Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Individual Fellowships

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships (formerly called Individual Fellowships) encourage young researchers to stay in Europe, and attract researchers from all around the world. They are awarded to researchers with a PhD who wish to add to their knowledge and skills or explore new areas. This enables researchers to broaden their training in a different EU country, or to spend two years training outside of Europe before returning for one year, or—for non-EU researchers—to be invited to Europe in order to share their knowledge.

The current ULB's "Marie-Curie" researchers are:

Sofia Fernandez Guerrico, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management

Project: BIMHt

This project aims to study the complex links between connectivity to work during non-work time and employee mental health disorders. The researcher studies the impact of diffusion of high-speed Internet on mental health-related disability insurance claims in Belgium from 1995 to 2012.
By focusing on the usage of work-related ICT use after traditional work hours and linking that usage to mental well-being, this project offers innovative explanations to the existing economic, management and public policy-oriented literature on disability.
More specifically, this project contributes to the understanding of recent trends that fundamentally impact the expansion and costs of both regional and national disability insurance programs.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101027302

Piotr Godzisz, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences

Project: ENTER

Combating violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is a priority for the European Commission. More and more States are responding to this problem by imposing tougher penalties for anti-LGBT hate crimes. In Europe, such laws are being introduced in some southeastern European countries whose record on LGBT equality remains poor. However, most of them cannot prove that they are actively using the new laws to prosecute these crimes.

Using innovative methodology, this socio-legal research project will develop a theoretically transferable model explaining how, when, and how these states deal with anti-LGBT hate crimes. Specifically, the research will shed light on how different actors, including non-governmental organizations, government officials, academics, and international bodies contribute to the introduction and enforcement of laws against these crimes.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant

Torres Huerta Aaron, Brussels School of Engineering

Project: LipoNanoReactors

Nanoreactors are interesting systems for emerging technologies because they allow matter to be manipulated at the molecular scale to manufacture large-scale products. However, they suffer from a lack of control over the flow of the substrate that can access their interior and they have not been used to build large supramolecular structures.

Faced with these drawbacks, this project proposes a new nanoreactor design based on the combination of liposomes and molecular transporters (LipoNanoReactors). By a controlled transport of ions (metal cations or organic anions) through phospholipid membranes, the project aims to build supramolecular structures inside liposomes, where the final structure could be modulated by the rate of ion flux and confinement effects. Ultimately, this strategy will make it possible to control the physical and chemical properties of these structures at the nanometric scale. 

In addition to achieving supramolecular assembly inside liposomes, the project aims to address challenges such as supramolecular isomerism, crystalline phase purity, and particle size control. This research therefore opens up new horizons in the field of crystal engineering, solid state chemistry and materials science.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant

Emmanuel Siefert, Faculty of Science

Project: BioCapSoft

Capturing fluids at small scales is a challenge that nectarivores have solved by developing various type of specialized tongues, which consist of a complex assembly of flexible structures of small size compared to the capillary length. Most of the physicochemical mechanisms allowing some of those animals to quickly feed on nectar are not yet fully understood.
This project aims to understand the physical mechanisms underlying the efficient capture of nectar by bees and hummingbirds which results from the dynamical coupling between viscous flows, capillary forces and elasticity in hierarchical soft tongues.
The BioCapSoft project will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamical coupling between viscous flows, capillary forces and elasticity in soft impregnated structures.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101027862

Benjamin Vis, Faculty of Architecture

Project: REMIND

REMIND is interested in indigenous urban practices that can benefit sustainable urban development in the Mérida region (URM), Mexico. It is experiencing rapid and unsustainable urbanization. In fact, the weakness of urban planning policies and the globalization of urban design generate problematic urban models which, in addition, marginalize the relevance of pre-colonial Maya rural-urban integration, indigeneity, and the persistent urban pattern in the region.

The URM has seen urban centres that persist for more than 2,000 years despite socio-ecological pressures and societal transitions. To consider sustainable urban planning and design adapted to the region, it is therefore interesting to understand how these urban forms have adapted over the long term. The project asks the following question: how can indigenous Mayan practices be applied in rethinking urban development processes and fostering the future sustainability of Mérida?

This fundamental research will be structured and guided by two cross-sectoral capacity-building workshops that will combine multidisciplinary academic expertise with institutional actors of sustainable development and URM heritage with the aim of supporting alternative approaches to urban planning based on indigenous principles.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant

Xu Wen, Brussels School of Engineering

Project: Green-Combustion

Hydrogen is enjoying renewed interest in Europe and around the world, its great advantage being that it does not emit greenhouse gases. The EU's priority is to develop renewable hydrogen to meet the goal of fully reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

There are two options for using hydrogen. The first is the "drop-in" approach, which involves adding a limited amount of hydrogen to fossil fuel to reuse existing chambers. However, this option still emits a large amount of greenhouse gases. The other option is to develop systems capable of handling a large amount of H2. However, during hydrogen combustion, very complex phenomena take place, linked to the strong differential diffusion of this molecule and the resulting instabilities. The most recent combustion models cannot accurately account for these phenomena.

