Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : FlowMachines (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Sorbonne Université — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Sorbonne U
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 145500.0 €

The music industry has seen its profits decrease drastically since 2000, challenged by other forms of entertainment such as video games and the internet, as well as by illegal download and piracy. However, there is a growing activity in the so-called music synchronization business: music composed, retrieved, or otherwise produced to fit with the many constraints of videos, movies, games or commercials. Synchronized music has to satisfy complex constraints, specified temporally (specific events at specific moments, or, in the case of interactive music, specific moods matching the player’s situation, etc.). Major movie, game and advertisement companies devote considerable budgets to get synchronized music by famous artists. Producing such synchronized music is a costly process currently performed manually by well-known artists or specialized studios. This results in prohibitive costs for high-quality synchronized music, that only a few professional customers can afford. The commercial value of synchronized music lies in the style of the composer. Style is what makes an artist’s music easily recognizable: Paul McCartney has a unique composition style, Joao Gilberto has a distinctive guitar accompaniment style, and Take 6 are well known for their incomparable harmonization style. Producing operational representations of style is precisely the subject matter of the ERC project Flow-machines, which already produced scientific and technical breakthroughs: turning style into a new content type is within reach. The next step is to explore commercial strategies to exploit style. The goal of this PoC project is to apply these techniques to synchronized music, and to study three business models in the movie, game and advertisement sectors. The project will: 1) develop a style manipulation prototype for synchronized music, 2) evaluate the prototype in the key industrial sectors and 3) clear legal issues related to the exploitation of style information.

Mots-clés : music industry,content generation,constraints,synchronization,style,games,film industry
Projet ERC : MyeRIBO (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : CIC bioGUNE — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 14476.73 €

The myelin sheath is essential for neuronal function and health: myelinating glial cells speed up propagation of axonal potentials, fuel the energetic demands and regulate the ionic environment of neurons. Lesions to the myelin sheath thus result in devastating neurological disorders that include multiple sclerosis, diabetic neuropathy and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Myelination involves a striking expansion of the glial cell membrane that relies on an exceptional increase in protein and lipid synthesis rates. Decades of dedicated research has uncovered a complex transcriptional program that drives this process, whereas translational control mechanisms, on the other hand, have received little attention. There is emerging evidence, enabled by modern techniques, that ribosomes, typically viewed as invariant, passive molecular machines, may instead be heterogeneous in composition, with particular ribosomal components having a ‘specialized’ regulatory capacity for preferential translation of specific mRNAs. In MyeRIBO, I propose that translation control by specialized ribosomes is a novel layer of regulation that shapes the proteome of the myelinating glial cell. I will exploit advances in cryo-EM and quantitative proteomics analyses to discover the nature and diversity of ribosomes in myelinating cells, employ genome-wide ribosome profiling to obtain mechanistic insights into selective mRNA translation by heterogeneous ribosomes, and generate genetic mouse models to determine the functional consequences of this specialization for myelination in vivo. Notably, I will study the implication of this mechanism in pathogenesis of injury-induced demyelination and diabetic neuropathy, and evaluate the targeting of specialized ribosomal components as a preclinical strategy. MyeRIBO will push further the boundaries of our current understanding of the molecular control of myelination, which could have a profound impact for understanding neural development and myelin disorders.

Mots-clés : myelin,schwann cells,translation control,specialised ribosomes
Projet ERC : AxionDM (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Southern Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : SDU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 770380.5 €

The nature of dark matter, which makes up more than 80% of the Universe's matter content, remains unknown. Light axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are well motivated dark-matter candidates that could be detected through their oscillations into photons in the presence of magnetic fields. Here, complementary laboratory and astrophysical searches for dark-matter axions and ALPs are proposed that will cover more than 10 orders of magnitude of possible axion and ALP masses. The astrophysical searches will focus on high-energy gamma-ray observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope as well as current and future imaging air Cherenkov telescopes. Photon-ALP oscillations would cause features in the spectra of distant galaxies as well as gamma-ray bursts from core-collapse supernovae. Axion and ALP decay would also increase the opacity of the Universe for gamma rays. These signals will be searched for through novel comparisons of gamma-ray data and model predictions. The laboratory searches will focus on contributions to the Any Light Particle Search (ALPS II) and International Axion Observatory (IAXO) experiments. New analysis and simulation frameworks, as well as trigger concepts, will be developed in order to significantly improve the background rejection for the Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detector employed in the ALPS experiment. These improvements could pave the way for an ALP detection in the laboratory with first data runs at the ALPS II experiment planned in 2021. Monte Carlo simulations will be used to assess whether TES detectors can achieve the low background rates required for IAXO. Such high energy resolution detectors could help to precisely measure the axion/ALP mass through mass-dependent spectral features. Through an unprecedented investigation of axion and ALP signatures and by enhancing the sensitivity of future laboratory experiments, the proposed research will discover or rule out so-far unprobed dark-matter axions and ALPs.

