Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet Competing Forecasts (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Constructing accurate predictions on different macroeconomic variables is a key issue for any central bank and other policy making institutions. For example, obtaining accurate inflation forecasts is important for setting interest rates. These institutions typically rely on a set of models to construct their forecasts and the question that often arises is which of these models performs the best in terms of predictive ability. The purpose of this project is to show that, when strong identification on these models is lost (an issue that is prevalent in many models used for prediction), our inference based on standard tests, that compare these models' predictive accuracy, can be misleading. A policy maker could thus falsely conclude that a particular model outperforms some other models in her set of competing models. This project will answer thus the question of how to perform correct inference about predictions in the setting in which the models are affected by identification deficiencies. To this end, I propose methods that make the standard predictive ability tests robust to this issue, while appropriately accounting for the parameter estimation error. The asymptotic distribution of the statistic will be derived under loss of strong identification. Bootstrap inference will be developed in order to obtain correct critical values. Monte Carlo simulations will analyze the finite sample properties of bootstrap critical values. Empirical studies will illustrate the consequences of using a standard vs. a bootstrap critical value. Results emerging from this project, will be of interest to a large academic community, central banks and other governmental organizations - that could take-up the new knowledge for policy making, as well as businesses that produce predictions - that could improve their forecast evaluation methodologies.

Mots clés : predictive ability assessment, identification, forecasting, robust inference

Participants :
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165598.8 €
Projet Cyanolichens (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Contemporary nature conservation policy in Europe has identified the protection of alvars and other semi-natural grasslands to be important for halting biodiversity loss. Loss of biodiversity implies not only species and communities but also loss of genetic diversity. To design effective conservation strategies for threatened biodiversity, the basic biology of the target organisms needs to be understood. Lichens are symbiotic entities consisting of at least two components, a fungus (mycobiont) and algae and/or cyanobacteria (photobionts), living in intimate symbiotic association. The genetic diversity of cyanobacteria will be studied in cyanobacterial lichens (cyanolichens) and in free-living cyanobacteria that form biological soil crusts (BSC) in North European alvars. The main DNA markers used will be tRNALeu (UAA) intron and 16S sequences for cyanobacteria and ITS sequences for lichen mycobionts. Cyanobiont specificity of lichen mycobionts and possible overlap in the cyanobiont spectra of different lichens will be determined. Also free-living Nostoc genotypes from the same habitats will be screened in order to establish their potential role in the symbiont pool. The diversity of lichen cyanobionts and free-living cyanobacteria in alvars, restored alvars and alvar-like substitution habitats will be compared to determine the effects of disturbance history on genotype diversity patterns. This study targets the very poorly known relationships between lichen-symbiotic cyanobacteria and their free-living relatives and will be the first of its kind in any grassland environment. The results will significantly improve our understanding of lichen biology and community ecology, and especially of the role of symbiont specificity in generating and maintaining lichen diversity. The results will have wide practical application in the design of conservation measures to protect the highly specialized BSC communities of the remaining semi-natural grassland in North Europe.

Mots clés : lichen, cyanobacteria, nostoc, alvar, genetic diversity, biological soil crust, cyanobiont specifity, habitat disturbance

Participants :
- University of Helsinki (Finlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191325.6 €
Projet MICADO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Continental wetlands are major carbon dioxide sinks but the second largest source of methane. Monitoring of wetland methane emissions revealed large inter-site variability that is hard to explain in the framework of current biogeochemical theories. Methane production in wetlands is an anaerobic microbial driven process involving a complex set of microbial metabolisms depending on the availability of (i) energy (via the presence of specific redox couples), (ii) organic substrates and (iii) specific microbial communities. To understand the complexity of microbial drivers on wetland methane emissions and quantify their contribution, the MICADO project will set up a multidisciplinary approach linking isotope organic geochemistry and environmental microbiology to assess microbial functioning in situ. As an organic geochemist I have developed an innovative approach to trace in situ microbial activity via compound specific carbon isotope analysis of microbe macromolecules and organic metabolites. The host institution is a leader in France in environmental microbiology and biogeochemistry developing high-throughput metagenomics and microbial rate assessments, for which I will be trained during the MICADO project. These techniques are highly complementary and combined they will provide a comprehensive knowledge on microbial metabolisms involved in organic matter degradation encompassing their complexity and interactions. This will revisit the relationships between organic substrate availability and microbial communities and will contribute at estimating the impact of microbial activity on wetland methane emissions. This project will give me the opportunity to acquire fundamental knowledge and to develop original lines of research that will consolidate my position as an independent scientist in biogeochemistry.

