Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : InterWiring (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University of Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1970000.0 €

Understanding how the mammalian brain network acquires its ability during development to process information and interact with the environment is one of the fundamental challenges in modern biology. The brain originates from a sheet of neural progenitors during embryogenesis but rapidly develops into distinct functional areas such as primary sensory and the highly associative cortices. Although all cortical areas consist of the same main neuronal elements, excitatory and inhibitory cells, their functions are markedly distinct. Unlike others, primary sensory cortical regions receive direct inputs from the environment through the respective thalamic nuclei starting at an early stage in development and are therefore likely to be shaped by incoming activity from sensory modalities. Despite the plethora of data on the arealization of the cortex by early signaling centers and the critical period plasticity mechanisms which take place after the basic elements of the circuit have been laid out, very little is known about the important period in between and how individual elements bind together to construct a functional circuit. This proposal is aimed at bridging this gap in knowledge, by addressing the long-standing question of how genes and activity interact during development to establish the correct wiring of excitatory and inhibitory cells in cortical sensory areas. As the primary role of inhibitory cells is to shape the flow of information transfer in the brain, they are well positioned to contribute significantly to the distinct modes of information processing performed in different cortical areas. Considering that dysfunction of cortical inhibitory circuits has been proposed as a major contributor to the etiology of neuropsychiatric-neurodevelopmental disorders, it is my hope that this approach will not only provide insights into the making of the healthy brain, but also into clinically relevant pathologies.
Projet ERC : SOCIAL ROBOTS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Glasgow — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1623268.0 €

Understanding how we perceive and interact with others is a core challenge of social cognition research. This challenge is poised to intensify in importance as the ubiquity of artificial intelligence and the presence of humanoid robots in society grows. By innovatively combining psychology, neuroscience and robotics, the SOCIAL ROBOTS project helps prepare us for this future by (1) establishing a new approach for understanding how the human brain processes and responds to interactive robots; (2) delineating the factors influencing how representations of robots and humans are shared at brain and behavioural levels; and (3) exploring how these findings inform the now-rapid development of social robots. To achieve this, we first investigate how young adults perceive and interact with humans vs. robots, the role of physical features and training experience, and the extent to which brain regions mediating social interaction with humans also support robot interaction. Next, to test the role of experience-dependent plasticity on social cognition, we assess how brain and behavioural flexibility toward robots manifests among young children and older adults. Finally, we explore cultural influences on shared representations of humans and robots by extending the first project phase to Japan, the world’s most robotics-rich nation. The SOCIAL ROBOTS project tests a dominant hypothesis of social cognition and is expected to lead to a novel conception of the neurocognitive architecture supporting human-robot interaction. Neuroimaging and behavioural measures will offer detailed and nuanced insights into how brain mechanisms supporting social engagement with people are used when interacting with robots, and how different kinds of experience (e.g., training, lifespan, cultural) influence such engagement. The planned studies and those generated during the project will enable the SOCIAL ROBOTS team to become a world-leading group bridging social cognition, neuroscience and robotics.

Mots-clés : social brain,fmri,development,aging,cross cultural,japan
Projet ERC : MULTIVIsion (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Delft University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499655.0 €

