Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Ancient genomic reconstruction of convergent evolution to agriculture (AGRICON)

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: United Kingdom
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2019-STG, 2019)
Start date: 2019-11-01
End date: 2024-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

As global climates warmed ca. 10,000 years ago came a remarkable convergent transformation of human lifestyles that occurred independently in multiple continents and human populations. This transition from hunter-gatherer subsistence to food-production catalysed large-scale population growth, offering the opportunity for increased rates of adaptation, but also rapidly presented a large number of independent human populations with a new evolutionary challenge. This project will use ancient population genomics—the only way to directly reconstruct human genetic evolution—to study whether evolutionary processes during the agricultural transition differed in differed regions. Which genomic adaptations were associated with the agricultural transition? Did adaptation to hunter-gatherer and agricultural lifestyles act on similar genetic architecture in different instances? To which extent did adaptation in domestic dogs—the only species domesticated prior to the agricultural transition—occur in convergence with humans? To answer these questions, the project will generate ancient genomic data from pre-agricultural and early agricultural populations from multiple human- and domestic dog populations from Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia. This will be achieved with direct sequencing as well as a new human ~850,000 SNP capture panel designed to avoid bias towards Eurasian ancestry. We will also develop new computational methods robust to the challenges posed by ancient genomes to identify adaptive admixture, analyse copy number variation, test continuous population models, and statistically assess convergence in the genomic architecture of adaptation. Leveraging cutting-edge ancient genomics and two model organisms for the genomic basis of phenotypic variation, this project aims to reconstruct the universal evolutionary phenomena underpinning a watershed evolutionary episode that shapes global biodiversity and the human condition to this day.

Keywords: ancient dna,population genetics,evolution,archaeology,human origins,genomics,human,evolutionary genetics,neolithic
A new high-performance aqueous lubricant formulation for soft bio-contact surfaces (AquaLub)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
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: United Kingdom
Call: ERC Proof of Concept Grant (ERC-2019-PoC, 2019)
Start date: 2020-05-01
End date: 2023-04-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

In the AquaLub project, we will translate an innovative aqueous lubricant technology, developed in the context of the ERC project LubSat, towards commercial applications. The technological focus is on an electrostatically-driven macromolecular self-assembly of naturally occurring proteins. Commercial aqueous lubricants market is significantly growing ($22 billion by 2025) with broad range of personal care and institutional care applications to enhance hydration and alleviate dryness-related pathologies of oral, ocular, vaginal, rectal and/or urethral tissues. In this context, hydrophilic polymers are the standard materials that provide sub-optimal lubrication properties significantly impairing the quality of life. Taking inspiration from highly sophisticated bio-lubricant saliva, engineered by nature, we propose a novel technology exploiting the self-assembly of proteins to design a porous mesh that acts as a nano-reservoir of water to provide the fluid film lubrication whilst the hydrophobic attachment of the proteins to the surface provide the boundary lubrication. These dual-benefits have not been achieved by any commercial solutions to date. This technology allows for substantial improvements on enhancing lubrication and sustaining hydration of biological soft surfaces, over existing commercially-available approaches. In this project, working through 4 work-packages, we will validate the techno-commercial feasibility of the aqueous lubricant formulation in various formats for chosen sectors and generate connections with key industrial players based on initial contacts established so far. Key activities in the proposed project will ensure demonstration of the up-scaling feasibility and validation of performance, market research and filing IP, which will allow us to build strategic alliances with selected industrial partners, explore licensing of the IP to these partners, and build a robust business case to take forward the commercialization of this technology.

Keywords: lubrication,self assembly,hydration,dry mouth,aqueous lubricant,proteins,electrostatics,xerostomia,mucin
Cloud based Vessel Allocation Decision Support System for Vessel Chartering (CLOUD-VAS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Smart, green and integrated transport
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Türkiye
Call: Small business innovation research for Transport (H2020-SMEINST-2-2014, 2014)
Start date: 2015-06-01
End date: 2017-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1803125.0
EU funding (EUR): 1262187.5
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

CLOUD-VAS is a CLOUD-based Vessel Allocation decision Support tool derived from the by oil chartering companies expressed need for an elementary, user friendly software solution that is accessible any place, any time. CLOUD-VAS helps Large Oil & Gas companies and Large Ship-owners make sharp decisions on which vessels to charter, saving enormously on chartering costs and fuel consumption equalizing lower CO2 emission. The Vessel Allocation Problem is a widely known managerial problem for transportation companies relying on maritime shipping for transportation of their bulk. Current methods for Vessel Allocation are based on linear, nonlinear, integer, stochastic and global programming solvers proven to perform well but complicated are in use and not protected by user access rights packages which entails alteration of data by virtually anyone is possible often leading to significant time and monetary losses. The outcome CLOUD-VAS will provide a flexible and affordable optimisation platform that enables to significantly minimise operational costs and fuel consumption (thus GHG emissions). Minimising carbon footprint and fuel consumption is a strategic direction for Waterborne Transportation overall in Europe. Reduced environmental impact and enhanced fuel efficiency will contribute to economic prosperity and environmental sustainability as two pillars of sustainability. This makes the project strongly related to the current EU wide challenges for the Maritime Transportation Industry to cut back its CO2 emissions and contribute to their strive for delivering products in a timely and cost effective manner. Besides CLOUD-VAS’s benefits like an integrated report system and the implemented user access rights packages the real innovation lies in it being a ready-to-use cloud-based solution. CLOUD-VAS is the first and so far the only Cloud Based Vessel Allocation Decision Support Tool in the world and will be an important innovation for the Maritime Transportation Industry.

