Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : STICK2HEAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149000.0 €

The ERC ADG “Engineering of biomimetic surfaces – Switchable micropatterns for controlled adhesion and touch” (SWITCH2STICK) has developed micropatterned polymer surfaces for innovative adhesive functions without glues, based on the “gecko adhesion principle”. While robotic applications were originally in the focus of these developments, a radically new application field of these microstructures will be taken to the initial steps of application and subsequent commercialization: the repair of injuries of the human tympanic membrane. Tympanic membrane damage is a frequent medical affliction, affecting over 30 million patients worldwide each year. It results in hearing loss, associated with a dramatic impact of the patients’ quality of life and a significant healthcare burden. Our invention suggests a new therapeutic option to replace conventional therapies: Wound management with a novel gecko-inspired surface structure. In collaboration with clinicians, the feasibility of the new technology has been demonstrated. When designed for interaction with skin, our surfaces cling reliably to mouse ear drums for up to 28 days. In addition to the adhesive function, they provide support for cell growth and proliferation and allow the option of local drug delivery due to the micropattern. Besides detailed market analyses and dissemination, activities in the proposed project range from a technical and pre-clinical validation in an animal model to establishing an IPR strategy and an initiation of the medical product certification. Our invention will overcome several critical limitations of existing solutions. Besides ear-drum repair, the project enables a wide field of additional medical applications ranging from electrode fixation to the fitting of wearable healthcare electronics. This PoC project is therefore to be seen as a preparatory step for exploring the market potential of various micropatterned medical surfaces and preparing a solid commercialization in this field.

Mots-clés : materials engineering,bioinspiration,shaping,biomaterials,adhesion,wound dressing,cellular scaffold,otolaryngology
Projet ERC : CONECTIF (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Aix-Marseille Université — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : amU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The ERC StG project “Epilepsy Controlled with Electronic Neurotransmitter Delivery (EPI-Centrd)” is focused on improved therapeutic intervention in drug-resistant patients with surgically-complicated forms of epilepsy. These patients represent a large demographic needing new commercial solutions, as there are fifty million people in the world with epilepsy and up to 50 cases of new-onset epilepsy per 100,000 people each year, where 30% of these cases are patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Although EPI-Centrd provides state-of-the-art treatments for epileptic zones in the brain of drug-resistant patients, it does not include technology for improved identification of such epileptic zones. This ERC PoC project “The Commercial Assessment of a Novel Protocol for Epilepsy Characterisation with Temporally Interfering Electric Fields (CONECTIF)” dramatically improves the traditional limitations in the identification of epileptic zones in the brain of patients by providing a simplified, less-invasive method capable of localizing epileptic tissue, including the ability to non-invasively investigate previously inaccessibility and surgically-complicated brain regions. The new method utilizing temporally interfering electric fields could have a massive commercial potential and, if successful, would dramatically improve the therapeutic targets for technologies developed in the EPI-Centrd project and for the identification of epileptic zones in other forms of epilepsy, not only in drug-resistant patients.

Mots-clés : epilepsy,electrophysiology,identification of epileptogenic zones,novel protocols in epilepsy
Projet ERC : BLUE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
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 : 150000.0 €

The ERC project GenomeFun has revealed a substantial genetic and phenotypic variability within Penicillium roqueforti, which is the fungus used for the maturation of blue cheeses. The ERC project GenomeFun has also shown the existence of different genetic clusters harboring specific traits and has allowed the development of a protocol for inducing in the laboratory the natural process of sexual reproduction in this fungus. The present PoC BLUE project aims at proving the possibility to obtain and identify, in sexual progeny, strains of P. roqueforti with novel combinations of traits of industrial interest. This would enable strain improvement, and would allow the production of blue cheeses with innovative characteristics, as desired by producers and consumers. Thus the objective of the present PoC project is to identify progeny with interesting combinations of traits. These strains will then be protected and commercialized. The project therefore also aims at identifying the market and the best strategy for exploitation, firstly by defining the most suited approach for the protection and exploitation of intellectual property, taking into account the market practices and conditions, and secondly, by verifying the legal dispositions applicable to sexual progeny of micro-organisms in the field of “novel food”, biodiversity and genetic resources protection. The legislative framework raises interesting questions in the context of recent treaties on biodiversity. The consequences of the recent laws on biodiversity on the use and protection of micro-organisms as intellectual property in the fields of food are still unclear. The results of these investigations could thus serve as a model case.