Mots-clés : high energy gamma rays,axions,axion like particles,dark matter,indirect dark matter searches,cryogenic detectors,transition edge sensors,data analysis,machine learning,detector simulations,trigger concepts
Projet ERC : QuantumBirds (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 4225563.0 €

The navigational and sensory abilities of night-migratory songbirds, travelling alone over thousands of kilometres, are absolutely staggering. The successful completion of these magnificent voyages depends crucially on the birds’ ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Exactly how this magnetic sense works is one of the most significant open questions in biology and biophysics. The experimental evidence suggests something extraordinary. The birds’ magnetic compass sensor seems to rely on coherent quantum phenomena that indirectly allow magnetic interactions a million times smaller than kBT (Boltzmann’s constant multiplied by temperature) to be detected in biological tissue. QuantumBirds brings together quantum physics, spin chemistry, behavioural biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology in a unique, ambitious, imaginative and genuinely synergetic research programme that will prove whether the primary magnetic detection event occurring in the birds’ retinas involves the quantum spin dynamics of photochemically formed radical pairs in cryptochrome proteins. We will address three specific questions: 1. Are avian cryptochromes capable of functioning as magnetic compass receptors? 2. Do retinal neurons encode light-dependent, cryptochrome-derived magnetic information? 3. Are cryptochromes the primary magnetoreceptor molecules for magnetic compass orientation? Success in this endeavour will: (a) revolutionise our understanding of magnetoreception, the least understood of all biological senses; (b) firmly establish the emerging field of “Quantum Biology” and thereby reduce by six orders of magnitude the threshold for sensory detection of weak stimuli in biological systems; (c) prepare the ground for the development of a novel and powerful range of bio-inspired magnetic sensing devices; and (d) provide insights that could be applied in quantum computing and guide research into the potential effects of weak anthropogenic electromagnetic fields on human health.

Mots-clés : magnetoreception,quantum biology,spin chemistry,cryptochrome,migratory birds,spin dynamics,radical pairs,electrophysiology,quantum coherence,magnetic compass,bird navigation
Projet ERC : HiSCORE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KIT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 7248035.0 €

The need for drug screening with increasingly higher throughput is dictated both by the increasing number of drug targets made available through genomics and the increasing number of chemical molecules generated through combinatorial chemistry. Merely Boolean high-throughput screening techniques today can scan large compound libraries, but the ever increasing throughput has not translated into a significant increase in late-phase drug candidates. HiSCORE presents a synergistic approach to high-throughput, high-information drug screening that builds on the complementary skills of four laboratories supported by two external experts of drug screening: (i) Research and build innovative magnetic resonance instrumentation (Kentgens, IMM/RU) that can provide small, hyperpolarized solid samples on a seconds timescale, transfer and dissolve or liquefy these samples with minimum dilution, and acquire multiple high-resolution NMR spectra of the liquefied samples in parallel (Meier, IBG/KIT), using complementary contrast-enhancement methods, in up to 1000 massively parallelized microfluidic detectors (Korvink, IMT/KIT). (ii) Use this instrumentation for binding assays and measure the dissociation constants in the nano to micromolar range, and determine kinetic rates of the association and dissociation for a large number of complexes of putative drug compounds and protein targets (Bodenhausen, ENS) (iii) Use this instrumentation for functional assays, in particular for systems that comprise multiple enzyme steps with intermediate products, and to determine the efficacy of potential inhibitors, while fully exploiting the rich information that can be obtained by fluorine-19 NMR. (iv) Use this instrumentation for metabonomic assays to observe the metabolism of the compounds in cultures of living cells in view of identifying potentially toxic side-products. The contrast between compounds that bind to targets and those that fail to bind will be boosted by exploiting long-lived states

