Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Network mOdel for MechAnism of epilepsy Dynamics (NOMAD)

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: Physics
Countries involved: Spain,Netherlands
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-03-01
End date: 2028-02-29
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 194074.56
EU funding (EUR): 194074.56
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Epilepsy, characterized by recurrent seizures, is one of the most common neurological diseases globally affecting around 5 per 1000 people in Europe. Yet little is known about the exact mechanism of seizure and its relationship to pathological brain structure. From the clinical perspective, proposing the optimal surgical strategies and predicting the outcomes of surgeries are difficult due to the dynamic nature of epilepsy. The NOMAD project proposes novel network models of seizure propagation based on statistical physics, aiming at understanding the mechanism of the interplay between the brain network changes and seizure propagation, and improving the optimal surgical strategies. Numerous studies have focused on characterizing the changes in the epileptic brain network via network analysis. However, due to the bias from different measurements and the arbitrariness of choices in diverse types of network analysis, there is considerable controversy in the conclusions. Recently, spreading models built on statistical physics for seizure have been proposed which are promising in predicting epileptic surgical outcomes, yet they are inefficient in surpassing clinical criteria. Integrating recent advances in statistical physics and network science, NOMAD studies the fundamental roles of inhibitory regulations and plasticity in shaping seizure dynamics, which are neglected in previous studies. I will first study the critical dynamics of seizure on a theoretical model taking into account the role of inhibitory regulations and secondly, a computational framework considering in addition the effect of plasticity via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. Lastly, I will apply the models to clinical data by predicting the seizure dynamics on brain networks constructed from clinical data and proposing optimal surgical strategies. The project will provide new insights into understanding the mechanism of epilepsy and potentially new tools to enhance epilepsy surgical outcomes.

Keywords: complex networks,brain networks,seizure dynamics,epilepsy surgery,brain dynamics,critical phenomena,statistical physics,monte carlo simulations,inhibitory regulations
Elucidating the role of RNA-binding proteins in Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infected cells during latency-reactivation switches (KSHV-RBPome)

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: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Germany,United Kingdom
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 189687.36
EU funding (EUR): 189687.36
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), an oncogenic human γ-herpesvirus, is the cause of Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), primary effusion lymphoma and multicentric Castleman's disease with no effective therapies. Like other herpesviruses, KSHV has a latent cycle with limited gene expression and a lytic cycle with expression of most viral genes and production of infectious viral particles. RNA-binding proteins (RBP) play key roles in RNA biology, including expression, export, stability, processing and translation. Previous reports showed that RBPs can function as proviral or antiviral. Viruses also express viral RBPs. There are no reports investigating the role of RBPs during infection with DNA viruses. Here we aim to determine the scope of host and viral RBPs involved in KSHV latent infection and reactivation. To do so, we will employ a multidisciplinary approach that combines cutting edge methods of molecular biology and virology with next generation technologies to discover cellular RBPs that directly interact with viral RNA and regulate KSHV infection and tumorigenesis. We expect also to discover novel viral RBPs involved in KSHV infection and pathogenesis. The outcome of this project will be a comprehensive census of RBPs with antiviral, proviral and pro-oncogenic activities. In the short-term, the knowledge obtained will facilitate the development of biotechnological applications to exploit the function of RBPs in RNA biology, including RNA visualization, expression and translation. In the long-term, the proviral RBPs could be targeted to develop host-based antivirals. Therefore, this project contributes to the EU global challenge of Health and the EU Mission Cancer. To ensure the successful outcome of this project, I will contribute with my experience in molecular virology and my supervisors will train me in system-wide profiling of RBPs and cutting-edge methods in virology, ensuring the appropriate transfer of knowledge among the participants.

Keywords: kshv rna binding proteins
Unchaining diagnostic and therapeutic tools for syphilis in pregnancy, neurosyphilis and treatment failure. (BREAKFREE-Sy)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Panel description: Medical technologies  and tools for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, therapeutic approaches and interventions , pharmacology, preventative  medicine, epidemiology and public health , digital medicine
Countries involved: Spain,United States,China
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2024-COG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2030-07-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2999975.0
EU funding (EUR): 2999975.0
Participants: 4
Project status: SIGNED

For over 50 years, the tools for diagnosing, preventing, and treating syphilis have seen minimal progress, partly due to limitations in bacterial cultivation. Existing tools were primarily drawn from research on early-stage syphilis and evidence extrapolated to severe forms of the infection, leaving important unmet needs like the lack of predictive markers for neurosyphilis and mother-to-child-transmission, limited evidence on treatments for these conditions, and challenges in monitoring treatment failure. This project aims to shift the paradigm by demonstrating that the diverse manifestations of syphilis are not merely random infections in different bodily compartments but are intricately linked to unique bacterial traits and host responses that necessitate specific tools. Our goal is to discover manifestation-specific biomarkers, repurpose antibiotics for tailored treatments, and pioneering TPA isolation methods for treatment monitoring. Taking advantage of a unique network of collaborators in areas with a high incidence of severe syphilis, I will examine how severe clinical manifestations relate to genomic variations in TPA strains and with host humoral responses. A groundbreaking pan-proteomic array will allow identifying markers linked to clinical phenotypes and it will open avenues for discovery of new antigens as vaccine candidates. Furthermore, I will exploit the established expertise of my team on drug repurposing and conducting randomized clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of alternative antibiotics to cure patients with neurosyphilis and syphilis in pregnancy. Finally, I aim to pioneer methods for the first-time isolation of TPA from patient samples and conduct antimicrobial resistance testing in treatment failures. The resulting tools will be a tremendous resource for preventing adverse outcomes like neurological sequelae, stillbirth, congenital syphilis and treatment failure, especially in low-middle-income countries where most complications occur