Understanding the brain is one of the great scientific challenges of our time. This pursuit fundamentally depends on advances in physical sciences and engineering to provide novel tools and methods to perturb, record and interpret brain activity. Information in the brain is encoded in changes in the voltage across the membrane of brain cells. Voltage imaging with genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) is a revolutionary method that allows faithful recording of the fast electrical dynamics of many genetically targeted cells in parallel. This provides an unprecedented means to record how patterns of change in this membrane voltage, called action potentials, manifest in subcellular compartments, cells, and networks across the brain, which is the only way to arrive at a fundamental understanding of brain functions like learning and memory, and of neurogenerative diseases. For this promise to be fulfilled, we need voltage imaging deep in the living brain of awake and behaving organisms. To achieve this, I will evolve a GEVI optimized for three-photon (3P) imaging, by screening mutant libraries of GEVIs directly for brightness and photostability under 3P-excitation, voltage sensitivity, and membrane trafficking in neurons. I will optimize the photocycle dynamics of GEVIs with temporally structured light, using a NOPA with tunable repetition rate, pockels cell and multiple optical delay lines, to create optimal 3P excitation protocols. Crucially, this optimization will not depend on spectral phase and is therefore compatible with high speed multiphoton imaging, aberration correction, and deep tissue imaging. Finally, I will investigate memory formation in a proof-of-principle experiment. I will use a custom microscope I developed, for 3P voltage imaging of cells in the cerebellum of mice trained in an eyeblink task. Memory formation in this paradigm is hypothesized to look like subtle changes in the exact shape and timing of action potentials, which I will resolve.

Mots-clés : protein evolution,multiphoton imaging,light matter interaction,deep tissue imaging
Projet ERC : BacCellEpi (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Institut Pasteur — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1147500.0 €

Understanding the establishment and persistence of bacterial infections in the gut requires integrating an ensemble of factors including bacterial and host components and the presence of other microorganisms. We will capitalize on 25 years of studies on the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes used as a model, to focus on three objectives which will significantly increase our knowledge of the bacterium, of the cell biology of infection and of the epigenetic reprogramming upon infection. Our aims are: - at the bacterial level : to describe for the first time, the proteomic landscape of a bacterium during switch from saprophytism to virulence. We will use a proteogenomic approach together with ribosome profiling, to analyze the translation of the whole transcriptome after bacterial growth in several conditions, including in vivo, in order to barcode all the proteins which play a role in infection. This will open the way to assess the role of 1) small proteins; 2) internal translation initiation sites ; 3) the coupling of transcription and translation. - at the host cell level : To decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying the dynamics and role in infection of host intracellular organelles, starting with mitochondria. - At the host epigenetic level : To explore how the microbe reprograms host transcription and how tolerance to a commensal such as Akkermansia muciniphila differs from responsiveness to a pathogen insult, at the level of histones and mRNA modifications by studying 1) chromatin remodeling, in particular histones modifications during infection ; 2) modifications of the epitranscriptome during Listeria infection and colonization with Akkermansia ; 3) whether there is an epigenetic memory of infection and colonization. This ambitious multidisciplinary project will not only generate new concepts in infection biology but also will unravel fundamental mechanisms in microbiology, cell biology, and epigenetics opening new avenues for further research.

Mots-clés : epigenetics and infection
Projet ERC : LASTJOURNEY (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 153875.0 €

Understanding the human journey of global colonisation is the history of modern humanity and the development of the diverse characteristics of peoples and cultures around the world. This five-year interdisciplinary project will investigate the peopling of South America, the last continental terra incognita (other than Antarctica) to be colonised by humans, constituting a virtually unprecedented migration of modern humans across richly diverse, empty landscapes during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition. Situated at the geographical gateway to the continent, the project will investigate one of the most momentous demographic dispersals of our species into the diverse environments of north-western South America, encompassing coasts, savannahs and lowland, Sub Andean and Andean tropical forests. This process took place amidst one of the most significant climatic, environmental, and subsistence regime shifts in human history, which contributed to the extinction of megafauna, plant domestication, and today’s remarkable diversity of indigenous South American groups. Despite its geographical importance and a wealth of archaeological and palaeoecological data across its diverse environments, north-western South America has only been given cursory consideration to understand processes of human dispersion. This project will redress this imbalance by applying an innovative interdisciplinary approach that integrates state-of-art archaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology, ancient environmental DNA and isotope studies. The results will provide a global comparative perspective to the study of Late Pleistocene human colonisations, hunter-gatherer adaptations, the demise of megafauna and the beginning of plant cultivation and domestication. The results of the project have broader implications not only for archaeology but also for geography, palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, and molecular biology.

