Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : F2GO (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université technique de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498609.0 €

The IRDS roadmap considers two-dimensional (2D) materials a promising option for scaling electronic devices down to atomic dimensions. While there has been a lot of progress regarding 2D semiconductors, all electronic devices require suitable insulators as well. Although a major show-stopper, insulators have received far less attention and their is no clear roadmap as to which insulators can be used for ultimately scaled nanoelectronics. My group was recently first to demonstrate back-gated 2D FETs using ultrathin calcium fluoride (CaF2) as an insulator. Based on these promising results, I firmly believe that fluorides, which are ionic crystals with often very wide bandgaps, can efficiently address the major challenges: (i) Although relatively exotic materials, their growth is considerably better established than that of any 2D material. (ii) CaF2 can be epitaxially grown layer-by-layer on silicon substrates and likely also on 2D semiconductors. As their F-terminated inert surface supports van der Waals epitaxy of 2D materials, they could be the missing link between 3D substrates and 2D semiconductors. (iii) The low-defectivity of the inert CaF2 surface will significantly improve device performance and stability. Thereby, fluorides will allow novel 2D devices to make the leap from promising concepts to highly performant and stable real devices. F2GO will establish fluorides as a key enabler for 2D nanoelectronics by successfully demonstrating device architectures which were previously impossible to fabricate with sufficient performance due to inadequate insulators. I will do so by investigating selected fluoride-based devices for key technologies: (i) steep slope devices for CMOS logic (Cold Source FETs) at the ultimate scaling limit to allow sub-100 mV operation and (ii) ultra-scaled non-volatile memory devices (Flash and TRAM). Thereby, F2GO will pave the way for fluoride-based nanoelectronics at the ultimate scaling limit as required for the generations 2030+.

Mots-clés : 2d materials,insulators,more moore,steep slope devices,non volatile memories
Projet ERC : SMART-QDEV (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496206.0 €

This project will combine for the first time strong light-matter coupling in quantum-confined electronic systems with the optical and electronic non-linearities of semiconductor heterostructures: we will develop device concepts with unique ultra-fast, non-linear and quantum functionalities. The key ingredient is an unconventional use of the strong light-matter coupling regime (SCR), a fascinating concept that is recently transitioning from basic physics to quantum devices. We will first address fundamental physics problems, then we’ll turn to device applications. A key conceptual building block is that the nature of optical non-linearities is radically modified when operating in the SCR. This has profound consequences. We will study few-photon non-linearities, in particular the ultimate case of devices that can “sense” virtual photons. This will lead us to device concepts whose behavior is enabled by vacuum-field photons, bringing us radically beyond the state of art. We will then move to the case of many photons. We will focus on absorption saturation, that explored only in the weak coupling regime, where it is difficult to engineer. We have discovered that in the SCR instead it becomes tailorable and previously unavailable functionalities can be envisioned. This has profound consequences: we will demonstrate semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAM) for the mid-IR spectral range, a technology that revolutionized ultra-fast lasers in the near-IR, but is missing at longer wavelengths. We will apply them to fiber and interband cascade lasers, radically advancing the potential of those sources. These are ground-breaking demonstrations for mid-IR science and technology. SMART-QDEV is a project rooted in fundamental physics research, able to open up new horizons and research opportunities on longer-term and visionary topics. At the same time, SMART-QDEV has a clear vision for applications.

Mots-clés : strong light matter coupling semiconductor heterostructures mid infrared intersubband transitions ultra fast and non linear devices quantum cascade lasers interband cascade lasers fiber lasers
Projet ERC : BBThoughts (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 403232.0 €

Understanding the initial architecture and learning algorithms of the human brain are central goals for cognitive neuroscience. Anatomical and functional brain-imaging studies have revealed that a complex brain architecture is already present at birth, including features associated with adult brains such as structural and functional asymmetries, long-distance connectivity and activations in prefrontal cortex. Despite such advances, little is known about the depth of information processing and the richness of mental representations in human infants. To address this issue, I propose to study the dynamics of information processing and conscious access in 3–4-month-old-infants. Using high-density EEG (128-280 channels), combined with new methodological approaches such as decoding, single-trial analyses of variability patterns, and new paradigms that monitor infants’ attention with frequency tagging, pupillometry and eye-tracking, I will separate infants’ short-lived, externally triggered versus sustained, internally driven responses and shed light on their roles in early learning. WP1 will study whether the properties associated with conscious access in adults (ignition, top-down amplification, serial bottleneck) are already present in infants, and explore how ongoing neural activity, top-down expectations, and bottom-up stimulus features combine to modulate conscious access. WP2 will investigate the dynamics of acquisition and manipulation of symbolic representations. Experimental manipulations combined with fine-grained analysis of the temporal dynamics of EEG signals will clarify the time constants of infant cognition: how fast a stimulus enters perceptual awareness, how long attention can be maintained, how robust is this central representation to competing inputs, and how quickly it leads to stable learning. This project aims to enhance our understanding of early cognition, as well as provide new paradigms to shed light on early learning disabilities.

