Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
BIogeochemical cycles, Sea Ice and CLimate in the Polar Oceans (BISICLO)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Recent field studies indicate an active biogeochemistry within sea ice. The latter is characterized by significant primary production, large loads of iron, and fluxes of climatically significant biogases, namely carbon dioxide (CO2) and dimethyl-sulfide (DMS). The role of sea ice in the carbon cycle and climate system via a large-scale action on ocean biogeochemistry is relatively poorly studied, potentially important and missing in Earth System Models. In this project, it is proposed to explore this role, in particular via an impact on carbon and iron cycles. The specific contribution of the relevant processes on carbon production and export at depth – be those processes physical (light, vertical mixing) or biogeochemical (nutrients, release of micro-algae, iron, heterotrophic feeding) – will be studied. In addition, an attempt to quantify the uncertainties associated with under-sampling and poor understanding of the processes involved will be made. The proposed analysis relies on a synthesis of existing observation data in both Polar Regions, on the development of numerical modeling tools, and on the analysis of numerical simulations both at local and global scales. In particular, the role of the specific processes at work will be studied via sensitivity experiments. The modeling tools include: (i) a one-dimensional sea ice model for the study of local-scale processes and (ii) NEMO, a numerical modeling system of the blue, white and green ocean (ocean, sea ice, and biogeochemistry) at large scales. As this ocean modeling system is part of a state-of-the-art climate model, it will be further possible to evaluate the role of sea ice on carbon cycle and climate. The project should take part into the reduction of uncertainties on climate and carbon cycle-climate projections in the Polar Regions and orient future observation campaigns. By directly implementing the developments directly in NEMO, this project should benefit to a wide community.

Keywords: v201 climatology and climate change,v201 oceanography,v201 biogeochemistry - biogeochemical cycles - environmental chemistry
Diffusive Partial Differential Equations with Nonlocal Interaction in Biology and Social Sciences (DIFNONLOC)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In the presented project we shall develop the analytical theory for a large class of diffusive partial differential equations with nonlocal interaction and related models, having an interdisciplinary set of applications ranging from population biology and microbiology to material science and sociology. In particular, we shall study the existence and uniqueness theory for those models, the qualitative behaviour, the large time behaviour, their microscopic to macroscopic interplay, and singular perturbation problems. Recurring keywords are the Wasserstein gradient flow theory (both in the classical sense, and in the direction of models with nonlinear mobility), and the Entropy solution theory for nonlinear conservation laws. One of the most innovative aspects of this project will be to provide a link between those two theories. A new theory with many species within the mentioned gradient flow setting will be developed. We shall focus in particular on models for pedestrian movements, featuring a highly nonlinear and nonlocal structure, which requires a new approach within the framework of scalar conservation laws. The duality between aggregative behaviour (finite time blow up, formation of spatial patterns) and diffusive behaviour (local repulsion, large time decay, self similar decay) is behind many of the studied problems, as it provides complexity in the large time behaviour with respect to initial data and parameters of the problem. The project will last 4 years, and it will be implemented through a series of activities: research collaborations of the fellow in various universities in UK, Germany, and Italy, 4 events (conferences, summer schools, etc), and 4 mid term visiting period at the host institutions by top class researchers. The host institution is the University of Bath, which provides a permanent Reader position in Applied Mathematics for the fellow. The project will be partly co-funded by other projects (among which the FIRST network, expiring in 2013).
Improving future projections of climate change induced hydrological responses by looking into the past: the Lake Prespa / Aliakmonas River case study in Greece (CLIM-HYDROLAKE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Greece
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This multidisciplinary project covers the research areas of climate change, geology and hydrology, and is of direct relevance for global biodiversity and the socio-economy. Aim: To advance the state-of-the-art in climate research by improving projections of climate change induced hydrological responses in the S Balkans, using a novel multi-proxy methodology combining hydro-climate modelling and palaeo-hydrological techniques. Study area: research will focus on the unique landform-sediment archive of the Prespa Lakes and Aliakmonas River that allows high-resolution reconstruction of palaeo-hydrological changes over the past 1500yrs. These records provide the exceptional opportunity to validate/calibrate hydrological models on 102-103yr timescales, and analogues of hydrological responses to past climate change. Future projections of hydrological responses will focus on the Prespa, Aliakmonas and Ohrid catchments (S Balkans). Timeliness: The project is highly timely as the S Balkans suffer growing water stress, revealed by falling lake/river levels, the causes of which are not properly known. The dramatic, unexplained, fall in water level of Prespa threatens the globally significant ecosystems of Lakes Prespa / Ohrid. There is an urgent need to understand climate change induced hydrological responses, as future climate scenarios predict an increase in excessive drought events and declining rainfall. Host: NOA is the foremost Greek research centre on climate change, but lacks the palaeo-hydrological expertise of the researcher. This hampers improving projections of hydrological responses by using the latest integrated modelling and palaeo-hydrological methodologies. The transfer of knowledge offered by this project will improve the national research capacity while facilitating the long-term integration of the researcher through leading a major project and gaining expertise in the growing field of climate impact research.

