Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Resolving the nature of our deuterostome ancestor by integrating Cambrian fossils into evolutionary trees based on genomic data (DeuterostomeOrigin)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-02-01
End date: 2028-01-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 276187.92
EU funding (EUR): 276187.92
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Deuterostomes are a major group of animals that include creatures as diverse as sea stars, acorn worms, and humans. Though seeming very different, these animals have long been grouped together taxonomically and the nature of their ancient ancestor has been greatly controversial. However, new research suggests that the deuterostome grouping might be false, leaving our understanding of their evolutionary relationships and evolutionary origins in complete disarray. I propose to resolve this controversy through joint analysis of genomic data and anatomical data from living animals and exceptionally preserved fossils from the Cambrian (520 million years old) that can directly inform on the nature of ancient deuterostomes. Realising the evolutionary significance of the fossils requires we resolve their phylogenetic affinity, which can only be achieved by elucidating their fine anatomy. My proposal focuses on three groups of Cambrian deuterostome fossils, myllokunmingids, yunnanozoans, and vetulicolians, from the Chengjiang UNESCO World Heritage fossil site, which I will integrate into a holistic synthetic family tree of deuterostomes to understand how their anatomical and physiological features evolved over time. For this, I will employ multiple state-of-the-art technologies to reveal the high-resolution histological information of the fossils, including spectrometry, electron microscopy, and computed tomography. The latest methods for phylogenetic analysis and ancestral state estimation will be used to construct the evolutionary tree and infer character evolution. Together, these work packages will allow me to resolve debates on the evolutionary relationships of deuterostomes and the evolution of their disparate bodyplans. The training will help me make the transition from a fossil-focusing palaeontologist, to an independent interdisciplinary palaeobiologist comfortable with the joint analysis of living and fossil species based on the anatomical and genomic data.

Keywords: fossil,deuterostomes,cambrian,chengjiang biota,macroevolution
Cyprus ON a missioN to Engage, inspire and Connect with ciTizens through the European Researchers’ Night (CONNECT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Researchers' Night
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Cyprus
Call: European Researchers' Night 2022-2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-CITIZENS-01, 2022)
Start date: 2022-04-01
End date: 2024-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 300000.0
EU funding (EUR): 300000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The vision of the CONNECT proposal is to engage, inspire and ultimately connect with researchers and the public at large in a quest to increase awareness about research and innovation activities and to boost public recognition of science and research education in Cyprus. In the framework of the proposed project, two European Researchers' Night (ERN) events will be organised in Cyprus in September 2022 and September 2023. The theme of the events, Mission: INSPIRE 2022 and Mission: CONNECT 2023, is inspired by the EU Missions aiming to mobilise and activate collective efforts to tackle common challenges and bring about lasting impact. The target audience is the public at large, attracting people regardless of their age, gender or scientific background, with a special focus on families, pupils and students. Having coordinated the organisation of the ERN events in Cyprus since 2006, the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF), will seek to build on the experience accumulated over the years and established collaboration with local Research and Innovation (R&I) stakeholders from the academia, the public sector, industry as well as other actors in civil society to make the events successful. Key messages will be communicated through a vibrant and diverse awareness campaign and unique pre-events such as a flashmob, whilst the main events will bring together the public and researchers from all disciplines through hands-on experiments, prototype demos and simulations as well as through an online event engagement application, a treasure hunt, screenings of documentaries, science communication competitions and a Stand-Up Science Comedy Live Show to conclude festivities. CONNECT will also bring researchers at schools in order for them to actively engage with the younger generation but also promote a scientific approach to teaching for teachers, providing direct access to information about research performed in Cyprus in the priority topics of the EU missions.