Mots-clés : dissociation constants,kinetic rates,enzyme inhibition,high throughput screening,microfluidics,supercritical co2,parallel detection,dynamic nuclear polarization,para hydrogen
Projet ERC : HiSCORE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Radboud University Nijmegen — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3222184.0 €

The need for drug screening with increasingly higher throughput is dictated both by the increasing number of drug targets made available through genomics and the increasing number of chemical molecules generated through combinatorial chemistry. Merely Boolean high-throughput screening techniques today can scan large compound libraries, but the ever increasing throughput has not translated into a significant increase in late-phase drug candidates. HiSCORE presents a synergistic approach to high-throughput, high-information drug screening that builds on the complementary skills of four laboratories supported by two external experts of drug screening: (i) Research and build innovative magnetic resonance instrumentation (Kentgens, IMM/RU) that can provide small, hyperpolarized solid samples on a seconds timescale, transfer and dissolve or liquefy these samples with minimum dilution, and acquire multiple high-resolution NMR spectra of the liquefied samples in parallel (Meier, IBG/KIT), using complementary contrast-enhancement methods, in up to 1000 massively parallelized microfluidic detectors (Korvink, IMT/KIT). (ii) Use this instrumentation for binding assays and measure the dissociation constants in the nano to micromolar range, and determine kinetic rates of the association and dissociation for a large number of complexes of putative drug compounds and protein targets (Bodenhausen, ENS) (iii) Use this instrumentation for functional assays, in particular for systems that comprise multiple enzyme steps with intermediate products, and to determine the efficacy of potential inhibitors, while fully exploiting the rich information that can be obtained by fluorine-19 NMR. (iv) Use this instrumentation for metabonomic assays to observe the metabolism of the compounds in cultures of living cells in view of identifying potentially toxic side-products. The contrast between compounds that bind to targets and those that fail to bind will be boosted by exploiting long-lived states

Mots-clés : dissociation constants,kinetic rates,enzyme inhibition,high throughput screening,microfluidics,supercritical co2,parallel detection,dynamic nuclear polarization,para hydrogen
Projet ERC : HYPOTHESis (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Technische Universität Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3096625.0 €

The need to shift to carbon-free energy generation is impelling, but renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are intermittent. Significant storage and additional energy sources are needed to guarantee continuous supply of heat and power. To limit global warming, these sources need to be carbon-free/neutral. Hydrogen represents a promising alternative in future energy generation. It can be produced using renewable sources by electrolysis from excess energy or by gasification, stored, and then converted in highly efficient gas turbines delivering electrical energy and heat in peak demand periods. But it does not come without challenges. Hydrogen has unique combustion properties that differentiate it from traditional natural gases. They dramatically affect flame dynamics and combustion stability, particularly at the high-pressure conditions at which gas turbines operate. HYPOTHESis supports the paradigm shift to a carbon-free society by developing greater fundamental and applied understanding on combustion dynamics and control of pure and highly-enriched hydrogen flames and enabling future gas turbines to be operated at up to 100% hydrogen content. We will perform an extensive experimental campaign using our medium-pressure combustor to enable single stage hydrogen combustion at high pressure. Using both physics and machine learning based methods, novel models will be developed for predicting and controlling the dynamical behaviour of hydrogen flames. This will lead to (1) the understanding of the dynamics of hydrogen combustion, with a focus on the scaling of its properties at high pressure, for which little is yet known; (2) the establishment of new design strategies, thermoacoustic prediction methods and control tools that are of paramount importance for practical applications enabling industry to use hydrogen as a safe and clean future fuel. Ultimately, the proposed research will help in significantly accelerating the shift towards a carbon-free society.

Mots-clés : carbon free energy generation,hydrogen,clean combustion,combustion dynamics at elevated pressure,dynamic control,machine learning
Projet ERC : MIX2FIX (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