Mots clés : isotope geochemistry, metagenomics

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 196707.84 €
Projet R4H2020 (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : European Researchers' Night
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Continuing the series of events from 2007 organized in Romania, “Researchers for Humanity 2020” will build a strong link between public and research by stating the main message that science and researchers are useful for daily life and humanity over all, and their life is as everyone else’s. For one day (or 2 days in some places), the public will have the chance to meet important players from science and education through play, interesting talks and interactive hands-on learning. Based on the outstanding awareness of the European dimension of the event that we created throughout the years, European Researchers Night 2020 will confirm as being one of the most important communication event for research and education institutions. After last 2 years of enlarging the network (21 big, medium and small cities from all over Romania), this time we will focus on strengthening and increasing the quality of the interactions by gathering over 400 researchers, students and teachers in order to reach 45 000 visitors and over 650 000 persons exposed to the awareness campaign. The traditional logo of the event will be maintained so that a coherent link will be created with the European and national dimension of the event. Also, through the platform, we will invite associated events to get enrolled and be supported by us through promotion at the national level. Due to the long lasting relationships, the partnerships will be continued with main actors from mass-media, private research, universities and non-formal education institutions.

Mots clés : science, researchers, science fun, learning, caravan, youngsters, research

Participants :
- Target Active Training (Romania) (Roumanie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 112225.0 €
Projet M-Lysosomes (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Controlling cell cycle, process by which cells progress and divide, is at the heart of cancer research therapies. Tumor cells signature often lays in high proliferation rate, alterations of multiple intracellular signaling networks and hijacking of programmed-cell death pathways. Implication of autophagy and lysosomal biology in cancer is still controversial. Lysosomes are catabolic vesicles involved in the degradation of biological material and need to be tightly regulated. Lysosomes may influence cancer formation and progression by regulating many complex processes of cell biology, such as cell signaling, cell death, nutrient sensing and cell metabolism. Lysosome function depends on lysosome acidification capacity modulated by proton pump v-ATPase activity and on its intracellular localization driven by motor proteins, mainly by motor protein kinesin KIF5B. We recently discover an innovative mechanism involving lysosomes impairment to induce mitotic error that could potentially lead tumor cells to cell death.

Mots clés : lysosomes, autophagy, lysosomotropic drugs, cancer therapy, mitotic error, cell death

Participants :
- Institut d'Investigació Biomédica de Bellvitge (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet Wave-Locked Loop (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Conventional analog Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) occupies large area and is difficult to be reconfigured due to a bulky loop filter. In 2005, phase-domain all-digital phase-locked-loop (ADPLL) was proposed. It measured output phase of digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) using a time-to-digital converter (TDC). Unfortunately, designing fine-resolution TDC and wide dynamic range is power-consuming. In this project, instead of utilizing single sampling point per reference clock, we propose to oversample and digitize oscillator oscillator waveform which will produce enough digital samples to reconstruct, now in digital domain, the waveform and compare against a model waveform which will give precise frequency/phase and amplitude information. Thus, it is called, wave-locked loop (WLL) that will result in low-in-band phase noise, fast lock time, and wide-loop bandwidth that is no longer limited by reference clock. Preliminary data shows finer than 1-degree phase resolution even with 10% delay error in sampling clocks, and distortion from input waveform. This shows possibility to break the tradeoff in traditional TDC and improve robustness over PVT variations. Moreover, the design of building blocks which includes low-flicker-noise mm-wave LC Digitally-Controlled Oscillator (DCO) and small-sized ring oscillator with phase noise filtering will be investigated. Thus, this fellowship program studies an innovative frequency synthesizer and clock generation systems using wave-locked loop, which includes the study of oversampling of oscillator waveform for fine phase detection, the study of phase-noise reduction in ring oscillator using discrete-time filtering, the study of mm-wave oscillator with flicker noise corner reduction, and system integration for wave-locked loop system. The proposed synthesizer will be tapeout using advanced CMOS technology and will be measured to verify their performance.