Mots-clés : food,cheese,fungal strains
Projet ERC : ARTIV1 (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
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 : 13542.0 €

The ERC starting grant GECOMETHODS, on which this POC is based, tackled problems of diffusion equations via geometric control methods. One of the most striking achievements of the project has been the development of an algorithm of image reconstruction based mainly on non-isotropic diffusion. This algorithm is bio-mimetic in the sense that it replicates the way in which the primary visual cortex V1 of mammals processes the signals arriving from the eyes. It has performances that are at the state of the art in image processing. These results together with others obtained in the ERC project show that image processing algorithms based on the functional architecture of V1 can go very far. However, the exceptional performances of the primary visual cortex V1 rely not only on the particular algorithm used, but also on the fact that such algorithm “runs” on a dedicated hardware having the following features: 1. an exceptional level of parallelism; 2. connections that are well adapted to transmit information in a non-isotropic way as it is required by the algorithms of image reconstruction and recognition. The idea of this POC is to create a dedicated hardware (called ARTIV1) emulating the functional architecture of V1 and hence having on one hand a huge degree of parallelism and on the other hand connections among the CPUs that reflect the non-isotropic structure of the visual cortex V1. Such a hardware that we plan to build as an integrated circuit with an industrial partner will be a veritable artificial visual cortex. It will be fully programmable and it will be able to perform many biomimetic image processing tasks that we expect to be exceptionally performant. ARTIV1 will come to the marked accompanied by some dedicated software for image reconstruction and image recognition. However we expect that other applications will be developed by customers, as for instance softwares for optical flow estimation or for sound processing.

Mots-clés : sub riemannian geometry,artificial visual cortex,image processing,image reconstruction,image recognition,fpga,asic
Projet ERC : FLOVISP (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
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 : 126375.0 €

The ERC-FLOVIST project has focused on advancing Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) towards a versatile technique for the non-intrusive diagnostics of aero-acoustic problems. One of the milestones has been the use of Tomo-PIV to infer the instantaneous three dimensional pressure field from the velocity measurement. The use of this laser-based technique for the detection of pressure fluctuations both around and on the surface of aerodynamic models offers the advantage that surface pressure transducers do not need to be installed, along with connecting cables for power supply and data transfer. The technique has demonstrated high scalability and pressure fluctuations were detected from low-speed up to the supersonic flows. This is an important headway from standard technologies (surface pressure transducers and microphone arrays) favouring a broader utilization of PIV in aero-acoustics, flow-induced vibrations and bio-fluid mechanics. The potential of this innovative approach has been recognized in science. However, the industry lags behind with a more conservative position, partly justified by system complexity and the high skills required to perform experiments. Instead, when correctly implemented this method can lead to important economical benefits with saving of costs for the integration of instrumentation. The targeted industrial areas are: aeronautics (aircraft aerodynamics and propulsion), energy systems (turbo machinery and wind energy). In wind-energy, the study of unsteady loads may lead to designs that reduce fatigue loads and increase system durability. Also, growing interest in noise emissions from wind turbines requires increased capabilities for their aero-acoustic analysis. The proposal intends to move forward these capabilities from research labs to industrial facilities. The main task is bringing together the current advances of the Tomo-PIV technique to make it broadly usable by research centres and for industrial innovation.

