Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet IECILSB (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Lithium-metal solid-state batteries (LMSSBs) are regarded as highly promising Post-Lithium-Ion Technology due to their high energy density and exceptional safety. However, their practical application remains challenging because of the interfacial issues at the metallic lithium|solid-state electrolyte interface (e.g., contact resistance and dendrite formation). In this regard, interlayer engineering based on carbon materials with different dimensions and fluorination degrees has been proposed to effectively address interfacial issues. Specifically, carbon quantum dots (0D), nanostripes (1D), and nanosheets (2D) will be used to clarify the influence of the geometric structure of carbon on the plating/stripping performance of lithium ions. Also, the fluorination degrees of carbon nanostructures will be precisely regulated to quantitively understand the fluorine chemistry-electrochemical performance relationships. Ultimately, this project will fill the knowledge gap in geometric design and chemical modification of carbon-based interlayer materials for developing safety LMSSBs with energy density > 500 Wh kg-1 and cycling life > 2000 times.

Mots clés : interface, carbon interlayer dendrite lithium metal sold state batteries

Participants :
- Institut de technologie chimique de Prague (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 166278.72 €
Projet BIOMON (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The European Union's Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 emphasizes the need to halt biodiversity loss driven by anthropogenic activities. However, to achieve this, it is necessary to understand how those activities affect biodiversity so that evidence-based conservation interventions can be made. Therefore, effective monitoring tools are needed that can be used to survey biodiversity changes over large spatial and temporal scales. Conventional monitoring tools, based on expert field surveys, are time-consuming and expensive and, therefore, inappropriate for such large-scale monitoring. Consequently, researchers worldwide are increasingly turning their attention to new technologies. When it comes to monitoring vocalizing animals, such as birds, which have been shown to be appropriate indicators of biodiversity, researchers focus on the use of passive acoustic monitoring methods. However, further development of those methods is needed before conservation practitioners can use them widely and reliably in the field to monitor bird communities. BIOMON's main objective is to extend the current state-of-the-art acoustic monitoring approaches through the novel use of machine learning techniques. BIOMON's overarching goal is to develop an innovative passive acoustic monitoring protocol that can be used to survey bird communities in biodiverse agricultural farmlands in the EU. The EU is home to many species of which the persistence depends on low-intensity agricultural areas, and consequently, developing appropriate monitoring tools for those areas remains a key research priority. The methods and monitoring protocol developed in BIOMON, through the collaboration of the ER, a conservation biologist, and the supervisor, a machine learning expert, have the potential to contribute to the objectives of the EU's Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and other related policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy.

Mots clés : acoustic indices bird monitoring bioacoustics machine learning soundscape ecology

Participants :
- Université Frederick (Chypre) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 148488.0 €
Projet SUB-SCRIPT (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Chromosome condensation during mitosis has long been assumed to render mitotic chromatin incompatible with transcription. However, recent evidence shows that some chromosomal regions (e.g. centromeres, some genes) are transcribed in mitosis. These findings imply that mitotic transcription inhibition (MTI) is not a global event along the entire chromosome. Instead, I propose that mitotic transcriptional silencing is spatially regulated, allowing specific loci to evade MTI and maintain their transcription. Testing this novel hypothesis is challenging due to our poor understanding of the mechanisms driving MTI. Additionally, commonly used techniques to study transcription (e.g. genome-wide approaches) provide snapshots of the process but lack temporal resolution to dissect fast changes in transcription. With SUB-SCRIPT, I will implement an advanced imaging tool in live cells to uncover the dynamics of ongoing transcription throughout mitosis, for selected loci. I will apply this approach to selected genes to test how transcription regulation in mitosis varies depending on gene architecture/identity. In parallel, I will make use of a putative MTI factor (my preliminary observations) to manipulate the transcriptional state of selected genes during mitosis. Both strategies will capitalize on my vast expertise in dCas9 use for chromosome targeting, which I will further exploit to imaging RNAs (dCas13). Ongoing work in the host lab on chromosome assembly and novel mechanisms that drive MTI provides an excellent environment for project implementation. The completion of this project will uncover how different genes display unique kinetics of transcriptional regulation during mitosis and how MTI is regulated at the sub-chromosomal level, challenging current views on how mitotic transcription shut-down occurs. It will also provide novel tools and concepts to explore how MTI can actively impact mitotic fidelity, transcriptional control, cell physiology and potentially disease.

