on four key sites in western Sicily, investigated during the second half of the 20th century but largely unpublished. These comprise the rural settlements of Campanaio and Castagna and the port cities of Palermo and Lilybaeum (Marsala). By analysing the quantity of material culture from the excavations and exploring the distribution of artefacts at a micro-regional scale, we aim to investigate the many and various causes that triggered changes in trading patterns, social behaviour, and cultural practices between the 5th and the 7th centuries AD. The expected results will undoubtedly affect the international scientific community dealing with similar issues in other Mediterranean regions. They will also positively impact Sicilian society and the local economy, promoting an awareness of important but often neglected aspects of the Sicilian Cultural Heritage.

Mots clés : mediterranean, sicily, late antiquity, early medieval age, material culture, pottery, legacy data, gis

Participants :
- Université de la Colombie-Britannique (Canada) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Parco archeologico di lilibeo (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche), subvention : 0.0 €
- Aix-Marseille Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 275008.56 €
Projet MAPPING (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Our daily behaviors critically depend on our ability to execute carefully planned movements. While motor planning is known to rely on the motor cortex, the logic by which specific patterns of neural activity in the motor cortex contribute to the planning of a movement remains unknown. Addressing this issue is not only central to our understanding of the brain, but may also lead to concrete advances in neuroprosthetics. A recent theory of motor planning proposes that neural dynamics in the motor cortex acts as a dynamical system whose state is optimized via a putative “corrective” mechanism during the planning phase of the movement. While this theory has had a profound impact on the field, empirical evidence corroborating the existence of such a mechanism is crucially lacking. In this proposal, I devise a 3-step approach to fill this experimental gap and test key predictions of the theory. First, I will design a behavioral task in non-human primates to probe the neural basis of motor planning. Second, using this task, I will characterize baseline motor cortical dynamics during normal movement preparation. Finally, I will selectively perturb neural dynamics to assess the existence of a corrective mechanism within the motor cortex. This manipulation will rely on a highly innovative approach based on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to perform targeted perturbations of neural activity. The project will combine the technical expertise of the host laboratory in motor control with my own expertise in complex neural data analyses acquired during my PhD. Both the host and I will benefit from the project. I will acquire technical and managerial skills I intend to leverage in my future research. In turn, I will bring a set of new analytical tools in the host team to complement and expand their existing research. The project will be a major step in the direction of my future scientific agenda, and will strengthen my application for a permanent research position in France.

Mots clés : neural population dynamics, electrophysiology, non human primates, motor cortex

Participants :
- Aix-Marseille Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 211754.88 €
Projet FUMA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Over half of Parkinson Disease patients develop cortical dysfunctions leading to Parkinson Disease Dementia (PDD). The cognitive changes are primarily driven by pathological alpha-synuclein (a-syn) protein aggregates with secondary synaptic dysfunctions in the cortex. Microglia plays a key role in synapse maintenance and clearance of aggregated a-syn proteins, however, this is impaired in PD. Low intensity focused ultrasound (FUS) combined with intravenous microbubbles (MB) can non-invasively increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, resulting in a transient and controlled entry of blood-born substances. In animal models of Alzheimer disease, FUS-MB treatments increase microglial-mediated clearance of extra- and intracellular protein aggregates and improve synapse health. In small patient cohorts in the clinic, FUS-MB treatments are safe and results suggest decreased levels of pathological proteins in Alzheimer disease patients. HYPOTHESIS: FUS-MB applications targeted to the cortex promote cortical a-syn clearance and synapse maintenance which can prevent or slow the development of dementia in PD. In a mouse model of PDD we will determine the ability of FUS-MB treatment to increase microglial-mediated clearance of a-syn, maintain synapse health, and inhibit the development of cognitive dysfunctions. In addition, we aim to evaluate non-invasive positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging as biomarkers of the effects of FUS-MB treatment. Finally, we will investigate the underlying pathway of potentially beneficial effects of FUS-MB treatments by measuring changes in specific pathways of interest as well as perform an unbiased screen for novel targets. Both the researcher and supervisor have a background in Parkinson disease research. The researcher brings expertise in FUS-MB treatments of mouse models and the supervisor is an expert in preclinical and clinical neuromodulation, the latter with FUS.

