Université de Lorraine (UL) has a long tradition of IA research initiated in the 1970s by Prof. Haton. This research gave birth to research groups on speech recognition, knowledge discovery, multi-agent systems, robotics, augmented reality, recommender systems, etc. UL is also internationally recognized for its work in the fields of materials, physics, energy, processes conducted, and mineral, energy and natural resources. Recently AI has profoundly changed the approaches used in natural language processing, computer vision, and more generally many domains addressed in computer science. We are deeply convinced that many other areas will be affected in the coming years. It is therefore urgent to open new scientific fields to AI in order to increase our scientific competitiveness. This project about Artificial Intelligence, led by the Université de Lorraine (UL), involves CNRS, Inria, Regional University Hospital Centre (CHRU) has a double objective: on the one hand, to strengthen UL areas of excellence in AI and domains tightly connected to IA, i.e. particularly Health, and on the other hand, to open other research areas to AI with the objective of leading to scientific breakthroughs. Each proposed thesis subject concerns either a theoretical aspect of AI, or an object in the field of AI (e.g. language processing), or an application field of AI (e.g. health). The PhD subjects cover (1) Health, Biology, Medicine, (2) physics and materials (3) Social and Human Sciences (4) Human-machine interactions and natural language processing, (5) Control, (6) Robotics and (7) Industry of the future. This project makes extensive use of the resources of UL and its partners, in terms of hosting doctoral students, training, computing platforms, etc. This project is strongly focused on the national health priority (one third of the projects), and on research related to regional priorities or areas of excellence in the region. It also promotes interdisciplinary approaches. In total partners of UL and UL laboratories have committed to provide 24 co-financing. 31 subjects have been submitted, but 8 supervisors also applied to the personal AI grant call whose results are not known yet. As soon as the project is launched, the steering committee will thus select theses to be funded while maintaining the main thematic balances. The selection of candidates will be carried out by the university's doctoral schools (all concerned to varying degrees). Applicants will be selected in a transparent, open, equal and internationally accepted process of recruitment.

The CARAMBAR project aims to elaborate hard carbons for the preparation of negative electrodes for sodium-ion batteries. Hard carbons are extensively studied for this application: they are disordered materials, simply obtained by available precursors such as sugars, some polymers or biomass. Their structure allows a sorption of sodium which is well adapted for battery running, even if precise interactions mechanisms between sodium ions and hard carbons are still controversial. In order to get a high capacity and a good cyclability, hard carbone have to exhibit both a low specific surface area, and an important proportion of closed porosity. These features are obtained after high temperature treatments (around 1500°C), which implies a high energetic cost. The CARAMBAR project proposes an alternative to these high temperature treatments thanks to the elaboration of hard carbons by pressurized pyrolysis, pressure being an experimental parameter which is rarely studied in the literature. Our first results show that even at moderate temperatures, an increase of pressure of only a few bars allows a drastic decrease of the specific surface area, and the closure of some pores. The electrochemical behavior is then improved. The CARAMBAR project is then focused on a deeper exploration of this promising elaboration route, through a multi-scale characterization of the as-obtained hard carbons, and a careful electrochemical study based on several techniques. For this last point, a post-doctoral researcher will join the project team which is more specialized in the carbon science. The goals of this project are a deep understanding of the mechanisms operating during the pressurized pyrolysis, as well as a thorough study of the interactions between sodium and hard carbons. This will lead to the elaboration of high-performance hard carbons with a lower energetic cost.