Mots-clés : eeg,infant learning,expectation,consciousness,symbols,brain,cognition
Projet ERC : MilliInMicro (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2134529.0 €

Complete understanding of how complex biological objects operate and fulfill their cellular role requires at its core a detailed picture of the millisecond (ms) conformational transitions between functional states. Computational investigation of such ms–events is thwarted by our difficulty—and often impossibility—to identify and sample efficiently the relevant degrees of freedom at play, as well as the current limitation of all-atom molecular dynamics to the microsecond (μs) timescale on common computer architectures. Guided by concrete biological questions that experiment alone has hitherto proven unable to address, we propose a holistic approach to bridge affordable μs–computer simulations and ms–biological processes without the aid of a special-purpose supercomputer. To meet this grand theoretical challenge, we will associate two powerful developments to make the quantum leap, and open a breadth of applications, scaling up to very large biological objects, so far inaccessible to μs–timescale computer simulations. First, we will determine the reaction coordinate in an unprecedented combination of data- driven discovery of collective variables and advanced algorithms to find the minimum free-energy pathway that connects the end states of the conformational transition. Second, we will accelerate sampling along this pathway by associating ergodic schemes to a novel approach that maps complex free-energy landscapes significantly faster than its competitors. We will apply this methodology to a V1Vo–ATPase, a complete ATP–driven biological motor that converts over the ms–timescale the chemical energy of ATP hydrolysis into mechanical work, with minimalist dissipation. Beyond illuminating the allosteric pathways that underlie the conformational transition, atomic-level description of the rotary-catalysis milestones will shed new light on the effects of pathological mutations altering ATP activity, while helping engineer artificial cells with accelerated ATP turnover.

Mots-clés : allosteric transitions rare events numerical simulations molecular dynamics free energy path search kinetic modeling biological motors atpase
Projet ERC : HIPSTAR (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université Érasme de Rotterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EUR
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2365672.5 €

With 40 million patients in Europe, osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common chronic and disabling disease. OA is incurable, and symptomatic treatments have limited effect. Therefore, prevention by identifying and targeting asymptomatic persons that develop a clear OA risk factor is sorely needed. Hip dysplasia is the strongest risk factor for hip OA. Hip dysplasia is a condition of mechanical instability of the hip caused by insufficient coverage of the femoral head (ball) by a shallow or obliquely oriented acetabulum (socket). This results in high cartilage stress, and subsequent hip OA. In Europe we screen for developmental hip dysplasia in infants (prevalence 2%), enabling early treatment. However, we discovered that hip dysplasia can (further) develop during skeletal maturation and thus remains unrecognized. In 1100 Dutch 9-year-old children we found a 6% and 26% prevalence of marked and mild hip dysplasia, respectively. Hip dysplasia can be influenced until the stage where hip growth plates close at about age 13. I propose a novel research program (HIPSTAR) where I will uniquely unravel the mechanisms behind late childhood hip dysplasia in order to pave the way for devising preventive measures that reduce the prevalence of adult hip dysplasia and, thus, hip OA. In a birth cohort of 8000 children (followed from foetal life until adulthood), I will first uniquely built a 5D growth model on how hip shape develops over time from age 2-18 years. I will gain novel knowledge regarding causal factors of dysplastic growth, and whether there are various phenotypes that have different underlying mechanisms. I also will study how and when dysplastic growth will already impact on the integrity of the young adult joint, and discover very early signs of joint aberration leading to OA. Finally, in a computational model, I will test the influence of loading factors on dysplastic growth mechanistically, and provide detailed information regarding the potential remedial options.