Mots clés : focused ultrasound, blood brain barrier, alpha synuclein, microglia

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 230774.4 €
Projet HEACAT (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The Covid-19 pandemic and the international conflicts are now having a significant impact on energy systems around the world, potentially slowing the expansion of clean energy applications. European energy safety can only be ensured by accelerating the development of cheap and clean energy. Catalysts for the chemical reactions in energy conversion and storage, such as fuel cells and water-splitting, are critical to achieve large-scale clean energy production. However, the scarcity of noble metals (such as Pt, Ir), currently the state-of-the-art catalysts, limit their apllications. Co, Fe and Ni oxides are proved to be earth abundant alternative catalysts. Corrosion of these transition metal-based electrocatalysts is inevitable, particularly for the oxygen evolution reaction of water splitting. Transition metal-based high entropy alloys (HEAs), the homogeneous “mixtures” at the atomic level of at least 5 transition metals, exhibit high electrocatalytic activity compared to binary oxides and also high corrosion resistance compared to stainless steels. These unusual properties of HEAs arise from atomically ordered but elementally disordered structures, which are poorly understood. I will explore, for the first time, the surface disorder of HEAs at the atomic scale, by synthesizing nanofilms of 5-element alloys in ultra-high vacuum (UHV) and using advanced surface analytical techniques (mainly STM, XPS). I will perform electrochemical measurements on synthesized model HEAs’ surfaces in a home-made movable reaction cell that can be connected to different UHV systems, in order to correlate atomic-scale structures with catalytic and anti-corrosion properties. I will merge my previous expertise in STM, XPS techniques and surface reactivity of ternary alloys into the host’s experience in thin film alloy synthesis and catalysis. The overall objective of this project is to find the balance between the activity and the stability of HEAs for water splitting electrocatalysis.

Mots clés : scanning tunneling microscopy stm , x ray photoelectron spectrocopy xps , ultra high vacuum uhv , electrochemistry, high entropy alloys hea , nanofilm, catalysis, corrosion

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet De.ltas (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

This project will pursue an interdisciplinary methodology to analyse how and why the early medieval European deltas became primary gateways for interaction between sea and inland territories, and how they influenced the new socio-economic scenario after the fall of the Roman economic system. I will compare two Mediterranean cases, the Rhone and the Po deltas, with the North Sea cases of the Rhine and Elbe deltas between the 6th-10th centuries AD. Historical document and archaeological analyses in one of the most-active research clusters of early medieval Europe (UrbNet) will be paired for the first time in these areas with new cutting-edge remote-sensing technologies and network modelling analysis, allowing to: a) reconstruct the early medieval delta’s landscape; b) understand how deltas’ environment influenced the form and development of socio-economic networks; c) assess what kind of impact people and goods had on deltas and related societies; and d) identify and, possibly, define a ‘delta identity’ establishing a new research trend. De.ltas, through its interdisciplinary approach and the support of leading scholars in both archaeological (Sindbæk) and landscape (Kristiansen) analysis of wetland environments, has the potential to highlight the crucial socio-political and economic role of interaction in delta areas, reassessing the opinion of an early medieval socio-economic stagnation in the Mediterranean in this phase. Moreover, the case-study areas, at the borders of the post-Roman ‘European Union’ under the Franks, will allow me to investigate the permeability of delta societies engaging with migration, cultural integration and self-definition, and the anthropic interaction with climate change and environmental threats which are pressing contemporary issues. Finally, this project will fill a research gap concerning the development of early medieval socio-economic systems linked to river deltas, an overdue research question not yet fully tackled.

