Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
An unstructured data platform for financial institutions to accelerate investment research and reduce operational costs by expanding data processing capabilities with a specialised model (OrbitDataStudio)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Other destinations
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: EIC Accelerator 2024 - Short application (HORIZON-EIC-2024-ACCELERATOR-01, 2024)
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1458757.0
EU funding (EUR): 1458757.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Orbit Financial Technology Ltd (Orbit) is enhancing its Orbit DataStudio platform to address the challenge of unstructured data in the financial industry. Financial organisations often struggle to process such data efficiently, leading to decision-making based on limited information. Orbit DataStudio will offer a comprehensive platform enabling companies to access and analyze extensive data sets swiftly, promising up to 70% cost savings and 90% time reduction for data science teams. This solution aims to transform data processing and accelerate corporate growth.

Keywords: investment research unstructured data large language model
Valence band engineering of oxidation materials for cheap and sustainable solar fuel production (OMATSOLFUEL)

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: France
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2025-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 143754.0
EU funding (EUR): 143754.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Given the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels, there is a great interest in the development of solar fuels and especially solar H2. However, the production cost of solar H2 is still not yet competitive. Current strategies rely on converting water into H2 and O2, a low-value-added molecule. This is because process feasibility was based on the reduction half-reaction, with the oxidation half-reaction being secondary. In OMATSOLFUEL, the focus is shifted instead to the oxidation half-reaction. I will develop routes for the photoconversion of model glucose reactive mixtures and rich-glucose industrial mixtures. They are cheap, renewable, and could help micro industries become self-sufficient in fuels and energy. Instead of simply generating H2 and O2, the glucose will be photocatalytically converted into high-value-added molecules (e.g. arabinose or erythrose) and H2. These molecules would be highly interesting for plummeting the cost of solar H2 and replacing molecules produced by the petrochemical industry. To reach this objective I will design efficient and selective photocatalysts based on oxynitrides and novel chalcogenides structures. The main efforts will be on the electronic structure engineering by adjusting the S 3p, N 2p, O 2p, and metallic d orbitals to shift the valence band maximum and the oxidation potential of the photogenerated holes closer to the targeted glucose oxidation potentials. Powders and thin films will be synthesized by soft route methods and chemical or physical vapor deposition methods. The resulting morphology, structural and electronic properties will be characterized with the well-equipped platform of the Institut des Matériaux de Nantes (IMN), and in particular with photoelectron spectroscopy.

Keywords: chalcogenides,oxynitrides
Training network for Next generation cellular screening (NEXTSCREEN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Doctoral Networks
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Italy,France,Greece,Germany,Spain,Switzerland
Call: MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-12-01
End date: 2027-11-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2851128.0
EU funding (EUR): 2608819.2
Participants: 16
Project status: SIGNED

Biomedical screening at single-cell and bioparticles level has the potential to transform clinical diagnostics, but the research and development in this field are scattered in different disciplines: biophotonics, micromanipulation, machine learning, in vitro diagnostics, and clinical regulations are traditionally imparted in separate training programs. NEXTSCREEN aims to train and establish a network of researchers with the expertise required for the development of next-generation screening methods, based on automatic imaging and classification of samples moving along a liquid stream. The researchers have the objectives to reduce the cost and complexity of imaging flow cytometry; empower it with novel contrast mechanisms; build high-resolution automatic microscopes at the diffraction limit and beyond; develop real-time data processing tools able to detect and recognize the samples, circumventing the need for manual annotation. Using these technologies they will characterize blood cells and bioparticles, screening large cellular populations, with the goal to identify and characterize cancer biomarkers, in samples derived from liquid biopsies. The ultimate goal is to initiate the development of diagnostics tools, that could be adopted in clinical settings on a large scale, democratizing the use of automatic screening. The project brings together academic and industrial research groups, that are leading the field of imaging flow cytometry, with complementary know-how in high-resolution microscopy, high-precision microfluidics, biotechnologies, and weakly-supervised deep learning, that will facilitate the development of data-driven cells and bioparticle screening.

Keywords: cytofluorimetry,flow cytometry,light sheet fluorescence microscopy,microfluidics,optofluidics
LUMINESCENT IMPLANTS AS PORTS FOR LIGHT-BASED THERAPIES (PHOTOTHERAPORT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Pathfinder
Destination: Open to supporting projects in all areas of science, technology,...
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: Spain,Finland,Latvia,Israel
Call: EIC Pathfinder Open (HORIZON-EIC-2023-PATHFINDEROPEN-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2999840.29
EU funding (EUR): 2999840.0
Participants: 8
Project status: SIGNED

