Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : LEAPS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2362950.0 €

The crucial role played by molecular motors in major biological processes gives a clue on the potential of these nanoscale devices for technology. Their exploitation depends on our ability to build working and robust artificial systems, and to interface them with their environment or other molecular constructs for using the motion to carry out tasks. The goal of this project is to develop the first synthetic photochemical supramolecular pumps and to apply them for performing nanoscale transport functions and macroscopic actuation. The motor modules, which rely on a functioning and affordable minimalist design based on first principles and threaded topologies, operate autonomously away from equilibrium by using light as a clean energy source, can be switched on/off chemically, and are easy to make and functionalize. Appropriately designed motors will be embedded in the bilayer of vesicles to pump molecules across physically separated places, thereby photogenerating concentration gradients. In parallel we plan to arrange the pump modules in oligomeric tracks and investigate the autonomous, directional and processive displacement of a molecule over a few nm. These linear motors will be equipped with a cargo that can be loaded/unloaded with control, yielding the first man-made molecular transporters. Finally, we will integrate the pump components in polymeric scaffolds such that the photoinduced operation of the motors produces a non-equilibrium entanglement of the polymer chains, that can be eventually unravelled by chemical stimulation. Such materials may be used to convert, store, and reuse the energy of (sun)light upon demand. All the above functionalities are unprecedented for wholly synthetic chemical structures. Their demonstration would be a landmark result in supramolecular chemistry and nanoscience, and open up radically new directions for nanotechnology, nanomedicine, and energy conversion.

Mots-clés : azobenzene,bilayer membrane,energy conversion,liposome,molecular machine,molecular switch,motor protein,nanomedicine,nanoscience,non equilibrium systems,rotaxane,vesicle
Projet ERC : CryoET4Diversity (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1996102.0 €

The cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) modalities of single particle analysis and cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) have revolutionized the fields of structural biology and cellular biochemistry, and they enabled groundbreaking insights into primarily hypothesis-driven, mechanistic problems, using well-established model systems. High-throughput sequencing technologies have revolutionized microbial community studies and changed our view of the diversity of life. In order to understand how microbes function and interact with other cells, however, sequencing- and cultivation-based techniques must be complemented with experiments that elucidate phenotypes in situ at the single-cell level. In Aim 1, we will develop cryoET methods for their application to problems in microbial ecology. We will resolve technical challenges of cryoET application to complex environmental samples, including aspects of sample preparation, data collection, data analysis and data integration. In Aim 2, we will apply the new methods to outstanding biological questions to advance our understanding of cell-cell interactions. We will study the role of unique bacterial tubulins in a bacterium-ciliate symbiosis, aspects of multicellularity in magnetotactic bacteria, and the diversity and roles of bacterial contractile injection systems. This project resides at the interface of structural biology/biophysics and environmental/evolutionary biology. We will leverage the power of cryoET to generate three-dimensional images of cells in a frozen-hydrated life-like state, and at macromolecular resolution. The complementation with high-throughput and single-cell approaches from microbial ecology will allow us to make progress on specific biological questions. CryoET offers a new “sense” for the analysis of complex environmental samples. Our efforts will establish cryoET as a discovery tool that enables us to conceive how genetic variations manifest in structural and functional diversity.

Mots-clés : electron microscopy,cryo electron tomography,sample preparation,cell cell interactions,macromolecular machines,contractile injection systems,cytoskeleton,multicelluarity
Projet ERC : N-EXTLAW (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
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 : 1498733.0 €

The current economic model is overdue for revision. The relentless focus on economic growth is ravaging the environment, and the concomitant social problems have either already reached glaring levels (rocketing global inequality) or seem poised to do so (climate displaced persons). A number of radical proposals, such as prosperity without growth, circular economy, or doughnut economics, have been proposed to chart a trajectory towards socio-ecological transformation, arguing that a profound change in our ways of living and modes of production is necessary in order to respond to the threats we face. Yet such proposals, however commendable, have gained only modest political traction, insofar as they seem unthinkable from the vantage point of our current economic system, consumption patterns, political discourse and legal institutions. This project will show how law can contribute to making such transformative projects politically credible. More specifically, it will demonstrate how law, and private law in particular, can be used to nurture those existing economic practices that already build on the environmental and social aspirations embodied by such projects. The two main objectives are, first, to offer a set of legal tools and policy proposals that would make the adoption of environmentally and socially non-extractive economic practices, such as social cooperatives or solidary financial institutions, more attractive for people to implement. Second, N-EXTLAW theorizes how law can turn seemingly utopian projects for socio-ecological transformation into a realistic legal-political project. By refashioning the concrete socio-legal arrangements for pursuing non-extractive economic practices as well as re-shaping the values on which economic decision-making draws, law can make non-extractive economic practices more present in everyday action, and thereby uphold those cultural frames that affirm the sense that socio-ecological transformation is within our reach.