Mots-clés : human colonisation,late pleistocene,archaeology,palaeoclimate,palaeoecology,molecular biology,lithic studies,megafauna,south america,andes,amazon
Projet ERC : DiGe (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Ca' Foscari University of Venice — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1292462.5 €

Understanding the logics of obtaining, managing and perceiving of local natural resources, particularly plants, is crucial for ensuring sustainability of human life, as the use of plants is a key for survival of humans. The proposed research will create an advanced understanding of the mechanisms of changes in ethnobotanical knowledge experienced by traditional societies/minor ethnic groups when dominating group try to unify and/or erode this practical knowledge. It will also evaluate the effects of the sudden cease to existence of such centralization and following impact of the trial of revival of discontinued traditional etnobotanical knowledge. Research will evaluate the effect of several social and cultural factors on the evolution of ethnobotanical knowledge of four compact, but divided ethnic minorities that had experienced for shorter (25 years) or longer (70 years) period different influences affecting their plant use and very different social conditions (including welfare and economy). As a long-term outcome, based on the result of present and consequent studies scientists will be able to predict the extent and depth of the changes occurring in the ethnobotanical knowledge and as a applied outcome learn to direct and educate people in the way that the knowledge necessary for sustainable maintenance and utilization of local plant resources will be constantly evolving in the way supporting health and well-being of different populations.

Mots-clés : ethnobotany,cross cultural,cross border,adaptation,change
Projet ERC : PROMISE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Chalmers University of Technology — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 628987.5 €

Understanding the physical processes that control the life-cycle of the interstellar medium (ISM) is one of the key themes in the astrophysics of galaxies today. This importance originates from the role of the ISM as the birthplace of new stars, and therefore, as an indivisible component of galaxy evolution. Exactly how the conversion of the ISM to stars takes place is intricately linked to how the internal structure of the cold, molecular clouds in the ISM forms and evolves. Despite this pivotal role, our picture of the molecular cloud structure has a fundamental lacking: it is based largely on observations of low-mass molecular clouds. Yet, it is the massive, giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in which most stars form and which impact the ISM of galaxies most. I present a program that will fill this gap and make profound progress in the field. We have developed a new observational technique that provides an unparalleled view of the structure of young GMCs. I also have developed a powerful tool to study the most important structural characteristics of molecular clouds, e.g., the probability distribution of volume densities, which have not been accessible before. With this program, the full potential of these tools will be put into use. We will produce a unique, high-fidelity column density data set for a statistically interesting volume in the Galaxy, including thousands of molecular clouds. The data set will be unmatched in its quality and extent, providing an unprecedented basis for statistical studies. We will then connect this outstanding observational view with state-of-the-art numerical simulations. This approach allows us to address the key question in the field: Which processes drive the structure formation in massive molecular clouds, and how do they do it? Most crucially, we will create a new, observationally constrained framework for the evolution of the molecular cloud structure over the entire mass range of molecular clouds and star formation in the ISM.
Projet ERC : CRAGSMAN (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1783464.07 €

Understanding the physics of galaxy formation is arguably among the greatest problems in modern astrophysics. Recent cosmological simulations have demonstrated that "feedback" by star formation, supernovae and active galactic nuclei appears to be critical in obtaining realistic disk galaxies, to slow down star formation to the small observed rates, to move gas and metals out of galaxies into the intergalactic medium, and to balance radiative cooling of the low-entropy gas at the centers of galaxy clusters. This progress still has the caveat that "feedback" was modeled empirically and involved tuning to observed global relations, substantially weakening the predictive power of hydrodynamic simulations. More problematic, these simulations neglected cosmic rays and magnetic fields, which provide a comparable pressure support in comparison to turbulence in our Galaxy, and are known to couple dynamically and thermally to the gas. Building on our previous successes in investigating these high-energy processes, we propose a comprehensive research program for studying the impact of cosmic rays on the formation of galaxies and clusters. To this end, we will study cosmic-ray propagation in magneto-hydrodynamic turbulence and improve the modeling of the plasma physics. This will enable us to perform the first consistent magneto-hydrodynamical and cosmic-ray simulations in a cosmological framework, something that has just now become technically feasible. Through the use of an advanced numerical technique that employs a moving mesh for calculating hydrodynamics, we will achieve an unprecedented combination of accuracy, resolution and physical completeness. We complement our theoretical efforts with a focused observational program on the non-thermal emission of galaxies and clusters, taking advantage of new capabilities at radio to gamma-ray wavelengths and neutrinos. This promises important and potentially transformative changes of our understanding of galaxy formation.
Projet ERC : EvoComBac (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1070018.0 €

