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

One of the greatest challenges of our generation is to implement sustainable and ‘energy smart’ chemical manufacturing processes. This can be accomplished via the electrification of the chemical industry, where electrons serve as a clean redox reagent to drive processes under mild conditions. This would avoid stoichiometric amounts of reagent waste from toxic chemical oxidants/reductants, and help resolve intermittency issues associated with renewables, as excess supply could be directed and stored into a stable chemical bond. However, to reach this goal, efficient and selective electrocatalysts are required. ‘Single-site catalysts’ today represent a new frontier, devised as a means to circumvent the issues regarding the non-uniformity and multi-faceted nature of conventional heterogeneous catalysts, which often experience poor selectivity towards the targeted reaction. Merging the benefits of electro- and single-site catalysis into a complete heterogeneous system is thus a highly innovative and sustainable approach towards modernising synthetic processes. In this MSCA action, I will therefore design novel, single-site, heterogeneous electrocatalysts, comprised of earth-abundant components, for conducting valorised and energy-storing C-C coupling reactions under continuous-flow conditions. In particular, my first objective will be to acquire fundamental insight into the design, development and understanding of precious-metal-free single-site electrocatalytic systems for the purposes of conducting such organic transformations. This project will then go a step further, to rationally engineer and manufacture catalytic flow reactors, in order to intensify the targeted process via the numerous benefits that flow chemistry offers in place of conventional batch electrochemical cells.

Mots clés : heterogeneous catalysis, process intensification, flow chemistry, single site catalysis, electrocatalysis

Participants :
- Politecnico di Milano (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 171473.28 €
Projet MAGIC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the main goals of artificial intelligence is to build artificial agents that can interact with humans using natural language. To fully master language, an agent needs to know how to use it to accomplish a goal; to interact with another speaker; and to refer to objects in the external reality. My research project aims at equipping an artificial agent with all these skills in one single learning framework. Communication helps humans accomplish things in the world and cooperate with each other, resulting in continuous and incremental updating of the speakers’ knowledge state. However, traditional machine learning methods used to model language are based on static and passive regimes, and are typically not grounded in external reality. I propose a radically different research programme, based on recent advancements in training neural networks using reinforcement learning, that will enable the move from a static, fully supervised to a dynamic, interactive learning where the agents need to use language to accomplish a task in the visual world. This will dramatically accelerate the development of machines that can talk with humans. Even though I am an established researcher in computational linguistics, with substantial contributions to the integration of language and vision, I still need to fully develop my own line of research to become a leading, independent researcher in Europe. Carrying out the present proposal at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research will be a fundamental step towards achieving my goal, since my hosts are leaders in computational linguistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in general, and specifically in the methods needed for the present proposal. Conversely, my unique profile, bridging computational linguistics and computer vision with machine learning methods, will widen the scope and outreach of the research conducted at both groups.

Mots clés : computational dialogue modelling, end to end dialogue systems, multi agent, language grounding, language and vision, interactive learning, reinforcement learning, language generation, deep neural networks

Participants :
- Pompeu Fabra University (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet MAD-SDN (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the main problems of the Internet is the rapidly growing volume of diverse data. The Future Internet needs new efficient methods to support data management, processing and analysis. The Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a novel network architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional networks, separating the control and data planes, and providing programmability capabilities of network functionalities. Yet, modern SDN deployments are difficult to manage and optimize. Big Data analysis techniques can be useful in SDN to identify problems, troubleshoot them and optimize network performance. One promising approach for this is the Multivariate Big Data Analysis (MBDA), which extends multivariate analysis to Big Data sets. However, MBDA has not been applied to SDN yet. During this project, MBDA will be used to detect anomalies and classify network traffic in complex SDN environment. In addition, in order to ensure privacy, MBDA will be extended with Federated Learning, a cutting-edge approach recently developed by Google with application to distributed data analysis problems. This project will be carry out by the experienced researcher (ER) who worked during her PhD thesis on network traffic analysis using advanced statistical methods on time series. The ER will cooperate with the Supervisor who is an expert in the field of multivariate analysis for anomaly detection and optimization of networks, and the principal developer of the MBDA approach.