Based on a flamelet approach, the project aims to improve the understanding of these phenomena and their mathematical modelling. Machine learning-based approaches will be introduced to account for differential scattering. To model positive and negative curvatures in unstable pre-mixed flames, a new model will be developed based on detailed a priori and a posteriori analyses of high-fidelity data (by direct numerical simulation, DNS). Finally, the model will be extended to large eddy simulations (LES), taking into account differential scattering and curvature effects related to the sub-grid scale (SGS) with an artificially thickened flame (ATF) model, including an advanced efficiency function. Large eddy simulations (LES) will therefore be carried out to replicate the DNS configuration and to simulate a turbulent methane flame with substantial addition of hydrogen.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 

Networks

The MSCA programme also funds the creation of networks dedicated to training young researchers (Doctoral networks, formerly called Innovative Training Networks), as well as staff exchanges in order to promote inter-sectoral and international collaborations in research and innovation (Staff Exchange, formerly called Research and Innovation Staff Exchange).

ULB is in charge of coordinating the europeans networks:
DN : CISSE, Comm4CHILD, DEDS, ENCODING, GEM-DIAMOND, UHMob

ULB takes part in H2020 networks:
DN : ABC-EU-XVA, AppQInfo, ASCenSIon, Bactivax, CoPerMix, DEEPICE, Evomet, IGNITE, INIA, INTERACT, MODELAIR, POST-DIGITAL, ProTechTion, ROPES, VORTEX.
RISE : Coclican, Connect, LABOUR
 

COFUND

ULB has received EU funding through the COFUND programme. The project receiving the funds, entitled IF@ULB (Individual Fellowships at ULB), enabled the University to hire 63 post-doctoral researchers as part of international exchange programmes.

Learn more about the IF@ULB project.

IF@ULB fellows

Completed projects

Projects "network" completed:

ITN (coordinator) : C-CASCADES
ITN (partner) : BtRAIN, CLEAN-Gas, MixITiN
RISE :  EU4HIVCure
MSCA-NIGHT project (partner) : SCI-TREK

Projects "individual followships" completed :

Michael Allwright, Brussels School of Engineering

Project: SRoCS

Swarm Robotics Construction System

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Xavier Bisteau,Faculty of Medicine

Project: Kinaddict

Vulnerability of esophageal cancer to their addiction to kinase activities

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Mathieu Bourguignon, Faculty of Psychology and Education

Project: DYSTRACK

Brain-speech tracking in noisy conditions: towards the identification and remediation of dyslexia

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Joe Burton, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Science

Project: CYBERCULT

Strategic Cultures of Cyber Warfare

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Eduardo Castello, Brussels School of Engineering

Project: BROS

Blockchain: a new framework for swarm RObotic Systems

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Agnès Chetaille, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences & STRIGES, MSH

Project: MIGREMOV

Movements, Migration and Emotion: East/West Mobility, Transnational Bonding, and Political
Identities in Polish Activists' Biographies

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Francesco De Lucia, Brussels School of Engineering

Project: PocketLight

Compact optical rulers based on fiber technology

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Deborah Gatti, Faculty of Pharmacy

Project: GD TCR Ligand

Identification of the ligand of a human public anti-HCMV/cancer γδ T cell receptor

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Guangfeng Liu, Faculty of Sciences

Project: PARADA

Parallel Donor and Acceptor Semiconductor Crystals for Organic Field Effect Transistors

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Nerantzis Nerantzis, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Science

Project: ME.TEch.NAS

Metals Technology in North Aegean Societies

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Ov Cristian Norocel, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences

Project: INWELCHAV

Intersectional Analyses of Welfare Chauvinism in Europe

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Charlotte Sleight, Faculty of Sciences

Project: InflaBoot

Bootstrapping Inflationary Cosmology

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Magdalena Sznurkowska, Faculty of Medicine

Azzura Tafuro, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Science

Project: GENI

Gender, emotions and national identities: a new perspective on the abortion debates in Italy (1971-1981).

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Massimo Taronna, Faculty of Sciences

Project: TcCFT

Tools to Carve out Conformal Field Theories

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Amandine Van Rinsveld, Faculty of Psychology and Education & ULB Neuroscience Institute

Project: Freq4Num

The neural signature of numerosity: Tracking the cerebral correlates of numerical and continuous
magnitude extraction with a frequency-based approach

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If you are a researcher and would like to conduct research at ULB with MSCA funds, please contact the "Europe research unit" of the Research Department:

ulb-europe@ulb.ac.be