Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : AUTAR (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1725656.0 €

For a large family of computational problems collectively known as constrained optimization and satisfaction problems (CSPs), four decades of research in algorithms and computational complexity have led to a theory that tries to classify them as algorithmically tractable vs. intractable, i.e. polynomial-time solvable vs. NP-hard. However, there remains an important gap in our knowledge in that many CSPs of interest resist classification by this theory. Some such problems of practical relevance include fundamental partition problems in graph theory, isomorphism problems in combinatorics, and strategy-design problems in mathematical game theory. To tackle this gap in our knowledge, the research of the last decade has been driven either by finding hard instances for algorithms that solve tighter and tighter relaxations of the original problem, or by formulating new hardness-hypotheses that are stronger but admittedly less robust than NP-hardness. The ultimate goal of this project is closing the gap between the partial progress that these approaches represent and the original classification project into tractable vs. intractable problems. Our thesis is that the field has reached a point where, in many cases of interest, the analysis of the current candidate algorithms that appear to solve all instances could suffice to classify the problem one way or the other, without the need for alternative hardness-hypotheses. The novelty in our approach is a program to develop our recent discovery that, in some cases of interest, two methods from different areas match in strength: indistinguishability pebble games from mathematical logic, and hierarchies of convex relaxations from mathematical programming. Thus, we aim at making significant advances in the status of important algorithmic problems by looking for a general theory that unifies and goes beyond the current understanding of its components.

Mots-clés : logic in computer science,computational complexity,algorithms
Projet ERC : NewHuman (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Kent — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1638643.75 €

For almost 100 years, the evolution of humans has been summarized as a transition from small-brained bipeds with an ape-like body plan (referred to as australopiths), to large-brained striding bipeds with a human-like body plan (members of the genus Homo). This characterisation dominates popular perception of human evolution in the public sphere. However, three newly discovered fossil human (hominin) species (H. naledi, H. floresiensis and Australopithecus sediba) do not fit this simple transitional model in either morphology or time (the former two surviving contemporaneously with modern humans), and have re-ignited debate about the origin of the Homo lineage, including perceptions of the earliest putative Homo species, H. habilis. These new fossils raise fundamental questions about the ecological niches occupied by hominins and the inferred transitions between niches throughout human evolution. With NewHuman, I will pioneer a novel, interdisciplinary and holistic approach using cutting-edge analyses of internal structures of fossil hominin teeth and bones to reconstruct the adaptive niche of these enigmatic species and test whether there is an unrecognized adaptive branch on the human family tree. Specifically, NewHuman will employ ground-breaking imaging techniques and analytical tools to reveal never-before-examined tooth and bone structures in these hominins. In doing so, it will 1) characterize the behaviour of these enigmatic species and place them more firmly into their ecological environment; and 2) elucidate the adaptive strategy that was likely the transition from australopith-like hominin species to later Homo, but which also represents a highly successful lifeway that persisted for over 2 million years alongside the evolving human lineage. By achieving these ambitious aims, NewHuman will have a significant impact on hypotheses about human evolution, and could result in a paradigm shift that overturns current views on human evolutionary history.

Mots-clés : human evolutionary history,micro computed tomography,biomechanics,adaptive niche,fossil excavations
Projet ERC : FLEXSEM (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of York — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999860.0 €

For any concept, we have knowledge about diverse features – for example, a dog is furry, can chase rabbits, and is “man’s best friend”. How, at a specific moment, do we flexibly retrieve relevant conceptual knowledge that suits our current goals and context? We can promote coherence between weakly-related aspects of knowledge as required, and also achieve the timely release from patterns of retrieval when the situation changes. These effects are likely to play a central role in our mental lives – yet they are poorly understood because past research has largely focused on how the conceptual store captures what is generally true across experiences (i.e. semantic representation). This project alternatively examines the cognitive and brain mechanisms that promote currently-relevant semantic information. We consider whether flexible semantic retrieval involves the recruitment of additional brain regions, organised within large-scale distributed networks, that place constraints on patterns of retrieval in the semantic store. In this way, semantic flexibility might relate to the evolving interaction between distinct brain networks. We examine whether specific brain regions support distinct cognitive processes (e.g., “automatic retrieval”; “selection”) or, alternatively, whether the functional organisation of these networks is non-arbitrary, with brain regions further away from the semantic store supporting retrieval when there is a greater mismatch between ongoing retrieval and the pattern required by the context. We test this “graded constraints” hypothesis by combining parametric manipulations of the need for constraint with convergent neuroscientific methods that characterise functional recruitment in space (magnetic resonance imaging) and time (magnetoencephalography). We investigate causality (neuropsychology; brain stimulation) and the broader implications of our account (using an individual differences approach).

