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

Bioinspired devices and soft robotics are of great interest in nowadays science and technology. Technological development towards biomimetic systems requires replacement of traditional actuators. Most of the industrial robots consist of joined rigid parts, but in nature biological structures are flexible and generate motion without motors and other rigid mechanical constituents. Electromechanically active polymers (EAPs) are potential materials for preparation of biomimetic devices. These stimuli responsive materials have been in the focus of intense research already for decades and have gone through significant development during this time in terms of work output and operation voltage. However, proposed applications for EAPs in biotechnology and biomedical engineering require biocompatible materials. Preparation of EAP actuators/sensors from entirely biocompatible materials is still remained an unattained challenge and will be the aim of the current project. Developed materials have high commercialization potential and influence to our everyday life due to applications in medical devices and consumers electronics (smart prosthesis, soft haptic devices, wearable electronics). Therefore the project is in accordance with European Research Area and Innovation Union Flagship Initiative principles to get more innovation out of the research. Successful accomplishment of the project goals enhance the experienced researcher's career prospects by complementing her experiences in organic chemistry with new knowledge in electrochemisty, toxicology and computational simulations.

Mots clés : electroactive polymer, biocompatibility, acuator

Participants :
- University of Tartu (Estonie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 148582.8 €
Projet Star Polymers (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Biologic supramolecular assemblies, e.g., virus capsids and multiprotein complexes, show unprecedented complexity compared to man-made structures. A key feature of the building blocks facilitating the emergence of this structural complexity is their deformability. This enables them to reconfigure during assembly to find optimum orientations within the superstructure. Here, I propose to exploit the concept of reconfigurability as design criterion for developing a new class of colloidal building blocks. Where currently available hard particles fail to form macroscopic structures due to lack of building block uniformity and undesired metastable states encountered during assembly, introducing flexibility will prevent these adverse characteristics. The envisioned building blocks are based on polymer grafted cores, where the attached polymers arms comprise solvophilic and solvophobic blocks. The limited number of arms have significant conformational freedom, a feature absent in traditional hard particles. The solvophobic segments, located at the particle’s periphery, drive spontaneous polymer micro-phase separation into patchy domains which are then locked into place. These patches imprint directional interactions to guide self-assembly and are linked to the core via flexible solvophilic polymers, enabling patch fluctuations. The resulting patch adaptability prevents the system from getting trapped in non-equilibrium states and relaxes stringent requirements on geometric uniformity, promoting the formation of long-range ordered assemblies. Following simulation studies, these soft particles should have propensity to order into ‘open’ (quasi)crystalline lattices providing unique photonic, mechanical and porous characteristics. Complementing my physical/polymer synthetic background with pioneering analytic tools, e.g. time-resolved scattering and in situ electron microscopy, this project will detail a new paradigm for self-assembly and the importance of patch flexibility.


Participants :
- Eindhoven University of Technology (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet TRITRONITRO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is one of the key agroecosystem services provided by legumes. Legume crops have a positive impact on the atmosphere and soil quality: i) by lowering emissions of greenhouse gases compared with other crops grown under mineral fertilisation and ii) by supporting BNF to the following crop when grown as components of crop rotations. This results in cost savings on synthetic fertilisers and fossil energy inputs in the system and on tillage, due to improved soil structure. However, factors such as insect attack, foliar disease and root microbial infection have a direct or indirect influence in reducing nitrogen fixation capacity and yield. Therefore, control of root-feeding organisms is essential for maximisation of nitrogen uptake by legumes. Conventionally, agrochemicals have been used to protect legume crops from pest and diseases, but their indiscriminate use has resulted in pest resistance and secondary pest resurgence, and they are detrimental to beneficial organisms for crop defence. The importance of driving reforms in response to the European commitment to sustainable agriculture and food production is directing my research interests towards a long-term mission that enables implementation of a new agricultural concept regarding food production that is safer for humans and the environment. The proposed project will use peas as a plant model to look for innovative strategies for reducing the dependence on chemical inputs, applying cutting edge technologies to leverage the use of beneficial soil microbes in the crop system. I suggest a pest management strategy to control nodule feeder insects by means of entompathogenic fungi (EPF). By exploring tritrophic interactions in plant-microbe-insect relations, this action seeks to evaluate whether EFP inoculated into legume crops can invade plant and nodule tissues, protect plants from pathogens and insects, influence BNF and affect the behavioural responses of aboveground insects.