Mots clés : chromosomes, mitosis, cell cycle, transcription, dcas9

Participants :
- Université catholique portugaise (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 156778.56 €
Projet ProMisMe (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Protein misfolding diseases (PMDs) are a large group of human disorders caused by the misfolding of specific proteins. They include conditions with high socio-economic impact, such as Alzheimer’s disease, cystic fibrosis, obesity and type 2 diabetes, and the majority of them remain incurable. Among the >70 PMDs, about 1/3 are caused by misfolding-prone membrane proteins (MisMPs). Despite their significance, and mainly due to the difficulties associated with MisMP overexpression, isolation and characterization, the PMD scientific community has largely overlooked MisMP-associated PMDs, thus limiting opportunities for drug discovery. In ProMisMe, we will develop engineered bacteria and yeast, which can function as broadly applicable discovery platforms for compounds that rescue MisMP misfolding. These compounds will be selected from libraries of drug-like molecules biosynthesized in these microbes using a technology that allows the facile production of tens of millions to tens of billions of different test molecules. These libraries will then be screened in the same microbial cells that produce them and the rare molecules that rescue MisMP misfolding effectively will be selected by ultrahigh-throughput screening. The effect of the selected molecules on MisMP folding will then evaluated by biochemical and biophysical methods, while their ability to reverse MisMP-induced pathogenicity will be tested in appropriate mammalian cell assays. The molecules that rescue the misfolding and associated pathogenicity of the target MisMPs will become therapeutic candidates against the corresponding diseases. This procedure will be applied for different MisMPs to identify potential therapeutics for two serious PMDs: Usher Syndrome III and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Successful realization of ProMisMe will provide invaluable therapeutic leads against major diseases and a more widely applicable framework for drug discovery against diseases caused by membrane protein misfolding.

Mots clés : biomolecular engineering synthetic biology e coli s cerevisiae protein misfolding diseases membrane proteins pharmacological chaperones cyclic peptides high throughput screening

Participants :
- Resq biotech idiotiki kefalaiouchiki etaireia (Grèce) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 211658.4 €
Projet RESLOVI (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

What is happening when nothing is happening? And how can we study events that are ‘uneventful’? As a research field, memory studies has mostly focused on violent events (wars, conflicts and particularly the Holocaust) and their (public) remembrance. However, the proposed project (RESLOVI) attempts to move away from studying public remembrance of conflicts and proposes an innovative approach to viewing the aftermath of violent events. RESLOVI focuses on memories and experiences of displacement, caused by a war and a natural disaster. The project’s main research objective is to rethink memory of suffering and violence in a post-conflict and post-disaster setting by raising awareness of violence that is ‘unspectacular’, happening out of sight, and is not publicly remembered or even acknowledged as violence at all. RESLOVI counters the mainstream theories of memory studies by employing an innovative theory of ‘slow violence’. The project examines how people from a region in a post-conflict and post-disaster country grapple with and remember the experience of displacement, which is considered as a form of ‘slow violence’. The project entails 3 key objectives: (1) To contribute to innovative research on ‘slow violence’ by studying its characteristics in a region of post-war Croatia at the example of slow-moving transformations of the built environment that produced new vulnerabilities (displacements); (2) To introduce the ‘slow memory’ theoretical approach into studying how memories of Croatian population’s displacement are triggered and reframed in the context of new displacements happening due to new crisis situations; (3) To analyse the community response (‘mnemonic solidarity’) to suffering and to contribute to research on political significance of citizens’ mobilization and agency in a post-disaster setting and in a post-conflict context.