Mots clés : network traffic analysis, network management, big data analytics, multivariate analysis, anomaly detection, traffic classification

Participants :
- University of Granada (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172932.48 €
Projet NANOTER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the major challenges in modern society is the early diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Cancer is one of the most relevant diseases worldwide because of its incidence, prevalence and mortality. Current cancer treatments do not only kill cancer cells but also healthy tissue. In order to overcome this situation, more effective and selective treatments are necessary. Neutron capture therapy (NCT) is a biologically targeted form of radiotherapy which exploits the potential of some specific isotopes to capture thermal neutrons producing charged particles suitable for the treatment of cancer. The range of the particles produced in NCT can be limited to the size of one cell. Therefore, provided that neutron capture species are selectively delivered to tumour cells, no damage will occur to the surrounding healthy tissue. Novel delivery agents suitable for NCT must be investigated that will allow a localised cancer treatment. NANOTER presents an innovative and previously unexplored approach to develop ultra-sensitive nanotherapeutic agents for NCT. Neutron capture species will be sealed in the interior of carbon nanocapsules (biocompatible closed-ended carbon nanotubes) and their behaviour against neutron irradiation experiments will be investigated and compared against other current materials for NCT. The interdisciplinary approach taken to develop the proposed research programme is expected to contribute to the development of alternative and previously unexplored nanoplatforms for NCT, enhancing the performance of current delivery agents for NCT.

Mots clés : carbon nanotubes, neutron capture therapy, encapsulation, boron compounds, functionalization

Participants :
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet ThReDS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the most fundamental human faculties is 'reference': the capacity to 'talk about things'. This extraordinary ability is at the core of many forms of human exchange, from asking for the salt at the dinner table to collaboratively building a solar probe. It involves using linguistic signs to identify things in the world and bring them to the mind of another. Reference is poorly understood: in particular, we do not know how humans build a shared linguistic representation of their environment, which they use to link words and world. My goal is to build a computational model of the way people acquire world knowledge from language and translate knowledge back into language. My overall framework includes three steps: 1) creating a representation of the way people 'talk about things', using distributional semantics (DS: a computational approach to modelling word usage); 2) automatically mapping the distributional model onto a partial set-theoretic model (a formal knowledge representation expressing shared beliefs about the world); 3) using the set-theoretic model to generate unobserved linguistic expressions which refer. The pipeline will be evaluated via an online game where a computer has to produce references to well-known concepts and individuals for a human tester. This work will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in linguistics: while DS has enjoyed considerable success in modelling lexical phenomena, it is currently showing its limits in explaining referential aspects of meaning. Conversely, referential semantics is still far from fully explaining the cognitive aspects of concept acquisition and reuse. The proposed investigation requires a very novel integration of computational semantics (my area of expertise) and formal linguistics (in which my host is an internationally recognised expert). The collaboration will give us the chance to lead a burgeoning area of research aiming at integrating reference into DS.

Mots clés : distributional semantics, formal semantics, reference

Participants :
- Pompeu Fabra University (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet PEPREP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the most fundamental questions in chemistry and biology is how a self-replicating protocell could form from collection of inanimate molecules. Self-replicating RNA molecules in lipid compartments have been widely studied, but these systems are inherently unstable and a plausible mechanism for their spontaneous formation and repeated replication is still lacking. Here, I propose to use coacervation of self-templating peptides as a radically new approach to create stable self-replicating protocells. We will use short peptide building blocks with aromatic and ionic side chains that are designed for self- or cross-recognition. The building blocks can dimerize through reversible or irreversible chemical bond formation, including disulfide, imine, alkene (metathesis) and peptide (native chemical ligation) bonds. Preliminary results indicate that these peptides spontaneously form coacervate droplets when dimerized. The coacervates enhance the self-replication by naturally concentrating the peptide building blocks, catalyzing the template-directed peptide dimerization and stabilizing the product. By periodic cycling of the solution temperature or pH, the coacervate protocells can be dissolved and recondensed, yielding an elementary system of self-replicating protocells. These coacervate protocells not only concentrate peptides, but also nucleotides, inorganic nanoparticles and pigments, creating a potent microreactor for prebiotic chemistry. Developing these model system will provide valuable insights in new prebiotically plausible pathways to self-replication and the origin of life.

