Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
The Location of Economic Activity in Space: An Intra-city Approach (LOCATE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 166336.2
EU funding (EUR): 166336.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This 24-month project aims at providing a comprehensive picture of the location determinants of different activities that make part of the productive system of modern metropolises, and advancing the current knowledge on how agglomeration effects operate in large cities in developing countries. It involves the mobility of the main researcher, who has been based at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands for the past seven years, to the Universitait Rovira i Virgili in Spain, under the supervision of professor Arauzo-Carod. The transfer of knowledge will happen through training-through-research activities in the area of empirical estimation of location models within the activities of the Research Centre on Industrial and Public Economics. It also involves the transferring of skills in complementary activities, including project management tasks, teaching and supervision, building collaborative networks and participating in conferences and seminars. The work plan is structured around the production of two high-quality journal publications, a six-month research visit to the London School of Economics, complementary activities at the host institution and three outreach activities. As a project based on genuine mobility within Europe, it is expected to have a considerable impact in the career prospects of the applicant through complementing her existing theoretical and empirical expertise and helping her to establish a solid academic international network. The project will contribute to the European excellence and European Research Area competitiveness through the creation of lasting collaborations between researchers in Spain, The Netherlands and the UK.

Keywords: location models,econometrics,urbanization,development economics,cities
Understanding the physico-chemical basis of transdermal drug delivery using nanomaterials (NANOLEM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 231283.2
EU funding (EUR): 231283.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Drug delivery transport across the cell membrane involves many biological processes. It is complex and dynamic in nature. In this regard, model lipid membranes which mimic many aspects of cell membrane lipids, are a very useful membrane model. It has been shown that physical characteristics of drug delivery nanoparticles such as polarity and surface charge can significantly influence their interactions with lipids. A clear understanding of the interactions of lipids with drug delivery systems and their transport mechanisms is required to enable the design of an efficient and biologically compatible drug delivery vehicle. The aim of this project is to focus on the physico-chemical understanding of the relationships between the structure of the nanoparticles and their penetration and efficiency as a drug delivery vehicle. In this research, we wish to clarify the mechanisms involved in the interactions between nanogels and dermal membranes and find out how these are influenced by physico-chemical conditions and the morphology of the nanogels. The outcome of this research would aid the design of the next generation of dermal delivery systems and also contribute to the risk assessment of skin exposure to nanoparticles. The scientific challenges to be investigated in this project will focus on the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of interaction between organic nanomaterials and biological barriers, in particular skin. The project will benefit from the combination of high level experimental facilities available in the Host Institute and the longstanding expertise of the group in the development of novel functional nanomaterials for drug delivery applications as well as experience in the area of understanding the biological processes and potential drug targets (by means of e.g. neutron scattering and reflectivity) with the knowledge and experience acquired by the applicant on nanoparticle synthesis, their physico-chemical characterization and interactions.

Keywords: nanogels,biological barriers,transport mechanism
Characterization of maternal microbiota-dependent imprinting of the neonatal immune system (MICROBIOTA-NEONATE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-03-01
End date: 2016-02-29
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 199317.6
EU funding (EUR): 199317.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Humans live in a mutual beneficial relationship with the commensal microbiota that colonize the epithelial surfaces of the body. The remarkable impact of commensal microbiota on the mucosal and systemic immune system has become apparent during the last years. It is now believed that changes in the composition of the intestinal microbiota as a consequence of “Western” lifestyle, significantly contribute to the rising incidence of autoimmune and allergic diseases. There is evidence that exposure to certain microbes during early childhood or even to the maternal microflora in utero are important factors in shaping the health of the neonate/infant. The objective of this project is to understand the molecular mechanism into how signals originating from maternal microbiota can shape fetal and neonatal immunity. Using a model of transient colonization of pregnant mice kept under germ-free conditions, we have discovered a beneficial effect of maternal microbiota on the immune system of the offspring. Importantly, mice born from transiently colonized mothers exhibited higher numbers of innate lymphoid cell populations in the intestine compared to offspring from untreated germ-free mothers. We suggest two approaches to depict how and by which route the maternal microbiota calibrates the immune system of the offspring. Besides increased appearance of allergic diseases in children in developed countries, neonate and child mortality from infectious diseases are still very high in developing countries. Thus, the improvement of neonatal immunity is an important goal. Our research will contribute to the development of new therapeutic tools to reduce child mortality as well as for the prenatal prevention of chronic inflammatory and allergic diseases.

