Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Characterizing opposing BNST to VTA circuits that differentially regulate motivation and individual responses to stress (MotiVTA)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Reintegration panel
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2020-09-01
End date: 2023-10-20
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 191149.44
EU funding (EUR): 191149.44
Participants: 1
Project status: TERMINATED

In our daily life, we face many challenges that create stressful situations. Some individuals experience stress as motivational drive, whereas in others, it can reduce motivation and trigger avoidance behavior. Pathological responses to stress, such as depression and anxiety, take an enormous toll on society. Despite the relevance of stress on mental health, little is understood about the neuronal circuit mechanisms that underlie the behavioral differences in stress responsivity and why some individuals are more resilient to the negative impact of stress than others. The mesolimbic dopamine system plays a major role in the stress response. Work in the host lab found that trait anxiety influences how an individual’s motivated behaviors change with stress and that the anxiety level correlates with differences in the response of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the stress-induced neuropeptide CRH. Recently, two parallel pathways from the basal nucleus of stria terminalis (BNST) to the VTA –one glutamatergic and the other GABAergic– have been identified and are thought to influence anxiety and motivated behaviors. However, solid evidence linking activity in these pathways to behavioral outcomes is lacking. The goal of this proposal is to monitor and manipulate the activity of these pathways using a combination of optogenetics, calcium imaging, and behavioral testing. I hypothesize that the glutamatergic and GABAergic BNST-VTA pathways are differentially engaged during stress. The balance between these pathways modulates dopamine release from the VTA, which then determines whether an individual would experience increased or decreased motivation in response to stress. I will first determine the natural activity pattern of VTA-projecting BNST neurons and then investigate the consequences of activation or inhibition of this circuit on motivated behaviors and the role of CRH in the modulation of this circuit using genetic tools and neuropharmacology.

Keywords: stress,motivation,mesolimbic dopamine,anxiety,behavioral adaptation
Climate change and Fossil Fuels (CLIFF)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Panel description: Political science, international relations, law
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANT (ERC-2020-ADG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-11-01
End date: 2026-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499192.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499192.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

To halt climate change, the 2015 Paris Agreement implicitly requires leaving fossil fuels (FF) underground (LFFU) and coherent financial flows. This implies stranding huge amounts of FF resources and assets (worth $16-300 trillion), affecting big investors: FF firms, shareholders (pension funds/philanthropies), debt financers (aid agencies/development banks) and governments. Research is scarce on big investors, the implications for developing countries with FF resources, and how LFFU can be equitably mobilized. Hence, CLIFF addresses the question: What is the role of big investors in leaving fossil fuels underground (LFFU), what are the North-South implications of LFFU and what measures can be taken by whom to equitably allocate and accelerate shareholder and stakeholder responsibility in energy transformation for inclusive development? LFFU has high stakes, disputed values, and urgency, so CLIFF combines institutional analysis and a theory of change for inclusive development (ICID) using a transdisciplinary, comparative case study approach. It has 4 substantive work packages: (a) a research protocol; (b) case studies on FF firms; pension funds; philanthropic foundations; aid agencies/development banks; developing countries with new FFs; (c) a geo-political analysis, and (d) an integrative analysis. CLIFF innovatively examines big investors and countries with new FF discoveries and growing vested interests in opposing climate policy implementation; and agents of change who address these vested interests (theory of change). CLIFF develops an innovative theoretical model (ICID) to analyse these actors and the changing North-South aspects, a CLIFF Interactive Atlas, and a Stranded Asset Index, co-creates equitable policy instruments; and assesses strategies of agents of change to make such climate policy instruments politically feasible and effective. Rather than ‘Building Back Better’ from the COVID-19 pandemic, CLIFF strives for Catalysing Climate-resilient Change.