Mots clés : memory studies displacement refugees natural disaster

Participants :
- Université Singidunum (Serbie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Slovénie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 155559.36 €
Projet ACOFOOD (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The objective of ACOFOOD is to promote the consumption of acorn by human beings as it is a nutritious fruit with high production in the Mediterranean region, selecting the genotypes with the best functional characteristics for the consumer, identifying markers related to healthy phenolic compounds and , the absence of astringency and cytotoxicity, and developing a healthy acorn-based food. Dr. María Vázquez is a researcher with a scientific background in the field of postharvest of fruits and biomedicine, with great motivation to be able to combine these two disciplines, contributing to the implementation of a healthy and sustainable diet.

Mots clés : acorn, quercus ilex, super food, astringency and cytotoxicity removal, functional compounds, mediterranean diet

Participants :
- Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 191858.4 €
- Compañía extremeña de investigación y producción agroalimentaria, s.a. (Espagne) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- American Farm School (Grèce) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet BREATHE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Project BREATHE aims to contribute a new understanding of cultural and behavioral traits of North African early humans through the archaeological record of southern and northern Libya. This is a crucial region for understanding the trans-Saharan connections that contributed to the global dispersal of our species. However, the current scant archaeological and chronometric data for the Saharan and peri-Saharan regions limits our knowledge of biogeographic dynamics that linked different regions of North Africa at key moments of human biological and cultural evolution, especially around the emergence of H. sapiens ca. 300 ka. The project research areas, the Jebel Gharbi to the north and the Acacus and Messak to the south, represent the extremes of an ideal North-South transect with different environments and archaeological records, an important axis between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. These arid regions have deeply eroded landscapes where Pleistocene geoarchaeological archives are rare. Except for few buried contexts, the evidence is mostly comprised of lithic artefacts found on open-air surfaces. Nevertheless, these surface lithics can provide a wealth of information when an array of cutting-edge analytical techniques (geospatial statistics, geometric morphometrics and wear analyses) are combined in the way proposed by BREATHE. These artefacts span the final phases of the Early Stone Age, the early emergence of the Middle Stone Age and its later manifestations, particularly the Aterian. The spatial amplitude of the research areas enables large-scale landscape analyses to be carried out, identifying land use and occupation patterns not detectable at a site-oriented research scale. This provides a unique window into past human behaviour and biogeographic dynamics in a central arid area that may have played a key role in the adaptive strategies that enabled our species to colonise new and challenging environments across Africa and beyond.

Mots clés : pleistocene, early homo sapiens, north africa, sahara, middle stone age, lithic technology, morphometrics, taphonomy, landscape archaeology

Participants :
- Université de Rome « La Sapienza » (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de l'Algarve (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 156778.56 €
Projet NeuroWelfare in CTs (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

NeuroWelfare in Cash Transfers Measures (CTs): Do Welfare Cash Transfers Show Different Brain Activity and Improve Equality? (NW) aims to pave the way for the interdisciplinary study of the brain functioning and the socio-cognitive impact on self and social perception in the experience of the two main paradigmatic cash transfer schemes: conditioned CTs (CCTs) and unconditioned CTs (UCTs). NW’s idea is born from my PhD effort, in which I studied a Basic Income pilot project, observing a mindset shift in the re-distributive beliefs and attitudes of community’ financiers, showing me the need for a neurophysiological understanding of CTs phenomena. NW’s achievability has been improved from the previous project’s application in its methodological operationalization, better defining the outcomes’ measurability and scalability to isolate effects of CTs’ on the brain. The assessment of social protection measures is usually done by looking at the behaviors of the welfare recipients. In addition, social neuroscience efforts are frequently focused on mental manifestations observed in the laboratory environments. What if the modern techniques to investigate brain activity would be applied to healthy individuals perceiving income support in their social environment? By utilizing an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach, I pursue to combine the knowledge and the methodology of human sciences with those of social neurosciences, to detect and measure the effect of CTs’ on brain from three empirical intertwined perspectives: (1) neurophysiological, (2) cognitive and (3) interactional.I’ll train my interdisciplinary skills thanks to experienced supervisors in Iscte-CVTT and the University of Turin. NW tackles the complexity of redistribution social phenomena, advancing my career progress in the brand-new field of “Neurosociology”.