Keywords: european researchers night,science communication,science for all,research careers
Hybrid Coordination Aggregates (MOFs) For Carbon Dioxide Adsorption (MOF4CO2)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2026-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 230774.4
EU funding (EUR): 230774.4
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Existing CO2 capture technologies, such as amine-based absorption and cryogenic distillation, face challenges and problems including high energy requirements, large infrastructure needs, and high costs. These technologies often require significant retrofitting or integration into existing industrial processes, limiting their scalability and commercial viability. In contrast, the utilization of MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) for CO2 capture has garnered significant interest due to the numerous advantages they offer compared to other materials such as high adsorption capacity, selectivity, tunability, regenerability, and potential for direct utilization, making MOFs a promising solution for efficient and effective CO2 capture. However, it is challenging to design MOF materials with extremely high CO2 capture capacity, gas selectivity, and water stability along with moderate regeneration energy as water dissociation causes hydroxyl-poisoning that impairs CO2 sorption by both high temperature and moisture exposure. Additionally, the high energy consumption during blowdown and evacuation steps for the process cycle of MOFs need to be improved to ensure long-term performance. The novelty of this work lies in its ability to strengthen the interaction between CO2 molecules and the MOF structure through an innovative dual activation method, utilizing both N and S atoms. This approach surpasses conventional single-atom activation in MOFs, resulting in enhanced binding. Furthermore, the incorporation of Lewis Base Sites (LBSs) has become increasingly popular for reducing the energy needed for MOF regeneration, consequently improving CO2 binding affinity, selectivity, and reversibility. Advanced thermal modeling will be employed to analyze the dynamic processes of CO2 adsorption/desorption, sweep gas, and dry-out sequences. This modeling considers both the mechanical and chemical properties of the synthesized MOF.

Keywords: hydrophobic mofs,selectivity,co2 capture,thermal stability,regeneration
The Milky Way as key to understanding the inward transport of matter to the centre of galaxies (GalFlow)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Universe Sciences
Panel description: Astro -physics/ -chemistry/ -biology; solar system; planetary systems; stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy; cosmology; space sciences; astronomical instrumentation and data
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2023-STG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-04-01
End date: 2029-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499281.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499281.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Gas accreting onto supermassive black holes that sit at the centres of galaxies fuels the most powerful engines in the universe, Active Galactic Nuclei, shaping the formation and evolution of their host galaxies. Yet, we have a poor understanding of how the gas is transported from typical galactic radii, R=several kpc, down to the area of influence of the black holes, less than a few pc. The centre of the Milky Way can be studied in much greater detail than any other galactic nucleus and is a Rosetta Stone to understand the physical processes that occur in all galaxies. Interstellar gas is transported from the Galactic Disc down to the central black hole SgrA* through a sequence of steps. The Galactic Bar performs the first step by efficiently transporting gas from the Disc (R=3kpc) down to the ring-like accumulation of gas known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at R=120pc. In the last few years I have led major theoretical efforts to understand and quantify this first step. However, these efforts have also demonstrated that the bar is ineffective in driving the gas further inwards. A long-standing question is how the gas continues from the CMZ to SgrA*. For the first time we have the possibility to answer this question thanks to new datasets and advances in numerical simulations. I propose here an unprecedented effort to solve this important problem through a unified analysis of all the relevant physical processes based on novel data and methodologies. I will combine recent and upcoming high-resolution astrometric and spectroscopic data with advanced stellar dynamical models to constrain the gravitational potential in the Galactic centre (GC). I will then use this potential to run cutting-edge numerical simulations to systematically quantify the contribution of all the mechanisms that can drive inward mass transport. This will solve the problem of the inward mass transport in the GC and will give us fundamental insights that can be applied to all galaxies.
Mass customization 2.0 for Integrated PV (MC2.0)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Energy
Destination: Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Netherlands,Italy,Switzerland,Austria,Germany,Belgium
Call: Advanced manufacturing of Integrated PV (HORIZON-CL5-2022-D3-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2026-02-28
Duration (months): 38.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8977744.03
EU funding (EUR): 7592626.0
Participants: 23
Project status: SIGNED

In the past 25 years, many integrated photovoltaics (IPV) products have been introduced and demonstrated. Mostly BIPV products, but more recently also IIPV and VIPV products. However, large scale deployment and massive market adoption of these technologies and products have not yet taken place. We are at the brink of a huge scale-up and capacity build-up of PV in Europe, that will have a large effect on our living environment. Therefore, it is now urgent and essential that IPV products become widely available and affordable. This is important (1) to generate solar electricity where the demand is (in the built environment) and (2) to enable multifunctional use of area and space in the built environment. Several parties in the MC2.0 consortium have more than 20 years of experience in IPV development and as such have been involved in many earlier projects and studies. We believe that the number one barrier for large scale market uptake of IPV is the high cost. Other - secondary but also important – barriers are immature sector cooperation and certification issues. The overarching ambition of the MC2.0 project is to demonstrate a cost breakthrough for IPV by means of an advanced manufacturing approach, referred to as “mass customization”. In coherence with this approach, we will contribute to solving the other identified barriers. To realize this ambition, the MC2.0 consortium brings together experts and companies on materials for PV laminates (including PV cells), on manufacturing of PV laminates, on manufacturing of IPV products and on market and application of IPV products.

