Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : EMERGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université technique de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496559.0 €

Geometry Processing is concerned with algorithms and data structures for representing and processing three-dimensional shapes. Techniques in geometry processing have been developed over the last three decades and are now driving real-world applications in various industries. Geometry processing algorithms may be interpreted as components of digital signal processing or machine learning, solving inference problems: given an incomplete description of the geometry, commonly based on point samples, the concept or process underlying the observations - the surface - is recovered (unsupervised feature learning) and then may be smoothed (filtering), segmented (clustering), or interactively modified (semi-supervised learning). To facilitate these operations the surface representation is adjusted (transcoding, resampling). However, using the algorithms and data structures in geometry processing for data living in higher dimensional spaces requires fundamentally new methods in geometric computing. Emerge presents a research program aiming at making geometry processing methods available as a set of tools in data science. Emerge will introduce fundamentally new concepts for surface representations and computational methods for surface interrogation in dimension beyond three -- providing useful tools in various science and engineering disciplines. The thesis of Emerge is that the resulting extensions and generalizations of geometry processing techniques will be fruitfully complementing and adding to the state of the art in processing large amounts of data. Any progress in this direction will have profound impact, as the proliferation of sensors and data processing has led to most of the current societal challenges (climate change, global biological risks, population growth, global policy making, energy) coming with enormous amounts of unstructured quantitative data to be analyzed.
Projet ERC : ReSpecTreg (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université technique de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Antigen-specificity is the key feature of adaptive immunity, orchestrated by CD4 T helper (Th) cells. A small CD4+ subset of autoreactive Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) secures tolerance against self and contributes to tissue homeostasis and regeneration. It is a central question in immunology how Tregs exert these various functions. In humans, however, self-specific Treg and Th cells are challenging to track and thus remain poorly characterized. In particular, the specific autoantigens targeted by Tregs remain elusive. Consequently, essential information about human self-specific Tregs' generation, function, and therapeutic potential is missing. This fundamental knowledge gap limits our understanding of human immune tolerance mechanisms and prevents their therapeutic application. We have developed sensitive cytometric technologies for deep molecular and functional characterization of human autoantigen-specific Th cells in various chronic autoimmune diseases (AIDs), identifying a novel Foxp3+ Th cell subset induced by chronic antigen stimulation. Furthermore, screening Treg responses against a wide range of self-antigens in healthy donors revealed Treg responses against known AID target antigens and against novel antigens potentially involved in tissue homeostasis or regeneration. Based on this prior work, RespecTreg will build a unique map of human Treg self-reactivity and deeply characterize prototypic Treg and Th cell responses: RespecTreg will explore fundamental mechanisms of Treg functions and their failure, identify relevant Treg target antigens, analyze Treg antigen receptor (TCR) characteristics, define antigen-related Treg functional diversity, and elucidate mechanisms of their induction and persistence. We will precisely characterize disease-relevant T cell responses in human AIDs or tissue damage. This will guide tailor-made antigen-specific Treg generation for future Treg-based therapies.

Mots-clés : regulatory t cell,antigen specific t cell,autoimmune disease,human immune response,tissue regeneration
Projet ERC : Off-Bench (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : South consulting africa limited — Pays : Kenya — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : SCA
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 98646.0 €

Off-Bench adopts an innovative approach to the study of judges and judicial politics. Rather than focusing on judicial rulings (the mainstay of academic study) it undertakes the first systematic study of what judges do outside of their courtrooms as part of their official duties and public engagements (hereon off-bench activities), why, and with what impact. This politics project adopts this approach for five reasons: off-bench activities are inherently political; judges engage in a wider range of off-bench activities than has hitherto been recognised; what judges do off-bench is highly revealing of their role understandings; what judges do off-bench matters for the roles that they play both on and off the bench; and judges are critical political actors who can help to promote or undermine the rule of law, accountability, and human rights. The project focuses on contemporary Africa as a most likely case for such off-bench significance and to build theory from the Global South. To facilitate the complex mix of qualitative and quantitative research required to map and then analyse off-bench activities the project will undertake extensive research in two countries. Kenya and Zambia are selected as most similar cases that display different levels of off-bench activism and judicial independence. To test theory developed and evaluate the broader applicability of findings the project will conduct additional research in five ancillary cases – Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda – selected for differences in levels of authoritarianism, conflict, and off-bench activities, and common and civil law traditions. This ambitious project will transform how we study and understand the political role, strategies, and significance of this critical democratic actor and make ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of African politics, institutional theory, and role of performance in politics and inform and enhance judicial reform and democracy support efforts.

