Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ToxMim (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
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 : 1498598.0 €

Venomous animals use a myriad of toxins to specifically disrupt the physiology and behavior of their prey. Because of their high stability, potency, and specificity, toxins are important tools for biomedical research and have been developed as therapeutics for various human diseases. However, contributions to date pale in comparison to future prospects. We hypothesize that a small and essentially overlooked group of toxins, “ToxMims”, represent the most promising candidates for drug discovery and development. ToxMims potently disrupt the prey’s physiology by specifically mimicking the action of endogenous signaling peptides. Because many of these signaling peptides are critical players in human health and disease, ToxMims are exceptionally promising drug leads. Proof-of-concept is provided by our recent discovery of a toxin mimetic of insulin that is used by a marine cone snail to induce dangerously low blood sugar in fish prey. Because of its advantageous properties over human insulin, the venom insulin has rapidly become a novel drug lead for the treatment of diabetes. Despite their significant biomedical potential, ToxMims are rare and difficult to systematically detect using currently available methodologies. By leveraging recent advances in next-generation sequencing combined with our proven expertise in computational and experimental venom discovery and pharmacology, this project aims to develop a set of tools to enable the systematic identification and characterization of any ToxMim of the ~350 human signaling peptides with an emphasis on those implicated in disease. If successful, this research will not only identify a set of unique drug leads with profound impact on human health but elucidate previously unknown mechanisms of receptor activation, inhibition and signaling. Furthermore, this project will foster European excellence in venom research and develop scientific leadership competences for an independent, early-career researcher returning to Europe.

Mots-clés : animal venoms,toxins,natural products,drug discovery,hormones
Projet ERC : AST (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Milano-Bicocca — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIMIB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Verifying the correctness of software systems requires extensive and expensive testing sessions. While there are tools and methodologies to efficiently address unit and integration testing, system testing is still largely the result of manual effort. Testing software applications at the system level requires executing the applications through their interfaces to verify the correctness of their functionalities and stimulate all their layers and components. Automating just part of this process can dramatically improve the effectiveness of verification activities and significantly reduce development costs, relevantly alleviating developers from their verification effort. This project addresses the development of a pre-commercial tool that has the unique capability of efficiently and automatically generating semantically-relevant system test cases equipped with functional oracles. This capability derives from the AUGUSTO technique, which is an outcome of the Learn ERC project. The idea behind Augusto is to exploit the common-sense knowledge, that is, the background knowledge that every computer user has and that normally lets her/him use software applications without the need of accessing any documentation or manual. Once this knowledge is represented abstractly and then embedded in AUGUSTO, the technique can automatically adapt its definition to the software under test every time a program is tested. This development work will be performed jointly with A company that produces and markets testing tools.

Mots-clés : software testing
Projet ERC : Connections (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 706800.0 €

Via our connections we learn about new ideas, quality of products, new investment opportunities and job opportunities. We influence and are influenced by our circle of friends. Firms are interconnected in complex processes of production and distribution. A firm’s decisions in a supply chain depends on other firms’ choices in the same supply chain, as well as on firms' behaviour in competing chains. Research on networks in the last 20 years has provided a series of tolls to study a system of interconnected economic agents. This project will advance the state of the art by further developing new applications of networks to better understand modern oligopoly markets. The project is organised into two sub-projects. In sub-project 1 networks will be used to model diffusion and adoption of network goods. Different consumers' network locations will summarise different consumers' level of influence. The objectives are to understand how firms incorporate information about consumers' influence in their marketing strategies—pricing strategy and product design. It will provide a rigorous framework to evaluate how the increasing ability of firms to gather information on consumers’ influence affects outcomes of markets with network effects. In sub-project 2 networks will be used to model how inputs—e.g., intermediary goods and patents—are combined to deliver final goods. Possible applications are supply chains, communication networks and networks of patents. The objectives are to study firms' strategic behaviour, like pricing and R&D investments, in a complex process of production and distribution, and to understand the basic network metrics that are useful to describe market power. This is particularly important to provide a guide to competition authorities and alike when they evaluate mergers in complex interconnected markets.

Mots-clés : economics of networks
Projet ERC : Evidence-VAW (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Research Institute of Industrial Economics — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : IFN
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 19500.0 €

Violence against women (VAW) is a fundamental cause of gender inequality and a substantial constraint on women’s lives, but it has drawn significantly less intellectual curiosity from economists than aspects of gender inequality such as the pay gap. I propose to redress this by acquiring, generating and analysing unavailable or under-used data using techniques for causal identification with a view to producing a rich tapestry of scientific evidence to guide policy and further scholarship. This is an important time to do this as there is a growing consensus around prioritizing VAW in international policymaking but the evidence base is thin. There are no systematic data on VAW, partly because women are inhibited in reporting. Creative new strategies are being used in many countries to reduce VAW, but without scientific evaluation. This project will investigate institutional designs to encourage women reporting VAW and to deliver justice on VAW (including penalties for firms, feminization of the criminal justice system and the use of mobile phone apps and social media to provide women information and facilitate their coordination); it will implement and evaluate grassroots interventions designed to address VAW by inducing behavioural change among men and women; it will analyse the likely value of policies addressing proximate causes (alcohol ban, unemployment insurance); the potential of women’s political mobilisation; and the role of UN discourse on VAW. Some projects use randomized control trials (RCTs), others leverage natural experimental variation from policy reform or institutional features. Many use longitudinal administrative data providing unparalleled opportunities for research. Within the RCTs, I will gather unique data on social norms, beliefs and social networks. Although focused on women’s rights, it addresses issues on the frontier of economics research, including inequality, productivity, institutional design, political economy, and legislative