Mots-clés : semantic,executive control,aphasia,neuropsychology,brain stimulation,transcranial magnetic stimulation,fmri,brain network,retrieval,automatic,selection,concept
Projet ERC : c-TSD-p (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Forschungsverbund Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FVB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 61231.88 €

For bonds to be broken and new bonds to be formed, chemical reactants have to come close to each other and evolve through transient intermediate configurations known as the transition state. Transition state dynamics is closely related to reaction mechanisms and of fundamental importance in chemistry. Much work has been done to unravel these dynamics, which often involve major structural rearrangement of atoms. However, there are a lot of open questions since to date none of the applied spectroscopic techniques has directly delivered the time-dependent transition state structure. I propose to develop a novel probe that images, one molecule at a time, the full three-dimensional atomic configuration of individual transition states as they evolve: Reaction precursors are prepared using molecular ions and small (ionic) clusters with defined initial structure and tunable internal temperature. Starting from these well-defined initial configurations, chemical dynamics will be initiated by a femtosecond laser pulse. Timed Coulomb Explosion Imaging, induced by extremely short intense laser or X-ray pulses together with full coincidence momentum imaging of all fragments is then applied as a probe. The latter yields the evolving transition state structure by mapping the position of all atoms as a function of time-delay between the two pulses. I argue that the progress in laser technology in recent years was imperative to make such a scheme feasible now, since it allows measurements at high repetition rate, which is absolutely crucial. I propose work packages of increasing complexity to study ground state chemical reactions in the presence of solvent molecules and under the influence of a control pulse. The structural information obtained from Coulomb Explosion Imaging gives direct insight into how reaction mechanisms change under such conditions. I anticipate that light will be shed on some of the long-standing open questions surrounding transition state dynamics.

Mots-clés : chemical reaction dynamics,ultrafast chemical dynamics,molecular physics
Projet ERC : Integrating Turkish (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Istanbul Technical University — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ITU;İTÜ
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 6115.0 €

For composers in Turkey today, the urge to integrate the beauties of Turkey’s rich musical heritage into contemporary concert music has become almost an imperative. But differences in tuning, texture, and between oral and notated orientations to performance have presented seemingly intractable obstacles. This project systematises practical processes essential for the creation of a new, East-West strand of contemporary music and opera. It initiates cutting-edge research workshops in Istanbul, Holland and the UK to: 1. Train top-level traditional instrumentalists and singers in Turkey effectively to perform a new repertoire; 2. Train top professional Western singers in non-Western techniques and nuances of vocal production; 3. Develop approaches for modelling such music's impacts on Turkish and Western musicians’ adaptive processes in rehearsal and performance, and diverse audiences’ perceptions of such music; 4. Create an ensemble interface (including newly designed instruments) to increase capacity for merging sounds beyond levels now achievable; 5. Produce groundbreaking studies on timbre to provide new insights into how sound is produced; 6. Establish a new template for mapping Eastern and Western tuning systems onto one another. This research, together with an orchestration manual for Turkish sounds will comprise the core of a published (CUP) team-authored e-book, Integrating Turkish Instruments and Voices into Contemporary Music (ITI), with included audio and visual examples linked as an online resource. Looking further, this project’s multi-modal, transdisciplinary approach also suggests a model for probing how the ‘free play’ of the imagination (Kant) possible within processes of art and its creation can provide metaphors towards understanding one of the most urgent and compelling issues of our time: how to transcend cultural barriers (real or imagined) that exist today.

