CNRS - Oxford Collaboration Scheme
The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the University of Oxford have established the CNRS-Oxford Collaboration Scheme to enhance existing collaborations, and to facilitate the development of new collaborations, between researchers at the two organisations.
The Scheme provides small grants to support
- joint research workshops between researchers from CNRS-affiliated units and Oxford to identify and develop new collaborative opportunities (maximum grant value: €5000 from CNRS; £4000 from Oxford); and
- short research visits as part of a collaborative activity that researchers from CNRS-affiliated units and Oxford wish to pursue together (maximum grant value: €3000 from CNRS; £2400 from Oxford)
The Scheme is open to researchers across all disciplines at CNRS and Oxford.
Grants support direct costs of the activity (e.g. travel and accommodation, event-related costs).
CNRS supports CNRS-related costs (e.g. travel and accommodation of researchers from CNRS visiting Oxford, event-related costs for hosting a workshop in France). Similarly, Oxford supports Oxford-related costs (e.g. Oxford researchers visiting CNRS, workshops held in Oxford). Oxford’s contribution to the Scheme is met through an award from the John Fell OUP Research Fund.
CNRS and Oxford Lead Applicants jointly complete an application and submit for peer review by both organisations.
Available to download for information only (applications deadline closed at 5 pm, on 31 May 2013)
- CNRS - Oxford Collaboration Scheme 2013 Guidelines
(43kb) - CNRS - Oxford Collaboration Scheme 2013 Application form
(101kb)
The previous call for applications for the 2013 Round opened on 13 March 2013. The deadline closed at 5 pm, on Friday 31 May 2013.
The 2012 Round
In the 2012 Round, 5 of the 14 proposals submitted for research workshops were funded and 10 of the 33 proposals submitted for research visits.
Research Workshops
| Principal Investigators | Title and Summary |
|---|---|
| Professor Cornelia Drutu, Mathematical Institute, Oxford and Dr Romain Tessera, Laboratoire Paul Painlevé, CNRS | 'Coarse Geometry of Infinite Groups ' The workshop will focus on the large scale geometry and topology of groups (discrete, but also Lie, p-adic and more generally locally compact groups). Among the themes represented are filling functions, coarse properties, isometry groups of CAT(0) spaces, quasi-isometry rigidity. |
| Dr Laura Rival, Department of International Development, Oxford and Dr Doyle McKey, CEFE, CNRS | 'Ecological and Anthropological Approaches to Agrobiodiversity and Food systems' Research combining social and ecological approaches to plant domestication has much to contribute to the design of long-term solutions for the production, distribution and consumption of food in the world. This workshop will explore emergent themes in agrobiodiversity and identify key areas for new integrated and collaborative research. |
| Professor Mark Sansom, Department of Biochemistry, Oxford and Dr Catherine Vénien-Bryan, IMPMC, CNRS | 'CNRS Oxford Membrane Protein Network' Membrane proteins play key roles in physiology and medicine, yet our understanding of how they work lags significantly behind that for other classes of proteins. A joint CNRS-Oxford Membrane Protein Network will bring together world leading researchers to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, expertise and act as a framework for future collaboration. |
| Professor Justin Wark, Department of Physics, Oxford and Dr Stéphane Mazevet, LUTH, CNRS | 'Creating and Diagnosing Giant-Planet Pressures in the Laboratory' Temporally tailored pressure pulses allow us to ramp compress solids to pressures greater than those at the centre of Jupiter. Although such conditions are transient, it is possible to perform transient X-ray diffraction, and diagnose the conditions never before investigated on earth. CNRS and Oxford groups are leading the way in this novel field. |
| Professor Andrew Wilson, Department of Classics, Oxford and Dr Michel Bonifay, Centre Camille Jullian, CNRS | 'Coastal life and economies in Roman times' The proposed workshop will bring together researchers from the Centre Camille Jullian, Aix-en-Provence (CNRS) and the Oxford Roman Economy Project in Oxford to showcase current research and investigate a new collaboration on pan-Mediterranean research highlighting the economic trends and also regional variations of coastal life and economies in Roman times. |
Research Visits
| Principal Investigators | Title and Summary |
|---|---|
| Professor Martin Browning, Department of Economics, Oxford and Professor Olivier Donni, THEMA, CNR |
‘Do you have time to take a walk together? Private and joint leisure within the household’ Our objective is (i) to develop a theoretical model to explain the allocation of time and consumption within the household, making a distinction between joint and private leisure of the two partners, and (ii) to estimate this model using a time use survey. |
