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

In several regenerating organisms it has been observed that distally amputated structures grow slower than proximally amputated ones, resulting in an overall time of regeneration that is independent of the tissue to be reformed. This observation suggests that cell proliferation or cell size could be adjusted with the plane of amputation along the proximo-distal (PD) axis, leading to an interesting scaling behaviour. It has been proposed that positional identity in the limb may be encoded as a proximal-to-distal gradient of cell surface molecules, that would in turn alter intercellular adhesions. Thus, it is possible that such differential adhesions are associated to the control of cell growth during regeneration. The central aim of this proposal is to address this question by combining cell biology, mathematical and physical tools, with the ultimate goal of understanding how the biomechanical properties of tissues affect regeneration, which may have important implications for the design of biomaterials aimed at being used for regenerative medicine. We will tackle this question in the highly regenerative salamander species Axolotl mexicanum, in which limb regeneration is initiated regardless of the amputation plane, and the regenerating limb grows until its size matches the contralateral undamaged one. We will evaluate growth rate and cell cycle of regenerating limbs amputated at different levels, and mathematically describe cell proliferation patterns. We will characterize several cell surface and extracellular matrix molecules along the PD axis, and measure tissue mechanics in vivo. Furthermore, we will for the first time, evaluate the Hippo pathway in salamanders, an important modulator of cell growth in response to several physical inputs, as the causal link between increased tissue stiffness and decreased proliferation.

Mots clés : limb regeneration, proximo distal axis, stiffness measurements, mechanotransduction

Participants :
- TU Dresden (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 174806.4 €
Projet CFUC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Mathematics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the 1950s, Calabi proposed a program in Kahler geometry and then introduced the Calabi flow, aiming to find the constant scalar curvature Kahler (cscK) metrics. When the first Chern class is zero, the cscK metric reduces to Ricci flat Kahler metric. The problem to find such metrics is called Calabi conjecture. Its resolution was Yau's Fields medal work. Generally, it is known as the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture. Geometric flow provides an effective way to find canonical metrics. E.g., the theory by Hamilton and Perelman of Ricci flow has achieved great success to solve the conjecture of Poincare and Thurston, one of the seven $1 million Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prizes. X.X. Chen conjectured the Calab flow has long time existence. This proposal concerns singularity analysis of the Calabi flow, when the curvature gets unbounded. Warwick leads a major new project funded by an EPSRC grant 'Singularities of Geometric PDEs', together with Imperial and Cambridge, making it a natural host for this proposal. The supervisor Topping is the Principal investigator of this project. He is a leading expert on geometric flows and nonlinear PDEs. He has considerable experience in supervising research: 14 postdocs and 8 PhD students. Currently, he is working on Ricci flows with unbounded curvature and presented an invited 45-minute lecture on this topic at Seoul ICM in 2014. Zheng completed his PhD at the Chinese Academic of Sciences under the supervision of W.Y. Ding and X.X. Chen. From his advisors, Zheng gained intimate understanding of Kahler geometry. He worked as a postdoc at the Institut Fourier in France and then Leibniz Universitaet in Germany. Up to May 2015, his research experience has entirely been outside UK. He is ambitious to establish himself as an independent researcher at a prestigious UK institution. He has published 8 papers in high reputation international journals. This project will help him to integrate himself into the UK research system.

Mots clés : calabi flow, kahler geometry, ricci flow, constant scalar curvature kahler metrics

Participants :
- University of Warwick (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet BIO-POLIS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