Mots-clés : music,workshops,turkish,transcultural,opera,performance,ethnography,ethnomusicology,musicology,music theory,timbre,tuning,interdisciplinary modalities
Projet ERC : GeoArchMag (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Hebrew University of Jerusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1786381.0 €

For decades the Holocene has been considered a flat and “boring” epoch from the standpoint of paleomagnetism, mainly due to insufficient resolution of the available paleomagnetic data. However, recent archaeomagnetic data have revealed that the Holocene geomagnetic field is anything but stable – presenting puzzling intervals of extreme decadal-scale fluctuations and unexpected departures from a simple dipolar field structure. This new information introduced an entirely new paradigm to the study of the geomagnetic field and to a wide range of research areas relying on paleomagnetic data, such as geochronology, climate research, and geodynamo exploration. This proposal aims at breaking the resolution limits in paleomagnetism, and providing a continuous time series of the geomagnetic field vector throughout the Holocene at decadal resolution and unprecedented accuracy. To this end I will use an innovative assemblage of data sources, jointly unique to the Levant, including rare archaeological finds, annual laminated stalagmites, varved sediments, and arid playa deposits. Together, these sources can provide unprecedented yearly resolution, whereby the “absolute” archaeomagnetic data can calibrate “relative” terrestrial data. The geomagnetic data will define an innovative absolute geomagnetic chronology that will be used to synchronize cosmogenic 10Be data and an extensive body of paleo-climatic indicators. With these in hand, I will address four ground-breaking problems: I) Chronology: Developing dating technique for resolving critical controversies in Levantine archaeology and Quaternary geology. II) Geophysics: Exploring fine-scale geodynamo features in Earth’s core from new generations of global geomagnetic models. III) Cosmogenics: Correlating fast geomagnetic variations with cosmogenic isotope production rate. IV) Climate: Testing one of the most challenging controversial questions in geomagnetism: “Does the Earth's magnetic field play a role in climate changes?”

Mots-clés : archaeomagnetism,paleointensity,geochronology
Projet ERC : CONSCIOUSNESS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499766.0 €

For decades the cognitive neuroscience community has expended significant effort identifying system-level neural correlates of human consciousness, broad neural signatures that distinguish conscious from unconscious processes at the level of whole brain regions. Meanwhile, within the field of neurobiology, rapid progress has been made in understanding the neurotransmitter systems underlying basic sensory processes (e.g. in mice, monkeys). This research has, however, been performed in relative isolation from studies of human consciousness, and clear opportunities to link the two levels of description remain largely unexplored. Here I will establish this link by combining state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques with pharmacological interventions. First, I will validate and refine existing theories of consciousness by isolating system-level neural correlates of consciousness that are invariant across experimental tasks and manipulations. Second, I will test the hypothesis that NMDA receptors play a crucial role in recurrent processing, the dynamic information exchange between brain regions, thought to give rise to consciousness. I will also test the hypothesis that rapid fluctuations in spontaneous network activity (modulating arousal levels), which are controlled by noradrenaline and acetylcholine neuromodulatory systems, determine the likelihood of sensory evoked recurrent processing, and hence consciousness, to occur. Third, I will test the hypothesis that recurrent processing provides the possibility for prolonged and flexible information processing, which could represent a potential function of consciousness. In summary, the proposed research has the potential to gain fundamental insights in the neural causes, rather than simply correlates, of human consciousness, as has been the focus of most previous work. In so doing, the work will advance scientific understanding of the long-debated functional significance of consciousness for human cognition and behavior.