Keywords: inclusive development,theory of change,stranded assets,stranded resources,institutional analysis,financial actors,fossil fuel,north south,pension funds,philanthropic foundations,export credit,development banks
Post-war trasistions in gendered perspective: the case of the North-Eastern Adricatic Region (EIRENE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The study of the human past
Panel description: Archaeology, history and memory
Countries involved: Slovenia
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2016-ADG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-12-01
End date: 2023-11-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2266067.0
EU funding (EUR): 2266067.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The EIRENE project’s purpose is to think afresh 20th-century post-war transitions by taking into account a gendered perspective. Namely, the historiographic consideration of gender thoroughly alters the understanding of social dynamics in multi-ethnic areas during the post-war transitions. They will be observed in the North-Eastern Adriatic region, an overlooked European space, marked by border redefinitions, changes of political systems, and high interethnic conflict intensity, but also by genuine cooperation among ethnic groups. The region has all the qualities of a “laboratory environment” for the study of gender positions and interrelations after World Wars I and II and after the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. The project will differ substantially from previous attempts to analyse post-war transitions in these aspects: a) longitudinal approach, comparing three post-war periods in order to detect their specifics and (dis)continuities; b) transnational approach, by overcoming nation-centric frameworks of analysis; c) by combining conceptual political and social sciences with historiography; and finally, d) by examining post-war transitions through the prism of gender. Focusing on four research-fields (politics, political violence, work, family), the project will validate innovative analytical concepts of the “inclusion-exclusion paradox” of women in post-war transitions, and women as “cross-boundary mediators”. Within the category of gender, focal attention will be given to women as they are often invisible in historical accounts and remain neglected in historicizing. By aggregating empirical sources, the project will approach the proposed subject matter by investigating the processes of identification across the lines of ethnic origin, class, generations, marital status, profession/occupation, language of use, migratory processes, etc. The project’s added value is its novel conceptual applicability to other comparable geopolitical areas.

Keywords: post war transition,gender,transnational history,north eastern adriatic,20th century
Recurrent Neural Networks and Related Machines That Learn Algorithms (AlgoRNN)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2016-ADG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-10-01
End date: 2024-03-31
Duration (months): 78.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are general parallel-sequential computers. Some learn their programs or weights. Our supervised Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) RNNs were the first to win pattern recognition contests, and recently enabled best known results in speech and handwriting recognition, machine translation, etc. They are now available to billions of users through the world's most valuable public companies including Google and Apple. Nevertheless, in lots of real-world tasks RNNs do not yet live up to their full potential. Although universal in theory, in practice they fail to learn important types of algorithms. This ERC project will go far beyond today's best RNNs through novel RNN-like systems that address some of the biggest open RNN problems and hottest RNN research topics: (1) How can RNNs learn to control (through internal spotlights of attention) separate large short-memory structures such as sub-networks with fast weights, to improve performance on many natural short-term memory-intensive tasks which are currently hard to learn by RNNs, such as answering detailed questions on recently observed videos? (2) How can such RNN-like systems metalearn entire learning algorithms that outperform the original learning algorithms? (3) How to achieve efficient transfer learning from one RNN-learned set of problem-solving programs to new RNN programs solving new tasks? In other words, how can one RNN-like system actively learn to exploit algorithmic information contained in the programs running on another? We will test our systems existing benchmarks, and create new, more challenging multi-task benchmarks. This will be supported by a rather cheap, GPU-based mini-brain for implementing large RNNs.

Keywords: recurrent neural networks,long short term memory
Development of RGD-therapeutics for cardio-metabolic disease (RGD-Diabetes)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept 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: United Kingdom
Call: ERC Proof of Concept Grant (ERC-2018-PoC, 2018)
Start date: 2019-12-01
End date: 2021-11-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In Europe, 58 million people are living with type 2 diabetes and 36 million people are at risk of developing the condition. Macrovascular disease is the commonest cause of morbidity and mortality in type 2 diabetes, yet current diabetes therapies have failed to consistently reduce cardiovascular events. In my Starting Grant, I discovered that a circulating protein, IGF binding protein-1, possesses several favourable characteristics– including insulin sensitisation, amelioration of glucose intolerance, blood pressure lowering, reduced atherosclerosis and increased vascular repair. These effects are mediated by interaction of the protein’s RGD-domain with cell-surface α5β1 integrin receptors, which increases insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in skeletal muscle cells and glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in pancreatic islets. Hence the ‘idea’ from my Starting Grant is that RGD-integrin interaction could be exploited therapeutically in diabetes. In this Proof-of-Concept grant, we will take the first step towards commercialisation of the idea by designing and testing small molecule mimics of the RGD domain of IGFBP1 as diabetes therapeutics. Using in silico modelling based on the known structures of IGFBP1 and the α5β1 integrin ectodomain, we will design a small molecule library of commercially available potential agonists. We will carry out virtual high throughput screening of the library for molecules matching the shape and electrostatic potential of the RGD domain of IGFBP1 as predicted to bind to α5β1 integrin. As contingency, we will also identify in silico ‘me-too’ analogues of known integrin ligands. We will test the best quality hits through ADME profiling and validate therapeutic activity in vitro and in vivo. At the end of the project, we anticipate we will have identified small molecule RGD mimics which can subsequently be progressed through the drug-discovery pipeline through translation grant funding or pharmaceutical industry Open Innovation schemes.

