Textile industry is facing major challenges. It is one of the most polluting industries, and consumers, as well as European regulations, are pushing for change. Indeed, global demand is changing, and consumers tend to expect more sustainable and smart textiles. Moreover, the EC is committed to a green and digital transition and needs to be more competitive globally. In this context, UPWEARS aims to contribute to structural resource efficiency and a sustainable economy by unlocking the potential of a new generation of biobased and hybrid fabrics for e-textile. UPWEARS e-textile will feature high performance, cost-effective multi-functionality, such as functionalized yarn and fibre, biomimetic fabrics, imbedded electronics and energy sensors. Partners will ensure a reduced environmental impact on the manufacturing value chain and end product – a country cycling suit – fully recycled. UPWEARS development will minimise manufacturing waste thanks to artificial intelligence technology and multiscale testing. It will also reduce chemical utilisation thanks to enzymatic & eutectic green solvents. For this, UPWEARS will: -Create an innovative & sustainable value chain from the native fibre to functional device end-of-life; -Switch from a traditional towards a modern textile fabrication process supporting the textile industry's digital and sustainable transformation; -Eco-design an e-textile for high added-value sportswear applications meeting European consumer's demand and contributing to EU competitiveness. UPWEARS implementation and exploitation will have many environmental, societal and economic impacts. It will contribute to EU policies like the EU Green Deal since it combines electronic devices and natural fibres and works on circularity. Finally, UPWEARS consortium covers the full value chain: formulation, functionalization; e-textile design & production; digital transformation; reliability & durability; industrial validation and recycling & additive manufacturing

The project 'Impulsé' unites seven national partners, 3 industrials and 4 universities covering different regions of France, in a theoretical and experimental development for the advancement of the technology using Pulse Electric Field sintering and/or association for materials fabrications. This technique, known as 'Frittage Flash' in France or as Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) internationally, has successfully been in operation at five French sites; two of them (PNF2/CNRS and Schneider Electric Industries) are involved in this project. Due to the power and success of the technique, it has witness a spectacular increase in demand all over the world. Although it is very well adapted for material preparations, there remain still many questions to be answered concerning the kinetics, mechanisms and optimization of conditions as well as aiming for singular products. One integral part of the project is to develop theoretical tools to unravel the missing information. A parallel experimental part will be undertaken to ensure the unification of the theoretical approach. Several materials of industrial use, as well as for domestic and research, will be studied with the aim of producing exact conditions for the optimization of the fabrication technique. The project aims at primarily developing high-yield, cost-effective and energy-conserving methods to provide our industries with the desired materials. For this purpose, developing the theoretical understandings of the processes (mechanism, kinetics, and optimization) should enhance our knowledge of this black-box technological tool. As such each participant, an expert in his own field, will contribute collectively and together we look forward to complement each other with one aim in mind - to bring a full comprehension of the SPS technique from laboratory level to industrial level. The project will be effected, through collaboration, at both the governmental and industrial sites using two of the oldest operating SPS sites in France.

This project focuses on various aspects of branching processes in fixed, variable or random environments, whether they are single-type or multitype. We propose to identify the limit of Bienaymé-Galton-Watson trees conditioned by their total population through their coding by multi-indexed and matrix-valued random walks. Then we will study the problem of the extinction of a part of the population for continuous multitype branching processes. We will construct the continuous analogue of multitype Bienaymé-Galton-Watson trees. These continuous random trees will then be obtained in the stable case as scaling limits of the renormalized discrete trees. These continuous random trees will be associated with continuous multi-type branching processes. We will also study discrete-time multitype branching processes in random environments to obtain asymptotic properties of the corresponding population size and survival probability; in particular, the problems of large deviations and asymptotic normalization will be considered. To this end, we will first deepen the study of the products of random matrices, in particular through the study of the multidimensional processes corresponding to the linear action of these products of matrices. We will be particularly interested in the cases where these processes are conditioned to remain in a cone of the Euclidean space. We will then establish limit theorems (invariance principle, local limit theorem, ...) for these conditioned processes. We will finally focus on the fundamental branching martingale associated to these Bienaymé-Galton-Watson trees, defined from the corresponding products of random matrices.

The VR-MARS project represents a support system for urgent healthcare delivery in isolated environments, based on virtual reality and embodied conversational agents (ECA). We hypothesize that these two technologies enable better situational awareness and care coordination between 3 parties: a care provider in an isolated location, a critically ill patient and the control centre on Earth. VR-MARS explore the scientific fields of emergency medicine, human factors and virtual reality. The use case of VR-MARS will be related to space medicine, in particular emergency care during a manned spaceflight to Mars. During these missions, temporal isolation will add to physical isolation, because of delays in communication between the care provider (on Mars) and ground control (on Earth), which will preclude real-time telemedical support. VR-MARS will be built around two simultaneous decision loops which will allow task assignment and synchronisation between the care provider, the ECA and ground control. The ECA will interact with the care provider via augmented reality. Upon request, it will deliver step-by-step guidance on medical protocols, using reassuring verbal tone and cues in order to mitigate the stress of the care providers. As soon as it is available, ground control on Earth will be made aware of the situation on Mars and of the procedures being undertaken by the care provider. This will improve situational awareness on the ground and enable the most optimal decision making in the mid- to long-term. In return, ground control will deliver its recommendation to the care provider via the ECA. Therefore, the ECA will represent the central hub of communication between the two sites. VR-MARS will be tested on two medical scenarios involving a critically ill patient represented by a high-fidelity simulator. Technical and non-technical skills of the care provider will be assessed at two levels: immediate interactions between the care provider and the ECA (for urgent, life-saving decisions) and delayed interactions between the care provider and ground control (for mid- and long-term decisions). With regards to research output and spinoffs, we anticipate that VR-MARS will improve medical care in remote environments, such as humanitarian missions, the combat environment, medical evacuations, expedition medicine, etc.