Mots clés : river deltas, post roman europe, post roman mediterranean, early middle ages, socio economic network

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet ECONET (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

One of the main consequences of the biodiversity crisis is the reorganization of ecological networks. This reorganization, usually termed ‘interaction rewiring’, can drastically alter nature’s functions and services to humanity. Therefore, predicting interaction rewiring is paramount to predicting the future structure, functioning and stability of the ecosystems. Until now this has not been done because quantifying and predicting rewiring into the future requires extensive data on species traits and interactions and computationally efficient and ecologically relevant analytical tools. The main objectives of ECONET are to quantify the potential of rewiring in mutualistic networks globally and to predict how mutualistic networks rewire due to global change (climate change, land cover change, human-driven extinctions). For this, I will use empirical data of pollination and seed dispersal networks to predict probabilities of all pairwise interactions in metawebs (network covering all possible pairwise interactions) with machine learning. I will quantify the species' rewiring potential as their interaction niche breadths in the metawebs. Then, I will construct scenarios of compositional change in local networks caused by global change and identify rewired interactions under different scenarios. I will also assess the stability and functionality of rewired networks under different scenarios. The main outcome of ECONET will be spatially-explicit knowledge of global change consequences on mutualistic networks. ECONET will provide practical and novel guidance to biodiversity management and conservation strategies, including nature-based solutions embedded in the EU’s environmental agenda. As a key part of ECONET, I will receive essential training from world-leading experts in the fields of ecological machine learning and scenario development at an outstanding centre. This will allow me to establish an independent and distinct research agenda in global change ecology.

Mots clés : climate change, community ecology, functionality, global change forecasting, interaction turnover, joint species distribution model, machine learning, pollination, seed dispersal, stability, trait

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 225934.4 €
Projet Green-UBacam (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

This proposal contributes to sustainable Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and future mobile communications with promising societal benefits. The aim is to integrate energy- and spectrum-efficiency scattering-based communication (SC) technologies into the next-generation communications operating in the millimetre wave (mmWave) band. The objectives will gain better environmental awareness via enhancing the SC system performance and assisting mmWave directional transmission by attaching backscatter devices (BD) to the user equipment to be served. The latter is a highly innovative scheme because, unlike available solutions that depend on antenna hardware, it utilizes the malleability of BD modulations to facilitate the estimation of directions. This scheme will improve the implementational degree of freedom, and potentially shorten the training period compared to the techniques that do not consider BDs. The core idea of addressing the problems is to examine the wireless channel altered by the BD modulation. I consider that a BD applies frequency modulation to create an artificial Doppler shift to the signal. This leads us to investigate the delay-Doppler profile of the received signal which provides information on the BD location and hence, estimates the channel altered by the BD. Moreover, applying frequency modulation with different frequency shifts on different BDs will help identify multiple BDs. The proposal will approach the problem at a fundamental and applied level, touching multidisciplinary knowledge including system and communication engineering, especially high-frequency and mobile technology, applied mathematics, and signal processing. There will be continuous knowledge transfer among the host, the supervisor, the collaborators, and the researcher. The research training will be complemented by a set of transferable skills including Self- and Team-Leadership, Pedagogy, and Communication, which will make the researcher more employable across sectors.

Mots clés : scattering based communications, 5g beyond and 6g, beamforming technology, millimetre wave communications, multi input multi output mimo