The new generation of optoelectronics seeks for emerging semiconductors which combine high performance with low cost. Lead halide organic-inorganic perovskites manifest as excellent optoelectronic materials for this purpose, but at the expense of robustness and environmental compatibility. This presents a major challenge which this research addresses directly. Viable alternatives have to be identified. To tackle this challenge, MIX2FIX proposes to develop a new class of solution-processable optoelectronic devices based on air-stable, non-toxic metal chalcogenides endowed with an organic part, which will facilitate solution-processing and potentially enrich the compounds with the spectacular properties of halide perovskites. To achieve this, the CoG project has set the following objectives: (i) designing and developing optoelectronically-active, organic-inorganic chalcogenide thin films that have never been explored before, by mimicking strategies from established perovskite technology, (ii) devising means to improve their optoelectronic quality so as to be comparable with the best single-crystal semiconductors and (iii) implementing optimized materials into boundary-pushing PV and LED devices. Addressing these objectives will enable the development of novel functional hybrids at the boundaries of perovskite and chalcogenide thin films. With this, optoelectronics with efficiency and stability, comparable or higher than those of lead halide perovskite or chalcopyrite devices, will be demonstrated. This project will therefore permit the transition for emerging optoelectronic materials from toxic lead halide perovskites to green hybrid chalcogenides. Consolidating this unproven but disruptive technology will secure sustainable future for other areas of interest beyond photovoltaics, displays and lighting such as in X-Rays detectors and phototransistors or even beyond optoelectronics, in systems such as batteries and supercapacitors.

Mots-clés : chalcogenides,photovoltaics,optoelectronics,hybrid,perovskites,lead free
Projet ERC : TheSocialBusiness (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Tel Aviv University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1487500.0 €

The notion that websites benefit when their users are socially engaged—i.e., when they interact with content and with other users—has become so entrenched it is practically an axiom. Accordingly, websites in numerous domains invest heavily in ‘social computing’ features that encourage such engagement. In fact, many attempt to elicit engagement proactively, through the use of calls to action—prompts that ask users to carry out participatory actions such as rating or ‘liking’ content. Given the vast popularity of social computing, it is surprising how little we actually know about how user engagement affects websites and their users. From a business perspective, the direct value of user engagement is far from clear. From a societal perspective, it is unclear whether the increasing expectation for users to engage with firms may lead users to behave in ways that do not serve them. This research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of user engagement, and specifically, engagement elicited by calls to action, from those two perspectives. I will use an empirical approach, relying on innovative lab and large-scale field experiments. The lab experiments leverage a specially-designed website. For the field experiments, we will collaborate with websites spanning several domains; we have already initiated a relationship with a leading website-development service provider that uses a freemium business model, and have been able to observe the actual behavior of its users. Our preliminary results are promising, supporting the idea that calls to action have strong effects on conversion and information revelation. Moving forward, I plan to fully characterize the nature of these effects in multiple product domains, and to isolate their underlying mechanisms. I am confident that this research program will transform our understanding of the economic and broader societal impact of the social computing phenomenon.

Mots-clés : electronic commerce,social media,online business models,privacy
Projet ERC : BetaDropNMR (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : European Organization for Nuclear Research — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CERN
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is a versatile and powerful tool, especially in chemistry and in biology. However, its limited sensitivity and small amount of suitable probe nuclei pose severe constraints on the systems that may be explored. This project aims at overcoming the above limitations by giving NMR an ultra-high sensitivity and by enlarging the NMR "toolbox" to dozens of nuclei across the periodic table. This will be achieved by applying the β-NMR method to the soft matter samples. The method relies on anisotropic emission of β particles in the decay of highly spin-polarized nuclei. This feature results in 10 orders of magnitude more sensitivity compared to conventional NMR and makes it applicable to elements which are otherwise difficult to investigate spectroscopically. β-NMR has been successfully applied in nuclear physics and material science in solid samples and high-vacuum environments, but never before to liquid samples placed in atmospheric pressure. With this novel approach I want to create a new universal and extremely sensitive tool to study various problems in biochemistry. The first questions which I envisage addressing with this ground-breaking and versatile method concern the interaction of essential metal ions, which are spectroscopically silent in most techniques, Mg2+, Cu+, and Zn2+, with proteins and nucleic acids. The importance of these studies is well motivated by the fact that half of the proteins in our human body contain metal ions, but their interaction mechanism and factors influencing it are still not fully understood. In this respect NMR spectroscopy is of great help: it provides information on the structure, dynamics, and chemical properties of the metal complexes, by revealing the coordination number, oxidation state, bonding situation and electronic configuration of the interacting metal. My long-term aim is to establish a firm basis for β-NMR in soft matter studies in biology, chemistry and physics.

Mots-clés : laser spectroscopy,optical pumping,beta detected nmr,radioactive ion beams,bioinorganic chemistry,metal interactions with biomolecules,liquid nmr