Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Rising competitiveness of early stage researchers and research management in Latvia (RISEus2)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Spreading excellence and widening participation
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Improved access to Excellence
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Germany,Switzerland,Latvia,France
Call: Twinning (H2020-WIDESPREAD-2020-5, 2020)
Start date: 2021-01-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 899960.0
EU funding (EUR): 899960.0
Participants: 4
Project status: SIGNED

Early stage researchers (ESR) from low performing countries are less competitive in the international scientific area than ESR's form internationally-leading counterparts. This is strongly related not only to the applicants itself, but also to the environment in which they were seeded as next generation researchers - meaning Universities. The competitiveness in scientific area is related to well measurable indicators, such as impact factors, papers in high-ranking journals, H-index, competitive funding, etc. Hence RISEus2 project´s Overall Objective is to significantly strengthen the research management and administration skills of RTU RBIDC leading staff and increase the research profile of ESR hosted in RTU RBIDC in the area of biomaterials development for bone tissue replacement and regeneration based on the long-term strategic cooperation between RTU RBIDC and three internationally leading counterparts: AO Research Institute Davos, Switzerland (ARI), Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse CIRIMAT, France (INPT-CIRIMAT) and FORM-Lab Frankfurt Orofacial Regenerative Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany (GUF). The purpose of RISEus2 is to create links and provide training which will ensure that RTU RBIDC will gain new knowledge and approaches of biomaterials research planning, implementation and exploitation. This will include methods, tools, equipment and effective infrastructure exploitation necessary to develop excellence in biomaterials research, that will boost the cooperation with the industry, thus becoming internationally competitive and attractive. The main RISEus2 activities include two way collaborative visits, mobility of staff, summer and winter schools, workshops at partner institutions, strengthening the visibility and cooperation with industry and intensive dissemination and outreach activities.

Keywords: competitiveness,training,mobility
In situ Structural Analysis of Molecular Crowding and Phase Separation (3DCellPhase-)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Panel description: Molecular biology, biochemistry, structural biology, molecular biophysics, synthetic and chemical biology, drug design, innovative methods and modelling
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2017-STG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-02-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Duration (months): 71.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1228125.0
EU funding (EUR): 1228125.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

This proposal brings together two fields in biology, namely the emerging field of phase-separated assemblies in cell biology and state-of-the-art cellular cryo-electron tomography, to advance our understanding on a fundamental, yet illusive, question: the molecular organization of the cytoplasm. Eukaryotes organize their biochemical reactions into functionally distinct compartments. Intriguingly, many, if not most, cellular compartments are not membrane enclosed. Rather, they assemble dynamically by phase separation, typically triggered upon a specific event. Despite significant progress on reconstituting such liquid-like assemblies in vitro, we lack information as to whether these compartments in vivo are indeed amorphous liquids, or whether they exhibit structural features such as gels or fibers. My recent work on sample preparation of cells for cryo-electron tomography, including cryo-focused ion beam thinning, guided by 3D correlative fluorescence microscopy, shows that we can now prepare site-specific ‘electron-transparent windows’ in suitable eukaryotic systems, which allow direct examination of structural features of cellular compartments in their cellular context. Here, we will use these techniques to elucidate the structural principles and cytoplasmic environment driving the dynamic assembly of two phase-separated compartments: Stress granules, which are RNA bodies that form rapidly in the cytoplasm upon cellular stress, and centrosomes, which are sites of microtubule nucleation. We will combine these studies with a quantitative description of the crowded nature of cytoplasm and of its local variations, to provide a direct readout of the impact of excluded volume on molecular assembly in living cells. Taken together, these studies will provide fundamental insights into the structural basis by which cells form biochemical compartments.