Mots-clés : pressure,flow visualization,tomographic particle image velocimetry,non instrumented model,model morphing,rapid prototyping
Projet ERC : EAVESDROP (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3439510.0 €

The Earth System is impacted continually by dozens of volcanic eruptions per year. Predicting their collective effects is hampered by our incomplete mechanistic understanding of eruptive and post-eruptive processes. The activity of explosive volcanic systems especially, is a key to the evolution of our world, not only for the eruptive catastrophes themselves but also for the massive injection of volcanic materials into the critical zone of the Earth System. (e.g. Ayris and Delmelle, 2012; Baldini et al., 2015; Dingwell, 1996; Dingwell et al., 2012; Martin et al., 2009; Robock, 2000). For this reason - as well as the many pragmatic issues of living with active volcanism – a mechanistic understanding explosive volcanism and the interaction of its products in the Earth System is a grand challenge of modern Earth Sciences. Fortunately, three recent experimental breakthroughs bring the challenge of mechanistic understanding within our grasp: these are the development of in situ high temperature 1) synchrotron-based real-time imaging techniques for deforming systems (Baker et al., 2012; Wadsworth et al., 2016). 2) acoustic monitoring of failure and fragmentation processes in exploding magma (Arciniega et al., 2015) and 3) dynamic ash-gas environmental reaction chambers (Ayris et al., 2015). Accompanying these experimental advances, have been fundamental advances in our mechanistic view of magma ascent and eruption (Tuffen et al., 2003; Gonnermann and Manga, 2003; Lavallée et al., 2008; Castro and Dingwell, 2009), volcano seismicity (Arciniega et al., 2015; Vasseur et al., 2017) , and the fate of volcanic ash (Delmelle et al., 2018; Renggli et al., 2018). Vast experimental expertise, together with the global impact of our work to date, place me uniquely to exploit these recent advances and to bring the impact of an experimental approach to volcanology to its fullest potential, with Europe at its forefront.

Mots-clés : volcanic eruption,experimental,rheology,degassing,failure,volcanic ash
Projet ERC : BENDER (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Utrecht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496611.0 €

The Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) membrane in all eukaryotic cells has an intricate protein network that facilitates protein biogene-sis and homeostasis. The molecular complexity and sophisticated regulation of this machinery favours study-ing it in its native microenvironment by novel approaches. Cryo-electron tomography (CET) allows 3D im-aging of membrane-associated complexes in their native surrounding. Computational analysis of many sub-tomograms depicting the same type of macromolecule, a technology I pioneered, provides subnanometer resolution insights into different conformations of native complexes. I propose to leverage CET of cellular and cell-free systems to reveal the molecular details of ER protein bio-genesis and homeostasis. In detail, I will study: (a) The structure of the ER translocon, the dynamic gateway for import of nascent proteins into the ER and their maturation. The largest component is the oligosaccharyl transferase complex. (b) Cotranslational ER import, N-glycosylation, chaperone-mediated stabilization and folding as well as oligomerization of established model substrate such a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II complexes. (c) The degradation of misfolded ER-residing proteins by the cytosolic 26S proteasome using cytomegalovirus-induced depletion of MHC class I as a model system. (d) The structural changes of the ER-bound translation machinery upon ER stress through IRE1-mediated degradation of mRNA that is specific for ER-targeted proteins. (e) The improved ‘in silico purification’ of different states of native macromolecules by maximum likelihood subtomogram classification and its application to a-d. This project will be the blueprint for a new approach to structural biology of membrane-associated processes. It will contribute to our mechanistic understanding of viral immune evasion and glycosylation disorders as well as numerous diseases involving chronic ER stress including diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases.

Mots-clés : cryo electron tomography,endoplasmic reticulum,er translocon
Projet ERC : POLICYAID (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1972860.0 €

