Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Joint PhD Laboratory for New Materials and Inventive Water Treatment Technologies. Harnessing resources effectively through innovation (NOWELTIES)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Innovative Training Networks (ITN)-European Joint Doctorates
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Germany,Germany,Spain,Spain,Italy,Spain,Italy,Switzerland,Serbia,Croatia
Call: Innovative Training Networks (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018, 2018)
Start date: 2019-02-01
End date: 2023-01-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3422141.64
EU funding (EUR): 3422141.64
Participants: 15
Project status: CLOSED

Future challenges, including climate change and the resulting unpredictability of precipitation patterns and temporal or permanent water scarcity, generate a high diversity of demands on water treatment technologies obliging them to be able to cater towards a variety of source and target water qualities across multiple scales, depending on application. It is evident that this will generate a market pull towards the development of new water treatment technologies, employing new materials or improving the integration of existing technologies. However, the integration of research and innovation within the water sector needs to be supported by education of a new generation of interdisciplinary trained wastewater professionals able to face future challenges and implement wastewater-related directives in practice. The primary objective of NOWELTIES is to organize a platform (European Joint Doctorate) that will provide cutting edge training opportunities for the education of tomorrow`s water treatment experts. The core activity is the research programme (composed of 14 individual research projects) aimed at development of inventive water treatment technologies (advanced biological treatments, inovative oxidation processes, hybrid systems) that allow catering for the varied treatment demands for a plethora of interconnected streams arising from recycling loops. These technologies will be able to control contamination by organic micropollutants (OMPs) and improve recovery of water across a diversity of scales enabling a smart combination of decentralized and centralised approaches. Besides a holistic training in the field of wastewater treatment dealing with state-of-the-art technologies, experimental techniques and knowledge management methodologies, NOWELTIES will provide a unique training approach to learning complex complementary skills leading to independent and critical thinking which seeks for originality and innovation.

Keywords: wastewater treatment,water reuse,organic micropollutants,advanced biological treatment,advanced oxidation processes,hybrid systems,nanomaterials,nanocatalysts
Multi-Parameter Live-Cell Observation of Biomolecular Processes with Single-Photon Detector Array (BrightEyes)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Systems and communication engineering
Panel description: Electrical, electronic, communication, optical and systems engineering
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2018-COG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-09-01
End date: 2025-02-28
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1861250.0
EU funding (EUR): 1861250.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Fluorescence single-molecule (SM) detection techniques have the potential to provide insights into the complex functions, structures and interactions of individual, specifically labelled biomolecules. However, current SM techniques work properly only when the biomolecule is observed in controlled environments, e.g., immobilized on a glass surface. Observation of biomolecular processes in living (multi)cellular environments – which is fundamental for sound biological conclusion – always comes with a price, such as invasiveness, limitations in the accessible information and constraints in the spatial and temporal scales. The overall objective of the BrightEyes project is to break the above limitations by creating a novel SM approach compatible with the state-of-the-art biomolecule-labelling protocols, able to track a biomolecule deep inside (multi)cellular environments – with temporal resolution in the microsecond scale, and with hundreds of micrometres tracking range – and simultaneously observe its structural changes, its nano- and micro-environments. Specifically, by exploring a novel single-photon detectors array, the BrightEyes project will implement an optical system, able to continuously (i) track in real-time the biomolecule of interest from which to decode its dynamics and interactions; (ii) measure the nano-environment fluorescence spectroscopy properties, such as lifetime, photon-pair correlation and intensity, from which to extract the biochemical properties of the nano-environment, the structural properties of the biomolecule – via SM-FRET and anti-bunching – and the interactions of the biomolecule with other biomolecular species – via STED-FCS; (iii) visualize the sub-cellular structures within the micro-environment with sub-diffraction spatial resolution – via STED and image scanning microscopy. This unique paradigm will enable unprecedented studies of biomolecular behaviours, interactions and self-organization at near-physiological conditions.