Mots-clés : conscious perception,visual awareness,unconscious processes,cognitive neuroscience,neuroimaging
Projet ERC : DESPO (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Bocconi University — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

For decades, deindustrialization has inflicted collateral damage far beyond displaced manufacturing workers by affecting the lives of working-class families and driving formerly industrialized areas into deprivation, generating new political fault lines in society. The aim of this project is to reveal how a person’s individual, family, and local community experiences of manufacturing decline transform the way they participate in politics and their political attitudes over the course of their life. DESPO will focus on the long-term consequences by studying a rich time frame which spans five decades of manufacturing decline and its political aftermath (1965-2015). It will examine an exhaustive series of political attitudes and behaviours covering: if and how people vote; what people believe and think about their political system; and how strongly people identify with political parties. The project will use large-scale administrative data to construct a unique database of multi-dimensional measures of deindustrialization for small geographic units that will be linked with individual and household longitudinal data. Finally, the analysis will use state-of-the-art statistical techniques to estimate the causal effects of experiencing manufacturing decline.
Projet ERC : NEWNEWS (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
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 : 1999537.0 €

For democracy, a necessary condition is openness to new political ideas. New ideas are often advanced by new political parties. New parties must rely on media to communicate with the electorate. In the process of that communication, it is inevitable that these media largely shape new parties’ public image. However, studies of new parties pay little attention to media. Vice versa, studies of media pay little attention to new parties. As a result, we lack a full explanation of new party emergence. This hinders our understanding of the openness of democratic systems, and of their current renewal. While Vox, M5S, and AfD experience unprecedented success, we hardly know 1. how (much) news media cover new parties; 2. what factors shape that coverage; 3. how (much) that coverage facilitates new party emergence; 4. how (much) social media use facilitates new party emergence. NEWNEWS addresses these questions by developing and testing an Integrative Framework of Political Party Gatekeeping. It adds to the literature in terms of theory (‘bringing in’ media and voter perceptions) and methodology (experimental methods and data science). The project seizes new opportunities: -Thanks to cutting edge analytical models, it adequately tests causes and electoral effects of that coverage, taking into account agency of new parties and heterogeneity of news outlets and voters; -Thanks to recent data collection, it encompasses all national-level new parties in 19 countries since 1950 (instead of only successful ones); -Thanks to innovations in automated content analysis, it maps national-level coverage of these parties in various offline and online sources (instead of only newspapers). NEWNEWS will reveal media portrayals of new parties, how these portrayals vary, and how they matter for election outcomes. This way, it will offer a novel theoretical framework, conceptualisations, operationalisations, data, and algorithms – and open up new lines of research on media and new voices.

Mots-clés : electoral participation dynamics,multiparty government,political agenda setting,grievance mobilization,political opportunity structures,analysis of mediatization,campaign organisations
Projet ERC : OPTORETINA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Fondation Voir & Entendre — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FVE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 546250.0 €

For patients suffering from inherited retinal diseases (IRDs), gene and cell therapies offer hope of preserving or restoring vision. Retinal imaging is crucial, to first phenotype patients to determine which cells are degenerated and devise an appropriate therapeutic path; then in the lab for cell therapy development, and finally back in the clinic to monitor therapeutic success in patients who have been treated with gene or cell therapy. To date, the imaging tools used in the clinic do not provide sufficient resolution for visualizing individual cells non-invasively, constituting a major roadblock for the development of gene and cell therapies. My group develops novel optical imaging tools for noninvasive cellular imaging such as full field optical coherence tomography (FFOCT), an interferometric technique, and adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy (AOO), which corrects ocular aberrations, to achieve diffraction limited resolution of in vivo retina. Recently we also devised a dynamic FFOCT method to detect metabolic contrast using intracellular organelle motion to indicate cell activity. These new noninvasive, all optical tools have the potential to provide, for the first time, simultaneous subjective and objective retinal function measurements. Here, I propose to adapt these existing optical setups based on dynamic FFOCT and AOO to allow retinal stimulation with visible light to enable functional testing of i) patients with IRDs in order to evaluate surviving cells and orient their therapy path; ii) in vitro retinal organoids derived from induced pluripotent stem cells; ii) patients being treated in our clinical centre with novel gene and cell therapies to check that vision is being successfully preserved or restored. The new imaging methods developed here will achieve quantitative functional assessment of cellular activity in vivo and in vitro, lifting the major imaging obstacles for successful application of gene and cell therapies in the clinic.

Mots-clés : ophthalmology,inherited retinal disease,optical coherence tomography,adaptive optics,scanning laser ophthalmoscopy,gene cell optogenetic therapies,microscopy,live imaging,retinal organoids,optoretinography,perimetry