Keywords: v201 climatology and climate change,v201 geology,v201 paleoclimatology - paleoecology,water-climate interactions,water system modelling,sedimentology,stratigraphy,geomorphology
A High-Throughput Computational Search for New Transparent Conducting Oxides (HTFORTCOS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Belgium
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-08-01
End date: 2015-07-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 75000.0
EU funding (EUR): 75000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) are materials exhibiting the unusual combination of transparency in the visible range and high electrical conductivity. These materials are essential to many technological applications (e.g., photovoltaics, low-emission windows, touch screens...). Important experimental efforts are currently focused at finding cheaper and better performing alternatives to the currently used TCO materials. This experimental process can however be very time consuming as the chemical space to explore is rather large. On the other hand, many of the relevant properties (e.g., optical absorption, electronic mobility, dopability,...) can be nowadays evaluated by first principles computations. This offers up the possibility to accelerate the TCO discovery process by computationally searching, on a large scale, new TCO compounds using available electronic structure techniques such as density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory in the GW framework. While such approach will be used to directly search for new TCO materials, the large data set generated will also be used to enhance the fundamental understanding of the relation between materials factors at the atomic scale and the relevant TCO properties, helping therefore the materials design process.

Keywords: density functional theory,transparent conducting oxides
Enforcement of T-cell quiescence by Schlafen2 (SLFN OF T-CELLS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2013-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The immune system maintains a vast repertoire of lymphocytes waiting to respond to microbial invasion. These cells are kept in a quiescent state, characterized by arrest in G0 and a decrease in cell size and metabolic activity, until they are activated. Not long ago, quiescence was considered equivalent to “absence of activation”, namely a default state of the cell. Recently our discovery of a chemically induced mutation, elektra, enabled us to illustrate what happens when quiescence fails. Elektra mice showed an abnormally high frequency of T-cells in a semi-activated state and suffered from immunodeficiency. We ascribed the elektra phenotype to a mutation in Slfn2, a gene of previously unknown function, and concluded that SLFN2 plays an essential role in immune defense, where it operates to maintain quiescence in T-cells and monocytes. Moreover, our results demonstrate that quiescence programming must be actively maintained. However, lymphocyte quiescence is still poorly understood and the mechanism by which SLFN2 maintains it is also unknown. We now propose to use molecular approaches combined with unbiased forward genetic screening to elucidate mechanisms by which SLFN2 enforces T-cell quiescence. Specifically, we will: 1) identify SLFN2 binding partners and investigate the nature of the interactions; 2) elucidate key molecular processes in T-cells regulated by SLFN2 by a forward genetic screen. These findings will likely have relevance to other immune cell populations which are not T-cells and may also clarify the function of other members of the SLFN family. The identification of lymphocyte quiescence maintaining factors will integrate to understand how the immune system is able to defend the host while maintaining self tolerance and therefore have the potential to be exploited for therapeutic purposes in immune disorders, either by enhancing specific anti-pathogen/tumor immune responses or by suppressing overactive, self-directed responses.

Keywords: t-cell,quiescence,schlafen2 (slfn2),cdna-library-screen,forward genetics
Supply-rate depression as endogenous anti-epileptic mechanism (ENDOGENOUS AED)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Czechia,Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-09-01
End date: 2017-08-24
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Epilepsy is a prevalent neurological disorder affecting more than 1 % of all people, with the estimated number of 900,000 children and adolescents suffering from active epilepsy in Europe. Most current drugs targeting this disease have important adverse side-effects. An ideal drug would, however, potentiate the endogenous anti-seizure mechanisms that keep most humans epilepsy-free. To date, these native “anti-seizure mechanisms” have not been identified. Recently, a novel candidate mechanism termed “supply-rate depression” was functionally characterized. It is only induced by excessive synaptic use, after which it dampens all pre-synaptic function for several minutes. This proposal would test whether lowering the threshold for inducing supply-rate depression is protective against epilepsy using genetically engineered mice, and will additionally test a structure/function hypothesis related to the assembly of the vesicles in presynaptic terminal that could lead to a high-throughput drug screen. These goals will be accomplished via the following Specific Aims: 1. To generate a synapsin 2 conditional knockout mouse line where synapsin 2 is deleted exclusively at excitatory synapses and thereby speed the onset of the protective mechanism at excitatory synapses. 2. To evaluate the susceptibility to seizures of the synapsin 2 conditional knockout mice using chemically induced models of epilepsy. 3. To apply state-of-the-art electron microscopy tomography techniques to test the structure/function hypothesis that the lengths of presynaptic vesicle tethering units are ~ 40% shorter in presynaptic terminals of synapsin 2 knockout synapses. Results of this project may justify a large-scale industrial effort for developing a new generation of anti-epileptic drugs that target supply-rate depression. Thus, these new substances should have reduced occurrence and magnitude of unwanted side effects and would immensely improve the well-being of affected people.