In the Anthropocene climate change is the greatest threat to socio-economical prosperity, environmental and human health as well as a priority in the European and Global Agenda. In an increasing and unbalanced urban planet, metropolises play a key role in addressing climate challenge but this requires a significant paradigm shift in urban planning. Nature contributes to urban climate and improves the quality of life. The growing attention to biophilic design confirms this power. BIO-POLIS aims to promote biophilic metropolis as a holistic urban model able to enhance livability restoring the man-nature relationship and to drive decision-makers in placing nature at the core of planning as the most ecological strategy to build climate resilience. The research is designed as a comparative study among overpopulated zonobiomes. Through an integrated, interdisciplinary and cross-scale method, it will advance the framework on Biophilic Urbanism, map the natural capital by digitalisation, explore biophilic features and processes, assess the biophilic potential in building climate resilience, provide an atlas of biophilic mitigation and adaption nature-based solutions in different biomes. The proposal will have multiple impacts. The biophilic guiding model aspires to turn the functional approach of city planning into a scientific one based on the human-nature interaction. Project results will influence citizens increasing public awareness of urban nature and inspiring biophilic lifestyle. Comparing various geo-contexts will encourage international cooperation among cities and partner institutions towards global and local strategies and boost the European role in R&I for sustainable development and climate change. The excellence of partners will offer me the best training and research experience to become an expert in urban challenges, complementary knowledge to be transferred, advanced skills and a leading network to maximise my career prospects both in and outside academia.

Mots clés : biophilic cities, resilient cities, urban science, urban morphology, urban digitalisation, social ecology, environmental technologyanddesign, landscapeandsustainable design

Participants :
- Delft University of Technology (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 232393.92 €
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet SMART-BONE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the European Union alone, the annual number of bone fractures is projected to reach 4.5 million in 2025. Despite the advances in implant technology, grafts prepared using bone extracted from the patient to fill the bone defect are the only material reported so far to retain any significant efficacy in sustaining new bone formation. However, the aging worldwide population and increased life expectancy call for a different answer to the growing need for effective implants for bone fracture healing. The 3D-BONE project will develop an in vitro 3D model to investigate electrical stimulation of stem cells based on biocompatible electroactive 3D scaffolds produced by the ice-templating technique. Electrical stimulation has been shown to positively affect stem cells differentiation into both bone- and vessels-forming cells. One of the key novelty of the 3D-BONE project is the use of human neural crest-derived stem cells (NCSCs). The study of this system in vitro will contribute to increasing the knowledge on a cell population that has the remarkable characteristic of preserving their potentialities to differentiate towards multiple lineages also in the adult. They can thus be isolated from the patient in need of the bone graft, with no need of external donors. Cells’ response to the applied electrical stimulus will be investigated using an organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) that will be integrated in the developed device and will allow for label-free monitoring of cells through an electronic readout. Altogether, the results of these studies will prove beneficial to increase the knowledge on electrically stimulated stem cells differentiation, providing new key tools for the development of implants to be successfully used in critical size defects healing.

Mots clés : organic bioelectronics, in vitro models, osteogenesis, stem cells

Participants :
- Institut Mines-Télécom (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 100961.0 €
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 72115.0 €
Projet Global-assembly (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the Galactic halo the footprints of early hierarchical processes can be easily recognized, with some still observable events, such as the merging between the Sagittarius galaxy and the Milky Way. With the discovery of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters (GCs), we are entering a new era in the study of the halo. We now know that typical Milky Way GCs host different stellar populations, with some of them resembling the Sagittarius nuclear GC M54, and Omega Centauri, proposed to be the survived nucleus of a dwarf galaxy. Recent photometric effort has revealed that the "populations pattern" in GCs is even more complex than previously believed, with the observation of minor populations for which we still do not have information of their nature, i.e. of their chemical composition. Many aspects about the nature of GCs are matter of a lively debate: Which is the origin of GCs? Could have some of them been former nuclei of dwarf galaxies? Which is their contribution to the halo? To answer these questions we lack a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the nature of “all” the stellar populations observed in GCs. Recently we have photometrically detected multiple stellar populations in the young GCs of the Magellanic Clouds (age of few hundreds Myrs). Are these the young counterpart of the old Milky Way GCs (10<age<13 Gyrs)? If yes, we have the unique opportunity to analyse, in the local Universe, an obscure phenomenon occurred at high redshift. To address this issue a chemical characterisation of the stellar populations observed in these young GCs is needed. Thus, the new revolutionary photometric discoveries impose a major effort in the chemical/kinematical analysis of this phenomenon. With this project, I propose to exploit my expertise in spectroscopy in close synergy with photometric techniques to provide for the first time a full characterisation of all the observed stellar populations in GCs to reconstruct the phases of their formation and evolution.

