Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Limiting factors of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) regeneration: Resilient populations, or extinction debt? (FECUND)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Destination: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Poland,United States
Call: ERA Fellowships (HORIZON-WIDERA-2024-TALENTS-02, 2024)
Start date: 2026-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 179006.16
EU funding (EUR): 179006.16
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Climate change is increasingly threatening European forests, yet we lack fundamental knowledge on a key determinant of resilience, namely regeneration. Without this knowledge, we risk overlooking populations at risk of collapse, unable to regenerate, recolonise after disturbance, or migrate. The FECUND fellowship addresses this challenge, and is particularly timely; we are witnessing sharp declines in viable seed supply in a cornerstone species, European beech (Fagus sylvatica), but its effects on regeneration outcomes remain unknown. The primary objective of ‘FECUND’ is to understand the interactions between climate conditions, seed viability, and seedling recruitment in European beech across different climates. FECUND will pursue four specific research objectives: 1) assessing how climate affects beech fecundity and viable seed production, 2) exploring the trade-offs between seed number and size (and quality) across climates, 3) evaluating the impact of seed supply on seedling recruitment, and 4) predicting future species distribution through dynamic forest modelling. These objectives will be met through an interdisciplinary approach, leveraging a European-wide network of researchers and a secondment at Ohio University to integrate empirical data into predictive models. The project is highly relevant to Horizon Europe, which emphasises the need for research that enhances forest resilience in the face of climate change. By providing critical insights into the factors that drive forest regeneration, FECUND will contribute to the development of more effective forest management practices and conservation strategies, and help safeguard the future of Europe’s beech forests. For the fellow, this project offers a unique opportunity to gain expertise in ecological modelling, advanced statistical analysis, and interdisciplinary collaboration, ultimately positioning her as a future leader in forest ecology and biogeography.

Keywords: masting,fecundity,recruitment,fagus sylvatica,forest,regeneration,demography,dynamic vegetation model,forest ecology,seed production
Systematic Micro- and Nanoplastics Assessment and Risk Evaluation of Their Toxicity on the Brain (SMART)

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,United States
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 276187.92
EU funding (EUR): 276187.92
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) have recently been detected in human brain tissues, raising significant concerns about their potential role in brain health. However, there remains a critical gap in understanding how MNPs enter the brain, whether they can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and the mechanisms involved in their interaction with brain tissues. Current studies have been limited by the absence of suitable BBB models and advanced analytical techniques.This project aims to address this gap by developing a novel BBB-on-a-chip model, combining advanced MNP analytical, labeling, quantification and mapping techniques, to systematically investigate these interactions. It will explore whether MNPs can penetrate the BBB, elucidate the mechanisms of translocation, and assess the biological impacts of MNPs on brain health, with a focus on long-term risks related to cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases. Secondments at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) will focus on advanced MNP labeling and quantification techniques, while secondments at SynVivo (SYN) will involve developing the BBB-on-a-chip model, introducing cutting-edge 3D modeling capabilities. These secondments will provide critical expertise and resources, ultimately expanding the scope and impact of the research. The fellow will gain valuable skills in chip model development, material labeling, and toxicological risk assessment, which will enhance his future career prospects in interdisciplinary environmental health research.

Keywords: microplastic,nanoplastics,toxicity,biocorona
Re-Engaging with Neighbours in a State of War and Geopolitical Tensions (RE-ENGAGE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Theme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Destination: Innovative Research on Democracy and Governance
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Norway,Germany,Czechia,Italy,Bulgaria,Serbia,Albania,Bosnia and Herzegovina,Ukraine,Georgia,Moldova, Republic of,Sweden
Call: Political perspectives for the Eastern Neighbourhood and the Western Balkans (HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2982125.0
EU funding (EUR): 2982125.0
Participants: 12
Project status: SIGNED