Understanding the rapid adaptation of infectious pathogens is crucial to design better management policies and anticipate future changes. Yet, existing models often fail to explain these dynamics. I will address this major challenge of evolutionary biology in the bacterial species Escherichia coli. E. coli is a commensal of the human gut and an opportunistic pathogen causing infections responsible for more than a million deaths worldwide per year. E. coli has rapidly evolved over the last four decades. From the 1980s, starting from an almost fully sensitive population, multiple antibiotic resistances have emerged and stabilised at an intermediate frequency. Concomitantly, virulence, the propensity to cause infections, increased. The evolutionary processes causing these changes are largely unknown. To elucidate the drivers of the evolution of commensal E. coli, I will develop a prospective cohort of 200 longitudinally followed healthy volunteers—the largest cohort of its kind. We will analyse these data in the light of an integrative statistical and mathematical framework describing the ecology of E. coli from the within-host to the population level. These models will generate testable predictions on the evolution of genomic variants determining virulence, resistance, and colonisation ability. These predictions will be validated on an exceptional existing dataset composed of 1000 bacterial genomes sampled from healthy human hosts from 1980 to 2025 encompassing around 100,000 generations of bacterial evolution. This original interdisciplinary framework draws from epidemiology, evolutionary biology and genomics for a better understanding of the evolution of bacteria. This project is a step towards better predictions of evolutionary dynamics and better stewardship policies for infectious pathogens.

Mots-clés : adaptation,virulence,drug resistance,bacteria,mathematical modelling
Projet ERC : UniCoSM (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Roma Tre University — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1235875.0 €

Universality is a central concept in several branches of mathematics and physics. In the broad context of statistical mechanics and condensed matter, it refers to the independence of certain key observables from the microscopic details of the system. Remarkable examples of this phenomenon are: the universality of the scaling theory at a second order phase transition, at a quantum critical point, or in a phase with broken continuous symmetry; the quantization of the conductivity in interacting or disordered quantum many-body systems; the equivalence between bulk and edge transport coefficients. Notwithstanding the striking evidence for the validity of the universality hypothesis in these and many other settings, a fundamental understanding of these phenomena is still lacking, particularly in the case of interacting systems. This project will investigate several key problems, representative of different instances of universality. It will develop along three inter-connected research lines: scaling limits in Ising and dimer models, quantum transport in interacting Fermi systems, continuous symmetry breaking in spin systems and in models for pattern formation or nematic order. Progresses on these problems will come from an effective combination of the complementary techniques that are currently used in the mathematical theory of universality, such as: constructive renormalization group, reflection positivity, functional inequalities, discrete harmonic analysis, rigidity estimates. We will pay particular attention to the study of some poorly understood aspects of the theory, such as the role of boundary corrections, the loss of translational invariance in multiscale analysis, and the phenomenon of continuous non-abelian symmetry breaking. The final goal of the project is the development of new tools for the mathematical analysis of strongly interacting systems. Its impact will be an improved fundamental understanding of universality phenomena in condensed matter.

Mots-clés : scaling limits,conformal invariance,quantum transport,continuous symmetry breaking,spin models,interacting fermi systems,renormalization group,reflection positivity,pattern formation