Mots clés : star clusters, population 2, spectroscopy, chemical abundances, milky way halo

Participants :
- University of Padua (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 180277.2 €
Projet TamCatHoly (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the TamCatHoly project, I explore ideas and practices of Catholic martyrdom and self-sanctification in early modern South India, in the context of the mission established by the Jesuits in Madurai in 1606. Unlike previous narratives centred around the missionaries, I adopt a new perspective, and focus on how Tamil converts reshaped ideas and practices of martyrdom, sanctity, and the miraculous, in order to accommodate their new faith within local social and cultural orders. How did they recognise, and relate to Catholic saintly figures and their powers? What were the tools and strategies at their disposal for becoming martyrs and saints themselves? My research addresses such questions by focusing on the little-known figure of a local convert, Tēvacakāyam (1712-1752), a high-caste Nadar soldier who converted to Catholicism in 1745, and was later imprisoned, tortured and killed by the king of Travancore. Upon his death, Tamil Catholics throughout South India immediately recognised him as a martyr and set to tell his story in songs and ballads, while missionaries begun to promote the cause of his canonisation. In the project, I analyse the biography and cultural memories of Tēvacakāyam and his martyrdom drawing upon hitherto unstudied sources such as hagiographic texts written in popular Tamil genres from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and local historical records and Church documents produced around his canonisation process. I read these Indian and European archives in Tamil, Malayalam, Latin, Italian, French, and Portuguese at the crossroad of philology, indology, and cultural and social history, thus inaugurating a novel interdisciplinary perspective. In doing so, I endeavour to connect the history and culture of small Tamil locales to the global history of Catholic missions on the verge of modernity, and explore the complex evolution of religious and regional belonging against overly simplified received notions of Catholic and Tamil identity.

Mots clés : martyrdom, intercultural encounter, conversion, south india, tamil literature, jesuit mission, hagiography, popular devotion, textual practices, sacred geography, cultural memory, religious identity

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 196707.84 €
Projet NSCaging (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the adult neurogenic niches, neural stem cells (NSCs) generate neurons throughout life. During aging, the number of newborn neurons is clearly reduced, although it is still very debated what specifically happens to the NSCs: do they die, increase their quiescence or change their fate? It is emerging that NSCs are heterogeneous, with different subtypes, in particular quiescent and active NSCs, responding differently to neurogenic stimuli, including aging. However, due to difficulties in distinguishing NSCs subtypes in vivo, their behavior in the physiological environment, their molecular hallmarks, and especially how those are changed during aging are still elusive. These are key questions in neuroscience and stem cell biology. Thanks to the combination of the host laboratory expertise with mine, the current action proposes to develop a strategy to discriminate different NSCs in vivo and shed new light on their behavior, molecular properties and the changes occurring during life. The expected results are going to provide critical information on the regenerative potential of NSCs subtypes and on whether and how the aging phenotype can be reverted, with a consequent strong scientific and social impact.


Participants :
- Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 165598.8 €
Projet MEDICINE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the context of a complex global agenda in traditional and complementary medicine, indigenous concepts of health and healing are less well documented and understood. MEDICINE will examine concepts of health and healing from an indigenous and culturally specific context, taking a unique time-depth perspective and with a framework of interdisciplinary methods which integrates archaeological-historical, ethnographic and modern health sciences approaches. MEDICINE offers a novel perspective and methods in the development policies sensitive to indigenous and minority people’s social, economic and health needs and, too, on developing culturally sensitive approaches to the conservation of their ‘intangible cultural heritage’. MEDICINE will also develop novel methodological and theoretical approaches to model how peoples survive and adapt their traditional belief systems in a context of alien cultural impacts. The study population are indigenous Quichua peoples in the northern Andean region of Ecuador, a country where the ER has considerable experience. Models of their understanding of health, illness and healing, and the way these have adapted and changed through time will be used to develop a ‘tool’ transferable to contemporary global policy scenarios. MEDICINE will benefit from the ER's unique perspectives from Medicine and Archaeology to explore the impact of traumatic cultural transition on people, the significance of traditional practices as intangible cultural heritage, and the degree to which the longer-term archaeological perspective can help promote understanding in a vital area of contemporary concern. It will enable her to develop further policy relevant skills, a particular output being contributions to policy and practice in the development of culturally sensitive approaches to the health and social needs of migrant and minority peoples from traditional cultural backgrounds.