Mots-clés : causal evidence,econometric approaches to gender inequality
Projet ERC : PhageDiff (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Technion – Israel Institute of Technology — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2162296.0 €

Viruses are extremely abundant in the oceans and majorly impact the marine ecosystem by influencing the abundance, diversity and evolution of their hosts. However, our understanding of marine viral physiology and ecology among different members of the virus community is conspicuously lacking. Preliminary data using a newly developed molecular method revealed drastic differences in field abundances of two subtypes of T7-like podoviruses that infect marine cyanobacteria. Moreover, these subtypes displayed large differences in infection properties in laboratory studies. The main objective of this proposal is to gain a deep understanding of the genetic basis for the physiological differences in infection dynamics among closely related T7-like cyanophages that infect the globally important marine cyanobacteria, Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus, and to ascertain the ecological consequences of these physiological differences. We hypothesize that a small set of genes, beyond the core replication and morphogenesis genes, differentially impact the dynamics of the infection process which, in-turn, defines the niche occupied by discrete members of this virus family. Our specific objectives are to identify the genes responsible for the physiological differences and determine their impact on infection dynamics. This will be achieved through the development of a phage gene inactivation system and the comparison of infection properties of mutant and wild-type phages. Furthermore, using our new molecular field method, we will assess the distribution patterns of different subtypes of T7-like cyanophages from within the mix of all viruses in the oceans. The unique combination of innovative molecular methods with physiological experimentation and ecological sampling will provide significant insight into both the biological functionality behind the diversity within an ecologically relevant phage family and the selection pressures that have led to their diversification and evolution.

Mots-clés : cyanobacteria,prochlorococcus,synechococcus,phage,virus,psba,physiology,diversity
Projet ERC : CosmicAntiNuclei (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1253523.95 €

Visible matter constitutes only 5% of the matter-energy content of the Universe, whereas the remaining 95% is constituted by unknown forms of matter (20%) and energy (75%) that appear as ``dark'' to us. In the landscape of Dark Matter searches, antinuclei are a promising, almost background-free smoking gun signal for WIMPs and are a target of indirect dark matter searches. This project attacks in a systematic and comprehensive way the modelling of light antimatter cluster formation, necessary to predict the expected signal and background rates for dark matter antinuclei searches in space-borne experiments. The programme is based on precision measurements of rare antihelium production in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions with the ALICE detector at the CERN LHC. An innovative approach based on the measurement of two-particle correlations will be applied for the first time to investigate experimentally antinuclei formation via coalescence in relation to the nucleus wavefunction and interaction potential. The results of the analysis of the ALICE data will be input for the modelling of antinuclei formation and propagation in the Galaxy. The final goal of the project is to obtain a prediction for the expected cosmic ray antihelium background rate for AMS-02, further enhancing the scientific value of the proposed research programme. The outcome of this project will shed light on the production mechanisms of light nuclei and antinuclei in high-energy interactions. In addition, it will extend the ALICE and LHC physics programme to the astrophysical domain, with a deep innovative impact in a well-established field of research. It will have direct fundamental applications to indirect dark matter searches with existing (AMS-02) and future (GAPS, AMS-100) experiments, providing relevant input to frontier research in this sector.

Mots-clés : antimatter,light nuclei formation,coalescence models,phenomenology,indirect searches for dark matter
Projet ERC : HURET (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University Hospital of Basel — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : USB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Vision is of key importance for humans and losing vision has a major effect on day-to-day life. Vision starts in the retina, where an image captured by photoreceptors is processed by retinal circuits built from more than hundred cell types. Information flows from the retina via the thalamus to a number of cortical areas. Despite the large number of cortical neurons involved in vision, most blinding diseases originate in the retina and are cell-type specific. Although the vertebrate retina has a conserved cellular architecture, only a few animal models of visual diseases reproduce the pathology found in humans. Therefore, there is a major need for understanding the healthy and the disease-affected human retina. Recently my laboratory developed a set of new technologies that enable us to study the human retina, to understand its functional architecture and disease mechanism in its cell types, and so to develop therapies. Using these technologies, we first aim to describe the functional diversity as well as the function of ganglion cell types and their circuits in the human retina. Second, we aim to reveal mechanisms of cell-type vulnerability in human and mouse retinas. Third, we aim to provide proof of principle for cell type-targeted near infrared vision restoration in the human retina. Taken together, this study will provide insights into the structure, function, and mechanisms of disease of the cell types in the human visual system and will investigate a new approach to restore vision in patients with blinding diseases.