Keywords: maritime transportation,green transportation,co2 emission,oil and gas,vessel chartering,cloud,decision support system
Cavity-mediated entanglement of trapped-ion qubit arrays for quantum information processing (CMEQIP)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Global Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Physics
Countries involved: United States,United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, 2016)
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 269857.8
EU funding (EUR): 269857.8
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Long-coherence times, high-fidelity individual-ion control and entanglement-mediating Coulomb interactions make trapped-ion qubits a very attractive platform for quantum information processing (QIP). Entangling gates performed by coupling the internal states of ions in the same potential well via their shared motional mode have recently reached the high fidelities necessary for the implementation of quantum error correction protocols which can enable fault-tolerant QIP. However, scaling this type of gate up to long ion chains (>20 ions) is not feasible: large ion numbers lead to crowding of the motional mode spectrum of the chain, eventually preventing addressing of specific modes. Cavity-mediated ion-photon coupling is a promising avenue to scalability. Photons emitted into a shared cavity mode can be used as a quantum bus to entangle short ion arrays. If implemented between arrays of N ions, this photonic interface benefits from an N-fold enhancement of the ion-photon coupling. Strong collective coupling has been shown with neutral atoms and 3D ion crystals, but has not been performed in a system with individual-qubit control and Coulomb-mediated entanglement capabilities. Prof.Vuletic’s MIT group operates a multi-zone ion trap which holds several linear ion arrays (of up to 20 ions each) spaced along the trap axis and features an integrated optical cavity. Cooperativity measurements indicate that the strong-coupling regime should be achievable with this apparatus for cavity-mediated entanglement of arrays as short as 5 ions in length. As an MSCA fellow, I will use this trap to pursue the first demonstration of cavity-mediated entanglement of two spatially separate ion arrays. On returning to Oxford, I will implement cavity-enhanced ion-photon coupling between Sr ions in separate vacuum systems, as part of Oxford's drive to build photonically-interfaced quantum computing nodes, which currently employs inefficient free-space ion-photon coupling techniques.

Keywords: cavity mediated ion photon coupling,remote entanglement,quantum information processing,trapped ion qubits,quantum networks
NOVEL TOOLS FOR FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT BASED ON QMRA WITH A ROBUST MODELLING OF UNNOVEL TOOLS FOR FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT APPLYING QMRA WITH ROBUST MODELLING OF UNCERTAINTY AND VARIABILITY: FANTASTICAL (FANTASTICAL)

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: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018, 2018)
Start date: 2020-04-01
End date: 2022-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175572.48
EU funding (EUR): 175572.48
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Food safety remains a main concern for consumers, society, health agencies and food industry. Despite the efforts made during the last years, the number of outbreaks and food borne diseases is still high. Recent outbreaks within the European Union (e.g. L. monocytogenes in frozen vegetables) show that efforts are needed to coordinate scientific advances into decision making in order to implement new measures to increase consumer protection. Quantitative Microbial Risk Analysis (QMRA) can be applied to support food safety management. QMRA is based on a mathematical description of the microbial response during the farm-to-fork chain of the product. Its application requires an accurate characterization of uncertainty and variability, inherent to any biological process. Because of these, QMRA must follow a probabilistic approach, considering the variance of the response variables. Consequently, decisions must be made with an acceptable level of risk given the knowledge gaps. A deeper knowledge of both uncertainty and variability is a top priority in the EU, since it would allow a better application of QMRA, leading to a better safety standards for policy makers and industry. FANTASTICAL aims to develop novel approaches and tools for QMRA that can be implemented by all the stakeholders, i.e. agencies related to consumer protection (EFSA, ECDC) and industry. It will link a database of microbial responses with robust statistical functions for variance analysis and stochastic simulation in a user friendly software. This project will reach out to the potential users and provide them with hands-on, open access tools to better understand microbial variability and uncertainty, resulting in more realistic QMRA. Thus, it will lead to an improvement in consumer protection and safer products. It will also complement Dr Garre’s curriculum and provide him with soft skills required to take the next step of his scientific career towards becoming an R3 – Experienced Researcher.