Keywords: phase separated compartments,liquid like compartments,self assembly,cryo electron tomography,cryo focused ion beam,3d correlative microscopy,centrosome,rna granules,caenorhabditis elegans
Digital radio game changer (DABCAST)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Poland
Call: Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme (H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2019-12-31
Duration (months): 28.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1993125.0
EU funding (EUR): 1395187.5
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Terrestrial broadcasting digitization is an ongoing process – television across Europe has been already switched to digital standard. Digitization of radio is next step and EU has already recommended the standard for it: DAB+. It gives great benefits to both listeners and radio stations (broadcasters), including better sound, rich content (visuals, text, web contents) and more radio stations available. Despite recommendation is already 10+ years old, the transition process was so far very slow (only Norway decided to switch over to DAB+ signal in 2017). The reason is that broadcasters are reluctant to carry high costs of this transition. It is unbearable especially for Small and Medium Broadcasting (SMB) stations, with limited budgets and resources to handle the expensiveness and complexity of digital broadcasting. To address this market niche, BCAST has invented the first ever complete digital transmission service in the cloud, called DABCAST. It hides all the complexity of DAB+ transmission (from studio down to transmitters and antennas) behind single service, being also cheaper than traditional DAB+ installations and offering added services available only in expensive products, e.g. content preparation software, monitoring and quality assurance tools. This remarkable characteristics were only possible to achieve by combining technological innovation with market position and business resources of BCAST company. As one of three Polish broadcasting operators (one of 50 on European scale), we provide transmission services to broadcasting stations, both analog and digital. We own and expand continuously our transmission network (antennas and transmitters). With DABCAST we plan to further utilize it to serve SMBs digitization. The objectives of this project are to finalize the technological platform and to validate it and gain customers approval (piloting); to continuously develop and monitor business and communication plan.

Keywords: disruptive,innovation,technology commercialization,piloting,validation,multimedia,cloud,deployment,digitization,optimization,broadcasting
400 Million Years of Symbiosis: Host-microbe interactions in marine lucinid clams from past to present (EvoLucin)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Panel description: Ecology, biodiversity, environmental change, evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology, marine biology, ecophysiology, theoretical developments and modelling
Countries involved: Austria
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2018-STG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-02-01
End date: 2025-01-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499561.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499561.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The widespread recognition that interactions with microbes drive animal health, development and evolution is transforming biology, but we so far understand the underlying mechanisms in very few systems. Considering that virtually every animal on Earth evolved with and among the microbes in its environment, there is still immense potential for discovering fundamentally new mechanisms of interaction among the staggering diversity of animals and their microbial symbionts in nature. The ancient and exclusive association between marine lucinid clams and chemosynthetic symbiotic bacteria is ideal for investigating these interactions. Lucinidae is one of the most widespread and species-rich animal families in the oceans today, and has lived in symbiosis for more than 400 million years. The clam’s outstanding ability to select one specific symbiont from the trillions of bacteria in its environment challenges widely held assumptions about the function and specificity of the innate immune system. Symbiont-free juveniles can be raised in the lab, and experimentally infected, allowing unmatched insights into the early development of this symbiosis. Although the symbiont infection is specific to gill cells, symbiont-encoded proteins can be found in distant parts of the animal that are symbiont-free. I will combine cutting-edge molecular tools and experimental infection to better understand three key aspects of host-microbe interactions in these clams: 1) Acquisition and selection of microbes during animal development, 2) Maintenance along animal lifetimes through molecular communication and exchange, and 3) Emergence and perpetuation over evolution. I hypothesize that intracellular bacterial symbionts fundamentally alter host biology, and these effects are not limited to the location where symbionts are housed, but can affect distant organ systems. My overarching goal is to understand the molecular basis for these effects, and their evolutionary history.
Understanding the role of parvalbumin interneuron development in schizophrenia using human cerebral organoids (Schizophrenia Organoids)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Austria
Call: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015, 2015)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2019-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 178156.8
EU funding (EUR): 178156.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Neuropsychiatric disorders account for 1/5 of the total disease burden in Europe causing mental anguish and decreased quality of life for those affected, especially for schizophrenia patients. An intriguing theory suggests that altered brain development results in schizophrenia, and the selective cellular defects in parvalbumin (PV) inhibitory interneurons observed in schizophrenic patient brains. However, the role of altered interneuron development in producing these pathophysiological hallmarks of schizophrenia is currently unknown due to a lack of cellular models of human interneuron development. Cerebral organoids are a revolutionary in vitro model of embryonic brain development generating complex brain circuits and recapitulating many aspects of interneuron development. The generation of organoid tissue from hiPSCs allows for the growth of patient-specific brain tissue. Therefore, the current proposal will develop a cerebral organoid schizophrenia model to analyze PV-interneuron development. First, cerebral organoids will be grown from patient-derived hiPSCs genetically modified to include a PV-GFP reporter. Using this reporter, genome-wide PV-specific gene expression will be analyzed to identify deregulated developmental pathways during PV-interneuron development. Second, a phenotypic analysis of PV-interneuron development will determine how PV-interneuron synaptic morphology and/or migration are altered in this cerebral organoid schizophrenia model. These assays are relevant to disease-related pathology, and will include axonal morphological analysis and a novel organoid co-culture migration assay. These results will determine the role of interneuron development in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disease for the first time in human tissue. Understanding the developmental mechanisms of schizophrenia will address a major unmet therapeutic need by inspiring new avenues of innovative therapeutic strategies.