Keywords: rgd mimetics,integrin signalling,insulin resistance,diabetes
Testing and Evaluating Sophisticated information and communication Technologies for enaBling scalablE smart griD Deployment (TESTBED2)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Research and innovation staff exchange
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Austria,Germany,China,Greece,Switzerland,Romania,France,United States,Netherlands,Netherlands,United Kingdom,United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call: Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2020-02-01
End date: 2025-07-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1462800.0
EU funding (EUR): 1039600.0
Participants: 18
Project status: SIGNED

Smart grids represent an electricity network that can intelligently integrate generators, consumers and energy storage in order to efficiently deliver electricity. There is a clear consensus that smart grids can provide many innovative services – to date the EC has devoted €360,413 million to support 527 projects on developing smart grid services. Decision-making plays a vital role in these services. But the computational complexity of decision-makings could grow explosively with the size of smart grid infrastructure, the number of devices/users, or the amount of data; If this scalability issue was underestimated, smart grid services can end up with poor performance or limited function, making these services impractical to meet the needs of real-life or industrial-scale deployment. Hence, there is an urgent need to solve the research problem: to what extent the performance and function of smart grids can be maintained without having significant increase of the computational complexity when its scale is changed in terms of smart grid infrastructure size or the number of devices/users? TESTBED2 is a major interdisciplinary project that combines wisdoms in three academic disciplines - Electronic & Electrical Engineering, Computing Sciences and Macroeconomics, to address the aforesaid problem. The main focus is on developing new techniques to improve the scalability of smart grid services, particularly considering the joint evolution of decarbonised power, heat and transport systems. Moreover, new experimental testbeds will be created to evaluate scalable smart grid solutions. Overall, the main objective of this project is to coordinate the action of 13 Universities (7 in EU, 3 in US, and 3 in China) and 5 enterprises (2 SMEs and 2 large enterprises) with complementary expertise to develop and test various promising strategies for ensuring the scalability of smart grid services, thereby facilitating successful deployment and full roll-out of smart grid technologies.

Keywords: smart grid,demand response,virtual power plant
Nav4I – Precise, reliable and inexpensive navigation and localization technology for indoor environments (NAV4I)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Italy
Call: Innovative mobile e-government applications by SMEs (H2020-SMEINST-1-2015, 2015)
Start date: 2015-09-01
End date: 2016-02-29
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The overall objective of GiPStech’s NAV4I innovation project is to complete the development and start the market deployment of its proprietary technology that will provide the market with the first solution able to locate and navigate indoor with a precision of 1 meter without any requirement of new infrastructure installation. From an industrial stand-point, many are the sectors that need an effective indoor localization. In some sector indoor localization is poised to reduce costs of operations, for example allowing in healthcare to optimize the use of medical devices across a location but also finding lost or “wondering” patients in large structures; in logistics to track goods and mobile equipment; in manufacture to locate workers in the event of an accident or disaster. In other sectors indoor localization can open-up new revenue growth opportunities, for example allowing retailers to guide customers in shops and perform proximity marketing; fair organizers to finally provide visitors with a functional tool to navigate their spaces; museums to deliver smart automated guides able to optimize visitors flows.