Keywords: microbial risk assessment,variance analysis,databases,foodborne pathogens,food quality,biological variability,uncertainty,decision support tool
Numerical and experimental analysis of a novel thermal energy storage for a small-scale concentrated solar power plant (Small-scale CSP)

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: Denmark
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-06-01
End date: 2020-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 212194.8
EU funding (EUR): 212194.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The biggest challenge for renewable energy sources is to match the demand with the supply. By using thermal energy storage for concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, the stability, reliability, and capacity factor of the plants are improved. Conventional CSP plants typically use mirrors, which are expensive to produce, install, and maintain. Apart from that, conventional thermal storages are also expensive as these are based on molten salts, which are expensive and their handling require special materials. Based on a novel micro-structured polymer foil, Heliac, Denmark, has demonstrated cost-effectiveness of the Fresnel reflector integrated foil based CSP plants. The primary objective of “Small-scale CSP” is to design a novel thermal storage for Fresnel reflector integrated foil based CSP plants. Detailed numerical works as well as experimental demonstrations are included. The intention is to design a packed bed storage system with heat storage charging and discharging using evaporation/condensation of one or more heat transfer fluids. For the thermal storage to be designed in this project, the cost is estimated to be around 4 €/kWh which is less than half of the cost of conventional storage system using molten salt (~ 11 €/kWh). The estimated cost of electricity and heat generation from the Fresnel reflector integrated foil based CSP plant with storage (at Seville, Spain) is 38 €/MWh and 8 €/MWh, respectively. By involving research topics from different fields and collaborations with world-leading organizations from industry and academia, this is a truly inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial project, ensuring its successful completion. In broader terms, the project will contribute to the development of cost-efficient renewable energy systems, reducing the dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of the heat and power generation sector, thus helping to attain socio-economic and environmental targets in context of the EU 2020 vision.

Keywords: concentrated solar power,co generation,thermal energy storage,packed beds,organic rankine cycle
The Impacts of Economic Growth and Decline on Party Behavior (ECONPARTY)

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: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Sweden
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2021-09-01
End date: 2024-09-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 203852.16
EU funding (EUR): 203852.16
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The economy influences which parties citizens vote for. But how do parties respond to macroeconomic conditions? Despite the theoretical and normative implications on democratic representation, existing studies have yet to provide an answer. ECONPARTY addresses this lacuna by investigating how the economy influences party behavior. It begins with this idea: parties electorally disadvantaged by the economy alter their issue profiles during elections and in legislative activities, in order to reduce voters' attention on the economy. Economic growth motivates parties to differentiate their issue profiles, while decline motivates them to do the opposite (converge). ECONPARTY will first investigate how parties differentiate or converge on three types of issues – redistribution, public services, and non-economic issues such as immigration. It will then examine the impacts of sustained growth and decline on party polarization. ECONPARTY will provide a new research agenda on the political effects of the macroeconomy, and boost methodological innovation in the fields of political economy and party competition. ECONPARTY will construct two game-theoretic models of the macroeconomy's impacts on parties' electoral and legislative strategies (models 1 and 2). The models will yield testable hypotheses. It will then utilize automated content analysis to code election manifestos and legislative bills from 1960 to 2020 in 10 democracies. Large-N statistical analyses will follow. The fellowship is crucial for my becoming a professor at a European university. Under the guidance of Prof. Johannes Lindvall, I will gain 1) new research skills in political economy and public policy, 2) scientific skills in time-series models, and 3) transferrable skills in academic publishing, grant management, and public outreach. These skills will help establish my expertise in political economy and democratic representation, and help me inform the public on the economy's potential in shaping politics.

Keywords: political economy of elections,issue competition
MicroILCs: Deciphering how the gut Microbiota influences Innate Lymphoid Cells in obesity" (MicroILCs)

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: Spain
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2021-01-01
End date: 2023-04-22
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 160932.48
EU funding (EUR): 160932.48
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Obesity reaches epidemic proportions and currently represents a significant public health challenge. Curbing the prevalence of obesity is one health policy priority, whose achievement requires more effective preventive measures. A high-caloric diet and sedentary lifestyle are key determinants of obesity. The diet shapes gut microbiota composition, which may partly explain why microbiota alterations are associated with an obese phenotype in humans. These microbial alternations have been proven to contribute to energy metabolism and fat storage. This evidence has represented an unprecedented shift in the way we envision obesity management. However, translating this knowledge into microbiota modulation strategies that can be applied in the clinical setting needs a better understanding of the active players within the gut ecosystem, as well as, of the mechanisms underlying their dialog with the host. Preclinical studies show that the microbiota shapes immune responses beyond the intestine with consequences for metabolic health. This proposal aims to decipher the regulatory role of indigenous intestinal bacteria on the recently discovered innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). To achieve this goal, we will use the collection of intestinal human bacteria created in the context of the EUproject MyNewGut by the host institution, first, to identify those with ILCs stimulatory properties and second, to perform mechanistic studies in wild-type and mutant murine models of diet-induced obesity coupled to in vitro experiments with primary cell cultures. Overall, the objective of the MicroILCs proposal is to move forward in the understanding of the mechanisms whereby the gut microbiota controls the immune response to high-energy diets and affects the metabolic phenotype.

Keywords: gut microbiota,microbiome,probiotics,obesity,nutrition,immune response