Keywords: super resolved microscopy,sted microscopy,image scanning microscopy,fluorescence lifetime,fluorescence correlation spectroscopy,single molecule tracking,image deconvolution
PrediKSion: An evolutionary guided and experimentally validated computational pipeline to unravel new polyketide synthase functionality (PrediKSion)

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: Switzerland
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2022-01-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 191149.44
EU funding (EUR): 191149.44
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Many of the most valuable, yet complex chemicals in society are obtained from bacteria, who use giant, multimodular acyltransferase polyketide synthase (AT PKS) enzyme complexes to make these products. The modular nature of these enzymes holds the promise to engineer biosynthetic assembly lines to produce new, societally relevant products in a benign and sustainable manner. However, the chemical functionalities installed by the textbook cis-AT PKSs is mostly limited to several basic moieties. In contrast, in a second class of PKSs, trans-AT PKSs, over 150 different module types have been identified, yet with many more still uncharacterized. Initial results show that bioinformatically-guided approaches can be effective ways to assign the functionality of these uncharacterized modules, but only individual examples have been studied. To catalyze the discovery of new functionality in trans-AT PKSs, I propose PrediKSion: a comprehensive, evolution-guided and experimentally validated computational pipeline to unravel the hidden chemical functionality of unassigned trans-AT PKS modules. PrediKSion will facilitate unbiased discovery of new module functionalities by looking at the phylogeny of ketosynthases (KSs) in the PKS sequences. The high substrate selectivity in KSs reveals crucial information on chemistry installed by upstream modules and can thereby lead to the discovery of new and unexpected biosynthetic features in uncharacterized PKS modules and elusive trans-acting components. PrediKSion will be applied on the complete bacterial tree of life and achieve great impact by providing the community with a global mapping of predicted chemical functionality in trans-AT PKSs. The computational suggestions will finally be validated experimentally and the substrate scope of new PKS modules will be studied. In this way, PrediKSion will accelerate the mapping of uncharacterized PKSs and the discovery of new metabolites and potentially interesting pharmaceutical platforms.

Keywords: polyketide synthases,genome mining,evolution
Thinking pandemic societies through metaphor: Language, crisis and coronationalism in the post-Yugoslav area (CRISMET)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Spreading excellence and widening participation
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Other Widening
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Countries involved: Slovenia
Call: Widening Fellowships (H2020-WF-03-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2024-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 162040.32
EU funding (EUR): 162040.32
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Months into the Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that global society is faced with an emergency of not only health, but of social mobilisation and communication, unfolding in paths we are only beginning to discern. Emerging research suggests that the pandemic is bringing a major reframing of notions of collectivity and national belonging, where a figurative, metaphorical political rhetoric is paving ways to sweeping ‘coronationalisms’, across Europe. Certainly timely and appropriate, the academic and citizen interest in language of the crisis points to public discourse metaphoricity as a new challenge for crisis research globally. By locating the analysis in the post-Yugoslav, post-socialist area, where persisting nationalist tensions mix with pandemic discourses in complex ways, this project lays the foundations for interdisciplinary, language-driven study of crisis discourse grounded in the role of metaphor for rooting perceptions of the past, present and future. The project thus addresses objectives on two levels: (1) exploring the (re)framings of collectivity, national belonging and nationalism in the post-Yugoslav political, media and citizen discourses, and (2) introducing a multi-dimensional metaphorical methodological approach to public discourse analysis, bringing together cognitive-linguistic metaphor study and social science study of politics, history and cultural memory, as an adaptable interdisciplinary model suited to approaching discourses of crisis and social transformation. The analyses, methodology and dedication to public debate together are expected to pave the way to rethinking effective crisis communication in this and other looming crises, by drawing on our pioneering insights on the conceptual role of language in mapping the real and symbolic borders and connections of (post-)pandemic Europe.