Mots clés : peptide, self replication, coacervates, protocells, evolution of life

Participants :
- Radboud University Nijmegen (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187572.48 €
Projet RigidPlasticNeurons (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

One of the remarkable features of the mammalian brain is its capability to learn. This is particularly evident during infancy, when novel context is rapidly integrated and transformed into new memory. How early-life experiences are encoded in the developing hippocampus, a brain region central to the formation and recall of memory, has not been well understood. We know very little how neural populations in the hippocampus are activated during learning, allowing for both a generalised yet flexible encoding of information. Recent work suggests that a subset of hippocampal neurons show more rigid, stable activation patterns across the behavioural domain while others are more plastic. How their properties emerge during infancy and evolve during brain maturation is the centre of this proposal. To answer these questions, I propose to study the ensemble code in the developing mouse hippocampus. I will use a combination of calcium imaging, viral labelling, and chemogenetic techniques paired with a behavioural navigation assay to measure in vivo the activities of 100s of neurons while the animal explores known and novel environments. Specifically, it is my ambition to understand how the functional properties of rigid and plastic neurons in CA3 region emerge during development and to identify the neural circuitry encoding episodic memories in the infant and adult brain. By bridging developmental, systems, and behavioural neuroscience, the proposed research will provide highly novel contribution to our understanding of learning during brain maturation.

Mots clés : calcium imaging, virtual reality, hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, episodic memory

Participants :
- University of Basel (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €
Projet GOLDEN-ROM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

One of the strongest branches of European Balladry is the Romancero. Romances are traditional ballads that originated in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages and have been transmitted by word of mouth from generation to generation for centuries in five European languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Judeo-Spanish). Its heyday was the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, when romances were sung daily in all social spheres. The Romancero left a deep mark on literature: Gil Vicente, Camões, Góngora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega or Cervantes, among others, took inspiration from romances to create their stories and frequently alluded to them in their works. The study of the influence of the Romancero on Portuguese literature is very advanced since at the beginning of the 20th century, Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos published a catalogue with 300 quotations and allusions to romances. However, the same cannot be said for Spanish literature: although the philologist María Goyri managed to gather around 2,000 echoes of romances in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish literature, this valuable inventory still remains unpublished and needs to be revised, completed and updated as to be used by scientific community. In order to fill this significant gap in philology, this project aims 1) to catalogue in an online database each of the echoes of romances in Spanish literature identified by Goyri and later researchers, 2) to analyse the use of quotes and allusions to romances by Spanish writers of the Golden Age and 3) to study the differences and similarities in the use of echoes by Portuguese and Spanish writers by comparing Goyri and Vasconcelos’ inventories. The Instituto de Estudos de Literatura e Tradição of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa is the ideal host for this project as it is one of the few centres in the world dedicated to researching the Romancero. In addition, this project will be supervised by Dr. Teresa Araújo, one of the greatest specialists in the field.

Mots clés : romancero, traditional ballads, oral literature, spanish golden age, iberian literatures, medieval and early modern spanish literature, folklore, digital humanities, cultural heritage, spain, portugal