Mots-clés : judges judicial politics african politics democratisation hybrid regimes
Projet ERC : CoDeFeL (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Deusto — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1313658.3 €

Machine Learning (ML) is forging a new era in Applied Mathematics (AM), leading to innovative and powerful methods. But the need for theoretical guarantees generates challenging, fundamental, deep mathematical questions. This great challenge can be addressed from the perspective of other, more mature areas of AM. CoDeFeL seeks to do so from the rich interface between Control Theory (CT) and ML, contributing to the analytical foundations of ML methods, significantly enlarging, and updating the range of applications of CT. As our recent results show, classification, regression, and prediction problems in Supervised Learning (SL) and the Universal Approximation Theorem can be successfully recast as the simultaneous or ensemble controllability property of Residual Neural Networks (ResNets). Following this path, we will develop ResNets of minimal complexity and cost, addressing the deep, intricate issue of linking the structure of the data set to be classified with the dynamics of the networks trained. Taking the turnpike principle as our inspiration, we will build new simplified ResNet architectures. This, however, raises major challenges for the genuinely nonlinear dynamics that ResNets represent.Adjoint methods will also be developed and applied, to understand the sensitivity of ResNets, and proposing techniques for Adversarial Training and computing Saliency Maps, applicable in Unsupervised Learning. The project is strongly inspired on the challenges arising in relevant applications in digital medicine and internet recommendation systems, among other areas. Accordingly, we will also develop a body of rich, hybrid, cutting-edge methods for data-aware modelling, combining ResNet surrogate models and those inspired on Mechanics, with the aid of Model Predictive Control strategies. New Federated Learning methodologies with privacy preservation guarantees will also be developed. The computational counterparts will be brought together in a new CoDeFeL GitHub repository.

Mots-clés : supervised learning,data aware modelling,federated learning
Projet ERC : LUIRET (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
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 : 2494683.0 €

To mitigate climate change, most electricity production will have to come from renewable energy (RE) sources. A challenge is that RE has a much larger land footprint than conventional energy sources. Current projections of the RE transition overlook its effects on landscapes, which may lead to unanticipated spill-over effects. Spatial constraints will severely limit the expansion of RE capacity due to: (i) competition against other land uses, (ii) public opposition, and (iii) restrictive legislation given the impacts of RE infrastructure on landscapes. It is therefore essential to understand land use impacts of the energy transition. Co-locating RE production with other land uses could decrease the overall impacts of the RE transition on land use and ecosystems compared to a spatial concentration of RE production with an exclusive use of the land. I propose a novel bottom-up approach to produce a fine-grained understanding of decisions by multiple, interacting actors regarding RE deployment in landscapes. The manner in which the RE transition is realised depends on decisions by numerous agents: governments, landowners, RE companies, civil society organisations, etc. My approach will lead to a realistic representation of feasible and sustainable pathways to accomplish a RE transition at scale. I will combine geographical analyses, interviews with stakeholders, and scenario analysis based on a new spatially-explicit multi-agent simulation model. The project will allow better anticipation of land use impacts of the RE transition under various scenarios. The project will explore the potential benefits of implementing the RE transition based on technologies that can co-exist and create synergies with current land uses as opposed to technologies that exclude other land uses. A successful and rapid energy transition is essential to mitigate climate change. This transformation needs to be realized in a way that minimizes negative spill-overs on land use and ecosystems.