Mots clés : biological nitrogen fixation  bnf, entomopathogenic fungi  epf, endophyte, plant microbe insect interactions, obligate nodule feeder, tritrophic interactions

Participants :
- Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 185076.0 €
Projet Dino-Bird Ecology (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Birds are the only extant dinosaurs and have achieved enormous diversity, spanning a wide range of ecologies including substantial variation in habitat use. However, ecological diversification in the earliest birds and their closest dinosaurian relatives is poorly characterised. This presents a fundamental knowledge gap regarding the dinosaur-bird transition – a major event in vertebrate evolution. The unparalleled Mesozoic Jehol and Yanliao fossil assemblages from China include most known Mesozoic birds and feathered non-avian dinosaurs, revealing unprecedented data on this remarkable transition. I will use cutting-edge 3D imaging methods to visualise the limb morphology in early birds and bird-like dinosaurs. We will quantitatively constrain the link between the foot/hand morphology and habit ecology using geometric morphometrics and finite element analyses based on a large 3D database of extant tetrapods. The results will be used to infer the habitat use (e.g. arboreal, terrestrial, aquatic) of important fossil species during the dinosaur-bird transition, with a focus on early birds and closely related dinosaurs. This will add considerably to understanding of palaeoecology during dinosaur-bird transition, and clarify contentious hypotheses of the origin of bird flight. Our findings will also provide a test of ecological explanations for the extinction of the enantiornithine birds, and the ultimate survival and success of Ornithuromorpha, which includes all extant birds. Hosted in a world-class palaeontology lab in Oxford and trained by a supervisor leading the quantitative macroevolutionary research, this proposal will bring cutting-edge 3D morphometrics and statistical comparative skills to the researcher, ensuring her a promising independent future career. The long-term connection between key institutes of UK and China built in this proposal will also benefit both countries in not only research profiles, but also in public engagement and education.

Mots clés : tetrapoda, feathered dinosaurs, early birds, ecomorphology, mesozoic, jehol and yanliao biota

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet BAIT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Blame avoidance is a key communication strategy used by government officials when they initiate unpopular policies, but has not yet been studied for its use in social media. ‘Blame Avoidance in Twitter’ (BAIT) is a project which generates new knowledge about this important form of communication by analysing data from Twitter as an influential site used by politicians, activists and citizens. We take the recent, controversial decision of the British government to leave the European Union, as a timely and high-scale case study which offers lessons to other European countries about how governments may respond to acute blame risk. The objectives of BAIT are: (1) to establish and quantify the discursive features of blame avoidance used in Twitter debates; (2) to evaluate the effects of blame avoidance expressed in Twitter, through analysing the responses that arise in the form of replies and retweets; (3) to investigate how blame avoidance affects how people think and feel; (4) to disseminate the findings of the project to academics and the wider public, including politicians and activists. We will achieve this with an interdisciplinary approach which bridges the macro-social interests of political science and micro-analytic foci of linguistics, using mixed methods in a series of three studies. The first study uses corpus linguistics to quantify the forms of blame avoidance in a specialised corpus created from Twitter hashtag threads related to Brexit. The second study analyses replies to tweets containing blame avoidance, using critical discourse analysis to analyse the extent to which such posts gain support or criticism. The third study uses in an online survey experimental task to examine how the language used in blame avoidance affects citizens’ perceptions of politicians. The results of BAIT will be published in articles, an edited collection and a series of public engagement activities.

