Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet Halo modelling (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The mechanism behind the current phase of accelerated expansion of the Universe is not understood. Either space is filled with dark energy, a substance that has never been detected in an earth-bound laboratory, or the gravitational equations of Einstein are incorrect and acceleration arises naturally within the correct theory. There are now a wide variety of models that purport to explain accelerated expansion, and often these models make different predictions for how matter is clustered in the Universe. Weak gravitational lensing uses measurements of the deflection of light from distant galaxies to infer the intervening distribution of matter, and thus allows us to discriminate between acceleration models. However, in its present state the lack of accurate modelling for the distribution of matter as a function of cosmological paradigm will be the major limitation in the interpretation of forthcoming weak lensing data: the goal of the 'halo modelling' project is to provide the required accuracy of modelling. To achieve this, the Fellow will take a novel hybrid approach; combining results from perturbation theory, high-accuracy simulations and semi-analytics. Crucially, the 'halo modelling' project will simultaneously improve our understanding of the distribution of baryons relative to dark matter in the Universe, and incorporate this. The current ignorance of the level of mass redistribution caused by baryonic feedback processes has the potential to severely degrade the constraining power of forthcoming lensing surveys.

Mots clés : cosmology, large scale structure, weak gravitational lensing

Participants :
- University of Barcelona (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 242683.2 €
- University of British Columbia (Canada) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet 4DGenomeReg (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The mechanisms that regulate genome activation and gene expression occur within a complex three-dimensional (3D) architecture, that helps bring functional regulatory elements into spatial proximity. Although observed at individual loci, the general principles and dynamics of enhancer-promoter interactions remain very poorly understood. The proposed project will use chromosome conformation capture, Hi-C, to measure 3D chromatin interactions at a genome-wide scale across different stages of embryogenesis. The project will build on the Furlong lab’s recent findings in genome topology. First, it will look at changes in chromosome conformation during the entire developmental time-span to determine if the stability of interactions observed during the early stages holds true to the end of embryogenesis. It will also compare high-resolution interaction frequencies in two different cells types (mesodermal and neuronal) during different stages of development. The project will consider the entire spectrum of possible interactions, as opposed to a narrow set of enhancers, and thereby yield the first high-resolution view of the overall topology of the Drosophila genome as it develops and the general ‘search-space’ of developmental enhancers. Second, the results will identify constitutive and dynamic chromatin interactions, revealing the extent to which enhancer-promoter interactions change between cell types as they transition from a multipotent state to a terminally differentiated tissue. Third, these data will be used to make an integrative predictive model of chromatin loop formation, which should yield mechanistic insights into how chromatin contacts are formed and predict their dynamic or constitutive behaviour. Given that the general principles underlying genomic architecture are deeply conserved, the project should not only help to explain regulatory principles underlying Drosophila development, but also greatly enhance our understanding of general chromatin organization.

Mots clés : gene regulation, dna regulatory elements, chromosome conformation, chromatin structure, 3d genome topology, topological domains, long range interactions, chromatin loops, embryonic development, hi c

Participants :
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 171460.8 €
Projet ANAT-MEC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and the adjacent pre- and parasubiculum are thought to create an internal map of self-position that animals may use for goal-directed navigation. This map uses a set of functionally specific and largely non-overlapping cell types: grid cells, border cells, speed cells, object-vector cells, and head-direction cells. The presence of multiple distinct functional cell types, matched in specificity only by cell populations in some of the sensory and motor cortices, allows us to examine input-output transformations and computational algorithms in association cortices with unprecedented power and detail. In order to examine these algorithms, however, an obvious and crucial first step is to map the division of function across cells in anatomical space. This requires recording of hundreds of cells at the same time in freely-behaving animals exploring open spatial environments. Unfortunately the absence of appropriate methods for neural recording at the population level has so far prevented a clear understanding of the broader organization of multi-cell-type and multi-layer networks of MEC, at both micro and macro scales. During my PhD, I invented a technique called “fast high-resolution miniaturized two-photon microscopy (FHIRM-TPM)”, which, through the use of a portable light-weight (2g) two-photon microscope, allows animals to move freely while large scale, single-cell-resolution calcium imaging is performed. In ANAT-MEC, I will refine this optical imaging method to study neural activity during spatial navigation in two-dimensional environments. I shall characterize in detail the anatomical organization of distinct cell types in MEC while mice engage in naturalistic, exploratory behavior in open spaces. Besides shedding light on this specific question, the project will – by developing a new technology - also open doors to unravel fundamental mechanisms of neural code formation in the mammalian space circuit.