Mots-clés : critical legal studies,private law,alternative economic practices,sustainability,law and social change
Projet ERC : CPTarget (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Newcastle University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2241271.0 €

The current ‘genomics’ era is an exciting time for drug target discovery with considerable opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Whilst classical small molecules remain the reagents of choice as chemical probes for target validation, not all targets are tractable with small molecules. There is thus an urgent need to develop methods for more efficient target validation, not only of individual proteins but also of protein-protein and other complexes. Natural product like cyclic peptides have enormous potential as a chemical platform for target validation. Recent technological advances have enabled the efficient production and screening of large libraries containing non-proteinogenic residues. De novo cyclic peptides with high affinity and selectivity for target proteins can be readily generated, even for protein-protein interaction targets perceived as challenging. Development of this technology and their innovative applications as outlined in our proposal will provide a step-change in methodology, and transform the current approach for studying the biological function of the target / pathways, enabling new ways to investigate potential targets. We aim to develop innovative chemical and molecular techniques to explore the applications of natural product-like cyclic peptides in target validation for very challenging targets. Ultimately the work aims to enable the development of new therapeutic agents targeting multiple diseases.

Mots-clés : cyclic peptides,screening technology,chemical probes,affinity probes,epigenetics,histone modifications
Projet ERC : RG (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : University of Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1965250.0 €

The debate on world literature is among the most significant cultural historical controversies of our time. This contribution to the debate aims to pursue two goals in particular: a) A groundbreaking theoretical approach to the current shift in focus of the concept of World Literature that will involve both the displacement of Eurocentric forms of knowledge and a comprehensive review of selection processes in a globalized publishing world. b) An innovative investigation of the production and selection of literature that eschews an established canon as a point of departure. This approach is based, among other things, on newly available archival materials from publishing houses active on the international market, which will provide information on mechanisms of exclusion in the global book market. Informed by multiple critical perspectives on current theories, this five-year, six-member project will investigate the implicit selection mechanisms involved in the global circulation of literature, which touch on the material, economic, and visual dimensions of these processes and have so far received little to no attention. The project takes as its focus the exemplary case of Latin American literatures and their global circulation for the period from 1959 to the present. Unique among global regions in its comparative cultural, historical, and political homogeneity, Latin America offers the opportunity to investigate processes of external projection (exoticization), mechanisms of exclusion, and current transformations of the global market of culture. This interdisciplinary project combines literary studies methodologies with a cultural studies perspective on the World Literature debate and likewise integrates approaches from visual studies and economics. The global comparative analysis of publishing policies will provide groundbreaking knowledge on the processes of reception, canon formation and exclusion in the international circulation of literature.

Mots-clés : world literature,latin america,archive studies,cultural transfers
Projet ERC : War and Supernature (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Queen's University Belfast — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : QUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1324885.0 €

The debates of intellectuals both Catholic and Protestant have much to tell us about the nature of religious warfare in early modern Europe. In the seventeenth century, the small numbers of radical Catholics and Protestants who favoured imposing their own version of Christianity on others by force were accused by moderates (no less religiously sincere) within their own communities of promoting wars incompatible with Christian orthodoxy. Religious faith, the moderates insisted, was a supernatural thing, a gift of God, rather than a natural thing, a creation of rational humans, and thus could not be imposed by force. Arguments for religious war in the sense of evangelisation by force were thus resisted by most of the educated European elite. These debates among university-based Catholic and Protestant intellectuals took place in the Latin language and are insufficiently known to political historians of early modern Europe. Political historians examining the phenomenon of early modern religious war impose the modern categories of sacred (which they associate with the irrational) and secular (which they posit must be drained of the divine) on the past, mistakenly assuming that those who opposed evangelisation by force were somehow more secular than their opponents and composing a false history of secularisation. This project will analyse, translate, edit, and publish these scholastic debates between religious militants and religious moderates on the role of force in religious life in order to inform and re-shape arguments among political historians on the nature of religious warfare. One focus of the project will be the Franciscan intellectual tradition which favoured evangelisation by force. But some Protestants and especially Calvinists also brought the supernatural very far into human life, and the project will insist on the utility of that distinction between natural and supernatural in composing a trans-confessional history of religious militancy.

Mots-clés : scholasticism,history of universities,religious and holy war,neo latin,franciscans,calvinists,sacred,secular,natural,supernatural
Projet ERC : MiniEmbryoBlueprint (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 133496.79 €

The development of an embryo requires the spatially structured emergence of tissues and organs. This process relies on the early establishment of a coordinate system in the form of three orthogonal axes that act as a reference for laying down the body plan, a template for the organism. Genetic analysis of this process has revealed an underlying transcriptional blueprint that links the coordinate system and the body plan. However, the way in which the gene products contribute to the emergence of the body plan remains an open question. A reason for this is that this process involves feedbacks and integration between the activity of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) and the mechanics of multicellular ensembles, and that probing this relationship is experimentally challenging. In the case of mammalian embryos, which are particularly important as models for human development, our gaps in knowledge of these events are larger than in other organisms. This is partly due to the challenges associated with uterine development but also, and increasingly, because of the cost of mice and the difficulty of obtaining large numbers of embryos, as required for mechanistic experiments. In this project we shall use gastruloids, a novel and versatile Pluripotent Stem Cells based experimental system that we have developed for the study of mammalian development, to gain insights into the molecular and cellular basis underlying the emergence of the mammalian body plan. Gastruloids lack anterior neural structures and over a period of five days become organized in the fashion of a midgestation mouse embryo. We shall use the experimental versatility of the Gastruloid system to probe into the functional relationships between the mechanical activities of multicellular ensembles and the dynamics of GRNs that underlie the emergence of the mammalian body plan.