Keywords: l502 molecular and cellular neuroscience,epilepsy,short-term synaptic plasticity,synapsin 2,neuroprotection
Securing Internet Routing: Economics vs. Network Security (SIRENS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The Internet is made up of over 35,000 smaller networks, owned by different economic entities (e.g., AT&T, Google). The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) establishes routes between these networks and can be regarded as the “glue” that holds today’s Internet together. BGP was designed at a time when the Internet was meant to provide connectivity between largely trusted and cooperative parties. However, times have changed and today’s BGP is notoriously vulnerable to attacks. To remedy this, secure variants of BGP have been proposed to prevent the propagation of bogus routing information. Unfortunately, despite a decade of extensive work the problem of securing the Internet’s interdomain routing is far from solved and deployment of a secure routing protocol is not on the horizon. It is now clear that the two biggest impediments on the path to secure Internet routing are: 1. Which secure protocol to deploy? There are still lingering disagreements about which of the security-enhanced variants of BGP should be deployed. 2. How to create economic incentives for deployment? Even once an agreement about which secure BGP variant to deploy will be reached, how can we get the ball rolling on protocol deployment? My proposed research aims to inform this discussion and will consist of three main components: (1) investigating the security guarantees of the major proposed secure BGP variants; (2) exploring the vulnerabilities of the routing system to new kinds of attacks; and (3) designing market mechanisms for large-scale deployment of a secure routing protocol. To achieve these goals, I plan to combine theoretical analysis with extensive simulations on real-life data. AIongside its practical contributions, the proposed research will involve posing and tackling new and exciting theoretical questions, motivated by Internet routing (topics on the borderline of distributed computing and game theory, non-local influence in social neworks, and more).

Keywords: g208 networks,internet protocols,routing,network security,border gateway protocol (bgp)
Novel Data Storage by Advancing Information Sciences (INFO-STORE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-08-01
End date: 2016-07-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The proposed project centers on data storage as a target application for research innovations that span theory and practice. The objective of the project is to improve the key features of merit in data storage: storage density, data reliability, access performance and security. These features and the tradeoffs between them will be treated by introducing and advancing theoretical frameworks in various information sciences. To prove and measure these improvements, systems research provides important complementary tools. The project will therefore carry out a joint theory and systems research to solve the most critical problems in data storage. The project is timely in the sense that separate efforts in theory and in systems are no longer effective to deliver the desired performance. In all known storage technologies, scaling in density and in access speed can no longer be achieved by physical means only. Rather, clever methods now need to be developed for the placement and low-level representation of data within the device. With harsher design conditions, data placement has to be well aware of the low-level media properties, and data representation must be designed with the device access properties in mind. These new design dependencies require a joint research effort in theory and in systems to find new analytic constructs and understand their performance in real storage environments. Previous contributions by the proposing researcher while at academic and industrial research institutes show the great promise of this line of research. Different ubiquitous and emerging storage applications have already benefited from this research: solid-state storage, next-generation magnetic storage and storage systems.

Keywords: data storage,information theory,data representation,data placement,algorithms,storage security,g106 informatics and information systems,g101 computer architecture
Improving adoptive T cell transfer immunotherapy for cancer with T memory stem cells (STEMIMMUNE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2012-08-01
End date: 2016-07-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Here we seek to identify the genetic program at the basis of T memory stem cell persistence in vivo and use their properties to improve the adoptive T cell transfer for the treatment of human cancer. Adoptive cell transfer with tumour-specific T lymphocytes is currently under test in the clinic for the treatment of solid tumours such as melanoma. However, the poor persistence in vivo of adoptively-transferred cells is the major caveat to successful immunotherapy. Recent evidence suggests that CD8+ T cells derived from lymphocytes at early stages of differentiation better mediate tumour rejection due to their increased persistence, survival and proliferation in vivo. We recently identified the least differentiated human memory T cell subset, the T stem cell memory (TSCM), capable to self-renew and simultaneously generate more differentiated progeny. These TSCM are also endowed with superior immune reconstitution capacity and anti-tumor immunity (Gattinoni L, Lugli E et al. Nat Med, 2011;17:1290-97). However, the genetic program at the basis of persistence of these cells, especially under chronic stress, still needs to be defined. By studying immune reconstitution in haploidentical, T-repleted bone marrow transplantation, we will address this question and subsequently exploit this information to improve anti-tumor immunotherapy. Specifically, we will: 1. Determine whether TSCM cells are major contributors to the process of immune reconstitution as suggested by non-human primate and humanized mouse models. 2. Identify the genetic program responsible for the persistence of TSCM cells in vivo under conditions of continuous stress, i.e. the lymphopenia induced by the conditioning regimen 3. Genetically-modify tumor-specific T cells with candidate genes to improve persistence in humanized mouse tumor models. Our data will impact not only the field of adoptive immunotherapy but also of vaccination and transplantation.

Keywords: l605 immunological memory and tolerance,l602 adaptive immunity,l705 gene therapy - stem cell therapy - regenerative medicine,adoptive t cell tranfer,cancer immunotherapy