Mots clés : medial entorhinal cortex, grid cell, two photon microscopy, miniature microscope, free moving imaging

Participants :
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214158.72 €
Projet MetaBioMec (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The meniscus plays a critical role in load transmission, stability and energy dissipation in the knee joint. Loss of the meniscus leads to joint degeneration and osteoarthritis. In a number of cases replacement of the resected meniscal tissue by a synthetic implant might avoid the articular cartilage degeneration. None of the available implants presents optimal biomechanics characteristic due to the fact the biomechanics functionality of the meniscus is not yet fully understood. Mimicking the native biomechanical characteristics of the menisci seems to be the key factor in meniscus replacement functioning. This is extremely challenging due to its complex inhomogeneous microstructure, the lack of a full experimental characterization of the material properties and the lack of 3D theoretical, numerical and computational models which can reproduce and validate the experimental results. Therefore, the aim of this work is a thorough understanding of the menisci biomechanics with the view of translating the knowlege to the orthopeadic implants arena. The objective of the proposal be achieved through (i) designing and performing a range of innovative experimental tests to characterize the behaviour of the meniscus tissue at the micro and macroscale, (ii) building an appropriate and novel multiscale anisotropic model at the tissue level which takes into account the fractal dimension of the porous menisci’s tissue, (iii) implementing the material model in commercial finite element (FE) software and (vi) build and validate an accurate FE biomechanical model of the knee joint (which includes the meniscus) in order to model the biomechanical behaviour of the menisci when subjected to a range of mechanical stress which is not reproducible in an experimental context.

Mots clés : menisci biomechanics, multiscale poro mechanics, fractional models, anisotropy

Participants :
- University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 95999.77 €
- University of Palermo (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 80123.46 €
Projet EMPaTHY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The methanol-to-hydrocarbon (MTH) process is a versatile catalytic process that are gradually playing a more important role in the economy. However, an important factor that is inhibiting the profitability of MTH is accumulation of coke in the pores of the catalyst during operations. To reduce or eliminate the coke formation during MTH operations, it is necessary to have a detailed mechanistic insight into its cause of formation. In this proposal, I will achieve this insight through a computational modelling strategy. I will study the mechanism of the MTH process at various time- and length scales, using various computational methodologies. I will use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to study the fluid flow at the reactor scale and the diffusion in the macropores. I will use kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) to study the diffusion in the meso- and micropores. Finally, I will use density functional theory (DFT) to study the reactions at the active sites. The processes studied at the various length scales will be coupled together through a multiscale methodology. Multiscale modelling has steadily evolved over the past decade, but the concept is still at the proof-of-principle stage where the methodology has been demonstrated for simple test systems such as CO oxidation. The methodologies that will provide data to the multiscale simulation, CFD, kMC, MD, and DFT have all reached a high level of maturity. Now is the right moment to use a multiscale methodology to couple these methodologies together and solve the problem of coke formation in the MTH process. The potential outcomes are the following: 1) an understanding of how coke is formed in the MTH process; 2) a larger acceptance in the catalysis community to use multiscale modelling in the design of new catalysts; and 3) tighter interdisciplinary collaborations.

Mots clés : multiscale simulations, kinetic monte carlo simulations, model construction of catalyst particles

Participants :
- Politecnico di Milano (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 171473.28 €
Projet PROCEED (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The modelling community achieved steady progress in dynamical climate prediction using Earth System models and the last decade has seen an accelerated development for the land surface component. This has led to predictions that are now considered useful for some societal applications over “hot-spot” land areas such as the Euro-Mediterranean. However, forecasts performance over land is still substantially weaker compared with ocean, due to the lack of observations, which has hampered the development of well-constrained land processes models. While benefiting from daily verification, the models used for the prediction of the short time-scales (from weather to seasons) include only that part of the surface variability for which observations are available and that can be modeled/initialized to positively contribute to the forecasts (verification-based approach). As a consequence, they unavoidably lack some processes such as those related to ecosystems and their variability. On the other hand, longer time-scales (interannual to centennial) models used for climate variability/change research contain comprehensive vegetation and soil schemes intended to represent as many processes as possible, even those that are still poorly constrained or understood. Through the synergy between process-based and verification-based approaches the ambitious objective of this project is to obtain a practicable seamless development across scales of the land modelling applied to Earth System predictions. The main goal will be to obtain verifiable land processes models to enhance the performance of the predictions across scales and to demonstrate unprecedented useful applications for the energy sector. A fundamental contribution to fill in the gap between short- and long-term Earth System predictions will come from the emerging availability of reliable land surface observations from remotely sensed satellite campaigns that will provide novel observational constraints to land processes models.

Mots clés : climate prediction, seamless earth system prediction, land surface modeling, vegetation processes implementation, climate services for energy sector

Participants :
- Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 177598.8 €
Projet MorphIRe (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The morphological structure of a word plays an important role in determining its function and meaning, yet it is often disregarded by current machine learning models aimed at natural language processing (NLP). State-of-the-art NLP models typically rely on word-level or character-level representations. This arguably works well for English, the dominant language in NLP research, since it is morphologically simple, but poses a challenge for morphologically-rich languages like Basque, Estonian, or Kurdish. As a consequence, the current state of the art is biased against these languages, preventing us from building better NLP technology for them. The MorphIRe project aims to learn morphologically-informed representations for NLP. It proposes to explore the fine-grained morphological analysis of word forms in order to learn representations that are grounded in morphemes, the smallest grammatical unit of language. Using these representations as input to NLP models is expected to improve their performance particularly for morphologically-rich languages. To this end, MorphIRe will make use of deep learning with neural network architectures both to learn the representations and to apply them to state-of-the-art models for a variety of NLP tasks, such as language modelling and dependency parsing. The impact of MorphIRe is twofold: 1) Learning input representations that can be used in a variety of models encourages reusability of the results and promises that improvements will carry over to future NLP research. 2) Through improving the state of the art on morphologically-rich languages, speakers of these languages will ultimately benefit from better NLP technology. This way, MorphIRe has the potential for making both a scientific and a societal impact.