Mots clés : twitter, blame avoidance, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, political discourse

Participants :
- University of Birmingham (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet BoostUrCAreer (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Cofund Doctoral programme
Statut du projet : SIGNED

BoostUrCAreer project aims at implementing at Université Côte d’Azur (UCA) a multidisciplinary doctoral programme in e-health to attract to the French Riviera early-stage researchers (ESRs) with the world highest academic, creative and innovative potentials and to enhance their employability with the support from the Region Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur socio-economic dynamism. The proposed programme will foster interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international experiences with the objective of contributing to creating a new generation of PhDs equipped for both academic and non-academic careers in e-health and inclined to the great research and innovation challenges of tomorrow. In line with the strategy of excellence, interdisciplinary and innovation pursued by UCA, every doctoral project will have to associate two laboratories of UCA, a foreign academic partner and a non-academic one. BoostUrCAreer will thus provide a diversified education combining the most basic aspects of research with the practice of transfer toward other the socio-economic world. This dual expertise represents a real added value for career development and is acquired thanks to specific trainings on practical and transferable skills and a six-month mobility abroad at an international research laboratory. A close follow-up as well by two academic supervisors in fundamental laboratories and by an academic tutor and a local non-academic mentor will ensure the quality of doctoral theses and further facilitate the ESRs’ integration to the workforce. High-level applicants are selected through a merit-based, open and fair process to develop projects with UCA excellent research teams. They will receive an attractive allowance and dedicated research funds. BoostUrCAreer will promote European best practices for research and innovations and should serve as a model to disseminate these policies to the whole region.

Mots clés : employability, interdisplinarity, international, intersectoral, career development, excellence, local attractiveness, phd programme, e health

Participants :
- Université Côte d'Azur (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 1423800.0 €
Projet SKILL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Both genetic and cultural human traits evolve through the successive mechanisms of: production of variations, transmission of variations, and differential selection of variations. From a behavioral point of view, individuals learn cultural traits channeled by social models and they participate themselves to transmit these traits to their peers and to the younger generations. How much are the cultural traits influence by the individual’s own style and his social surrounding? How individual variations lead to cultural divergences? The SKILL project addresses these issues, focusing on individuals practicing the pottery wheel-throwing. I will analyse an existing experimental dataset (collected with expert potters in France, India, and Nepal) and I will set up a new field experiment in Laos with expert potters and their novices. I will analyse both the behavior (hand positions) and its material consequences (xy coordinates of the pots’ profiles) with methods (inspiring from the ethology and the biology) allowing precise identification of the individual variations. Because motor learning of cultural skills does not result from strictly reproducing a model but rather as a behavior elicited by the observation of a model, I assume that the apprentice adapts the motor skill shown by his tutor. The adaptation hypothesis claims that apprentice develops idiosyncratic motor skill leading to inter-individual variations of the traditional shapes. Some of these variations can be transmitted and different selective forces can operate on them causing the evolution of the traditional shapes. At the crossroad of archaeology, anthropology, movement sciences, and ethnology, the SKILL project addresses the questions of the transmission and the evolution of the human material (artifacts) and non-material (motor skills) culture. It will complement existing work on pottery which still lacks direct insight into the nature of the skilled work required to produce them.

Mots clés : motor skill, cultural evolution, cultural transmission, individual variation, pottery wheel throwing, expertise, artifacts variability, comparative studies