| Professor Martin Castell, Department of Materials, Oxford and Professor Claudine Noguera, INSP, CNRS | ‘Ultra-thin oxide polar films’ Oxide surfaces are technologically important due to their wide-ranging use in catalysis, gas sensing, and solar energy conversion. In our project we aim to combine the theoretical expertise from the Paris group with the experimental capabilities in Oxford to generate a research collaboration whose aim is to generate new types of oxide surfaces with unique chemical and electronic properties. |
| Professor Nicole Grobert, Department of Materials, Oxford and Dr Ausrine Bartasyte, Institute Jean Lamour, CNRS | 'Precision synthesis of carbon nanotubes by pulsed injection MOCVD’ Development of novel nanomaterials synthesis techniques based on pulsed-injection metal organic chemical vapour depostion in conjunction with in-situ online control. The aim is to establish in-situ quality control and improve the yield of carbon nanotubes with desired properties. Moreover, the efficient up-scaling of the manufacturing process while maintaining the structural parameters and the materials properties is also envisaged. |
| Dr Sam Henry, Department of Physics, Oxford and Dr Stéphane Gaffet, LSBB, CNRS | ‘Tracking underground water with SQUIDs’ The Oxford particle physics sub department and geophysicists at LSBB will join forces to build a high resolution SQUID magnetometer, and use this to search for a magnetic signal from groundwater flow, and investigate further application. |
| Dr Kay Grunewald, Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford and Dr Herald Wodrich, Microbiologie Fondamentale et Pathogénécité, CNRS |
'Visualisation of adenoviral membrane penetration steps using native electron cryo tomography (cryoET)' Adenoviruses are non-enveloped viruses, which cross membranes upon entry. This requires deployment of an internal capsid protein and activates an inflammatory response currently limiting technological exploitation of adenoviruses. We propose to use advanced correlation of fluorescence microscopy and cryoET techniques to understand the membrane penetration step of adenoviruses at high resolution. |
| Dr Paola Mattei, Department of Social Policy & Intervention Oxford and Professor Agnes van Zanten, Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, CNRS | 'Education and Multiculturalism in France' The project will study the major trends of educational outcomes of ethnic minority pupils, especially in the Zones d'Education Prioritaire, with the aim to understand the barriers to the introduction of multicultural education in France. |
| Professor Colin McDiarmid, Department of Statistics, Oxford and Professor Mireille Bousquet-Mélou, LaBRI, CNRS | 'Collaboration on Graph Theory and Generating Functions' In this project we would like to combine two well-known areas of mathematics, theoretical computer sciences respectively: Graph Theory and Analytic Combinatorics. Event though independently each area is well explored with a lot of research going on, the idea of combining analytic, graph theory and probabilistic methods has only been considered very recently. |
| Dr Julia Schnabel, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford and Dr Laurent Risser, Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse, CNRS | 'New strategies for physiologically realistic diffeomorphic image alignment' This project is motivated by the development of medical image analysis methodologies for nonlinear image alignment. The aim is to enable quantitative assessment of tumour growth and therapy response. A particular emphasis will be on estimating physiologically realistic alignments in image volumes requiring large deformations or presenting severe motion artefacts. |
| Professor Ian Walmsley, Department of Physics, Oxford and Dr Béatrice Chatel, LCAR, CNRS | 'Ultrafast and Quantum Optics' The main objectives of this project are the preparation of a Laboratoire International Associé and the further development of collaborative experiments in ultrafast nonlinear and quantum optics which have been initiated and for which ongoing funding is being sought (FP7 STREP). Visits between Toulouse, Oxford and Paris are planned. |
| Dr Antonin Vacheret, Department of Physics, Oxford and Dr Muriel Fallot, SUBATECH, CNRS | 'Anti-neutrino detection applied to nuclear safeguards and the search for non-standard oscillation at reactors ' This project aim is to build a collaboration between Nantes Subatech and Oxford to develop an anti-neutrino monitoring system for safeguards application and to study short distance neutrino oscillations. The system will integrate a reactor evolution code used by Subatech and novel detector technology currently developed in Oxford. |