Mots clés : traditional knowledge, traditional medicine, traditional healing, traditional healers, shamanism, indigenous culture, indigenous policy, intercultural health care, culture change, cultural trauma

Participants :
- Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Équateur) — Partner, organization partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
- University of York (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 217708.2 €
Projet UMIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the context of decreasing water standards for uranium (U) concentrations in drinking water, the use of natural or constructed wetlands is often proposed for cost-effective small-scale water treatment. The underlying mechanism is immobilization of the dissolved form of uranium, U(VI), through its reduction to a less mobile form, U(IV). However, the long-term stability of U(IV) species formed is not well understood. Indeed, a significant amount of U is found labile, even in its reduced form, and contaminates the hydrologic network in several sites. Previous studies suggest that the colloidal phase is responsible for the dispersion of U(IV) in the watershed. In addition, it has been hypothesized that the propensity of the colloidal phase to bind and mobilize U(IV) depends on the association of Fe with colloidal natural organic matter (NOM), and on the colloids conformation. However, these hypotheses need to be investigated and information is lacking on the processes leading to the formation of the pressented vector of U(IV) dissemination, i.e. Fe-NOM colloids. Understanding these processes is crucial for predicting the efficiency of wetlands as traps of U water contamination. We propose to (i) further characterize wetland colloids, in a broader panel of wetlands, and use correlation analysis to pinpoint factors controlling the NOM shape and its ability for Fe- and U-binding; (ii) test in batch experiments the effect of Fe sources on NOM properties in solution; and (iii) test the reactivity of Fe-NOM colloids with U(IV) and identify the U(IV) binding mechanisms at molecular levels. The original approach proposed will help decision making for uses of wetland filters, and also generate fundamental knowledge about NOM reactivity. The project involves the state-of-the-art expertise of the host institute (EPFL) about U geochemistry in wetlands, and the complementary expertise of Geneva University about characterization of colloidal organic matter.

Mots clés : geochemistry, wetland, colloids, organic matter, iron, uranium, contamination, mobilization, remediation, spectroscopy, redox

Participants :
- Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175419.6 €
Projet PoetEleg (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In the course of the long 19C the pursuit of 'elegance' emerged as a phenomenon aiming at an intensification of life through aestheticization. The distinguishing features of an 'elegant' appearance manifested themselves in the self-fashioning of an individual person (language, attire, behaviour) and in the shaping of domestic and public environments (artefacts, interior design, architecture). The concept of elegance was realized in social action and cultural practices, particularly in convivial conversation, entertainment and leisure activities. The project demonstrates that one of the crucial patterns of modernity manifests itself in the phenomenon of elegance, which inaugurates a specific aesthetic of the surface as a distinguishing social feature as well as a marker transcending the established order: an imaginary community of urban origin that supersedes historically conditioned social and gender norms. Committed to the methods of transnational historiography, the study outlines the European topography of the so-called ‘elegant world’ in the tension between national aspirations and transnational aesthetic norms. The project focuses on ‘circulating things’ and examines the social agency of press and material goods. It pays particular attention to an innovative type of cultural journals, which reported in detail on urban social, cultural, and material life and helped spread the new urban styles of living and had a decisive impact on the staging of a new, imaginary cross-border community. Its geographic range is marked by the imperial metropolises, as well as by aspiring Central and Eastern European cities such as Berlin and Leipzig, Prague and Pest, which developed into new urban centres in the course of the 19C. The main output of the project is a monograph that maps out the phenomenon of elegance and the way it redefined the social order, constituted urban life, and expressed the transnational aspirations and affiliations of the elite.

Mots clés : urban culture, modernity, elite, literature, european studies, transnational cultural studies, media history, aesthetic paradigms, self fashioning, social norms, imaginary community

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €