The major transitions of the 21st century, notably digital and environmental, are revolutionizing our lifestyles and have ultimately transformed the modes of industrial production. In addition, companies no longer define themselves solely by what they do, but also by their approach. Thus, innovation must become responsible and do better by consuming less: less raw materials, less energy, less consumables, while maintaining or improving the levels of performance, recyclability and lifespan. The design of a new product must therefore take into account from the outset the environment in which it will be used: it is no longer a question of manufacturing a standard product, but a product capable of adapting to its user, its needs and that is sustainable. This context constitutes a powerful lever for transformation of the heating industry, by nature energy-intensive: the objective is now to produce systems communicating with their environment and their users, to optimize energy efficiency, by adapting to individual needs. . This transformation requires this partnership research program which aims to achieve two major and complementary advances: (i) The design of a new technological generation of thermal generation systems aiming at both energy efficiency and increased service life; (ii) The development and implementation of new systemic design methods, catalyzing a long-term transition from industrial innovation practices. This whole project is at the heart of a long-term partnership between IMT and elm.leblanc, aimed at supporting the energy and digital transformation of this company, through research, innovation and training, transformation requiring in fact strong support for staff, via the creation of a training program dedicated to IMT. The target of the research program will be the element for storing domestic hot water of the future, the heart of elm.leblanc's activity: more efficient, in particular from an energy point of view, less expensive in raw materials, recyclable, self-adapting according to the needs of the end user and whose durability is ensured by continuous monitoring. This objective can only be achieved by a holistic approach considering use and end of life from the design phase. Thus, the locks processed by CORENSTOCK will have to define all of the service functionalities and processes that mark out the phases of the life cycle of hot water tanks: energy efficiency in the production phase and in the use phase; intelligent management of thermal production and preventive maintenance during use; longer life and circular economy strategies at end of life. The target of the research program will be the element for storing domestic hot water of the future, the heart of elm.leblanc's activity: more efficient, in particular from an energy point of view, less expensive in raw materials, recyclable, self-adapting according to the needs of the end user and whose durability is ensured by continuous monitoring. This objective can only be achieved by a holistic approach considering use and end of life from the design phase. Thus, the locks processed by CORENSTOCK will have to define all of the service functionalities and processes that mark out the phases of the life cycle of hot water tanks: energy efficiency in the production phase and in the use phase; intelligent management of thermal production and preventive maintenance during use; longer life and circular economy strategies at end of life.

The major transitions of the 21st century, notably digital and environmental, are revolutionizing our lifestyles and have ultimately transformed the modes of industrial production. In addition, companies no longer define themselves solely by what they do, but also by their approach. Thus, innovation must become responsible and do better by consuming less: less raw materials, less energy, less consumables, while maintaining or improving the levels of performance, recyclability and lifespan. The design of a new product must therefore take into account from the outset the environment in which it will be used: it is no longer a question of manufacturing a standard product, but a product capable of adapting to its user, its needs and that is sustainable. This context constitutes a powerful lever for transformation of the heating industry, by nature energy-intensive: the objective is now to produce systems communicating with their environment and their users, to optimize energy efficiency, by adapting to individual needs. . This transformation requires this partnership research program which aims to achieve two major and complementary advances: (i) The design of a new technological generation of thermal generation systems aiming at both energy efficiency and increased service life; (ii) The development and implementation of new systemic design methods, catalyzing a long-term transition from industrial innovation practices. This whole project is at the heart of a long-term partnership between IMT and elm.leblanc, aimed at supporting the energy and digital transformation of this company, through research, innovation and training, transformation requiring in fact strong support for staff, via the creation of a training program dedicated to IMT. The target of the research program will be the element for storing domestic hot water of the future, the heart of elm.leblanc's activity: more efficient, in particular from an energy point of view, less expensive in raw materials, recyclable, self-adapting according to the needs of the end user and whose durability is ensured by continuous monitoring. This objective can only be achieved by a holistic approach considering use and end of life from the design phase. Thus, the locks processed by CORENSTOCK will have to define all of the service functionalities and processes that mark out the phases of the life cycle of hot water tanks: energy efficiency in the production phase and in the use phase; intelligent management of thermal production and preventive maintenance during use; longer life and circular economy strategies at end of life. The target of the research program will be the element for storing domestic hot water of the future, the heart of elm.leblanc's activity: more efficient, in particular from an energy point of view, less expensive in raw materials, recyclable, self-adapting according to the needs of the end user and whose durability is ensured by continuous monitoring. This objective can only be achieved by a holistic approach considering use and end of life from the design phase. Thus, the locks processed by CORENSTOCK will have to define all of the service functionalities and processes that mark out the phases of the life cycle of hot water tanks: energy efficiency in the production phase and in the use phase; intelligent management of thermal production and preventive maintenance during use; longer life and circular economy strategies at end of life.