Mots-clés : osteoarthritis,hip,growth and development,risk factor,joint diseases,phenotype
Projet ERC : SOFA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2726588.0 €

Aerosols and clouds are key players in tropospheric chemistry. These tiny particles suspended in the air, with a radius ranging from a few nanometres to tens of micrometres, impact atmospheric composition, represent one of the largest uncertainties in climatic projections and cause millions of deaths worldwide every year. Hence, they have enormous societal and economic consequences. Nonetheless, there is still a knowledge gap preventing us from describing the chemical evolution of aerosols and clouds during their atmospheric lifetime. Supported by preliminary experiments, I therefore propose to unravel the impact of the spontaneous oxidant formation at the air/liquid interface as a key driver for multiphase oxidation processes. Water molecules in bulk liquid are stable and inert under ambient conditions. In sharp contrast, it was very recently shown that the local orientation of water molecules at an air/water interface induces an electric field that generates spontaneous radicals in micron-sized droplets. This production does not involve any catalysts such as light or heat. It is an intrinsic property of the air/water interface, and therefore potentially ubiquitous in the troposphere. This spontaneous interfacial oxidant formation has never been explored for its atmospheric significance. Therefore, the SOFA project aims to unravel the atmospheric importance of this interfacial (dark) chemistry. If oxidants (including OH radicals) are in fact spontaneously produced at the air-water interface, under atmospherically relevant concentrations, this would profoundly challenge our understanding and description of atmospheric multiphase chemistry. SOFA will develop a novel strategy, scaling up from laboratory-based measurements to fieldwork and modelling to assess the importance of this interfacial chemistry. SOFA will advance an entirely new perspective on how to address the multiphase oxidation capacity of the troposphere, and will therefore have a wide impact.

Mots-clés : aerosol,cloud,interfacial chemistry,radicals,atmospheric oxidation capacity
Projet ERC : IGN (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2261250.0 €

Obesity and type 2 diabetes continuously progress worldwide, compromising healthy aging. Deregulated endogenous glucose production (EGP) is involved in hyperglycemia and its complications. Among the 3 organs (liver, kidney, intestine) contributing to EGP, I uncovered with my team that intestinal gluconeogenesis (IGN) has the capacity to interfere in the control of energy homeostasis. Indeed, intestinal glucose initiates a gut-brain circuit controlling both body weight and glucose production by the liver, the strongest quantitative contributor to EGP. Intestinal gluconeogenesis is, thus, a novel target to control obesity and diabetes. The IGN project has 3 objectives: Understand: is dedicated to elucidating the neural mechanisms by which IGN is sensed and send its signals to the brain. Our data suggested that glucose receptor sodium-glucose co-transporter 3 (SGLT3) could be the peripheral sensor of IGN. Moreover, we showed that the neuromediator calcitonin gene-related peptide alpha (CGRPa) is mandatory for the IGN signal. I will use original mouse models to map the SGLT3-neuron connection to the brain and define the role of CGRPa. Explore: aims at expanding the scope of IGN to the networking of hypothalamus during the neonatal period. I will assess whether the surge of IGN occurring during the neonatal period may control the development of neuronal connections between the hypothalamic nuclei, to ensure an optimal control of energy homeostasis in adult, as previously observed for the neonatal surge of the hormone leptin. Take advantage: aims at identifying novel metabolites able to activate IGN and test them as beneficial modulators of energy homeostasis under unbalanced nutrition. This will pave the way to novel therapeutic approaches of metabolic diseases based on IGN.  Thus, the IGN project should lead to a better understanding of metabolic control and offer new perspectives for preventing metabolic diseases and maintaining healthy ageing.

Mots-clés : gut brain axis,glucose and energy homeostasis
Projet ERC : LATEUROPE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2558250.0 €