Mots clés : cmos, integrated circuit, radio frequency, rfic, frequency synthesizer, phase locked loop  pll, all digital phase locked loop  adpll, digitally controlled oscillator  dco, phase noise, jitter

Participants :
- National University of Ireland (Irlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175866.0 €
Projet SPINCS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Conventional electronics employs the electron’s charge to process information. An alternative route is to utilise its spin instead, promising for realising equivalent devices that operate far more energy-efficiently, but also paving the way for entirely new applications like non-volatile memory or quantum computing. Previous attempts to realise such spintronics platforms were based on inorganic magnetic materials, often requiring very low temperatures and highest material purities that involve energy-extensive fabrication processes. Within this highly interdisciplinary project, I will explore an entirely different avenue towards spin-control which is based on the concept of chirality in novel molecular self-assemblies. Together with experts in synthetic chemistry, I have designed supramolecular cages that are chiral and can also encapsulate smaller molecules inside. Upon excitation with light, an electron can be transferred from the host to the guest, and with it the desired spin based on the chosen handedness of the molecules. This enables spin storage or switching and thus to encode information. To this end, I will combine time-resolved optical and electron spectroscopy to unravel the mechanism of chirality-induced spin-selectivity in such supramolecular structures, and then employ it for spin-dependent charge transfer from host to guest, tunable through spin-orbit coupling of the chosen building blocks. As such, I will exploit the versatility of a chemical bottom-up approach combined with light-matter interactions for the first time in chiral supramolecular nanostructures for unprecedented optical spin control, dictated by molecular design. This research will open up the path to molecular spintronics applications like memory storage, sensors or logic devices for quantum computing.

Mots clés : optoelectronics, molecular electronics, organic spintronics, spectroscopy, self assemblies, nano structures

Participants :
- Heidelberg University (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 246669.12 €
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet EMPOWER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Cofund Doctoral programme
Statut du projet : SIGNED

EMPOWER is an innovative entrepreneurial-based doctoral programme aiming to train scientific entrepreneurs with the skillset to operate between academia, companies, start-ups, public authorities and the general public. This professional figure will have high impact in a post-COVID future where the efforts of research are required to transform the European Union into a modern, green, inclusive and resilient economy, where growth is de-coupled from resource use. EMPOWER will build-up on the experience of Wetsus, a multidisciplinary research institute where intersectoral cooperation between companies, universities and public authorities takes place. In EMPOWER the partners will be 3 universities and 14 companies. EMPOWER will recruit 14 ESRs in one widely advertised call and a transparent 3-round selection procedure. ESRs are employed by the academic partners, according to the Collective Labour Agreement of the Dutch Universities, to earn their PhD degree together with an integrated business-oriented training. Each ESR will shape her/his own project around the idea of achieving clean water and energy, resource recovery and smart water management. Two supervisors (one from Wetsus and one from academia) and an industry mentor will constitute a multidisciplinary “knowledge triangle” to guide each ESR. Together with this, the training of each ESR will focus on research, multidisciplinary expertise, entrepreneurship and personal development.

Mots clés : scientific entrepreneurs, clean water, clean energy, resource recovery, smart water management, key enabling technologies

Participants :
- WaterCampus (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 1708560.0 €
Projet ENAMARE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