Participants :
- Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 147815.04 €
Projet SAFER (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One of the top ten goals set by the White Paper on Transport is to reduce fatalities in road transport. The European Union is aiming to halve road casualties by 2020, in line with the long term goal to move close to zero fatalities by 2050. Despite the reduction in road fatalities in the EU since 2010, there are specific countries where the numbers are increasing. In addition, the yearly decrease rate in road fatalities for Europe as a whole is slowing down. In order to reach the goal set for 2020, action should be taken immediately. The most vulnerable road users are motorcyclists, who are currently suffering from frequent fatalities in crashes involving road barriers. The European Road Assessment has indicated the critical need to adopt improved barrier designs to protect vulnerable road users. While rubberized concrete has been recommended for road barriers, challenges involving strength and durability of the material have not been addressed. This research proposes to develop optimised steel fibre-reinforced rubberised concrete mixtures as well as road barrier designs, which will lead to the development of SAFER road barriers with outstanding deformability and structural integrity; thus paving the way for forgiving road infrastructure. The use of recycled rubber and steel wires (obtained from End-of-life tyres) supports the Horizon 2020 Transport Research and Innovation Act priorities for sustainability and resource efficiency (including the Circular Economy package).

Mots clés : concrete engineering, road barriers, end of life tyre recycling, experimental mechanics

Participants :
- Cyprus University of Technology (Chypre) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 163648.8 €
Projet H2Bio2Energy (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Ongoing search for renewable energy technologies is essential in Europe to tackle the continuous increase in demand and the environmental and ethical concerns. Hydrogen is a promising renewable fuel, but so far its production is not clean as the conventional industrial techniques start from fossil fuels. Production of H2 by biological, biotechnological or bioinspired methods would solve this problem and the study of FeFe-hydrogenases is a key step in this process. For this reason, the proposal is well aligned with the EU Societal Challenges in “Secure, clean and efficient energy”. FeFe-hydrogenases are efficient metalloenzymes that catalyse H2 production from water at high turnover rates, using Fe, rather than Pt active sites. Building on my previous experience with these enzymes, in this project I will apply a highly innovative approach to investigate how nature uses cheap iron to catalyse H2 production. Protein film infrared (IR) electrochemistry was recently developed by Prof Vincent at the University of Oxford, allowing electrochemical triggering of enzyme catalysis with simultaneous IR spectroscopic study of how the enzyme works. This will provide a deep understanding of enzyme structure/function relationships, from coordinated electron and proton transfer to structural rearrangements at the Fe site. Due to my prior expertise in FeFe hydrogenases which are not studied in the host group, and Oxford’s excellence in bio-spectroscopy, the Fellowship will promote exceptional bidirectional knowledge transfer. Dissemination of research through Oxford’s outreach programs will increase the impact of the project to varied audiences. Access to the well-established training and career development activities in Oxford, and the world-class programs of visiting speakers, will advance my career as I gain new knowledge and skills, enhance my scientific profile by acquiring international experience, expand my scientific horizon, strengthen my skills, and build new networks.

Mots clés : enzymes, hydrogenases, biohydrogen

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet CENTURION (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Optical fiber communication technologies substantially support high-speed, long-distance or/and terabit capacity networks all around the globe. Contemporary applications oblige the network operation to respond efficiently and rapidly to any user request. To achieve such demands, optical label switching (OLS) techniques have been developed to support data traffic in fiber networks. The reliable and fast processing of data headers is highly critical for trustworthy transmission flow. All-optical header recognition has been investigated lately through diverse physical implementations that offer competitive advantages; however, these configurations have been proposed as basic processing units with practically small or non-existing intelligence. Reservoir computing (RC) as a method of applying intelligence to physical systems has been lately proposed to exploit the inherent nonlinearities of photonic devices and components that are commercially available towards proficient processing of light. Lately, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) modules have been engaged to exploit nonlinearities through the fast implementation of algorithms that work towards this direction. CENTURION project aims at joining several multidisciplinary research aspects that belong to the fields of non-linear dynamics, optical communications, FPGA programming and informatics and establish FPGA-assisted and photonic RC as intelligent high-speed methodologies in data traffic management of broadband optical signals. The objective is to train the experienced researcher in FPGA programming and the concepts of reservoir computing, in order to append intelligence to the decision making processes in optical communication networks and to offer sophisticated solutions for routing and switching in telecom applications and to reduce storing requirements in sensing applications.

Mots clés : reservoir computing, signal processing, optical networks, fpga modules, intelligent decision making

Participants :
- Universitat de les Illes Balears (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 170121.6 €