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet NECROFUNGI (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Botrytis cinerea and Monilinia fructicola are both devastating pathogens that can cause decay in a broad range of hosts during pre and postharvest handling. Despite the current use of chemical fungicides, both fungal pathogens are still responsible of important economic losses worldwide. The knowledge of pathogen virulence mechanisms is an important step to guide the search for new control strategies alternative to the fungicides currently in use. Crucially, the genome sequences of both B. cinerea and M. fructicola can be exploited to identify genes and proteins that determine their ability to infect host plants. By applying molecular and bioinformatic analysis, NECROFUNGI aims to identify genes that encode necrotrophic effector proteins which only kill their specific host, but do not affect other plant species. The identification of genes responsible for disease will lead the way towards new strategies to control plant diseases based on the development of new classes of chemicals that are not directly toxic to fungi and to design more efficient breeding strategies. Wageningen University has an extraordinary resource to carry out this research. The host will train Dr. Vilanova in molecular and bioinformatic techniques in the study of the B. cinerea and M. fructicola genomes, providing the necessary skills for her to establish a similar facility in her home country in the study of M. fructicola where none currently exists. In turn, the fellow will bring specific expertise in postharvest fruit-pathogen interactions, not currently available at the host institution. The multidisciplinary perspective adopted, combining fruit-pathology, comparative genomics, molecular biology and bioinformatics will build the necessary information to control these two devastating pathogens by effector-based technologies that would provide a great economic benefit for EU agriculture.

Mots clés : plant pathology, monilinia, botrytis, plant protection, host pathogen interaction, genome sequences, necrotrophic effectors

Participants :
- Wageningen University & Research (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 177598.8 €
Projet ComplexSignal (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Brain development relies on formation of functional neuronal circuits. This requires coordinated migration of embryonic neurons and their cellular processes such as axons to the target regions and their selective connections with synaptic partners. The migration of neurons and axons is mediated by guidance cues. Combined interactions of multiple guidance cues with their receptors direct neurons and axons to their final destinations. So far our understating is limited to the effect of individual cues, which result in attractive or repulsive responses. How multiple cues influence neuron and axon migration remains elusive. In addition, interactions of multiple cues and receptors are poorly understood. Our group recently elucidated the structure of an octameric super-complex fragment consisting of FLRT proteins, adhesion GPCRs Latrophilin and guidance receptors Unc5. In this project, we will aim at elucidating the full length (including the transmembrane domains) structure of the super-complex to reveal the molecular details of the interactions. Further analysis of structure-function relationship of the super-complex will, for the first time, address how modular architecture of these medically important receptors influence their signaling functions. Expertise of the host, capacity of the researcher, multidisciplinary approach of the proposal and well-planned implementation and risk mitigation strategies will ensure successful completion of the project. The results will enhance competence of the researcher; collaboration opportunities and competitiveness of the host and contribute to the excellence of European research.


Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet hSAI (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Braincities wants to build a human Supportive Artificial Intelligence (hSAI) with judging and empathy capabilities by using the latest advances in Deep Machine Learning technologies. The idea is to create a context-aware recommendation system to scan, analyse and match patterns, supporting Human Resources, Smart Cities and finance industries with better guidance powered by AI. This design is based on the concepts of Actionable AI, Steady States Analytics, Natural Language Processing and AI-based time series operating over a Decentralised Blockchain Big Data storage system. Braincities has been supported by sponsors, partners and start-up accelerators that are conscious that a great amount of research is needed to plot, construct, test and implement the architecture, logic and training methods of the several Artificial Neural Network algorithms needed to such complex system. To accomplish this, the hSAI has been split into several independent smart layers in order to fulfil specific demands or ‘use cases’ for different allied companies. With Porsche (Stuttgart), the idea is to build a career planning tool adapted for personal planning and based on employees CVs and personal statements. With Careaway we will mine patients habits and emotional steady states to help doctors perform better diagnosis and monitor the overall evolution of the patient. An alliance with Bita Index (Frankfurt) is made to build an AI model ‘able to predict the stock market behaviour’ using stocks and social media data. The research and innovation required for each individual application, and the integration of them into the final system, is expected to be done by an experienced researcher with diverse skills who at the same time should be open to perform several advanced trainings to improve and diversify his competences.

Mots clés : human resources, finance, fintech, smart cities, research, development and innovation

Participants :
- Braincities lab (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 184707.84 €