ENAMARE is an innovative project that will study the functionality of the aesthetic constituent of general perception through the use of an enactive approach and conceptual tools from the dynamic systems theory. This will be done through the elaboration of a interdisciplinary model based on interactional loops between environmental and bodily rhythms mediated by the phenomenon of entrainment and their implications on processes of sense-making and engagement. This project will address general perception, thus, as a temporally extended process arising from dynamic interactions between agent and environment with an inherent and vital aesthetic component involved in our constant reappraisal of the world and ourselves. In coherence with enactivism, the theoretical framework will be grounded on philosophy but will integrate research results and theory from biology and neurosciences as well. It is a particularly timely moment to conduct ENAMARE. Despite relevant researchers asking for projects addressing this topic and interdisciplinary research focused on different aspects of cognition, there has yet to be a thorough and comprehensive research on aesthetic influence over everyday perception. It would lead to a better understanding on the reciprocal effect and influence between environment and agents, and it would also enhance European research in fields as diverse as urbanism, education or artificial intelligence. My background, which covers biology, neuroscience and humanities, puts me in a unique position to develop a project that will grant me methodological expertise and theoretical knowledge. This will help me develop into a solid interdisciplinary researcher by successfully integrating all sides of my previous academic formation.

Mots clés : interdisciplinary aesthetics, enactivism, dynamical systems, pragmatism, cognitive processes

Participants :
- Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 168277.2 €
Projet ENEVOLVE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

ENEVOLVE is an interdisciplinary approach to test the tissue properties of dental enamel in living and extinct reptiles. This project addresses the need in functional morphology and palaeontology for quantitative methods that can characterize the structure and chemistry of prismless enamel, which caps the teeth of all non-mammalian vertebrates. Although structurally simpler than its mammalian counterpart, prismless enamel has evolved to cope with the forces of grasping and cutting through prey, crushing hard shells, and grinding plant material and it has persisted for over 300 million years. In order to assess how this enamel type has evolved to suit these disparate functions, we will integrate advanced structural, chemical, and mechanical analyses of modern and fossil reptile teeth from four dental morphotypes. By characterizing enamel under optical and electron microscopy, X-ray microdiffraction, and X-ray and vibrational spectroscopy, ENEVOLVE provides an innovative framework for describing the structural and chemical variation within prismless enamel associated with different tooth functions, and for teasing apart the key alterations resulting from fossilization. These techniques then provide valuable context for applying guided micro- and nanomechanical testing of prismless enamel, which will reveal how different prismless enamel structures and compositions help maintain teeth under different stresses. The framework and results stemming from ENEVOLVE will guide future form-function studies of mineralized tissues in vertebrates, but may also reveal new candidate structures for biomimetics and enamel restoration.

Mots clés : palaeontology, functional morphology, evolutionary biology

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €
Projet ENTRAP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

ENTRAP is multidisciplinary research project aimed at developing an Energy Harvesting (EH) device which will convert the locomotion of domestic animals, i.e. animal kinetic energy, into electrical power. This device would then supply autonomous power to a wide range of wireless sensing Precision Agriculture applications. Precision Livestock Farming is used to monitor individual animals' health, behavior, location and more so as to increase the efficiency and sustainability of food production. Millions of battery powered smart collar devices used in Precision Livestock Farming are being marketed today in the EU and through ENTRAP these devices will become powered by the animals themselves. In fact, the locomotion of domestic animals hasn't been characterized as a power source at all and to develop an EH device designed specifically for free grazing animals, extensive field experiments are necessary. Experiments are designed in cooperation with the Faculties of Agriculture in Zagreb and Helsinki, and will be performed at their respective experimental farms. The host beneficiary, Tampere University of Technology, is providing supervision in electromagnetic EH device design through mentorship by asst. prof. Paavo Rasilo, an expert in modeling of electromechanical systems. To enhance the projects prospects of success and to gain knowledge necessary for the development of my future career I will be seconded to an industry leader in the EH field, ReVibe Energy(SWE). The device will be integrated at Nofence(NOR), the world's first producer of a cloud based Virtual Fencing system (a Precision Livestock Farming application). The motivation for the restart of my career arose from an academic break and subsequent 6 months spent as a goat herder which allowed for this novel research idea to develop based on my previous research in the EH field. Through the implementation of this project I will have restarted my career with a fresh incentive and thus far unperformed research.

Mots clés : energy harvesting, energy scavenging, precision agriculture, electromagnetic induction, numerical modelling, smart farming, virtual fencing, autonomous systems, wireless sensor networks

Participants :
- Tampere University (Finlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 304021.44 €