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has responded by re-engaging with its neighbours. This builds on the assumption that bringing them into the European family of liberal democracies will increase the resilience of the whole European community against external negative interference. Combining insights from a variety of academic fields, RE-ENGAGE will deliver innovative research and concrete advice on how the EU should adapt its foreign policy tools to the current context. Russia’s war against Ukraine has radically altered European security, not only causing extreme civilian suffering in Ukraine, but posing a direct threat to neighbouring countries fearful of the war spreading. Confronted by the direst security crisis in decades, EU policymakers are forced to fundamentally rethink their security policies. Europe has demonstrated unexpected unity and resolve, adopting a series of sanctions against Russia, and increasing national defence spending to better handle potential military threats. This has also led to a revival of EU enlargement process. While this will not improve EU resilience to military threats in the narrow sense, it may counter hybrid warfare, which is the more likely threat faced by the EU and most of its neighbours. The neighbourhood policy and the accession process require urgent adjustment to build strong, resilient neighbourhood states capable of countering external threats, particularly those posed by hybrid warfare. A systematic investigation of how this can be achieved in the current context without compromising the EU’s values and security is therefore needed. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, there have been increasing calls from the EU for a more context-sensitive approach to its neighbours. RE-ENGAGE will assist the EU in determining how best to achieve this goal through an in-depth study of six cases – three in the Western Balkans and three in the Eastern Neighbourhood.

Keywords: democracy,social cohesion,eastern neighbourhood,western balkans,eu enlargement,resilience,forecast,hybridity,war,instability,albania,bosnia,georgia,moldova,serbia,ukraine
Stable Inorganic TAndem solar cell with superior device efficiency and increased durability (SITA)

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: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Sweden,Germany,Luxembourg,Belgium,France,Poland,Switzerland,Portugal,Austria
Call: Novel tandem, high efficiency Photovoltaic technologies targeting low cost production with earth abundant materials (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D3-02, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2025-08-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4987480.0
EU funding (EUR): 4987479.5
Participants: 14
Project status: SIGNED

To face the grand challenge of transforming the energy system to include at least 42 % photovoltaic energy in 2050 (as forecasted in a scenario by IRENA), our proposed project, SITA, aims to explore innovative concepts for tandem solar cells based on two technologies with strong competence base in Europe: Silicon Heterojunction (SHJ) and high bandgap Cu(In,Ga)(Se,S)2 (CIGS). A novel tandem concept with a 2-terminal (2T) approach requiring no additional cables or electronics will be developed, enabled by recent and further development in wide gap CIGS devices leading to high efficiency (>18%). SITA will demonstrate the durability of the new modules under realistic outdoor conditions delivering the next generation of stable inorganic tandem solar modules with superior device efficiency (>30%). SITA’s technology will build on and increase the efficiency of SHJ modules by a factor of 1.5 with marginal increase in the use of the costliest raw materials. This in turn leads to a considerable reduction in area related system costs of up to 25 % per installed power and a corresponding reduction in the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Tandem-junction efficiencies have recently approached or even surpassed the single-junction Shockley-Queisser limit for prototype devices. SITA will address the remaining limitations in terms of stability, scaling and manufacturing costs, as well as environmental impact.

Keywords: tandem,chalcopyrite,cigs,acigs,2 terminal,thin film photovoltaic
AI enabled artistic solutions for sustainable food systems (Hungry EcoCities)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Digital, Industry and Space
Theme: Digital
Destination: A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Czechia,Netherlands,Belgium,Italy,Poland,Germany
Call: Art-driven use experiments and design (RIA) (HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2026-02-28
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2806781.25
EU funding (EUR): 2796781.0
Participants: 8
Project status: SIGNED

