Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DigiScore (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Concordia University — Pays : Canada — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 118798.75 €

Digital scores utilising computational technology and digital media are emerging worldwide as the next evolutionary stage in the concept of the music score (Vear 2019). Yet there has been no scientific study of digital scores; nor their effect upon creativity and musicianship. This is remarkable for two reasons: First, because digital scores are generating new music experiences, innovative compositional approaches, novel performance opportunities, and broader accessibility for a vast number of musicians and music cultures around the world. Second, because many topics immediately adjacent or informing digital scores have been theorised thereby liberating these subjects and innovating creative practices, e.g. digital media art, digital performance, electro-acoustic music. This project will launch the first scientific investigation into the transformation of the music score through computational technologies. The core aims of the project are to: (1) determine scientific knowledge of how digital scores stimulate new creative opportunities and experiences within a range of music practices, (2) develop a theoretical framework for digital scores as an important transdisciplinary area of research, (3) build a scientific study of inclusive digital musicianship through the transformative potential of the digital score. This project will investigate these questions through an innovative combination of artistic and scientific research methods, undertaken by a transdisciplinary and international team of scientists and artists, led by a world expert of digital scores: Prof. Dr. Craig Vear. This is real “frontier research”, the benefits of which extend beyond music studies into computer science, new media research, digital humanities, performance studies and creative practice.

Mots-clés : music scores,performance practice,computational technology
Projet ERC : DigitalDoctors (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Maastricht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1361507.0 €

Digital technologies are reconfiguring medical practices in ways we still don’t understand. This research project seeks to examine the impact of the digital in medicine by studying the role of pedagogical technologies in how doctors learn the skills of their profession. It focuses on the centuries-old skill of physical examination; a sensing of the body, through the body. Increasingly medical students are learning these skills away from the bedside, through videos, simulated models and in laboratories. My research team will interrogate how learning with these technologies impacts on how doctors learn to sense bodies. Through the rich case of doctors-in-training the study addresses a key challenge in social scientific scholarship regarding how technologies, particularly those digital and virtual, are implicated in bodily, sensory knowing of the world. Our research takes a historically-attuned comparative anthropology approach, advancing the social study of medicine and medical education research in three new directions. First, a team of three ethnographers will attend to both spectacular and mundane technologies in medical education, recognising that everyday learning situations are filled with technologies old and new. Second, it offers the first comparative social study of medical education with fieldwork in three materially and culturally different settings in Western and Eastern Europe, and West Africa. Finally, the study brings historical and ethnographic research of technologies closer together, with a historian conducting oral histories and archival research at each site. Findings will have impact in the social sciences and education research by advancing understanding of how the digital and other technologies are implicated in skills learning. The study will develop novel digital-sensory methodologies and boldly, a new theory of techno-perception. These academic contributions will have practical relevance by improving the training of doctors in digital times.

Mots-clés : anthropology of the body,comparative anthropology,sensory ethnography,enskilment,sensing,oral history,social studies of medicine,medical education,medical technology,technology and embodiment
Projet ERC : OptoHear (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Universitätsmedizin Göttingen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496405.0 €

Disabling hearing impairment (HI) affects 360 million people worldwide and prevalence increases with age. So far, no causal treatment is available for its most common form, sensorineural HI. I propose to establish, characterize, and employ optogenetic stimulation of the cochlea, which provides unprecedented opportunities for auditory research and promises a fundamental advance of hearing restoration. Sound is encoded by spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) with high frequency-, intensity-, and time-resolution. Hearing can be enabled via electric stimulation of SGNs, which is employed in current hearing restoration with cochlear implants (CIs) and also used in auditory research. CIs enable speech comprehension in most users, but the quality of ‘electric hearing’ is low, with poor frequency resolution. The goal of OptoHear is to overcome this fundamental limitation by increasing the number of independent coding channels via spatially confined optical stimulation of channelrhodopsin (ChR)-expressing SGNs by tens of light emitters along the cochlear axis (cochlear optogenetics). This promises a dramatic improvement in the frequency resolution of artificial sound coding. As proof of principle, we achieved virus-mediated expression of ChR in SGNs, recorded light-evoked auditory activity and demonstrated improved frequency resolution for optical vs. electric stimulation in rodents. We co-developed and implanted optical multichannel CIs and studied their position in the rodent cochlea using X-ray tomography. We will optimize the expression of best-suited ChRs in SGNs, establish multichannel optical stimulation, characterize neuronal responses to cochlear optogenetics along the auditory pathway by physiological and behavioural approaches, and employ cochlear optogenetics for fundamental auditory research. OptoHear will establish and use cochlear optogenetics as a research tool, validate its potential for research and hearing restoration, and prepare translation into the clinic.