Keywords: host-commensal mutualism,commensal microbiota,germ-free,reversible colonization,neonatal immunity,innate lymphoid cells
Synthesis of small molecules and evaluation of their biological activity: discovery of new protein-protein interaction inhibitors (DOS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-03-05
End date: 2017-03-04
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

(1) Goal The project goal is to exploit diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) to discover protein-protein interaction (PPI) inhibitors of gankyrin-S6 complex. (2) Topic Vital cellular functions are all regulated by protein complexes. In order for a complex to work correctly, interactions among its subunits must have the right intensity. If they are too weak or too strong, the complex does not work well, causing disease. Thus, modulation of PPIs offers a strategy for therapy. Gankyrin is a protein that forms a complex with the S6 subunit of ATPase in 26S proteasome. This complex is overexpressed in hepatocellular and oesophageal cancers, so its inhibition would offer a strategy for the treatment of such diseases. Unfortunately, the development of PPI modulators is challenging, mainly because the libraries of compounds used for biological screening have a limited structural diversity and a low probability to contain an active compound. A new synthetic strategy is necessary to solve this problem. (3) Significance DOS affords the highest structural diversity in compound libraries, maximising the chances to find an active molecule. PPI inhibitors of gankyrin could become the first drugs against oesophageal and hepatic cancers, for which no pharmacological treatment exist. (4) Methods The project will involve four steps: 1) structure-guided design of gankyrin ligands; 2) their chemical synthesis; 3) test of their inhibitory properties on gankyrin and 4) structural characterization of the protein-inhibitor complex. The process will be iterative: based on biological results, new compounds will be designed and synthesized. (5) Impact The development of drugs against two incurable diseases would have a benefit for millions of people. The fellowship will provide the researcher with new knowledge and skills in computational chemistry and biophysics, it will boost his academic career and will lead to a long-term collaboration between researcher and host institution.

Keywords: diversity-oriented synthesis,protein-protein interaction,small molecules,oesophageal cancer,hepatic cancer
Online Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Generators and Power Converters (OHMWIT)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Outgoing Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 273196.6
EU funding (EUR): 273196.6
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal is a 24-month Marie Curie IOF scheme which involves a British experienced researcher to undertake a training-through-research project on the development of cutting-edge wind turbine health monitoring technologies in liaison with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Dr Wenping Cao has been conducting original research into electrical machines and power electronics at QUB, and has established an excellent track record. MIT is a world-leading research institution in the field with an international reputation of technological innovation, enterprise participation, and knowledge transfer. This project will integrate a novel online condition monitoring system into the wind turbine drive train to detect incipient electrical winding and bearing faults in the generators (e.g. doubly-fed induction generators and permanent magnet synchronous generators), and to estimate failure/ageing conditions of power electronic devices (e.g. insulated-gate bipolar transistors, silicon carbide metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and DC-link capacitors). It will help the EU to tackle climate change and contribute to the EU’s economy by developing next-generation resilient wind turbine systems and significantly widening the competences of the fellow to reach his professional maturity with interdisciplinary expertise and complementary skills unique to the ERA. It is timely because: (i) there is a pressing need for reliable and cost-effective condition monitoring technologies for wind turbines, especially for those large ones installed in offshore environments; (ii) the applicant is leading the development of QUB’s teaching and research activities in wind energy and the highest quality training under supervision of internationally leading scientists is indispensable for his career development which will in turn benefit the UK and the EU.

Keywords: ageing,condition monitoring,dfigs,electrical machines,faults,harmonic injection,igbts,permanent magnet synchronous generators,physics of failure,power converters,silicon carbide,wind power
COgnitive Radio Platform and Algorithms (CORPA)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Outgoing Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-01-01
End date: 2017-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 372029.9
EU funding (EUR): 372029.9
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ICT industry is faced with a global challenge: develop new services with improved QoS, high QoE, and reduce its environmental impact. Clearly, there is a deep need of global efficiency, in the spectral domain, in the energy domain, and in the design of the radio. Indeed, wireless technology is rapidly proliferating into all aspects of computing and communication. The explosion of wireless applications and new services creates a very huge demand for more spectrums. However, most easily usable spectrum bands have been statically allocated. These considerations have motivated the research for breakthrough radio technologies. Cognitive radio system (CRS) offers the promise of being just this disruptive technology innovation. Although the theoretical research for CRS is blooming, hardware design is progressing at a much slower pace. A key bottleneck in CR continues to be the flexible radio frequency (RF) transceiver consuming very low power, which can easily be integrated with baseband processing. Another challenge is that cognitive algorithms and techniques should take into account the implementation constraints and requirements. Addressing these three main challenges is the motivation of this project. We propose to design, develop, and demonstrate the reception part of a CR platform that facilitates the realization of RF front-end functions for military and commercial communications systems. This CR receiver will be very power-efficient. We also propose enabling interference cancellation techniques and secure cooperative sensing algorithms, which will be implemented in this CR platform. It removes the need for custom-designed RF transceivers for each radio system. Moreover, this re-configurability allows upgrades to future standards and technologies in the field. This will be a disruptive technology; a nowadays-missing pillar of CRS, for the deployment of mesh and ad-hoc cognitive radio networks both for military and commercial applications.