Mots clés : natural language processing, morphology, representation learning, cross lingual learning

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 207312.0 €
Projet MFCPF (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The most brilliant colours in nature are obtained without using any pigments, only by nano-structural materials. Such colour effects are found in many plants where colour can be obtained using only cellulose. We aim to produce bio-mimetic materials with multiple optical functionalities, by taking the inspiration from nature and by optimising the properties of the cellulose itself. A challenge in cellulose-based photonic materials is the intrinsic brittleness of the final films. The proposed research aims to modify the properties of the cellulose building block and design their properties and structures to finely tune the optical and mechanical properties of the produced films. Novel nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) such as electrosterically (ENCC) and sterically (SNCC) stabilized nanocrystalline cellulose will be exploited to this propose. The unique charge and hairy morphology of ENCC and SNCC will allow to finely tune their interaction and therefore to tailor the properties of the composites films. The high charge density of ENCC allows obtaining stable colloidal suspensions even after conjugating them with plasmonic nanoparticles or fluorescent molecules. Therefore composite films made from them are expected to reveal complex optical response. Finally by exploiting the fluorescent-ENCC as a labeling nanoparticles in the films, will allow to investigate the self-assembly process by detecting their fluorescent signal during the film assembly. This research will develop a detailed understanding of the processes involved in the self-assembly of biopolymer-based nanoparticles and to fabricate smart materials with on-demand optical and mechanical response, and will pave the way to the use of natural materials as novel pigments or for optical interfaces and sensors required in biomedical applications.

Mots clés : chiral nematic film, nanocrystalline cellulose, self assembly, flexibility, plasmonic, fluorescent

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet HANSOME (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The most common ionizing radiation detectors using inorganic solid scintillators do not currently enable the technological progress in the fields of high-energy particles detection and medical diagnosis (such as in time-of-flight PET tomography), where high light yield and fast timing capabilities are needed. Nanoparticles can be exploited as scintillators to overcome these limits due to the possibility to control and modify their structural and luminescence properties. Moreover, nanoparticles can be embedded in polymers for the fabrication of nanocomposites with high optical transparency. The main goal of the project is to develop advanced hafnium oxide nanocomposite scintillators with time response in nanoseconds, while exploiting the hafnia quality to efficiently stop the ionizing radiation. In order to reach the project goal, the radioluminescence properties of inorganic hafnia nanoparticles will be optimized by defects engineering and doping strategies. The hafnia surfaces will be decorated with highly fluorescent organic dyes and the radioluminescence of nanoparticles will sensitize the dye emission. These hybrid nanoscintillators will be embedded in a polymer matrix in order to fabricate low cost, flexible and scalable nanocomposite scintillators with optimized luminescence efficiency and fast time response. The project is at the forefront of the progress in high-energy physics experiments to minimize the photons losses at high count rates, and meets the urgent demands of medical imaging techniques to gain high quality images. The results of the proposed research will represent a fundamental step forward towards significant advances in technologies for ionizing radiation detection as well as reinforce the position of the European scintillation community worldwide.

Mots clés : luminescence, nanoscintillators, energy transfer, doping, composite systems, fast timing, metal oxide

Participants :
- Czech Academy of Sciences (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 144980.64 €
Projet NDTD (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The multidisciplinary project ‘No dollar too dark: free trade, piracy, privateering and illegal slave trading in the northeast Caribbean, early 19th century’ (NDTD) integrates maritime archaeology, history, geophysical survey and anthropology to investigate illicit trade between the Caribbean islands St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St. Maarten (5S) from 1816 to c.1840 with the aim of understanding why and how these islands were drawn into an illicit trade network, what archaeological evidence remains of these activities and why this is relevant to current ‘theories of piracy’ and modern illicit trade in the region. NDTD has five Research Objectives (RO) to investigate: RO1) Entanglements between international, regional and local factors that drove these islands to engage in illicit trade. RO2) How these islands functioned together as a network for illicit trade, smuggling and laundering, the processes involved, and how long it occurred. RO3) Dialectics between the acquisition of illicit goods, consumption of these goods, and race, class, and gender . RO4) Archaeological evidence of these activities. RO5) How illicit trade from this period informs the ‘theories of piracy’ proposed by scholars in the 21st century

Mots clés : illicit trade, piracy, maritime archaeology, maritime trade, material culture, consumption

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 224933.76 €