Mots clés : social neuroscience eegs translational neurosociology cash transfers schemes conditioned unconditioned basic income welfare s moral grammar debt trust judgment

Participants :
- Associacao iscte conhecimento e inovacao - centro de valorizacao e transferencia de tecnologias (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 158597.76 €
- Université de Turin (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet AI-2 Prodrugs (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Quorum sensing allows bacteria to synchronise and regulate their behaviours. Autoinducer-2 (AI-2) is a particularly relevant signaling molecule able to promote inter-species communication. In the mammalian gut microbiota, a therapeutically relevant niche, interference of AI-2-mediated signaling has been shown to influence the balance of the major phyla after antibiotic treatment. Still, the mechanisms involved in this process are not known. We propose to establish novel chemical and structural based approaches to decipher the mechanisms involved in the response of the gut microbiota to AI-2 and identify mechanisms that promote beneficial responses by the symbionts while inhibiting virulence in gut pathogens. For this, we will construct chemical tools that will function as AI-2 prodrugs to orally deliver intact AI-2 to the gut. AI-2 is a highly functionalised molecule, very reactive and unstable at high concentrations, thus a prodrug strategy will protect AI-2 until its release in the gut. To gain a molecular understanding involved in response to AI-2 we will identify AI-2 sensing mechanism (receptors) in commensal and pathogenic members of the microbiota belonging to the Clostridiaceae. For that, new AI-2 fluorescent probes will be designed and synthesised. The Clostridiaceae family are relevant members in the mammalian gut. These organisms include both beneficial as well as pathogenic members and we want to identify strategies to promote the beneficial response while inhibiting the pathogenic ones to promote a healthy microbiota community. Our hypothesis is that synthetic AI-2 can help in the recovery of a healthy bacterial phyla ratio after a distress, like antibiotic treatment.

Mots clés : quorum sensing, ai 2, prodrugs, carbohydrate chemistry, fluorescent probes

Participants :
- Université nouvelle de Lisbonne (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 164698.56 €
Projet SAMEorNOT (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Human societies are sustained by flowering plants in different ways but especially as a key food supplier. However, it is known that increasing global temperatures strongly affect plant reproduction and the growing human population will require more food in short-middle term. Thus, to create new crop varieties more resistant to heat stress and with enhanced yield, a deeper understanding of the mechanism of plant sexual reproduction will be crucial for increasing the efficiency of plant breeding programs. Plant reproduction relies on a double fertilization process, in which two sperm cells from a pollen grain reach the ovule and one fertilize the egg cell while the other the central cell. In some species with dimorphic sperm cells a preferential fertilization of each sperm cell has been described, but for Arabidopsis thaliana as well as for many economically important crops with isomorphic sperm cells this question remains unclear. The main goal of this project is to identify by single cell RNA-seq analysis potential transcriptomic differences between the two Arabidopsis sperm cells. To do that, individual sperm cells from pollen tubes growing through female stylar transmitting tissue (semi in vivo) will be isolated by micromanipulation using a specially designed microfluidic chamber on an inverted microscope. The identification of differentially expressed genes would enable for the first time the creation of a sperm single-cell marker line to eventually explore a hypothetical preferential fertilization in Arabidopsis. These results can be adapted for plant breeding programs to develop impactful biotechnological tools, like haploid inducer lines with genetically modified sperm cells to specifically deliver components in the egg cell to induce in vivo gynogenesis. Additionally, the results will be a valuable scientific resource to address other topics beyond the preferential fertilization, like exploring hybridization barriers based on gamete recognition.

Mots clés : plant reproduction, pollen, sperm cells

Participants :
- Université nouvelle de Lisbonne (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 156778.56 €