Agriculture has been a nursery for practical solutions to global challenges for a long time. EU agriculture is the only major system in the world that reduced greenhouse gas (CHC) emissions by 20% since 1990. Nonetheless, even though the EU’s transition to sustainable food systems has started in many areas, food systems remain one of the key drivers of climate change and environmental degradation and there is an urgent need to transition to sustainable food systems. To realize this ambition, actors of the food chain must play their part in achieving sustainability within their food chains. To obtain a new quality of sustainable innovation and transform, we need another approach including a more diverse and multidisciplinary perspective, that enables barriers between science, technology, industry, and the arts to be removed, and enabling synergies along the value chain. Hungry EcoCities, takes inspiration from the 2008 book by Carolyn Steel where a core question of civilization, social, phycological and sustainability impact is put forward: how do we feed a city? To answer this question in this project, growers, and agricultural specialists’ team up with artists, designers and creative thinkers to come up with new ideas for the future food system. Hereby we start from a European approach centered on human needs and values. Hungry EcoCities puts forward a high-level alliance between science, technology, and the arts, to effectively explore how digital technologies & applications can lead in turn to reduced food waste, more sustainable value chains, eco-friendly attitudes, and a more ethical food consumption. Hungry EcoCities brings together some of the world’s most renowned art studios with leading AI and agricultural experts and a network of over 40 leading European agricultural companies to develop ways of creating a more healthy, sustainable, and affordable agri-food system for all.

Keywords: agriculture,food,ai,digital arts,creative coding,sustainability,responsible innovation,ethics,green,care,health,systems design,experimentation,prototyping,usability,use scenarios
A mycorrhizal fungi tunning tool for adaptation to harsh environment (MYTUNETOOL)

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: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Czechia,Switzerland
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-10-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 351338.16
EU funding (EUR): 351338.16
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are symbiotic fungi that improve plant productivity and plant survival in stress environments. AMF inocula are produced commercially and used to enhance plant growth and soil quality in agriculture and environmental restoration. A system is needed allowing AMF inocula to be tailor-made, providing AMF that are adapted or tolerant to given stressful environments. At present, this does not exist. It is also unknown how AMF can adapt to a given environment. The most advanced AMF mass production technique is an in vitro cultivation system. However, this system has not been developed into a tool allowing the production of AMF with a tolerance to a given environment. This project provides a novel way to build an in-vitro AMF adaptation TOOL that will adapt fungi to stress environments and that can then be mass produced for soil remediation. Increasing anthropogenic activities are the leading causes of soil damage. Soil is a precious resource and its renewal after contamination is extremely laborious and slow. In particular, many soils are heavy metal (HM) polluted. We will, therefore, adapt AMF to the most common heavy metal contaminants; namely, cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), copper (Cu) and Zinc (Zn). This project focuses on adapting the AMF species Rhizophagus irregularis to HM contamination and understand the adaptation mechanisms at molecular levels. The results will not only allow us to fill the scientific gaps regarding AMF adaptation to HM environments, and whether it is associated with genetic and epigenetic change, but also provide a possibility to obtain HM tolerant AMF that will be of great environmental and commercial value. Furthermore, this project will immediately allow the possibility of scaling-up to mass production. Moreover, the AMF adaptation TOOL will allow further expansion and implementation of this novel technology to other environments for future applications in agriculture and soil remediation.

Keywords: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi,adaptation,acclimation,in vitro,soil,contamination,heavy metal,mass production,environmental remediation
The initial stream of a urine void. (FVU)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS (ERC-2024-POC, 2024)
Start date: 2025-03-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The ability to easily obtain appropriate and reliable biological samples is critical to advancing life sciences and public/personal health. Having a sample that is non-invasive and can be self-collected at home has major acceptance and implementation advantages. Our team has already demonstrated that first-void urine (FVU) samples can replace clinician-collected cervical samples in Human Papillomavirus (HPV) based cervical cancer screening. Using the initial or first-void urine stream is crucial here. Indeed, the outer layers of the epithelium of the genital tract exfoliate and together with the genital mucus form the utero-cervico-vaginal secretions. This discharge accumulates between the labia minora, around the urethral opening, and is washed away with the FVU upon initiation of urination. The URISAMP project is making good progress to demonstrate that, using HPV infection and vaccination as a model, FVU is indeed an ideal genital tract liquid biopsy to monitor both disease and immune response of women at the site of infection. Importantly, diagnostic, screening, and monitoring applications via FVU samples are growing.
Women's Archipelagic NarratiVES. Gendered Eco-Consciousness in Water-related Anglophone Literature (WAVES)