Keywords: navigation,localization,personal safety,logistic plan,behavior analysis,tracking
Pulp and Paper Industry Wastes to Fuel (Pulp and Fuel)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Secure, clean and efficient energy
Theme: Alternative fuels and mobile energy sources
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Switzerland,Norway,Sweden,Sweden,Sweden,France,France,France,France,France,France,France
Call: Development of next generation biofuels and alternative renewable fuel technologies for road transport (H2020-LC-SC3-2018-RES-SingleStage, 2018)
Start date: 2018-10-01
End date: 2023-03-31
Duration (months): 54.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4954341.25
EU funding (EUR): 4954341.25
Participants: 14
Project status: SIGNED

The transport sector is dominated by the use of fossil fuels, and alternative fuels represent currently only 5% of fuel consumption in EU. The EU objective for the share of renewable energy in the transport sector is 10% in 2020. To achieve this goal, new advanced biofuels are needed and must be produced from alternative feedstocks. The Pulp&Fuel concept is to develop a simple and robust fuel synthesis process taking advantage of the synergy between super critical water gasification (wet gasification) and fixed bed gasification (dry gasification). For the Pulp&Fuel project, we have chosen to study the integration of the full process on a pulp mill. The developed process will take advantage of low to negative value wet and dry resources on a paper mill to add value to the overall process. The yield of biofuels will be significantly increased to 28 % compared to a classic approach that would only yield 18 %. The Pulp&Fuel final objective is to produce biofuels below 1 €/L without having a negative impact on the existing operations of the pulp mill. To achieve these goals a team of 10 partners, leaders in their field, from 4 EU-member states, will join efforts. To this end, we have defined five ambitious specific objectives: - Improve the efficiency of the dry gasification process from 70 to 80 % - Improve the carbon conversion of the wet gasification process to above 90 % - Improve fuel synthesis to obtain carbon efficiencies above 50 % (state of the art 45%) - Integration of the full process and synergy between dry and wet gasification - Integrated assessments will show that biofuels can be produced below 1 €/L Related work packages, tasks, milestones and risks are considered in order to achieve these objectives. The Pulp&Fuel project addresses the topic “liquid diesel- and gasoline-like biofuels from biogenic residues and wastes through either chemical, biochemical and thermochemical pathways, or a combination of them” of the LC-SC3-RES-21-2018 call.

Keywords: biogenic wastes,gasification,fischer trosch
Spatiotemporal, near-infrared light controlled carbon monoxide delivery for cancer immunotherapy (NIRCOThera)

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: Chemistry
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-03-01
End date: 2020-02-29
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 183454.8
EU funding (EUR): 183454.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a gaseous signaling molecule naturally produced by the human body. In recent years, CO has shown its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties and thus therapeutic potential in the treatment of inflammatory disorders and cardiovascular diseases. It is promising to exploit the modulatory effect of exogeneous CO in tumour microenvironment where inflammation and angiogenesis are the critical components of tumour progression and metastasis, which is largely unexploited. For this purpose, it is key to manipulate CO exposure in a precise dose and time-controlled manner exclusively at the tumour site. Herein, we propose to develop a new CO delivery avenue, enabling controlled CO release to tumour sites with spatiotemporal precision by using near infrared light (NIR). Specifically, the strategy consists of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) loaded with CO releasing molecules (CORMs). We have reported the development of a SWCNTs-based bifunctional system that enables intratumoural protein delivery and NIR activation, which is ready to be applied to realize controlled CO release in vivo. We plan to conjugate [ReBr3(CO)3][NEt4]2 to SWCNTs. The rhenium complex is chosen because of its stability and non-toxicity while the lipid functionalized SWCNTs have shown biocompatibility, ultrahigh tumour uptake and relatively fast clearance and excretion from the health tissues, which impart the platform promising for in vivo application. We will evaluate the stability of the platform, followed by the NIR-triggered CO release profile and then dose- and time-dependent effect on both cancer cells and tumour-infiltrating immune cells, including the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and expression of multiple genes associated with tumour progress. Furthermore, expecting increased cancer cell sensitivity to chemotherapeutics with CO treatment, we will combine the proposed strategy with current chemotherapy to eradicate tumours in animal models.