Mots-clés : optogenetics,neurophysiology,cochlear implants,auditory processing,sensory prosthetics,hearing impairment
Projet ERC : PARATOP (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
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 : 1362401.0 €

Discovering, classifying and understanding phases of quantum matter is a core goal of condensed matter physics. Next to the notion of symmetry breaking phases, the concept of topological phases of matter is a prevailing theme of recent research. Topological phases are envisioned for various applications due to their universal and robust properties, such as protected conducting boundary modes, and provoke fundamental questions about the nature of many-body quantum states by providing the basis for exotic quasiparticles. In this ERC research project, I propose several new topological phases and novel numerical approaches for studying and classifying the most sought-after topological phases of matter. Concretely, I propose the concept of three-dimensional hierarchical topological insulators, which, in contrast to the known topological phases, do not posses gapless surface, but protected gapless edge modes. Moreover, I plan to study topological metals arising in strongly correlated Kondo systems, going beyond the current paradigm of considering topological metals that arise in the absence of electronic correlations. Furthermore, I propose to make the analogous step for topological superconductors, which have been studied as free models to search for Majorana quasiparticles: For the first time, I want to explore strongly interacting systems that realize the more powerful parafermion quasiparticles with numerical techniques. Finally, in a cross-disciplinary and exploratory sub-project, I will employ methods of deep neural networks to classify strongly correlated quantum phases using supervised learning combined with a technique called deep dreaming. Each of these sub-projects has the potential to make a paradigm-changing contribution to the study of strongly correlated and topological states of quantum matter and the combination of them allows to take advantage of synergy effects and a balance between high-risk and definitely feasible key developments.

Mots-clés : topological insulators,topological semimetals,fractional quantum hall effects,disordered systems
Projet ERC : XSCAPE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 6378868.75 €

Do the worlds we build alter our own minds and the ways we process information? Do the material structures of our settlements, buildings, roads, and artefacts actively change patterns of thought and attention, so that understanding change in these ‘material codes’ becomes part and parcel of understanding the emergence of the modern mind? To answer these questions XSCAPE brings together a unique team from archaeology, vision science, and cognitive philosophy. Using a carefully curated set of materials, spanning a range of cultures and a wide sweep of historic and contemporary settings, we aim to test, for the first time, the hypothesis of materiality-driven cognitive change. To this end we will use a new synergistic methodology that combines multiple real-world case studies with state-of-the-art visual neuroscience, and simple agent-based simulations. The practical core of the project comprises a series of 41 different world-wide case studies. Together, these will constitute the largest ecological experiment on embodied visual perception ever attempted. A successful Pilot Study (described in detail in the main text) using eye-tracking analysis as applied to the visual exploration of archaeological artefacts already demonstrates the scientific and practical feasibility of our approach. For the simulations, we will use the emerging paradigm known as ‘active inference’ which describes a principled means of linking perception, attention, and actions (including eye-movements) with cognitive change and learning. This will deliver insights into the fundamental principles that may be guiding materiality-driven cognitive change. Using this unique combination of archaeological materials, visual neuroscience, and simulation- based studies, XSCAPE will deliver the first fully-integrated framework for understanding the potent yet ill-understood cycles by which we humans make and transform the landscapes, practices, and artefacts that make and transform our minds.