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet ChargFlex (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Rapid integration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the transport sector is the key to achieving the Green Deal decarbonization targets. However, EV adoption is still low for several reasons, mainly concerns about the lack of charging infrastructure from the EV drivers' view, known as range anxiety. Many studies believe deploying more public EV charging stations (EVCSs) can ease this anxiety among EV drivers. Still, EVCSs are not yet widely available due to profitability issues and putting more stress on the grid. While the growth of the EVCSs is moving slowly, the number of household charger installations is growing rapidly. However, scarce studies have investigated the potential of household chargers in providing public charging services. Further, many households are already equipped with renewables and sell the surplus energy to the grid through local flexibility markets. With renewables, household chargers can provide cheaper charging services while minimizing the negative grid impacts of EV charging. This project intends to alleviate the range anxiety in two ways. First, we will enhance the charging infrastructure availability by encouraging households to sell surplus energy to EVs through a market framework called the charging market, besides flexibility markets. We will design a coordinated bidding strategy model from the household viewpoint based on AI to maximize profit from the two markets (Work Package 1). Second, we will improve charging infrastructure accessibility by developing an AI-based charging recommendation model to guide EV drivers on when and where to get recharged (Work Package 2). Finally, we will conduct software implementation and real-time performance validation of the proposed AI-based models (Work Package 3). The complementarity between me, the host supervisor's profile, the environment provided by the host, and the secondment ensure the achievement of this timely and innovative project and the dissemination and exploitation of the results.

Mots clés : electric vehicle charging, charging infrastructure, renewable owner household, household participation

Participants :
- KTH Institut royal de technologie (Suède) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 230774.4 €
Projet CyTiS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

CyTiS will examine the fate and transport of cytostatic compounds in soil and groundwater from waste infiltration sites to drinking water resources. Cytostatic compounds are emerging contaminants classified as carcinogenic and genotoxic by the EU. They have been identified in surface, ground, and drinking water, but there is no published research on their fate and transport in soils and groundwater. Cytostatic compounds may enter soil via septic systems and waste infiltration beds and then enter groundwater. Since about 75% of Europeans rely on groundwater for drinking water, it is important to know the capacity of soil to retard or degrade cytostatic compounds, and to understand transport characteristics of these compounds through groundwater to drinking water. CyTiS will elucidate how cytostatic compounds move from sources of environmental input to sources of environmental impact. This project will use soil column experiments and stirred batch reactors in a state-of-the-art soil column laboratory to develop sorption, biodegradation, and transport models. Effect-based screening and metagenomics will be used to characterize the effect of cytostatic compounds on microbial communities and to identify resistant organisms that may be useful for bioremediation. Chemical analysis will be performed using the most advanced LC-MS method. The physiochemical data generated will inform risk assessments on how cytostatic compounds are likely to migrate if introduced into soils, will enable improved design of infiltration beds and leaching fields and may identify organisms key for bioremediation. The project results will serve as a launchpad for the researcher in the field of emerging contaminants and groundwater resources within Europe.

Mots clés : cytostatic drugs, groundwater transport, emerging contaminants

Participants :
- Université d'Aarhus (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214934.4 €
Projet CLIMINAR (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

This project examines two key aspects of the international discourse on climate change and migration: culture and policy. This discourse has become increasingly urgent during the 21st century as governments, institutions and the media fiercely debate climate change on the one hand and migration and borders on the other. Dominated by the Global North, the discourse has promoted alarmist assertions of climate change and migration as inextricably connected and destined to provoke conflict and scarcity, assertions often underpinned by a racialised military-security rhetoric. This discourse also routinely overlooks the real economic, political and social needs of those most affected by climate change and the discriminatory mobility regimes that govern them. To date research on the role played by narrative has been limited, nor have the intersections between culture and policy been studied. Recognising that climate change and migration are made known through different forms of narration and storytelling, through which certain interpretations or potential policy responses are favoured while others are discounted, CLIMINAR addresses the following question:  What role do cultural and institutional narratives play in either challenging or upholding the dominant alarmist discourse on climate change and migration?  The overarching research objectives are to: (1) analyse cultural narratives, in particular fiction and film; (2) examine institutional narratives, specifically policy material produced by NGOs and international governmental organisations, as forms of culture; and (3) comparatively assess all texts by developing and implementing a methodology that ascertains the ethical dimensions of narrative and its ability to incorporate both climate justice and mobility justice. This interdisciplinary approach innovatively combines the environmental humanities and social sciences research on climate change and migration, simultaneously advancing knowledge in both fields.

Mots clés : postcolonial studies empire race narrative storytelling policy advocacy justice

Participants :
- Université de Durham (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 276187.92 €