Keywords: integrated pv,bipv,mass customization,pv laminate,industry 4 0,cost breakthrough,renovation wave
Intelligent Embodiment: Social Robots that Understand and Adapt Through Recommender Systems (SOCIALADAPT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-07-01
End date: 2027-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 260347.92
EU funding (EUR): 260347.92
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Social robots, conceived to provide companionship, emotional support, and assistance with daily tasks, play a crucial role in promoting mental health and wellbeing, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite advancements in social robots’ ability to understand and respond to humans, they have limited capabilities in personalization and adaptivity, which are crucial for ensuring long-term user engagement. Meanwhile, given the rapid growth of the AI-driven e-commerce market and the widespread adoption of Large Language Models, conversational recommender systems have become a popular tool for providing recommendations and information. While most recommenders effectively sustain long-term user engagement in real-world applications, they are typically regarded as non-embodied agents, overlooking their social roles in interactions. SOCIALADAPT aims to enable social robots and recommender systems to benefit from each other and achieves the following objectives: for social robots, i) inferring user preferences from multi-modal interactions, and ii) personalized and adaptive responses for long-term use; for recommender systems, iii) integrating conversational recommenders with humanoid embodiments, and iv) evaluating the embodied recommender. To address the first objective, the candidate will use multimodal recommendation methods to infer short-term and long-term user preferences. For the second, she will develop a reinforcement learning method that learns from inferred user preferences to generate adaptive responses. The third objective entails integrating recommendations with virtual humanoid embodiments generated by generative AI. For the fourth, she will evaluate users’ social presence when interacting with the recommender through use studies, in compliance with data privacy. The candidate expects to advance her research career and contribute to the intersection of social robotics and recommender systems, becoming one of the leaders.

Keywords: social robot,conversational recommender systems,personalization,adaptivity,long term use,intelligent embodiment
Creating an orthogonal gate to the brain (OBGate)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Panel description: Biotechnology using all organisms , biotechnology for environment  and food applications, applied plant and animal sciences , bioengineering and synthetic biology , biomass and biofuels , biohazards
Countries involved: Spain
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-06-01
End date: 2028-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499136.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499136.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Many impairing illnesses raging from metastatic cancers to neurodegenerative diseases affect the brain. Unfortunately, delivery of therapeutics to the brain is highly challenging due to the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Despite decades of research, no safe and efficient strategy to overcome this barrier has reached clinical application. Here we propose a concept that will revolutionize brain transport: creating a new orthogonal receptor to mediate transport across the BBB. Numerous molecules have been developed to achieve brain delivery via receptor-mediated transport. However, delivery is very limited presumably because no receptor combines 3 key features: high transport efficiency, high expression on the BBB, and low expression on peripheral tissues. This results into peripheral tissues acting as a sink and dramatically lowering the therapeutic index of drugs aimed for the brain. The greatest limitation of current efforts is trying to solve both selectivity and efficient transport in a single delivery vehicle. Our unprecedented approach is based on dissecting this problem in two: increasing transport efficiency with the new orthogonal receptor OBGate and addressing selectivity with a highly efficient targeted vehicle to express the receptor only at the BBB. Since this receptor will not bind any endogenous ligand, its properties and intercellular trafficking can be engineered with minimal alteration of brain homeostasis. This will enable to unravel the key determinants of BBB transport and to build an ideal transport system. Selective expression of this receptor in the brain endothelium will be achieved by engineering a gene delivery nanocarrier mimicking the two-stage viral entry into BBB cells. As an example to prove the efficiency of our system we will aim to deliver biotherapeutics for the treatment of brain metastatic breast cancer. Overall, we will open a new gate to the brain that is poised to be paradigm-breaking in the treatment of neurological diseases.