Mots-clés : archaeology,cognitive sciences,predictive brain,situated cognition,mind,visual cognition,material culture,agency,visual statistics,cognitive primitives,perception,inference,causality,attention,visual search,gestural exploration,human behaviour,social complexity,architecture,landscape perception
Projet ERC : XSCAPE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Sussex — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1696026.25 €

Do the worlds we build alter our own minds and the ways we process information? Do the material structures of our settlements, buildings, roads, and artefacts actively change patterns of thought and attention, so that understanding change in these ‘material codes’ becomes part and parcel of understanding the emergence of the modern mind? To answer these questions XSCAPE brings together a unique team from archaeology, vision science, and cognitive philosophy. Using a carefully curated set of materials, spanning a range of cultures and a wide sweep of historic and contemporary settings, we aim to test, for the first time, the hypothesis of materiality-driven cognitive change. To this end we will use a new synergistic methodology that combines multiple real-world case studies with state-of-the-art visual neuroscience, and simple agent-based simulations. The practical core of the project comprises a series of 41 different world-wide case studies. Together, these will constitute the largest ecological experiment on embodied visual perception ever attempted. A successful Pilot Study (described in detail in the main text) using eye-tracking analysis as applied to the visual exploration of archaeological artefacts already demonstrates the scientific and practical feasibility of our approach. For the simulations, we will use the emerging paradigm known as ‘active inference’ which describes a principled means of linking perception, attention, and actions (including eye-movements) with cognitive change and learning. This will deliver insights into the fundamental principles that may be guiding materiality-driven cognitive change. Using this unique combination of archaeological materials, visual neuroscience, and simulation- based studies, XSCAPE will deliver the first fully-integrated framework for understanding the potent yet ill-understood cycles by which we humans make and transform the landscapes, practices, and artefacts that make and transform our minds.

Mots-clés : archaeology,cognitive sciences,predictive brain,situated cognition,mind,visual cognition,material culture,agency,visual statistics,cognitive primitives,perception,inference,causality,attention,visual search,gestural exploration,human behaviour,social complexity,architecture,landscape perception
Projet ERC : INFOSAMPLE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Universität Hamburg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UHH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1313407.5 €

Do we prefer a small flat with a short commute or a large house with a long commute? Many real-life decisions require combining information across different attributes. It has been shown that during such multiattribute decisions people serially attend to (or sample) a subset of the available information. The way this process takes place largely influences the final choice: for example, if the “commute” attribute is considered for longer, then the small flat will tend to appear better. Up to date, information sampling has been studied within the social sciences using eye-tracking techniques. However, in the context of choice tasks, the way eye fixations influence the upcoming choice is not precisely known and, thus, this line of research has not yielded any definitive mechanistic conclusions. Recently, theorists have proposed different mechanisms of information sampling but these proposals were not constrained by relevant data. I propose to fill this gap in a data-driven fashion by harnessing tools from sensory neuroscience. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) we will simultaneously track the locus of attention and the tendency to choose one alternative over the other, during the entire time-course of a single multiattribute decision. This approach will enable us to unravel the computational and neural mechanisms that guide attention towards different aspects of a multiattribute choice problem. This project will yield a neurophysiologically detailed theory of multiattribute choice–from the level of neurotransmitters, to large-scale brain networks, to behaviour– that will ultimately shed light on century-long questions, such as why humans reverse their preferences irrationally, when irrelevant alternatives are added to the choice-set. The emerging framework will be useful to policy makers and practitioners, interested in a descriptively enriched model of choice; and to clinicians aiming to understand how information sampling goes awry in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Mots-clés : decision making,attention,mulitattribute choice,choice dynamics,magnetoencephalography,sequential sampling models
Projet ERC : DOCUMULT (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1654671.8 €