The European healthcare services have begun collecting tissue samples and healthcare data from patients on an unprecedented scale. With POLICYAID we suggest the term 'intensified data sourcing' to describe these attempts at getting more data, on more people, of better quality while simultaneously making the data available for multiple uses. Data are used for research, for financial remuneration purposes, for quality assurance, to attract capital and even for police work. POLICYAID investigates how the diverse agendas interact in the making of a new infrastructure for healthcare. POLICYAID ambitiously aims to understand the drivers for and implications of intensified data sourcing in the biomedical realm across three levels: 1) policymaking, 2) everyday clinical practices, and 3) citizen experiences of health, illness, rights and duties. To achieve this aim we compare four different forms of intensified data sourcing, and analyze the regulatory frameworks guiding the data procurement and use in Denmark, the EU and beyond. Based on PI’s strong inter-disciplinary background and experience, we fuse legal, sociological, anthropological and public health scholarship and develop new methodologies for policy analysis by combining document analysis, interviews, participant observation and register-based methodologies. Instead of simply assuming that data sourcing can be reduced to matters of surveillance, we open up the black box of data sourcing by describing how data are selected; financed; what they are used for; how data practices relate to the involved stakeholders' hopes and concerns, and; who gains which rights to the data. We can thereby explore how intensified data sourcing affects clinical routines and patient experience, as well as understand how Big Data for medical research emerges. POLICYAID thereby arrives at novel understandings of both policy making and what it means to be patient in the age of intensified data sourcing.

Mots-clés : anthropology of policy,big data,clinical routines,data infrastructure,patient experience,science and technology studies  sts
Projet ERC : FIPS (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The FIPS proof-of-concept project aims at building a prototype of an ultra-small optical filter which can be integrated into a semiconductor chip. Spectral filtering is very important for both classical and quantum photonic technology. It has applications in many fields of engineering and science such as telecommunications and spectroscopy. Conventional methods to filter light, such as prisms and gratings, require a very large dispersion length (centimeters to meters) to achieve high wavelength resolution. Therefore, reducing the size of spectrometers to enable applications in the wearable and disposable market, requires a different technological approach to light filtering. The filter that we will develop within FIPS is based on sub-wavelength nano-cavities which provide sub-nm wavelength resolutions in the near infrared and can be integrated in compact photonic circuits. Additionally, we will integrate our filters with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to actively tune our filters over a broad wavelength range. This approach provides a novel solution that could be further combined with detectors for spectroscopy applications. The goal of the project is to fabricate an integrated filter in gallium arsenide membranes using state-of-the-art nanofabrication techniques and characterize it in our optical labs by performing spectral analysis of an input signal. Moreover, together with industry collaborators, we will explore the potential commercial applications of our technology towards new products that could compete in performance and specification with most of the existing integrated optical filters, in particular in the field of optical interrogation.

Mots-clés : integrated optical filters,nanophotonic devices,semiconductor quantum dots,micro and nano opto electromechanical systems,single photon sources
Projet ERC : FRUMKIN (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

The FRUMKIN project aims to develop and test a new model for the electric double-layer structure of the electrode-electrolyte interface and to investigate the impact of this double-layer structure on the kinetics and selectivity of electrochemical and electrocatalytic reactions. The inspiration for this new model comes from my own recent work that the classical Gouy-Chapman-Stern model for the electric double layer fails to properly describe the interface between an aqueous electrolyte and single-crystal platinum and gold electrodes. Specifically, our results indicate that there is an attractive interaction between ions and the electrode surface (unaccounted for in the Gouy-Chapman-Stern theory) that accumulates ions in the diffuse double layer, and that ions in the double layer interact with the electrode and with themselves through water-mediated hydration forces, approximately following the Hofmeister series. These effects are observed even for low electrolyte concentrations, explaining the invalidity of the Gouy-Chapman-Stern theory. The FRUMKIN project will approach its research objectives using a variety of high-level experimental, spectroscopic, theoretical, and computational techniques. The heart of the experimental work is based on ac voltammetry, i.e. differential capacitance measurements of the various interfaces, and electrochemical measurements of reactivity. Modelling of the experimental differential capacitance curves is based on first-principles DFT calculations and coarse-grained free-energy-based classical density functional simulations of the double-layer properties. Experimental molecular details of both double-layer structure and reactivity will be obtained from in situ vibrational spectroscopy (Infrared and Raman) and advanced in situ X-Ray spectroscopy, specifically Near-Ambient Pressure X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy and Total Electron Yield X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy.

Mots-clés : interfacial electrochemistry,electrocatalysis