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: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Italy,United States,Türkiye
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2028-07-31
Duration (months): 35.0
Total project cost (EUR): 407584.02
EU funding (EUR): 407584.02
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Human intimacy with water has been a distinctive feature of the Anthropocene. As seas rise, glaciers melt and warmer air absorbs more moisture, the need to recognize that human lives are physically, socially and culturally shaped by their relationship with water is imperative. Following the oceanic turn in the Humanities and attempting to reverse the patriarchal, land-centric paradigm that has long dominated ecocritical studies, WAVES aims to investigate the aquatic imaginary in contemporary archipelagic literature by anglophone women writers. Drawing from a broad corpus of primary water-texts from both Atlantic and Pacific oceanic contexts, i.e. Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light (2013), Tiphanie Yanique's Land of Love and Drowning (2014), Elaine Castillo's America is not the Heart (2018), Lani Wendt Young's Afakasi Woman (2019), and Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch (2020), and analyzing them through a material ecocritical lens, this project has a twofold objective. First, a critical examination of wet matter as an entity possessing intrinsic agency and vitality can prompt a reevaluation of current understandings of water as an exchangeable and utilitarian resource. Second, WAVES seeks to demonstrate that modern female authors’ representations of the archipelago, in its material and ideological dimensions, both elucidate the complex dynamics of water—as exemplified by the depiction of the unique archipelagic environmental system and the portrayal of postcolonial archipelagic diasporas—and imagine new ways to change our relationship to it. WAVES positions itself within the emerging field of the Blue Humanities and seeks to add a gender perspective to current research in archipelagic studies by pointing out the crucial part played by women in envisaging potential paths to enhance global environmental consciousness.

Keywords: archipelagic literature blue humanities ocean and island studies anglophone women s writings material ecocriticism
Untangling the dry limit for microbial life in rock-inhabiting communities of US Western drylands (DRYLIFE)

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: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Italy,United States,Spain
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2025-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 265099.2
EU funding (EUR): 265099.2
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

The effects of global warming are particularly pronounced in drylands, leading to their fast degradation and hampering the capacity to support active life. In an era of fast desertification, DRYLIFE seeks to identify those conditions that determine the dry limit for microbial life in the US Western drylands where a temperature increase up to 3°C associated to increases in aridity is expected by the end of the century. DRYLIFE will answer the key question using endolithic communities, simple and stable microbial communities dwelling inside rocks ubiquitous in drylands worldwide, as paradigmatic model system. In hyper-arid regions, in particular, once the threshold of dry tolerability for plants and soil microbes is crossed, endoliths represent the latest possibility for life, regulating water retention and nutrient cycles and creating positive feedback for ecological successions. DRYLIFE will be carried out in leading US and EU research laboratories by undertaking an interdisciplinary approach to address fundamental questions about how tiny microbes may have global-scale impact. This bottom-up project will combine amplicon sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, micro-environmental monitoring, geomicrobiology, and machine learning. Data generated will be translated, for the first time, into predictive models to better understand endolithic communities functioning and adaptations under global change, addressing a key knowledge gap. While my previous pioneering studies on Antarctic endoliths laid the basis for DRYLIFE, this Action will broaden my research and training skills and widen my professional networks, leading to a critical career development boost as an independent researcher. DRYLIFE will likely have the potential to improve projection of future climate impact on drylands, help tackle a timely global challenge of outmost importance to the Horizon Europe program, inform the next-generation of drylands ecologists, and, finally, provide evidence for policy makers.

Keywords: endolithic microbial communities,extremophiles,rock desert microbiome,drylands,microbial ecology,amplicon sequencing