The project aims to question human migrations and peopling: why the earliest hominins did occupy Western Europe later than other portions of Eurasia? Early Hominins, conquered Eurasia, long before Modern Humans, the single Homo species living now on the earth. They conquered Eurasia along a rapid “Out of Africa” movement but left Europe empty during almost 1 million years. Western Europe did indeed face environmental constraints. This subcontinent is in a remote corner of Eurasia but other large Eurasian peninsulas are dead-ends as well. Certainly, Western Europe mixture of various environments and topographies did change a lot over time and the succession of climates, then causing favorable territories for human occupations to fluctuate. However, archaeology in Asia and the Levant shows that hominins did overcome variable climatic conditions and geographies. Investigating why Western Europe have remained out of the “Oekoumen” for so long is our research proposal LATEUROPE, that we base over datasets of interdisciplinary and behavioral materials enriched by future fieldworks in several specific sites and biomes on the key period before 500 ka. This will question at the local, regional and continental scale, the environmental, geographic and climatic conditions of Europe as compared to the rest of Eurasia and the characteristics of the hominin occupations and behaviours, or/and if a minimum degree of cognition was required to thrive in these lands. Databases will input multiple scenarios combining migration patterns and internal evolution mechanisms, using conceptual modeling and spatial agent-based simulations. This formalized combination of modeling and field methodologies is an epistemological advance for bringing interdisciplinarity to reality, allowing us to deeply question the ability of Homo species to adapt themselves to harsh environments, to face environmental shocks and changes on a long term scale.
Projet ERC : DOC-PAST (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3120325.0 €

Atmospheric chemistry is an essential component of the functioning of the Earth's climate. It determines the atmospheric lifetime of most climatic agents, impacting the nature and concentrations of aerosols, greenhouse gases, cloud formations. Determining how this chemical reactivity has evolved in the past is essential, both for evaluating chemistry-climate models (CCM) and for establishing future climate trajectories. The chemical activity of the atmosphere is driven by highly reactive atmospheric compounds that have a very short lifetime in the atmosphere. Because of this ephemeral nature, they are not archived in the paleoclimate record. Reconstructing this chemical activity over time remains a difficult exercise that has not been successful to date. Using ice cores, the multidisciplinary DOC-PAST project proposes to develop new tracers of this chemical activity by taking advantage of the revolution introduced by clumps and isotopic anomalies. The aim is to use a variety of ice cores covering all latitudes to highlight key elements of the chemical reactivity of the atmosphere. This will be done by 1-determining in the laboratory the isotopic characteristics of key oxidation reactions of atmospheric of compounds preserved in the ice, 2-documenting in the ice archives these isotopic compositions and deducing the associated chemical reactivity of the atmosphere 3-incorporating in the CCM LMDz-INCA these changes and measuring their impacts on climate. These new isotopic proxies will require the development of new analytical approaches based on the retargeting of an orbitrap towards isotopic measurements and the construction of a very high sensitivity infrared spectrometer, paving the way for the use of clumped isotope in broad disciplinary fields using stable isotopes. DOC-PAST will provide for the first time in situ “chirurgical-level” of how atmospheric species are made with unparalleled mechanistic details and set new standards in geochemistry and spectroscopy.

Mots-clés : mass spectrometry,infrared spectroscopy,ice cores,clumped isotope,nitrate,sulfate,carbon monoxide
Projet ERC : CohPa (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2469604.0 €

How grains flow? Can we predict the behavior of sand, snow, powders and more generally of a collection of particles? In many situations both in nature or industry, this question is of importance to predict avalanches, landslides, or designing silos and industrial processes. While for simple fluids the measure of the viscosity is sufficient to compute and predict the flow, for granular materials the question remains open. The challenge of understanding the physics of granular flows has motivated many researches and constitutive laws have been developed for grains interacting by friction and collision. However, in many applications, grains present cohesion and predicting their behavior is much more challenging. Sticky or humid grains, powders, snow, fibers are examples of granular media having difficulties to flow, with clogging, agglomeration, intermittency. The CohPa project aims at a fundamental understanding of the behavior of cohesive granular materials, by combining experimental, numerical and theoretical approaches, with the ultimate goal of developping constitutive laws able to predict their behavior in any configuration. The two work packages correspond to two types of cohesive materials. In WP1, I will study cohesion resulting from the presence of adhesive forces between particles and I will focus on the development of model materials made of sticky grains with tailored surface properties as well as on real powders. By developing innovative rheological technics coupled with numerical simulations we hope to get a new understanding of the rheology. In WP2, I will study the cohesion arising from entanglement between frictional particles, as observed in an assembly of fibers (as in a bird nest or a cotton ball), or when mixing fibers and grains (typically roots in soils). They constitute a new class of disordered materials, in which the tensile strength results from a subtle coupling between geometry, elasticity and friction, which is not yet understood.

Mots-clés : granular flows,rheology,entanglement