Mots-clés : retina,two photon imaging,human,optogenetics,organoid,neuronal circuit,vision
Projet ERC : STEMMS (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Durham University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1968006.0 €

Volcanic eruptions are a major natural hazard, affecting life, health and financial stability globally, with >800m people living within 100km of an active volcano. Large explosive eruptions can be devastating, causing tens of thousands of fatalities. Forecasting eruptive activity is the ‘grand challenge’ of volcanology, but large eruptions are rare, so our ability to link geophysical observations of surface unrest to magma movements below the surface remains poor. There are two key questions: (1) how are large volumes of magma accumulated within the Earth’s crust? and (2) how are they subsequently mobilised for eruption? Magma is stored as crystal mush (a dense mixture of volcanic crystals and melt), that is too stiff to move and erupt. Understanding what controls its structure, and the mechanisms by which the mush can be released as eruptible magma, is therefore critical to identifying precursory signs of volcanic unrest. STEMMS introduces a transformative approach to the problem of magma storage and mobilisation prior to large volcanic eruptions, recognising that the micro-scale structure of a mush is fundamental to its subsequent macro-scale physical behaviour. The project brings together two new concepts: (1) The primary growth conditions of a mush control its grain-scale textures – there is a critical link between magma crystallisation history and its subsequent physical behaviour. (2) A mush can be remobilised simply by growth of gas bubbles, with no external source of heat or eruption trigger – the timing of volatile saturation is key. Thus, the way a mush is assembled critically determines its readiness to be erupted later. Together, these concepts will frame a new paradigm to define how mushy materials are mobilised before large volcanic eruptions. STEMMS will develop a new framework to interrogate the chain of events prior to large eruptions, which will change practices in the volcanology community and, ultimately, lead to improved eruption forecasting.

Mots-clés : crystal textures,volatiles,volatile saturation,mush remobilisation,eruption forecasting
Projet ERC : MAST (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 58845.0 €

Volcanic unrest can give warning of impending eruptions, thus monitoring and appropriate emergency management saves lives. However, the ability to accurately forecast the future behaviour of individual volcanoes relies on interpreting changes in the underlying magmatic system. The conceptual understanding of magmatic systems has evolved rapidly and there is now ample geophysical and petrological evidence that a fluid-dominated ‘magma chamber’ is only one component of a much larger system with a heterogeneous distribution of melts, crystals and gases. The opportunity exists to use these advances to interpret monitoring signals, to improve forecasting skills and in turn contribute to the paradigm shift in understanding. In particular, satellite technology has revolutionised the coverage, resolution and frequency of deformation measurements and is increasingly used for volcano monitoring. Dense time-series of high-resolution images reveal complexity and diversity than was not apparent when only infrequent point measurements were available. The latest images are more compatible with the paradigm of extensive multiphase, magmatic systems, but even the most recent models still rely on spheroidal chamber geometries. The aims of MAST are thus 1) to analyse and model volcano deformation independent of constraints on geometry or rheology and 2) to link the long-term evolution of the temperature and melt fraction to patterns of surface deformation. These aims capitalise on the rise of satellite data, and recent advances in machine learning, strain imaging and the modelling of multiphase systems. The outputs will provide a scientific basis for observatories to interpret signals observed during unrest and to forecast future activity. Most importantly, the outputs will be consistent with – and contribute to - the latest understanding of magmatic systems. This multidisciplinary proposal is inherently high risk, but builds on my experience leading a broad team of investigators.
Projet ERC : FastVolt (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1145.0 €

Voltage droops are unpredicted drops in the supply voltage of computer chips, which often occur as a result of nearby bursts of high intensity circuit activity. This proposal is concerned with fast voltage droops, where voltage drops within a few clock cycles. This means that any dynamic response must take place within one or at most two clock cycles. A promising direction for combining the advantages of a stable reference clock with a small response time are mixed-signal control loops, in which voltage measurements are digitized and control decisions are taken by digital logic. However, digitally measuring a dynamically changing voltage may cause metastability of the sampling circuit. Conventional approaches employ synchronizers to make the probability of metastable upsets negligible, which costs 2-3 clock cycles of additional delay. Based on results of the ERC starting grant project "A Theory of Reliable Hardware,'' we provide a simple, compact circuit that guarantees the desired behavior without incurring synchronizer delay. This yields a practical method for adaptive response to fast droops, which bears the promise of increasing computational efficiency. Conservative estimates suggest performance improvements of at least 5%, which would be of substantial economical interest. The main obstacle to commercialization is a gap between theory and practice: Without an existing implementation, it takes a long time to develop a product and the associated risks are high. In this project, we will overcome this hurdle by developing, producing, and evaluating an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) demonstrator for our approach. We complement this primary goal by tasks aiming at maximizing impact: publication of results in high-profile scientific venues, patent protection to facilitate commercialization, and outreach to potential industry partners for developing products.

Mots-clés : metastability containment,voltage droops,mixed signal control loops