A major difficulty in developing clinically useful treatments is to deliver therapeutic action with spatiotemporal precision and pharmacological specificity. This unmet need is exemplified in (1) neuropathic pain, which is due to abnormal inflammation and/or excitability of localized somatosensory nerves, sometimes resembling sudden stabbings or electric shocks, and in (2) epilepsy, a disease characterized by seizures that are due to a transient state of synchronized firing of a localized population of cortical neurons. Inflammation can be treated with photobiomodulation (PBM) but requires localized delivery of light. These conditions can be also treated with neuroinhibitory drugs (e.g. inhibitors of sodium channels, potentiators of GABAa receptors) but their systemic adverse side effects pose limitations to their safety and efficacy, and once administered, their activity cannot be controlled. To address this issue, we will use locally emitted light, which delivers anti-inflammatory action by PBM. It also allows turning on and off the pharmacological action of photoswitchable drugs locally and on demand. To illuminate the target sites in the body, we will develop PhotoTheraPorts, light-emitting implants based on upconverting nanoparticles. Their visible light emission can be controlled remotely and noninvasively with infrared light applied externally through the tissue and bone. Their encapsulation offers high efficacy and long-term tolerability. We will also develop suitable photoswitchable drugs with anti-inflammatory and neuroinhibitory activity, and we will preclinically test the efficacy and safety of both devices and drugs. We will demonstrate preclinically a novel treatment modality to reduce inflammation and neuroinhibition locally and on demand, in well-established animal models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain (peripheral, spinal cord, brain cingulate cortex) and epilepsy (focal seizures), producing a deep impact in the management of these conditions.

Keywords: upconversion,nanoparticles,neuropathic inflammatory pain,seizure,epilepsy,photobiomodulation,photoswitchable drug,local therapy,spinal cord stimulation,neuroinhibition
Resilience-centric Smart, Green, Networked EU Inland Waterways (ReNEW)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Mobility
Destination: Safe, Resilient Transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Belgium,Norway,Netherlands,Germany,Spain,France,Ireland,Portugal,Greece,Hungary,Italy,Romania
Call: Climate resilient and environmentally sustainable transport infrastructure, with a focus on inland waterways (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D6-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2025-08-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8866068.75
EU funding (EUR): 7689022.88
Participants: 24
Project status: SIGNED

ReNEW represents a multidisciplinary group composed of 24 participants from 11 countries of the European Union capable of playing a key role in supporting the transition of IWT to smart, green, sustainable and climate-resilient sector. To achieve this, the project will build on previous results, will capitalise on cooperation opportunities with ongoing projects and initiatives and will deliver: 1. An interdisciplinary IWT Resilience and Sustainability decision-support framework incorporating innovative models for IWT infrastructure networking interdependencies linking to probabilistic risk and safety analyses and resilience quantification (Resilience Index), supporting the identification of short- and long-term measures that enhance resilience utilising SOA building blocks from Reference Projects 2. Targeted innovative infrastructure resilience and sustainability solutions building on autonomy developments and maturing green energy options; 3. A Green Resilient IWT Dataspace and generic Digital Twin providing primarily data sharing between infrastructure monitoring, RIS and traffic management and emergency systems and climate solutions; 4. Four Living Labs designed to provide exemplars from a) LLs focusing on integrated IW and hinterland infrastructure [Gent-urban, Douro- corridor, Netherlands – EU network perspectives] and a LL addressing specifically inland waterway resilience; 5. ReNEW Outreach and Upscale activities designed to maximise impact pathways.

Keywords: iww,iwt,resilience,autonomy,automation,synchromodality,green and resilient infrastructure,digital infrastructure,digital twins,data spaces,modal shift,extreme weather,climate crisis
Extracting the Human Motor Null Space from Muscles - A new framework to measure human neural activity (ECHOES)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Systems and Communication Engineering
Panel description: Electrical, electronic, communication, optical and systems engineering
Countries involved: Spain
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-10-01
End date: 2028-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499608.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499608.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

By contracting our muscles, we move and interact with the world. In turn, the activated muscles act as signal repeaters of the neural inputs they receive. Muscles do not only receive inputs determining how they need to contract (and thereby how we move), but they also receive a rich set of neural information originating in the central nervous system and traveling through nerves and muscles without directly altering motor commands. This 'motor null space' in the muscles may represent a unique opportunity to explore the human central nervous system in an unobtrusive, spatially selective, and robust way, thereby overcoming the most critical inherent limitations of currently available non-invasive neuroimaging technologies. To test this novel concept, fundamental research is needed to develop methods to extract, separate, and interpret the non-motor neural projections to human muscles. ECHOES will capitalize on recent breakthroughs in decoding the spinal outputs to muscles to develop a theoretical and experimental framework to unveil the 'motor null space' in human muscles. The project will then demonstrate the potential benefits of the extracted neural information in three scientific fields with growing societal and clinical impact: human-machine interfaces, targeted brain neuromodulation, and diagnosis of movement disorders. I expect that the project's multidisciplinary research program will further our understanding of the origin and relevance of neural signals generated by the human brain and spinal cord. This will markedly improve future research aimed to understand, use, and modulate human neural activity by providing a first-of-its-kind, minimally invasive, and robust neuroimaging technology with unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. By achieving these goals, ECHOES technology will enable the development of new applications for the clinical and industry fields.