Mots-clés : systems developmental biology,image analysis
Projet ERC : GEMS (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
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 : 2086937.75 €

The development of scientific models suffers from two related problems: ever-growing number of experimental results and scientists’ cognitive limitations (including cognitive biases). This multidisciplinary project (psychology, computer modelling, computer science and cognitive neuroscience) addresses these problems by developing a novel methodology for generating scientific models automatically. The methodology is general and can be applied to any science where experimental data are available. The method treats models as computer programs and evolves a population of models using genetic programming. The extent to which the models fit the empirical data is used as a fitness function. The best models–potentially modified by cross-over and mutation–are selected for the next generation. Pilot simulations have established the validity of the methodology with simple experiments. To demonstrate that the methodology is sound, can be used with complex datasets and can be generalised across sciences, four related strands of research are planned. First, ‘Building New Tools’ develops the methodology and creates techniques to understand and compare the evolved models. Second, ‘Explaining Human Data’ uses the methodology to explain a wide range of data on human cognition. This will be done in two steps: (a) data without learning (working memory and attention); and (b) data with learning (categorisation, implicit learning and explicit learning). Third, ‘Explaining Animal Data’ develops models to account for various aspects of animal behaviour, focusing on conditioning and categorisation. Finally, ‘Explaining Neuroscience Data’ extends the methodology to account for data combining information about cognitive and brain processes. This project explores virgin territory and thus opens up a new field of research. It combines insights from experimental psychology, cognitive modelling, cognitive neuroscience and computer science, disciplines in which the PI has strong track record.

Mots-clés : cognitive modelling,genetic programming,methodology,categorisation,implicit learning,explicit learning,animal cognition,cognitive neuroscience,scientific discovery
Projet ERC : CONSTAMIS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 998005.0 €

The developments of Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory are among the major achievements of the 20th century's science. During the second half of the century, these two subjects started to converge. In two dimensions, this resulted in a most remarkable chapter of mathematical physics: Conformal Field Theory (CFT) reveals deep structures allowing for extremely precise investigations, making such theories powerful building blocks of many subjects of mathematics and physics. Unfortunately, this convergence has remained non-rigorous, leaving most of the spectacular field-theoretic applications to Statistical Mechanics conjectural. About 15 years ago, several mathematical breakthroughs shed new light on this picture. The development of SLE curves and discrete complex analysis has enabled one to connect various statistical mechanics models with conformally symmetric processes. Recently, major progress was made on a key statistical mechanics model, the Ising model: the connection with SLE was established, and many formulae predicted by CFT were proven. Important advances towards connecting Statistical Mechanics and CFT now appear possible. This is the goal of this proposal, which is organized in three objectives: (I) Build a deep correspondence between the Ising model and CFT: reveal clear links between the objects and structures arising in the Ising and CFT frameworks. (II) Gather the insights of (I) to study new connections to CFT, particularly for minimal models, current algebras and parafermions. (III) Combine (I) and (II) to go beyond conformal symmetry: link the Ising model with massive integrable field theories. The aim is to build one of the first rigorous bridges between Statistical Mechanics and CFT. It will help to close the gap between physical derivations and mathematical theorems. By linking the deep structures of CFT to concrete models that are applicable in many subjects, it will be potentially useful to theoretical and applied scientists.

Mots-clés : statistical mechanics,conformal field theory,ising model,schramm loewner evolution,discrete complex analysis,representation theory
Projet ERC : EPoCH (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 23750.0 €

The digital landscape is currently undergoing an evolution towards the Internet of Things. The IoT comes with a dramatically increased threat potential, as attacks can endanger human life and can lead to a massive loss of privacy of (European) citizens. A particular dangerous class of attacks manipulates the cryptographic algorithms in the underlying hardware. Backdoors in the cryptography of IoT devices can lead to system-wide loss of security. This proposal has the ambitious goal to comprehensively understand and counter low-level backdoor attacks. The required research consists of two major modules: 1) The development of an encompassing understanding of how hardware manipulations of cryptographic functions can actually be performed, and what the consequences are for the system security. Exploring attacks is fundamental for designing strong countermeasures, analogous to the role of cryptanalysis in cryptology. 2) The development of hardware countermeasures that provide systematic protection against malicious manipulations. In contrast to detection-based methods which dominate the literature, our approach will be pro-active. We will develop solutions for instances of important problems, including hardware reverse engineering and hardware hiding. Little is known about the limits of and optimum approaches to both problems in specific settings. Beyond prevention of hardware Trojans, the research will have applications in IP protection and will spark research in the theory of computer science community.

Mots-clés : internet of things,hardware trojans