Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : RETMUS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Friedrich Miescher Institute — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FMI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2329370.0 €

Sensory systems of the brain inform cortical centers about the outside world via the thalamus. Despite its central location between the sensory periphery and the primary sensory cortex, the functional role of the thalamus in sensory processing is still largely unknown. Understanding the role of thalamic circuits and their modulation by other brain areas is important for several reasons. First, in order to dissect the functional role of higher brain regions, such as sensory cortical areas, it is critical that we understand what kind of input they receive from the thalamus. The thalamus takes information from several different sensory channels, carrying different sensory features. Whether these features are simply relayed to higher centers, or perhaps recombined into new features in the thalamus, is not known. Second, as a central station in sensory processing, the thalamus is thought to gate behaviorally relevant sensory information. In addition to the input from the sensory periphery, the thalamus receives input from several other brain regions. How these inputs modulate or gate sensory information in vivo is not well understood. Finally, in the case of the visual system, an important unmet medical need is optic nerve degeneration caused by end-stage glaucoma, which leads to blindness. Here the input to thalamus is lost, yet the thalamic and cortical circuits are not severely affected. New methods to reactivate the thalamic neurons by channeling visual information directly to these neurons may help to restore some visual capability after the loss of optic nerve fibers.

Mots-clés : viral tracing,two photon imaging,retina
Projet ERC : SPEDI-TEST (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : University of Murcia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1875.0 €

Sepsis remains the leading cause of death in critical care units of Hospitals, affecting more that 18 million people worldwide and causes a systemic inflammatory response driven by the production of proinflammatory cytokines. Several studies have been conducted to find out whether data mining and machine learning could be used to identify patients at risk of sepsis. Although the currently available biomarkers can help shorten this decision process, there is still a need for additional early disease biomarkers that could anticipate the decision-making identifying immunocompromised septic patients. In this sense, ongoing efforts in the development of a point-of-care testing kit, enabling quick and reliable detection of immunocompromised patients by using blood biomarkers, will aid greatly the early prognosis of sepsis. In this scenario, the prognosis and therapy selection still remains a clinical decision by assessing the patient’s history, symptoms of infection, and development of acute organ dysfunction. Our group have determined under the ERC consolidator grant ref. 614578 (DangerATP) that during the initial 24 h of the inflammatory response in sepsis, monocytes from human septic patients present an early impairment of the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome that is associated with higher late mortality. This group of septic patients was not identified with any of the clinical or biochemical determinations performed. We have developed an in vitro prognostic (IVD) product for the fast detection in less than 4 hours of early impairment of the NLRP3 inflammasome activation, as a biomarker for the prognosis in sepsis. This IVD will be used in intensive care units and immunology units of hospitals. The objective of the action is to demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility and evaluate the new business opportunity of introducing this novel IVD product.

Mots-clés : sepsis,prognostic,nlrp3 inflammasome,technical and commercial viability,start up
Projet ERC : InterLeptons (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1486137.0 €

Several measurements in the quark and in the lepton flavor sectors have shown anomalies with respect to the standard model expectations and are now referred to as flavor anomalies. The Belle II experiment at the Super-KEKB laboratory in Japan is collecting data by colliding beams of electrons and positrons. The aim of this proposal is to look for physics beyond the standard model at the Belle II experiment by a) searching for the direct production of new light particles, and b) looking for deviations from theoretical predictions when performing precision tests of the standard model. The team will analyse events with leptons and large missing energy in the final states and implement the most advanced analysis techniques including, for the first time, deep learning tools in the identification of signals at the Belle II experiment. First, we will search for invisible decays of a dark Z' boson, a hypothetical particle that might also explain the anomaly reported in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Second, we will test with per mille precision lepton flavor universality by studying leptonic decays of the tau lepton and use the results to constrain new physics models such as those containing a lepton flavor violating Z' boson. Finally, we will search for new physics via lepton flavor violating decays of bottomonium resonances produced in initial state radiation events that, thanks also to an effective field theory approach, will allow us to interpret the search in terms of new physics mass scale and coupling constant, with an approach complementary to that of the LHC.

Mots-clés : new interactions,z  boson,dark sector,lepton flavor  universality  violation,rare decays,bottomonium,b factory,flavor anomalies,new physics,tau lepton
Projet ERC : SECOMP (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 368220.25 €

Severe low-level vulnerabilities abound in today’s computer systems, allowing cyber-attackers to remotely gain full control. This happens in big part because our programming languages, compilers, and architectures were designed in an era of scarce hardware resources and too often trade off security for efficiency. The semantics of mainstream low-level languages like C is inherently insecure, and even for safer languages, establishing security with respect to a high-level semantics does not guarantee the absence of low-level attacks. Secure compilation using the coarse-grained protection mechanisms provided by mainstream hardware architectures would be too inefficient for most practical scenarios. This project is aimed at leveraging emerging hardware capabilities for fine-grained protection to build the first, efficient secure compilers for realistic programming languages, both low-level (the C language) and high-level (ML and a dependently-typed variant). These compilers will provide a secure semantics for all programs and will ensure that high-level abstractions cannot be violated even when interacting with untrusted low-level code. To achieve this level of security without sacrificing efficiency, our secure compilers will target a tagged architecture, which associates a metadata tag to each word and efficiently propagates and checks tags according to software-defined rules. We will experimentally evaluate and carefully optimize the efficiency of our secure compilers on realistic workloads and standard benchmark suites. We will use property-based testing and formal verification to provide high confidence that our compilers are indeed secure. Formally, we will construct machine-checked proofs of full abstraction with respect to a secure high-level semantics. This strong property complements compiler correctness and ensures that no machine-code attacker can do more harm to securely compiled components than a component in the secure source language already could.