Mots-clés : land use,renewable energy
Projet ERC : ABSOLUTE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : University College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496268.0 €

Wastewater treatment (WWT) processes that use biofilms as their biocatalyst have been in use for over 100 years. Over the past few decades, a greater understanding has emerged on how biofilms can be exploited for enhanced nutrient removal and this knowledge has been translated into new technologies representing about one-third of all WWT processes in a multibillion-euro global wastewater technology market.  Despite the success of these technologies, there is significant need for enhanced efficiencies in these processes and the development of new technologies that are more energy efficient and are capable of better resource recovery from wastewater are needed. To achieve this, there is need for new mechanistic insight, in particular the interaction between biofilms and particulate organic matter in the influent wastewater. The knowledge-gap spans three key areas: (i) non-oxidative interactions, (ii) hydrolysis and (iii) bioflocculation. This research project will develop an enhanced multispecies biofilm model that better incorporates new understating of these areas. We will go significantly beyond current state of the art by first building an experimental platform that exploits recent developments in advanced imaging, nanosensors & particle-tracking to probe the fundamentals of these mechanisms. To achieve this, the platform will be uniquely based on fluorescently tagged monospecies biofilms, rather than on conventional multispecies biofilm in a first phase of the project. This work will then inform the development of new mathematical model relationships, which will be implemented in an extended multispecies model and validated against data from a pilot plant operating with conditions representative of a real WWT plant. The transformative approach in this project will lead to a more fundamental insight into the mechanisms underpinning particle-biofilm interactions and pave the way to new application of biofilms for advanced wastewater treatment.

Mots-clés : wastewater,biofilm,biofilms,process engineering,aerobic,environmental,modelling
Projet ERC : MISSINGRELATIVES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499948.0 €

How animals emerged from their unicellular ancestors remains a major evolutionary question. Work done on diverse unicellular relatives of animals demonstrated that the unicellular ancestor of animals had a larger repertoire of genes associated with multicellularity than previously thought. These include “animal-specific” genes such as protein tyrosine kinases, integrins and Brachyury. This suggests a latent genetic potential in place at the origin of animals and hints at a much more gradual transition in their emergence. However, a comparison of extant early-branching animals and their unicellular relatives still reveals an abrupt difference between protists and the body plans of extant animals. This gap could be due to intermediate lineages going extinct, or that descendants of key lineages have not been found yet. Recent DNA environmental surveys suggest the latter, revealing several novel kingdom-level lineages that branch close to animals and remain unknown. We will not make progress in understanding the origin of animals until we have explored the real diversity of animals’ closest relatives and isolated the major lineages that remain uncharacterized. Indeed, some of the answers to animal origins that we can not currently address with our taxon sampling are likely hiding in hindsight in those unsampled lineages. Notably, a targeted survey of animal relatives has not been done. I propose to do this by exploiting recent developments in long-read metabarcoding. We will screen different environments and isolate the novel lineages using fixation-free labeling methods. We will culture them and get their genomes.  We will provide a complete picture of the diversity among animal relatives, which will also be relevant to ecologists. Notably, the novel lineages will allow us to address fundamental questions about the origin of animals that cannot be answered with the current taxon sampling, including the origin of embryogenesis and spatial cell differentiation.

Mots-clés : animals,metabarcoding,holozoans,protists,multicellularity,life cycles,ancestor reconstruction,isolation,culturing
Projet ERC : REPRO-SCAPES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1575635.66 €

The global assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) market is expected to reach USD 45 billion by 2025 with more than 8 million babies born. Europe dominates the market followed by North-America and Asia. However more than half of European states and most countries in the Americas and Asia prohibit access to ARTs to solo individuals, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples who need donated eggs, embryos or surrogacy. It is a prime example of contemporary technological transnationalism with potential parents pursuing treatment abroad in the hopes of conception. As ARTs spread to populations that have not had access to them before, how is reproduction being transformed by technologies and individuals whose sexual and reproductive lives may defy social norms and national laws? Due to biotechnologies and the populations who seek ARTs a new theoretical framework for cross-border reproductive care is necessary. The overarching aim is to study the question of ARTs, new family-forms and transnationalism in three ways: Firstly by exploring how the transnational circulations of ARTs, bodily material and ideas take form in three continents: Europe, North-America and the Middle-East (multi-sited ethnography). The second is through the ethnographic approach of analysis of specific locations, examining how technologies, genetic flow and ideas come to settle in four countries, leaders in ARTs and sexual and reproductive health rights (single-site ethnographies): Spain, Denmark, Canada and Israel. Thirdly, by studying the complexity and intersection of the biological, social, politico-legal and ideological between new family-forms and ARTs, and how these intersections shape their experiences. I am uniquely positioned to implement this study due to my pioneering scholarship on ARTs and new family-forms from a strong interdisciplinary stance and solid experience of managing international teams, bringing together divergent empirical contexts for ground-breaking research.