Keywords: neurosyphilis strains,treponema neuroinvasive adhesin,treponema circulating strains genome,treponema deep proteome,congenital syphilis in the pacific,antibiotic resistant treponema pallidum treponema outer membrane proteins,
Clusters as Shape-Shifter Ligands for Cooperative Catalysis (CLUS_COOP_CAT)

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: Chemistry
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-06-01
End date: 2027-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 276187.92
EU funding (EUR): 276187.92
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

This proposal uses synthetic chemistry to develop a novel family of sustainable catalysts based on inexpensive and abundant elements. Up to 90% of chemical products manufactured require the use of catalysts, making catalysts crucial to how all modern commodities are made, from pharmaceuticals and pesticides to electronics and plastics. Catalysts often rely on the reactivity of expensive and rapidly depleting metals, such as Rh, Ir, and Pt. First-row transition metals (e.g., Fe, Ni) and main group elements (e.g., B, Al) are sustainable alternatives with costs up to 10 000 times cheaper. Individually, they are not competitive, but these elements can cooperate to create systems that are greater than the sum of their parts. We will build cooperative catalysts with these elements anchored on dynamic clusters, a fresh approach that will overcome barriers in the field. Three objectives will be met: -Synthesize a new family of cooperative catalysts with main group and 3d metal moieties anchored onto dynamic cluster platforms. -Catalyze two high-value synthetic transformations: olefin functionalization and CO utilization. - Understand the mechanism of catalytic transformations and cluster dynamics. This cohesive and innovative project provides synthetic science with novel tools to make everyday molecules, and feeds into the European Commissions’ priority area ‘A European Green Deal’. Dr Wenger has an outstanding track-record for his early career stage and a rapidly growing international reputation. He has demonstrated the necessary skills to deliver this project in a timely manner, and with the support of a MSCA fellowship, he will gain additional valuable skills in catalytic and kinetic science, spectroscopy, and computational chemistry, while building robust long-term collaborations across Europe. This fellowship will be a launchpad in Dr Wenger’s academic and personal development, and be instrumental in allowing him to establish his own independent research career.

Keywords: main group chemistry,zintl chemistry
ALTERNATIVE PROCESSES AND EQUIPMENT FOR ADVANCED MANUFACTURING OF PV TECHNOLOGIES TO BOOST THE EUROPEAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE (EMPOWER)

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: Norway,Lithuania,Belgium,Sweden,France,Germany,Romania,Switzerland,Spain
Call: Alternative equipment and processes for advanced manufacturing of PV technologies (HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-01, 2024)
Start date: 2024-12-01
End date: 2028-05-31
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 14387177.5
EU funding (EUR): 12012902.65
Participants: 25
Project status: SIGNED

The EMPOWER project will develop alternative equipment and processes to advance PV manufacturing, tackling the bottlenecks across the entire value chain-from Si wafer production to PV module fabrication-. Our goal is to reduce Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and Operating Expenditure (OpEx), leading to a lower Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) in Europe. We aim to enhance throughput, yield, sustainability, and decrease energy and raw material consumption. We will demonstrate the high-quality N-type Si wafers production using direct wafering tools, bypassing the traditional PolySi, ingot, and sawing process, contributing to cost reduction, minimizing waste production CO2 footprint. This innovative wafering technology will revolutionize the traditional wafer process, revitalizing Europe's PV upstream industry. Simultaneously, we will demonstrate alternative metallization processes for solar cells to reduce silver (Ag) consumption, high-throughput edge passivation to mitigate power loss during cell cutting, and high-speed interconnection and lamination to meet flexibility requirements in diverse cell and module configurations. The emphasis is on advancing N-type Si-based high-efficiency solar cell technologies, prioritizing low carbon footprint production, with an opportunity to compete with the Chinese PV industry. Leveraging Industry 4.0 implementation, EMPOWER aims to enhance production efficiency, improve PV production quality, and further reduce production costs. The project includes a demonstration of a virtual vertically integrated PV production line, along with the development of business cases and market introduction strategies. Through close collaboration in a multidisciplinary and multiactor approach including a solid exploitation and business development strategy, EMPOWER will not only achieve low-cost European PV manufacturing, but also bring Europe back to the leadership in the PV sector.