Keywords: cerebral organoids,schizophrenia,interneuron development,parvalbumin interneurons,cortical development
WILD HOPPER - Heavy-Duty UAV for day and night firefighting operations (WILDHOPPER)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Spain
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2, 2019)
Start date: 2019-11-01
End date: 2022-04-30
Duration (months): 30.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3550687.5
EU funding (EUR): 2485481.25
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

DRONE HOPPER is a company devoted to designing and manufacturing heavy-duty multirotor drones. For that, it has developed a number of proprietary technologies aimed at, essentially, providing a safe and reliable heavy-lifting platform. Special care has been taken on liquid transportation and release. WILD HOPPER is a 600-litre platform designed for forest fire firefighting. This payload capacity overcomes typical limitations of electrically powered drones that cannot be used for anything more than fire monitoring, as they do not have sufficient lifting power. It uses all the technologies developed by DRONE HOPPER, yielding a novel tool to counter rush fires worldwide. The enhanced capabilities of the WILD HOPPER allows to complement existing aerial means and overcome their main limitations, especially the need to cover night operations. This allows reducing heavily the duration of the wild fires by allowing continuous aerial support to the extinguishing activities once the conventional aerial means (hydroplanes and helicopters) are set back to the base at night. Other advantages of the WILD HOPPER are the precision of the release, derived from multirotor platform dynamic capabilities. This, together with the proprietary water jet nebulization system, yields a very high efficiency compared to traditional means that carry similar (helicopters) or more liters (hydroplanes) that just drop the water at a certain speed a highest altitudes over the target fire, limited by their dynamic operational envelope. Being an autonomous vehicle, WILD HOPPER does not put at risk human lives as platform management is done on a safe ground base. The WILD HOPPER is a less expensive platform than conventional aerial means, allowing small and medium regional bodies to own their own fast-response resources. Being less complex machines, cost of ownership is heavily reduced. Finally, WILD HOPPER allows swarm operation to implement several units in coordination to boost effiency.

Keywords: wildfires,forest fires,multirotor,night operation,water mist,swarming
Nanosensors for simultaneous electrical and optical monitoring of climate change gases (NEOGAS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Spain
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2021-11-01
End date: 2024-01-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 160932.48
EU funding (EUR): 160932.48
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), is the major source of global warming and climate change. To monitor their emissions, one can find in the market highly sensitive and selective, complex, bulky and expensive instruments, used as reference measuring systems, which can only be installed in few specific locations. For an accurate spatial control of these emissions, however, large number of sensing systems need to be installed and connected, benefitting from Internet of Things (IoT) and providing the required ubiquity. Usually these devices do not need to meet the sensitivity level of the reference instruments. The present project addresses the development, fabrication and testing of gas sensors, suitable for IoT, made from advanced metal organic frameworks (MOFs) materials. These gas sensors will be multivariable devices, providing the simultaneous readout of the change of electrical and optical properties when exposed to gaseous species, in opposition to standard gas sensing devices, that deliver one single readout. This innovative approach is expected to present advantages over the standard devices, especially in terms of miniaturization, compactness and selectivity, as they are integrated nanoelectronic noses. The developed devices will be tested towards GHGs and will be benchmarked against environmental reference stations.