Mots-clés : assisted reproductive technologies,new family forms,transnationalism,spain,denmark,canada,israel
Projet ERC : POWERbyU (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499266.0 €

Self-powered wearable electronic devices will be key technologies for future portable electronic systems in the Internet of Everything (IoE). However, their potential is limited because of their need for batteries, which are bulky, heavy, lack the flexibility to be adapted to the human body, and require frequent recharging or replacement. In that context, flexible thermoelectric generators (TEGs) that capture the body’s heat and convert it into electrical energy are a potentially promising and sustainable alternative.  Nevertheless, commercial TEGs are produced on rigid substrates, so they cannot adapt to the human body. The current solution proposed is to produce them on flexible polymeric substrates, which unfortunately have low thermal conductivity, the active power-generating layer must be very thick, and it is not efficient enough. Additional problems are no good electrical and thermal contacts and the non-availability of commercial low input power DC-DC converters.  POWERbyU seeks to merge four scientifically disruptive concepts to achieve the technological breakthrough of getting flexible and efficient enough flexible TEGs: 1) generate not yet existing bio-inspired, nano-engineered, flexible polymeric substrates with very high thermal conductivities in the out-of-plane direction. 2) Generate a bio-inspired patterning of the polymer surface to drive the thermal flow from perpendicular to parallel to the energy generation layer. This is important because then, the important length to avoid thermalization is not thickness but lateral size. 3) Produce world-record efficient quasi-2D thermoelectric layers generated by a unique deposition tool and 4) new solutions to the commercial DC-DC converter. By assembling, all the previous concepts I expect a novel high efficiency, flexible TEG able to generate tens mW/cm2, enough to self-powering wearable devices.  Additional fields of application could be thermal management in buildings, textiles, packaging…

Mots-clés : energy harvesting,iot,wearables,nanoengineered materials,bio inspired
Projet ERC : MEDAPP (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2064671.54 €

The Islamic conquest of Iberia in the 8th century brought in profound changes in the political, social and economic realms that transformed the everyday life of local rural and urban communities. Technological innovations and the arrival of new crops impacted their agriculture, diet and culinary practices. Plants were present in almost all aspects of medieval people’s ordinary lives (food, crafts, medicines, etc.). However, they have been commonly sidelined in discussions of the past. Most of what we know about plants in this multicultural period in Iberia is based on a limited number of archaeobotanical studies and on written sources, which despite their undeniable value they often reflect issues related to the elites. By contrast, archaeology, and more specifically archaeobotany and their associated science-based techniques, are placed in an extraordinary position for approaching issues related to plant production, processing, preparation and consumption, and how these connect to broader societal changes. By integrating archaeobotany and written sources, as well as applying ground-breaking techniques (plant genomics and food remains analyses), MEDAPP aims to disentangle what range of plants were used in Medieval Iberia (6th-11th CE); where new species came from and when were they introduced, who brought them, and how people engaged with them through different practices. The project sets a new holistic agenda for understanding the impact of the new political, economic and social system on agriculture, eating habits and culinary practices of Iberian medieval communities. This project aims at providing a step-change in the way agriculture, plant production, preparation and consumption have been studied in Medieval Iberia. It represents a golden opportunity to fill the voids of texts, looking for clues in the archaeobotanical record; an occasion to approach, with a suite of scientific and innovative methods, the unspoken information contained in these silences.

Mots-clés : archaeobotany,written sources,islamic,food,identity,storage,food remains,isotopes,genetics,