Keywords: pv manufacturing,alternative,high throughput,lower capex,lower opex,yield,co2 footprint,industry 4 0,quality control,demonstration,equipment,process,epitax
Artificial Intelligence for Traffic Safety between Vehicles and Vulnerable Road Users (VeVuSafety)

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: Netherlands
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2024-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 187624.32
EU funding (EUR): 187624.32
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Traffic safety is the fundamental criterion for vehicular environments and many artificial intelligence-based systems like self-driving cars. There are places, e.g., intersections and shared spaces, in the urban environment with high risks where vehicles and vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists directly interact with each other. By advancing starte-of-the-art artificial intelligence methodologies, this project VeVuSafety aims to build a privacy-aware deep learning framework to learn road users’ behaviour in various mixed traffic situations for the safety between vehicles and VRUs. VeVuSafety proposes a 3D environment model based on 3D point cloud for privacy protection — private information like license plates and face is anonymized. Then, within this environment model, an end-to-end deep learning framework using camera data will be built for multimodal trajectory prediction, anomaly detection, and potential risk classification based on deep generative models such as Variational Auto-Encoder. Additionally, an active privacy mechanism will also be adopted by application of the differential privacy mechanism to help the deep learning models prevent model-inversion attack. Moreover, the framework’s generalizability will be investigated by exploring the Normalizing Flows approach for domain adaption. The framework’s performance will be validated at different intersections and shared spaces using real-world traffic data. Besides road user safety and privacy, VeVuSafety can help traffic engineers and city planners to better estimate the design of traffic facilities in order to achieve a road-user-friendly urban traffic environment. Furthermore, the success of VeVuSafety will enhance the fellow’s scientific knowledge and project management skills to become an artificial intelligence expert for traffic safety and Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Keywords: deep learning traffic safety vulnerable road users trajectory prediction deep generative models anomaly detection data protection
The ultrastable state of metallic glasses and its role in the structural pathway of ageing (PathAge)

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: Physics
Countries involved: Germany,Switzerland
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2024-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 189687.36
EU funding (EUR): 189687.36
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

What are the structural characteristics of ultrastable metallic glasses? The recently discovered ultrastable state of metallic glasses (MGs) exhibits a variety of thermodynamic stability levels in combination with an enhanced kinetic stability. As a hypothesis, observed levels of excess enthalpy originate from faster relaxation contributions that are locally embedded in an otherwise stable structure. Such features remind strongly of novel MG-states of structurally heterogeneous glasses that were recently reported by experiments on conventional MGs and molecular dynamics simulations. The aim of the PathAge project is to test the hypothesis in terms of the ultrastable MG’s relation to these novel structural states. This builds on quantifying the evolution of the ultrastable state in response to thermal stimulus by tracing the structural transformation towards the supercooled liquid or eventual crystallization. Three possible mechanistic routes will be considered: First, a front-initiated process as observed for ultrastable molecular glasses. Second, a homogeneous structural evolution triggered by fast relaxation contributions. Third, a transformation involving an underlying phase transition of a heterogeneous glass state. In order to distinguish between the proposed transformation scenarios, the following novel experimental approaches will be used in addition to traditional methods: The so-called single-parameter-ageing formalism known from the field of molecular glasses, which will allow for predicting and testing the homogeneous ageing scenario. Surface sensitive methods that probe nanoscale heterogeneities revealing the formation of structurally heterogeneous glassy states. Spatially resolved electron diffraction combined with atomistic simulations to identify preferred local structural motifs. In concert, these approaches will significantly enhance the understanding of the unique ultrastable MG-state, thereby unlocking potential for novel applications of MGs.

Keywords: metallic glass ultrastable glass amorphous materials physical ageing
Nonequilibrium Topological States in Quantum Materials (TopQMat)

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: Physics
Countries involved: France
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 226420.56
EU funding (EUR): 226420.56
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Discovering routes to guide materials into desired phases through so-called topological phase transitions is one of the goals in modern condensed matter physics. The properties and invariants of topological materials are strongly related to the existence or breaking of certain symmetries, and by using external perturbations, topological phase transitions can be induced. However, ultrafast nonequilibrium processes hold the potential to revolutionise the manipulation of topology in quantum materials. TopQMat is an ambitious project which aims to drive ultrafast topological phase transitions in quantum materials and measure the associated modification of topological character of their electronic band structure with angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy. More specifically, the focus is (i) to develope innovative measurement techniques to probe the topological character of energy bands (Berry curvature, orbital pseudospin texture, Bloch wavefunction) using time-, angle-, and polarization-resolved multidimensional photoemission spectroscopy, under non-equilibrium conditions, (ii) throught femtosecond laser pulses, employ impulsive excitation of coherent phonon modes to periodically alter the symmetry of the lattice, to induce ultrafast out-of-equilibrium topological phase transition, and (iii) study and induce Floquet-Bloch engineering of topological states in optically driven quantum materials, aiming to identify the conditions and microscopic mechanisms that enable their creation with non-trivial topological characteristics. This project will push the boundaries of current knowledge on topological matter and ARPES measurements.These aspects are crucial for understanding the behaviour of materials and their electronic properties. By employing cutting-edge techniques and methodologies the project seeks to unravel the nature of local topology in the electronic structure during out-of-equilibrium topological phase transitions.

Keywords: topological materials,topological phase transitions,quantum materials,arpes,ultrafast dynamics,nonequilibrium phases