Mots-clés : security,compilers,programming,low level attacks,memory safety,sandboxing,full abstraction,dynamic monitoring,tagged hardware,composition,formal methods,formal verification,testing
Projet ERC : SECOMP (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Inria
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1130223.75 €

Severe low-level vulnerabilities abound in today’s computer systems, allowing cyber-attackers to remotely gain full control. This happens in big part because our programming languages, compilers, and architectures were designed in an era of scarce hardware resources and too often trade off security for efficiency. The semantics of mainstream low-level languages like C is inherently insecure, and even for safer languages, establishing security with respect to a high-level semantics does not guarantee the absence of low-level attacks. Secure compilation using the coarse-grained protection mechanisms provided by mainstream hardware architectures would be too inefficient for most practical scenarios. This project is aimed at leveraging emerging hardware capabilities for fine-grained protection to build the first, efficient secure compilers for realistic programming languages, both low-level (the C language) and high-level (ML and a dependently-typed variant). These compilers will provide a secure semantics for all programs and will ensure that high-level abstractions cannot be violated even when interacting with untrusted low-level code. To achieve this level of security without sacrificing efficiency, our secure compilers will target a tagged architecture, which associates a metadata tag to each word and efficiently propagates and checks tags according to software-defined rules. We will experimentally evaluate and carefully optimize the efficiency of our secure compilers on realistic workloads and standard benchmark suites. We will use property-based testing and formal verification to provide high confidence that our compilers are indeed secure. Formally, we will construct machine-checked proofs of full abstraction with respect to a secure high-level semantics. This strong property complements compiler correctness and ensures that no machine-code attacker can do more harm to securely compiled components than a component in the secure source language already could.

Mots-clés : security,compilers,programming,low level attacks,memory safety,sandboxing,full abstraction,dynamic monitoring,tagged hardware,composition,formal methods,formal verification,testing
Projet ERC : SEXinMALARIA (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Umeå University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Sexual development in malaria parasites is critical for disease transmission between infected individuals, and is therefore a major target for the malaria elimination agenda. However, there are currently no effective drugs or vaccines that block parasite transmission to mosquitoes, and we currently do not understand the molecular mechanisms involved. This is primarily because Plasmodium genetics has been slow, with the majority of the genome unexplored. I here propose to conduct the first genome-scale screen for male and/or female fertility genes by leveraging a game-changing genetic system we have developed and recently validated through the first genome-scale in vivo gene KO screen in any parasite. Using simultaneous phenotyping of barcoded mutants, we will conduct the first genome-scale screen for male and/or female fertility genes. My team will systematically map specific biological roles for hundreds of parasite genes, ranging from sex determination to zygote differentiation. We will also overcome the next hurdle in Plasmodium genetics by developing a method for massive parallel phenotyping, using the power of single cell transcriptomics to validate the screen and reveal molecular mechanisms at previously intractable points in the Plasmodium life cycle. This approach has clear translational implications, as it will identify both drug and vaccine candidates. This proposal builds firmly on my outstanding track records in delivering large reverse genetics projects and making ground-breaking discoveries in Plasmodium transmission biology. Its unprecedented breadth and depth will mark a turning point in how gene functions are studied in this important model parasite. I am relocating from the UK to Umeå University, a centre of excellence for pathogen research and innovative genetics, so retaining this important research in the EU of 27 will depend critically on ERC funding.

Mots-clés : biology of sex,sex determination,malaria,mosquito transmission
Projet ERC : BrokenGenome (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Université Catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499075.0 €

Sexual reproduction depends on the programmed induction of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and their ensuing repair by homologous recombination. This complex process is essential for sexual reproduction because it ultimately allows the pairing and separation of homologous chromosomes during formation of haploid gametes. Although meiotic recombination has been investigated for decades, many of the underlying molecular processes remain unclear, largely due to the lack of biochemical studies. I have recently made important progress by, for the first time, successfully purifying proteins involved in two aspects of meiotic recombination: DSB formation and the final stage of formation of the crossovers that are a central raison-d’être of meiotic recombination. This has opened new avenues for future research that I intend to pursue in my own laboratory. Here, I propose a set of biochemical approaches, complemented by molecular genetics methods, to gain insights into four central problems: (i) How meiotic proteins collaborate to induce DSBs; (ii) How DSB proteins interact with components that form the axes of meiotic chromosomes; (iii) How proteins involved at later stages of recombination form crossovers; and (iv) How crossover proteins interact with components of synapsed chromosomes. For each problem, I will set up in vitro systems to probe the activities of the players involved, their interactions with DNA, and their assembly into macromolecular complexes. In addition, I propose to develop new methodology for identifying proteins that are associated with DNA that has undergone recombination-related DNA synthesis. My goal is to gain insights into the mechanisms that govern meiotic recombination. Importantly, these mechanisms are intimately linked not only to gamete formation, but also to the general recombination pathways that all cells use to maintain genome stability. In both contexts, our findings will be relevant to the development and avoidance of disease states.