Keywords: blood brain barrier,brain delivery,protein engineering,non viral gene delivery systems
Meta-Learned Machine-Learning Interatomic Potentials for Ab initio Engineering of Chemical and Microstructural Complexity (META-LEARN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Materials Engineering
Panel description: Advanced materials development: performance enhancement, modelling, large -scale preparation, modification, tailoring, optimisation, novel  and combined use of materials, etc.
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2024-ADG, 2024)
Start date: 2026-01-01
End date: 2030-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Materials engineers have dreamed for decades of optimizing materials starting from the quantum mechanical laws of nature. Mastering the inherent chemical and microstructural complexity promises access to outstanding properties of structural and functional materials. Machine-learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) ignited hope by offering quantum-mechanical accuracy for systems with many atoms. However, the full capacity of MLIPs remains untapped due to the complexity of the MLIP construction process and the required simulations. META-LEARN will cut the MLIP Gordian knot and raise MLIP construction to the next level. Our vision is a meta-learning framework that unleashes the full strength of MLIPs for large-scale simulations to a broad community. We will meta-learn the optimal MLIP-construction processes by acquiring and exploiting domain-expert knowledge from various branches of advanced ab initio and large-scale simulations. META-LEARN leverages a comprehensive pool of algorithms to ensure an optimal, task-oriented accuracy-efficiency trade-off. MLIPs that account for magnetic and electronic excitations will broaden the materials spectrum. MLIP-based sampling will boost the efficiency of thermodynamic predictions. Deciphering the microstructure genome will provide the optimal training for large-scale defects. Sustainability challenges will be tackled at the limit of chemical and microstructural complexity: Multicomponent H-storage and coating materials. META-LEARN will encode the knowledge of the MLIP construction and make it openly available via the MLIP-COPILOT, a knowledge-graph-based artificial intelligence tool. The MLIP-COPILOT will provide the optimal combinations of MLIP algorithms, hyperparameters, training datasets, and training sequences for different materials and simulation tasks. The MLIP-COPILOT will remain flexibly extensible for the community beyond the project’s scope, allowing for the addition of new types of simulations, materials, and MLIPs.

Keywords: machine learning,interatomic potentials,ab initio simulations,large scale atomistic simulations,thermodynamics,high entropy alloys,molecular dynamics
Poles and People: Geographical Societies, Statehood, and Civil Society in Transnational Perspective (1870-1925) (Poles and People)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Norway,Germany
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-07-01
End date: 2025-04-30
Duration (months): 34.0
Total project cost (EUR): 226751.04
EU funding (EUR): 226751.04
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

This project investigates the foundation of statehood, science popularisation, and (trans)national cooperation with specific regard to the Polar Regions and “inner Africa”. In the nineteenth century, geographical societies formed the institutional base for the rising field of geographical research. Their foundation, mainly in European capitals, coincided with the growth of a civil society and the rise of imperial claims to power. By simultaneously practicing and popularizing science, they developed a lasting impact on the exploration and public perception of formerly inaccessible environments such as the Arctic, Antarctica, and “inner Africa”. However, the study of these “blank spots” followed not only political and economic interests, but also served sociocultural identity-building purposes and promised to provide scientific answers to questions of global interest such as climatology and ecology. The project will compare the geographical societies of four capitals: Brussels, Edinburgh, Oslo, and Vienna. Societies in these cities considered the Polar Regions and/or “inner Africa” as major poles of geographical inquiry. Sources including the understudied archival holdings of geographical societies will be brought together for qualitative and quantitative study. Particular attention will be paid to (1) historical geographies in which research on the Polar Regions and Africa was practiced, networks of exchange established, and scholarship popularised; (2) the relationship between state governance and geographical societies in the context of national and imperial statehood; (3) interaction processes between science, geographical exploration, and the public sphere with regard to practitioners, field sites, and exchange formats involved. Targeted dissemination and communication activities such the development and implementation of teaching materials will contribute to a higher degree of evidence-based self-reflection on global responsibility and colonial heritage.

Keywords: scientific societies,historical geographies,popular science,empire,exploration,history of science