Keywords: discourse analysis,public discourse,metaphor,ideology,nationalism
Who is that? Neural networks and mechanisms for identifying individuals (MECHIDENT)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, theoretical philosophy
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2016-COG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-07-01
End date: 2023-06-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1995677.0
EU funding (EUR): 1995677.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Our social interactions and survival critically depend on identifying specific individuals to interact with or avoid (“who is that?”). Identifying individuals can be achieved by different sensory inputs, and by many accounts any sensory input elicits a representation of an individual that somehow becomes transmodal or independent of any sensory system. However, how the brain achieves transmodal integration facilitating individual recognition remains a mystery: Investigations in humans allowing direct access to site-specific neuronal processes are generally rare and have not focused on understanding neuronal multisensory integration for person recognition. Also, animal models to study the neuronal mechanisms of related processes have only recently become known. I propose to use direct recordings of neuronal activity in both humans and monkeys during face- and voice-identification tasks, combined with site-specific manipulation of the sensory input streams into the lateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL). The ATL brings together identity-specific content from the senses but the neuronal mechanisms for this convergence are entirely unknown. My core hypothesis is that auditory voice- or visual face-identity input into key ATL convergence sites elicits a sensory-modality invariant representation, which once elicited is robust to degradation or inactivation of neuronal input from the other sense. The central aim is to test this in human patients being monitored for surgery and to directly compare and link the results with those in monkeys where the neuronal circuit and mechanisms can be revealed using optogenetic control of neuronal responses. Analyses will assess neuronal dynamics and sensory integration frameworks. This proposal is poised to unravel how the brain combines multisensory input critical for identifying individuals and cognitive operations to act upon. The basic science insights gained may inform efforts to stratify patients with different types of ATL damage.

Keywords: human,primate,identity perception,neurophysiology,mechanisms,neurons,monkey,attention,cognition
Reflexivity as capacity in EU’s border security: a contribution to theory and practice through the case of Polish Border Guard training (RefBORDER)

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: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, 2016)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2019-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 183454.8
EU funding (EUR): 183454.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Lived experience of border guards receives surprisingly little attention given the current challenges of European border security and its humanitarian aspects. The proposal sets out a plan to redress this hiatus through conducting an important policy-relevant research project that encourages reflexivity as capacity in border guard training. As a follow-up from my previous research in European security and preliminary results from studying assistance to border reform, it aims to both aid the EU’s efforts to establish a more efficient European Border and Coast Guard and foster greater humanitarian and democratic sensibilities in European border policy. In contrast to existing approaches which neglect reflective practice of actors on the ground, the project explores new empirical evidence, hones new theoretical avenues and develops participative dissemination techniques to nurture reflexivity in cooperation between scholars and practitioners. In order to do so, it studies the lived experience of Polish Border Guard (PBG) officers involved in the transformation of their service in the aftermath of EU enlargement which occurred at the intersection of receiving training from Western European border guards and providing training assistance to the Ukrainian Border Guard service. This unique situation of dual interaction triggers reflection and creates conditions for knowledge production that the project taps into. The core of the project consists in fieldwork with participants to study, make use of for participative design and inspire interpretations of shifting training methods towards installing greater reflexivity. The latter is planned as an innovative dissemination technique developed through the researcher’s training in action research and reflective teaching practice at Aberystwyth University and tested in secondment with a local border guard facility to contribute to a more context-informed EU border security policy.