Mots-clés : meiosis,homologous recombination,dna double strand breaks,crossovers,chromosome organization,protein structure,molecular mechanism
Projet ERC : SEAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : University of Klagenfurt — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1766803.95 €

Side channel attacks use, alongside information such as plaintexts or ciphertexts, leakage about the (secret) key-dependent intermediate state(s), and deliver a `key ranking' as a result. Kocher's attacks [15] [16] showed that for many practical implementations, observing a few encryptions made complete key recovery possible in practice. The academic research into combating these attacks so far has largely focused on approaches and tools to equip specialised cryptographic engineers with access to a specialist lab and tools. The research hypothesis of this CoG is that one can make meaningful statements about the leakage behaviour of arbitrary implementations on small devices by utilising a-priori derived (instruction level) leakage models. Our vision is to enable developers with limited domain-specific knowledge to perform side channel evaluations at design time without access to a fully equipped lab, by creating tools and methodologies that integrate a priori derived instruction-level leakage models into a standard compiler. This vision is articulated in three overarching research objectives: 1. Designing novel profiling strategies (WP1) including novel leakage acquisition techniques to generate leakage models for a specific target device. 2. Developing fast and comprehensive methods to support rapid evaluations (WP2). 3. Integration (WP3) of semantics, syntax and tools capable of using profiling information into a standard compiler with the aim to evaluate and improve the side channel resilience of the target code. Addressing these goals simultaneously is required to make substantial progress towards the overall vision of this project. As a final result, we will make demonstrators available (WP4): using a off-the shelf components, we supply the necessary tools and compiler enhancements including samples of cryptographic implementations to conduct analyses and demonstrate improvements regarding side channel resilience.

Mots-clés : side channel analysis,leakage resilient,physical security
Projet ERC : SignMorph (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Birmingham — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2347968.75 €

SignMorph aims to address two of the most fundamental questions in the language sciences: how much do the languages of the world resemble each other and how do they differ, and what factors account for both the cross-linguistic similarities and the differences? SignMorph will provide answers to these questions about the nature of human language through a focus on the sign languages of deaf communities. This project will also be the first to focus on key aspects of the grammar across three distinct subtypes of signing communities: (1) established macro-community sign languages used across an entire national deaf community, (2) established micro-community sign languages which are languages in smaller communities within a nation state, and (3) emerging sign languages which are sign languages that have only begun to emerge in the late 20th century. The driving research question is: sign languages are natural languages, but what kind of languages are they? SignMorph aims to better understand similarities and differences in the grammar of sign languages, and how these are shaped by language-internal and language-external factors. The factors to be investigated in the study include (1) the role of iconicity in mapping grammatical meanings onto form, (2) the relatively recent emergence of sign languages, and how their short history has impacted on the processes which create grammatical structure, and (3) the sociolinguistic structure of signing communities, particular the effect of the large proportion of child to child (rather than parent to child) transmission of sign languages, varying ages of first language acquisition, and variation in interaction individuals have with native signers through their social networks. The study of this distinctive combination of characteristics in sign languages means that this project will make a vital contribution to an understanding the human language capacity more generally.

Mots-clés : linguistics,sign languages,morphology,typology,sociolinguistics,psycholinguistics,language evolution
Projet ERC : CONCERT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Institute for Research in Biomedicine — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IRB;IRB-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1950000.0 €

Signal transduction in biology relies on the transfer of information across biomolecules by concerted conformational changes that cannot currently be characterized experimentally at high resolution. In CONCERT we will develop a method based on the use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solution that will provide very detailed descriptions of such changes by using the information about structural heterogeneity contained in a parameter that is exquisitely sensitive to molecular shape called residual dipolar coupling measured in steric alignment. To show how this new method will allow the study of information transfer we will determine conformational ensembles that will report on the intra and inter-domain concerted conformational changes that activate the androgen receptor, a large allosteric multi-domain protein that regulates the male phenotype and is a therapeutic target for castration resistant prostate cancer, the condition suffered by prostate cancer patients that have become refractory to hormone therapy, the first line of treatment for this disease. To complement the structural information obtained by nuclear magnetic resonance and, especially, measure the rate of information transfer across the androgen receptor we will carry out in a collaborative fashion high precision single molecule Förster resonance energy transfer and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy experiments on AR constructs labelled with fluorescent dyes. In summary we will develop a method that will make it possible to describe some of the most fascinating biological phenomena, such as allostery and signal transduction, and will, in the long term, be an instrument for the discovery of drugs to treat castration resistant prostate cancer, a late stage of prostate cancer that is incurable and kills ca. 70.000 European men every year.

Mots-clés : androgen receptor,intrinsically disordered proteins,allostery,single molecule fret