Documenting Multiculturalism will investigate comprehensively and systematically the coexistence of the diverse confessional, ethnic and linguistic communities of the island of Sicily under its Norman and Hohenstaufen rulers — Arabic-speaking Muslims and Jews, Greek Christians, and Latin Christians. It will investigate: the legal foundations upon which the coexistence of the subject communities rested; the nature, extent and results of cultural, linguistic and social interactions between them; and variation in the above, from time to time c. 1060 – c. 1266, and from place to place within the island. The ambitious objective is to create the fundamental tools to study, and to begin to write, the history of the subject communities of Norman Sicily from the bottom up, using documentary rather than narrative sources, and illustrating as far as possible the full variety in space and time. The Project will do this by making new critical editions of all of the administrative and legal documents for Norman Sicily, in the three principal administrative languages — Arabic, Greek and Latin. These texts will populate a database, to which further data from the non-documentary sources will be added. The database will then be used to generate a series of powerful electronic research tools, which will be both the means to meet the ends of this particular project, and ends in themselves that will revolutionise the future study of all aspects of the history of Norman Sicily. At the end of the Project, a series of summative studies will document, analyse and discuss different aspects of coexistence and popular multiculturalism in Norman Sicily, and set the case of Sicily in the wider Mediterranean context. What is distinctive about this Project is that not only the publication of its research objectives, but also the tools that it will create in order to achieve them, will revolutionise the future study of all aspects of the cultural, economic and social history of Norman Sicily.

Mots-clés : anthroponomy,byzantine greek,coexistence,diplomatic,hybridity,legal history,medieval latin,middle arabic,multiculturalism,multilingualism,norman sicily,palaeography,toponymy
Projet ERC : EPIMARK (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Nord University — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149202.5 €

Domestication and selective breeding of the major commercial fish species are essential to enable sustainability of the rapidly expanding aquaculture sector. The existing improvement programmes are based exclusively on genetic markers, overlooking the fact that selection for complex traits is strongly affected by environmental conditions and that epigenetics likely account for a large proportion of the observed phenotypic variation. Non-coding RNAs (e.g., miRNAs) and cytosine methylation (5mC) and hydroxymethylation (5hmC) of DNA are key mechanisms underlying epigenetic regulation of gene expression. We have recently identified a panel of 5mCs, 5hmCs and miRNAs that are potential epigenetic markers (epimarkers) of improved growth in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). EPIMARK will evaluate the commercial feasibility of our novel kit of growth epimarkers, so that they can be applied in selective breeding programmes. This will be achieved by (i) validating the miRNA, 5mC and 5hmC epimarkers, (ii) developing an assay for their quantification, (iii) investigating the commercial and financial feasibility and (iv) developing the optimal business strategy, consolidated in a business plan. The EPIMARK kit will lead to a more efficient selection of fish in breeding programs based on growth potential, thereby increasing the profitability and sustainability of the aquaculture industry. The technology developed in EPIMARK will also open important avenues of innovation, including the use of epimarkers for selection of other superior production traits and disease resistance in Nile tilapia and in other species of commercial importance.

Mots-clés : epigenetic markers,growth,farmed fish,nile tilapia,atlantic salmon
Projet ERC : TINTIN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Tilburg University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TiU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Drawn sequences of images are a fundamental aspect of human communication, appearing from instruction manuals and educational material to comics. Despite this, only recently have scholars begun to examine these visual narratives, making this an untapped resource to study the cognition of sequential meaning-making. The emerging field analysing this work has implicated similarities between sequential images and language, which raises the question: Just how similar is the structure and processing of visual narratives and language? I propose to explore this query by drawing on interdisciplinary methods from the psychological and linguistic sciences. First, in order to examine the structural properties of visual narratives, we need a large-scale corpus of the type that has benefited language research. Yet, no such databases exist for visual narrative systems. I will thus create innovative visual annotation tools to build a corpus of 1,500 annotated comics from around the world (Stage 1). With such a corpus, I will then ask, do visual narratives differ in their properties around the world, and does such variance influence their comprehension (Stage 2)? Next, we might ask why such variation appears, particularly: might differences between visual narratives be motivated by patterns in spoken languages, thereby implicating cognitive processes across modalities (Stage 3)? Thus, this proposal aims to investigate the domain-specific (Stage 2) and domain-general (Stage 3) properties of visual narratives, particularly in relation to language, by analysing both production (corpus analyses) and comprehension (experimentation). This research will be ground-breaking by challenging our knowledge about the relations between drawing, sequential images, and language. The goal is not simply to create tools to explore a limited set of questions, but to provide resources to jumpstart a budding research field for visual and multimodal communication in the linguistic and cognitive sciences.

Mots-clés : visual narrative,comics,linguistic typology,fluency,cross modal cognition