Keywords: neural engineering biomedical engineering biosignal processing neuroprosthetics neural control of movement neural population activity brain machine interface human machine interaction
Optimization Algorithms for Split Learning (OPALS)

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: Spain
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-04-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 277249.37
EU funding (EUR): 194074.56
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

With the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence, distributed machine learning methods such as Federated Learning (FL) are becoming ubiquitous in present-day technology. In FL, devices train neural network models while data stays local. A central entity then aggregates the model updates into a global model. Split learning (SL) has been recently proposed as a way to enable resource-constrained devices to participate in this learning framework. In a nutshell, SL splits the model into parts, and allows clients (devices) to offload the largest part as a processing task to a computationally powerful helper (edge server, cloud, or other devices). Essentially, SL is a paradigm shift offering a more flexible version of FL that alleviates the load at the devices by better utilizing other available resources in the network. However, this method comes with optimization challenges since networking decisions need to be made in order to orchestrate the SL operations and overcome any communication overhead. Despite the increasing attention towards SL, current algorithms focus on minimizing the training time and improving on energy efficiency, without however bearing any performance guarantees. In order to make SL efficient, OPALS will fill this crucial gap by providing algorithms with provable guarantees. In particular, OPALS focuses on 3 main research axes. First, it studies the well-established problem of minimizing the training time, in search of the first algorithm with guarantees. Second, it seeks ways of leveraging SL to reduce the carbon footprint of distributed learning. Third, it investigates how SL could be employed in a decentralized setting in view of the increasing importance of swarm intelligence. OPALS will employ mathematical modelling and cutting-edge optimization methods to achieve these goals. As a result, OPALS will pave the way to better resource utilization, and thus, efficient SL exploitable for technological innovation.

Keywords: split learning,federated learning,decentralized learning,approximation algorithms,carbon aware algorithms
Liquid Crystals in Flow: A New Era in Sensing and Diagnostics (LCFlow)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Products and Processes Engineering
Panel description: Product and process design, chemical, civil, environmental, mechanical, vehicle engineering, energy processes and relevant computational methods
Countries involved: Türkiye
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Liquid crystals (LCs) are the delicate phases of matter that exhibit molecular order, fluidic nature and birefringent optical properties. LCs have been developed as materials suitable for energy- and label-free reporting of the chemical changes occurring at their interfaces such as the presence of biomolecular, gaseous or nano-/microscopic species, or the occurrence of the chemical or biochemical interactions/reactions involving these species. LC-water interfaces were employed in most promising sensors as a medium to facilitate the interaction of the LCs with the species. Although promising, the studies reported were limited to the stagnant LC systems, limiting their use in continuous sensing and diagnostic applications. This project is designed to open a new era in the sensing and diagnostic systems involving the use of LCs by introducing a microfluidic flow. The system of interest differs significantly from their counterparts with the introduction of LC-water interfaces that facilitates the exchange of analytical species during flow. However, the design of such system is challenging and critical understanding is required to proceed towards the next generation LCFlow platforms. We aim to design highly sensitive, dynamically tunable, and label-free LC based fluidic sensing platforms and therefore this proposal is structured to understand: 1) The effect of the presence of the "soft" interfaces and the LC interfacial anchoring on the flow regimes, and the LC director profiles, 2) The role of the type, scale, shape and the symmetry of the chemical heterogeneity at the contacting surfaces on the LC flow and configurations, 3) The dynamic influences of the changes occurring at the contact interfaces on the configuration and the optical appearance of the LC medium. The proposal is positioned at the intersection of fundamental knowledge generation and application. It is highly interdisciplinary in nature involving physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering.

Keywords: microfluidics,liquid crystals,colloids,interfacial phenomena
A coherent Raman lensless endoscope for in vivo deep brain imaging of demyelination related diseases in mice models (CORAE)

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: 2025-11-03
End date: 2027-11-02
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 226420.56
EU funding (EUR): 226420.56
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The coherent Raman endoscope (CORAE) project aims to develop a lensless endoscope for label-free in vivo deep brain imaging. In particular, the scope of the project is studying demyelination-related diseases in animal models. Myelin sheaths, lipid-rich membranes that surround the axons, are essential for speed and efficiency of propagation of electric signals in the central neuronal system (CNS). The degradation of myelin, i.e. demyelination, can lead to neurodegenerative disorders, such as multiple sclerosis. Understanding myelin dynamics in the CNS is essential to advancing both basic neuroscience and therapeutic approaches. However, current imaging techniques have been constrained by limited penetration depth and invasive procedures, preventing the study of myelin dynamics in its natural environment over time. I propose a novel solution using a multi-core fiber (MCF)-based lensless endoscope (LLEs). In LLEs, the endoscope size reduces to the size of the optical fiber itself (around 150 micrometers diameter), giving access to the deep brain with minimal disruption to surrounding tissue. The MCF design allows the use of long and flexible fibers, ensuring ease of operation of the endoscope. By using coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) imaging, this endoscope will enable label-free visualization of myelin sheaths in vivo and study their dynamics over time. The CORAE project will focus on studying mice with induced experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis - the most widely used model for multiple sclerosis research - investigating both the demyelination processes and potential therapeutic interventions aimed at promoting myelin repair. The ability to image live, awake animals over extended periods will provide unprecedented insights into disease progression and the efficacy of treatments.

Keywords: lensless endoscope,multi core fibers,coherent raman scattering,cars,imaging,myelin,multiple sclerosis