Many problems in different scientific domains can be described through statistical models that relate observed data to a set of hidden parameters of interest. This kind of statistical models can be found in a broad range of applications such as biology, medicine, econometrics, computer science, artificial intelligence, astronomy, physics, chemistry, communications, earth science, among many others. In the Bayesian framework, the probabilistic estimation of the unknowns is represented by the posterior distribution of these parameters. The posterior allows to deal with the uncertainty of the estimation in a systematic way, compacting the data with the available prior knowledge of the parameters. Bayesian inference has been successfully applied in all the aforementioned disciplines, and there is clear tendency for a wider adoption. However, in most of the realistic models, the posterior is intractable and must be approximated. Monte Carlo methods are computational tools that allow for approximating intractable posteriors by drawing random samples. The problem there is to solve very challenging inferential problems by drawing samples from certain simple distributions and based on them and appropriate computations, conduct estimation, filtering, prediction, model assessment, or model selection, among other statistical tasks. Importance Sampling (IS) is a Monte Carlo methodology that has shown a satisfactory performance in many problems of Bayesian inference. Compared to other Monte Carlo methods, IS methods have sound theoretical properties. However, its use has been mostly restricted to low-dimensional spaces. The reason is that the performance of the IS methods is poor when the proposal distributions used for drawing the samples are not adequately selected. This problem worsens as the dimensionality is increased, due to the so-called curse of dimensionality. In this project, we will research novel adaptive IS-based methods for Bayesian inference in complex systems. We will push the adaptive IS (AIS) methodology so it can be applied to intricate realistic complex systems, achieving a high performance in non-linear high-dimensional models, adjusting automatically the required computational complexity, and still attaining solid theoretical guarantees that we will also analyze. We will test the novel AIS algorithms in three complicated real-world applications with real data in the context of wireless sensor networks, cell biology, and demand forecast in the supply chain. AIS is a flexible and promising methodology for Bayesian inference. By identifying and addressing its current limitations, we will enable its widespread use in complex problems.

Stimuli-responsive polymers have gained increasing interest in many domains; the ability to change their physicochemical properties, due to a stimulus, makes them relevant materials for several applications including biomedical and drug delivery systems. Based on these polymers, different forms of matrices and scaffolds have been developed and used for controlled drug release, such as particles, hydrogels, porous matrices and fibrous scaffolds. Various chemical structures of polymers were developed for this purpose allowing polymer-sensitivity to different stimuli: pH variations, heat, light, enzymes, chemical moieties etc. However, these systems show drawbacks and limitations such as a non-controlled and non-triggered biodegradation of the matrices or scaffolds within the physiological media and hence not well-controlled release, low penetration depth of the external stimulus, the intensity of the stimulus often depends on the fluctuations of the physiological media (e.g. pH or heat), a passive release which occurs before the application of stimulus, the control of the wettability is also a real challenge which affects the biocompatibility of these scaffolds. To overcome these drawbacks and limitations, the SIPONIUM project aims to developpe new structures of Self-Imolative Polymers (SIPs), whose special feature is to undergo depolymerization in response to external stimulus. The strategy adopted consists in combining the special degradation mechanism of the SIP, with a deep penetrating stimulus (NIR) and tailored macromolecular architectures leading to control the wettability and the permeability of these materials. The polymers that will be prepared will be used to make for the first time, intrinsically sensitive electrospun nanofibers for both NIR-and UV-triggered and controlled drug release, in vitro and in vivo. To our knowledge, SIPONIUM is the first project developing the theme of SIPs in France.

Stress corrosion and macroscopic growth of cladding materials used in nuclear reactors are topics of technological interest, as the reduction in CO2 and use of green energy is one of the core objectives of the European Union. Under irradiation, material deterioration is influenced by point defects produced in large quantity and grain boundaries (GBs). In this context, investigating their interactions is of fundamental importance, which implies identifying the nature of the GBs. Therefore, in this project, the main objective will be to generate, classify and characterize GBs in zirconium alloys used as cladding tubes by resorting to relevant modelling tools at the atomic scale (molecular statics and dynamics), since this type of information is lacking for zirconium alloys and is difficult to obtain experimentally. A second goal of the project will be the specific study of the Nb alloying effect due to the technological interest of this element, through (i) the determination of its segregation energy and tendency in the vicinity of the GBs, and (ii) the influence of its GB segregation on the deformation mechanisms of zirconium alloys. Due to the expected large amount of numerical data generated mainly due to the multiplicity of the GBs investigated, a statistical analysis will be performed to assess the relevance of the descriptors used to characterize the GBs and to establish correlations with the GB properties.