Keywords: nanomaterials,gas sensors,electrical response,optical response,electronic nose
compAct powerfUl anD reliAble piezoeleCtrIc acTuator for landing gear sYstems (AUDACITY)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Smart, green and integrated transport
Theme: Public-private partnerships
Destination: Clean Sky 2
Action type: Innovation actions
Partnership: CS2 (Art-187)
Countries involved: Italy,Switzerland,France
Call: Design and development of a long stroke Piezo Electric Actuator (H2020-CS2-CFP08-2018-01, 2018)
Start date: 2019-04-01
End date: 2022-09-30
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 990212.5
EU funding (EUR): 798962.5
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

Design and development of a long The objective of the AUDACITY project is to make the demonstration of a compact powerful and reliable piezoelectric actuator for future locking applications in landing gear systems. Audacity is required to get rid of the well-established hydraulic actuators in order to comply with System ITD Strategic Objectives in terms of environmental impact and More Electric Aircraft (MAE). One American and one Japanese company have shown the relevance of the piezoelectric technology to be used in landing gear systems. Their demonstration are today without equivalent in Europe. Whereas the principle of long stroke piezoelectric actuator is not new, technical challenges occur. The consortium of AUDACITY has come to the conclusion that every technical limitations one by one during the 20 past years. The technical objective is then to integrate all these individual progresses within a prototype for TRL4 demonstration AUDACITY aims at impacting the competitiveness of Europe and Associated countries with the direct creation of 20 jobs and 45 Millions of cumulative sales before 2030.

Keywords: piezoelectric actuators,motors,landing gears,locking systems
Dataset and dehazing methods for non-homogeneous and dense hazy scenes (NH-DEHAZE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2020-10-01
End date: 2025-05-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 178320.0
EU funding (EUR): 178320.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

In presence of haze, small floating particles absorb and scatter the light from its propagation direction. This results in selective and significant attenuation of the light spectrum, and causes hazy scenes to be subject to a loss of contrast and sharpness for distant objects. Besides, most computer vision and image processing algorithms (e.g., from feature extraction to objects/scene detection and recognition) usually assume that the input image is the scene radiance (haze-free image), and therefore strongly suffer from the color-shift, and low-contrast induced by hazy conditions. For instance, in normal visibility conditions the Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition (TSDR) module of the existing ADAS systems reaches a detection rate averaging around 90%, but drops below 40% in case of haze or poor illumination conditions1. Therefore, many recent works have explored inverse problem formulations and have designed dedicated image enhancement methods to address the dehazing problem. However, to estimate their key internal parameters (e.g. airlight in Koschmieder’s light transmission model), most of those solutions assume homogeneous distribution of light and haze, which is rarely the case in practice (e.g. lighting is non-uniform in space and frequency during the night, attenuation caused by haze depends on the light frequency). Image dehazing thus remains a largely unsolved problem in case of dense and non-homogeneous haze scenes. As a federating objective, our project aims at implementing dehazing methods that are suited to dense and non-homogeneous hazy scenes. This implies the following tasks: (O1) build up the first (world-wide) image dataset including pairs of hazy and haze-free scenes, for which hazy scenes include real, dense, and non-homogeneous haze; (O2) develop and train deep dehazing neural networks to derive the dehazed images from hazy inputs. (O3) train deep image interpretation models that are suited to images captured in adverse conditions.

Keywords: image dehazing,non homogeneous haze,neural networks