Keywords: international political sociology,border studies,transnational politics,reflexivity
Adaptive Immunity in Human Atherosclerosis: Understanding its Cellular Basis to Define Novel Immunomodulatory Therapies (ANIMATE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Panel description: Organ and tissue physiology, comparative physiology, physiology of ageing, pathophysiology, interorgan and tissue communication, endocrinology, nutrition, metabolism, interaction with the microbiome, non-communicable diseases including cancer (and except disorders of the nervous system and immunity-related diseases)
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2019-STG, 2019)
Start date: 2020-01-01
End date: 2024-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499946.25
EU funding (EUR): 1499946.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Atherosclerosis is a chronic immune disease of arteries that causes vessel-narrowing atherosclerotic plaques. Its acute complications, myocardial infarction and stroke, are the leading causes of death worldwide. Atherosclerosis is accompanied by an inflammatory and autoimmune response with CD4+ T-helper cells that recognize self-antigens, including ApoB-100 (ApoB), the main protein in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Although their existence has been inferred from indirect evidence, the existence and function of atherosclerosis-specific, self-reactive CD4+ T cells on a single-cell level remains elusive. In particular, it is unclear whether these are pro- or anti-inflammatory. Preliminary data suggest the existence of a natural pool of ApoB-reactive T-helper cells that share properties with atheroprotective T-regulatory cells but transform into pathogenic T-effector cells in the natural course of disease. This proposal aims to explore this loss of protective immunity on a cellular and function level. It employs novel tools to detect antigen-specific T cells in vivo by MHC-II multimers, mass cytometry (CyTOF), single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq), lineage-tracing mouse models, and live cell imaging. Based on the anticipated findings, this study will define a map of auto-reactive T-helper cell phenotypes in a temporal, spatial, and functional dimension. These insights will be used to identify novel immunomodulatory strategies to therapeutically stabilize the population of protective ApoB-specific T-helper cells, or to prevent their transformation into pathogenic T cell phenotypes by adoptive cells transfers, vaccination, or cytokine-blockade. In clinical association studies, a direct correlation of auto-immunity and clinical atherosclerosis will be tested. This proposal will decipher traits of protective immunity in atherosclerosis and help to build the conceptual framework to define novel therapeutic strategies for patients.

Keywords: atherosclerosis,inflammation,adaptive immunity,apob,t cells,vaccination,immunomodulation
Structural and functional studies of enterovirus 2C proteins: promising targets for antiviral therapy. (EV-2C)

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: Netherlands
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018, 2018)
Start date: 2019-04-01
End date: 2021-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175572.48
EU funding (EUR): 175572.48
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The enterovirus (EV) genus comprises many important human pathogens including poliovirus, coxsackieviruses, EV-A71, EV-D68 and rhinoviruses. These viruses are responsible for a wide array of diseases ranging from mild to life-threatening, such as neonatal sepsis and paralysis. There are hundreds of enteroviruses, and vaccination to all of these is not a viable option. As such, there is an urgent requirement for effective broad-spectrum antivirals. Enterovirus genomes comprise a positive-sense ssRNA genome which encodes four structural proteins (VP1--4) and seven non-structural proteins (2A--C, 3A--D). The non-structural proteins 2B, 2C and 3A cooperatively hijack host cell proteins and alter host cell membranes and lipid homeostasis to generate membranous replication organelles, which serve as platforms for genome replication and virion morphogenesis. The 2C protein is a particularly attractive target for the development of antivirals due to its high level of sequence conservation. 2C is an AAA+ ATPase with many proposed functions within the virus lifecycle including helicase activity, reorganisation of cellular membranes and encapsidation. Several structurally disparate drugs target 2C on the basis that resistance mutations map to this protein; however, the molecular basis of their effect on 2C is not understood. This project has two main objectives: 1. Determine the high-resolution structure of the functional hexameric 2C and inhibitor/ligand complexes by cryo-electron microscopy. 2. Use cryo-electron tomography to characterise the interactions 2C makes with viral and host proteins within ex-vivo and in situ replication organelles. Understanding the organisation of 2C within replication organelles will shed new light on its role in the enterovirus life cycle, and the high-resolution structure of 2C will serve as a long sought-after search template for structure-based drug design of urgently-needed anti-enteroviral drugs.

Keywords: enteroviruses,antivirals,cryo em,cryo et,aaa atpase,virus replication,infectious disease,human pathogens,virus host interactions,rhinovirus,coxsackievirus,poliovirus