Keywords: cognitive radio,software defined radio,spectrum sharing,cognitive radio resource management,interference cancellation,agile frequency receiver,sigma delta receiver,rf-fpga,low power.
Mapping the Dark Web of the Cosmos (WEBMAP)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-02-09
End date: 2017-02-08
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

With this research project we propose a full morphological analysis of clusters of galaxies and the cosmic web itself, based on very high resolution maps of the dark matter distribution in these structures. Those maps will be derived by means of gravitational lensing and other tracers of the dark matter distribution like temperature maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background. This analysis will go far beyond the usual simplifications made in the characterisation and classification of structure, like azimuthally averaged, 1-dimensional functional forms of the density profile or the sole use of 2-point correlation functions in astrophysical data. The cosmic web is the global, filamentary structure of the Universe with clusters of galaxies sitting at the intersects of this network. We will produce high-resolution maps of this web using wide-field galaxy redshift surveys and analyse its morphology, including its most prominent structures, clusters of galaxies, which are particularly interesting tracers of structure formation since they are the latest structures to form in the current paradigm of cosmological structure formation. All cluster mass components, the dominant dark matter, hot X-ray emitting intra-cluster gas and the small fraction of mass sitting in luminous stars are directly or indirectly observable through optical, X-ray, lensing or Sunyaev Zel'dovich observations. This morphological characterisation will be carried out with the techniques of mathematical morphology and include Minkowski functionals. By comparing to a large set of numerically simulated data, we aim to distinguish different models of dark matter including cold, warm and self-interacting dark matter. This is possible since the morphology of structure changes significantly in those different formation scenarios. Our analysis will use data from the cluster surveys CLASH and the Frontier Fields, from the wide-field surveys CFHTLenS and KiDS and will path the way for the Euclid mission.

Keywords: astrophysics,astronomy,cosmology,large scale structure of the universe,gravitational lensing,wide-field surveys,euclid mission,numerical simulations,morphological analysis,statistics
Rare Earth Metal Separation with Ionic Liquids (REMSIL)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2015-02-01
End date: 2017-01-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 231283.2
EU funding (EUR): 231283.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

REMSIL (Rare Earth Metal Separation with Ionic Liquids) focuses on the design and development of novel technologies based on task specific ionic liquids (TSILs), solid-supported-ionic liquids (SSILs) and ionogel membranes for the separation and recovery of high-tech rare earth metals (REMs).With the current demand for these high-tech metals and their severely limited supply in the EU, their recycling has become vital. Separation and recovery of REMs from secondary sources (“urban mining”) has become a necessity. Ionic liquids have great potential as alternative and environmentally benign solvents for high-tech metal extraction, separation and processing. In the first stage, novel task specific ionic liquids (TSILs) with specific REM coordinating abilities will be synthesised. Model systems for technologically important REM separations will be evaluated, to demonstrate significantly improved separations for these systems over conventional solvents.Understanding the principles governing solubility of rare earth in ionic liquids is of vital importance for extraction processes and will be studied using a combination of spectroscopic techniques. These results feed back into the design of improved TSILs. In the third stage, solid supported ionic liquids (SSILs) will be developed to evaluate their potential for REM separations in industrial-scale processes. The potential of novel TSILs with specific coordinating abilities for rare earth metal extraction and separation, including fundamental studies to improve understanding of the underpinning extraction mechanisms will be explored. The objective is to develop a new generation of cost-efficient and environmental friendly ionic liquids that will pave the way to develop new rare earth metal separation technologies. Dr Ritesh Ruhela will transfer knowledge in the design and synthesis of rare-earth metal selective ionic liquids and in metal separation technologies to the Host Institute, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

Keywords: task specific ionic liquid,solid supported ionic liquid,ionogel membranes,rare earth metals,separation,recovery,dissolution,speciation,spectroscopic techniques,exafs,secondary resources.
Comparative Study And Mechanisms Of Calcification Heterogeneity In Atherosclerotic Plaques (CALTHERO)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IIF, 2013)
Start date: 2014-07-01
End date: 2016-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 194046.6
EU funding (EUR): 194046.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Arterial calcifications, like those seen in patients with atherosclerosis, contribute to morbidity and are predictors of premature death. Despite exposure to the same cardiovascular risk factors, previous studies have demonstrated the concept of the heterogeneity of atheroma according to the arterial beds. These differences have a major clinical impact on the occurrence of cardiovascular events (embolism, thrombosis, dissection, restenosis), and recurrence of the disease. The host laboratory recently showed that plaque heterogeneity was notably associated with a difference in calcification burden. Further classification distinguished amorphous from cartilage or even bone structures in the affected vasculature. This process remains poorly understood. This project aims to identify cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the arterial calcification heterogeneity, by first fully characterizing the lesions in various vascular beds and by associating specific features of the plaque with calcification content. I will also test in vitro the contribution of endothelial cells (EC) and pericytes in vascular cells mineralization and calcification. In particular, I will assess the ability of EC and pericytes to alter macrophage and smooth muscle cell differentiation towards an osteoblast-like cell phenotype. The role of specific molecular pathways (RANK/RANL/OPG...) will be also tested functionally. To further analyze this process in vivo, I will generate double KO mice developing accelerated calcification in lesions and use in vivo fluorescence imaging to monitor plaque formation and calcification over time. Finally, I will assess the predictive clinical impact of the nature of the plaque on intra-stent restenosis in patients following OCT and serial duplex ultrasound imaging. Altogether, this project should greatly contribute to the characterization of the molecular basis of arterial calcification and the difference in bone metabolism in various vascular beds.

Keywords: calcification,atherosclerosis,vascular beds,vascular heterogeneity,intra-stent restenosis,pericyte,endothelial cell,macrophage,molecular imaging