Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PREDICT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 426417.0 €

The algorithmic turn of prediction, connected with Big Data and Machine Learning, presents an exciting and urgent challenge for the social sciences. Recent advances in digital forecasting claim to provide a predictive score for individual persons or singular events, thereby introducing a new way to manage the uncertainty of the future. But knowing the future in advance is not only advantageous. In fact, for our society, uncertainty about the future is also a resource. Since modernity, with the support of probability calculus various social institutions in different domains have developed means of coping with ignorance of the future by starting with the one thing that we all share – uncertainty. What happens to the stabilized forms of management of the future when their first resource – shared uncertainty – is missing? There is still no systematic research on this groundbreaking transformation. This project proposes a set of theory-driven empirical studies of the transition from probabilistic forms of uncertainty management to the new algorithmic forms of prediction. We will investigate three important social areas highlighting three fundamental dimensions with which digital forecast must deal. 1) First we will focus on personalized insurance. Here the key dimension is individualization of prediction, where the challenge is that such prediction could undermine the mutualization principle organized around actuarial practices. 2) Our second research area is precision medicine, highlighting the dimension of generalization where the challenge is the combination of algorithmic procedures with established statistical methods. 3) In the third field, predictive policing underscores the problem of bias while it challenges the distinction between prevention and repression. Exploring these transformation and its consequences, the project aims at developing a comprehensive approach to study the social, technical and theoretical aspects of prediction in digital society

Mots-clés : sociology of algorithms,prediction,precision medicine,predictive policing,sociology of risk,insurance
Projet ERC : PLASMIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : IBM Research - Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1941750.0 €

The ambition of PLASMIC is to address the bottleneck caused by electrical interconnects and develop on-chip optical interconnect solutions based on plasmonically-enhanced nanoscale emitters. Nanoscale photonic components are desirable for on-chip communications because of density, speed and because reducing the size of the cavity might reduce the lasing threshold. Conventional photonics are limited in scale by the diffraction-limit to dimensions of half of the wavelength of light in the material. This limit does not apply to plasmonics, an optical mode that exists at the interface between a metal and a dielectric. Thus, they have a great potential for applications where down-scaling and confinement are primordial. One of the barriers for applying plasmonics is the large losses associated with the metals. Thus in PLASMIC alternative plasmonic metals will be investigated based on their potential for tuning, VLSI compatibility, deposition methods and achieving lower optical losses in the near-IR. I will focus on highly doped semiconductors, metal nitrides, as well as multi-layers and compounds to form new plasmonic materials. Specifically, I will evaluate the use of the field-effect to achieve the semiconductor-metal transition to tune the plasma frequency. New pioneering device concepts for plasmonic-photonic emitters on a silicon platform integrated with passive silicon photonic waveguides will be developed. To implement the gain medium for the lasers, I will exploit a novel nanowire (NW) integration approach: Template-Assisted Epitaxy. The unique advantages make it possible to grow III-V NWs on any orientation of silicon and aligned to lithographic features. The devices will be based on a hybrid cavity formed between the NW and a Si waveguide with gratings to provide feedback. My team and I will explore dimensional scaling potential as well as the energy efficiency of plasmonic and photonic devices operating both in a lasing as well as in a subthreshold operation mode.

Mots-clés : plasmonics,nanowires,integration of iii v on silicon,optical on chip interconnect
Projet ERC : Mobidic (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator 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 : 1984562.5 €

The ambition of this proposal is to provide the very first realistic assessment of the contribution of microbes to subsurface silicate weathering rates. The motivation is simple: ~70% of Earth’s bacteria and archaea live underground, and microbes have long been suspected to impact silicate weathering rates, which affect the Earth’s climate. However, the rates and mechanisms of silicate bioweathering essentially remain a terra incognita, particularly in basalt settings. Such environments are suggested to be a potential host for early life and represent prime targets for massive injections of CO2 to fight against global warming, whose success strongly relies on silicate reactivity. Having a deep insight on the respective biotic and abiotic contributions to subsurface silicate weathering rates is therefore fundamental and urgent. Providing such estimates requires to overcome a twofold challenge: 1) to quantify dissolution rates in aqueous fluids that sustain endemic microbial communities and at the same time 2) to supersede the classical use of freshly ground substrates, whose reactivity is orders of magnitude greater than that of aged silicates long altered in natural settings. This proposal offers a solution: An interdisciplinary and non-conventional approach to assess the contribution of microbes to silicate weathering rates in complex environmental media. It consists in measuring dissolution rates using non-invasive nanotopography measurements of the silicate substrates reacted in natural solutions. These substrates will be treated beforehand to get surface properties that mimic various stages of aging. These measurements will be combined with studies of the microbial diversity associated with the substrates, innovative nanoscale characterizations of the reacted surfaces, and modeling of the dissolution process based on first principles. This strategy will provide an unprecedented and timely picture of the functioning and rates of subsurface silicate bioweathering.

Mots-clés : silicate weathering,dissolution kinetics,microbial communities,basaltic provinces,bioweathering,subsurface,dissolution mechanisms,microbe silicate interface,deep biosphere
Projet ERC : MassiveCosmo (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1975829.0 €

The ambition of this research program is to challenge the nature of gravity, provide an alternative to dark energy, and pave the way towards a potential resolution of one the most tantalizing problems of physics today: The Old Cosmological Constant Problem. As General Relativity celebrates its centennial, its predictive successes and its status as our most elegant theory of gravity are incontrovertible. Nevertheless, while the recent discovery of the late-time acceleration of the Universe is in perfect agreement with observations, the 120 orders of magnitude discrepancy between expectations and observations is one of today's most challenging puzzles and may be the sign of new physics to uncover. This conundrum has driven the development of dark energy models as alternative sources for acceleration, but many of them suffer from a similar discrepancy and require an unnatural tuning of their parameters. Despite decades of attempts, the Old Cosmological Constant Problem remains yet unsolved. This program proposes a distinct direction to address this problem and to explain the acceleration of the Universe where the graviton, the particle carrier of gravity, has a mass, or is effectively massive. Not only will this open a new panorama for cosmology, it will also answer the fundamental question of the nature of the graviton. Signatures and constraints will be derived through astrophysical and cosmological probes. While striving to address these fundamental challenges, the program will also elucidate new aspects of massive gravity by establishing its theoretical viability and embedding as an effective field theory. These developments will feed into new breakthroughs that have recently emerged from massive gravity. As major missions and experiments are underway to probe dark energy and to detect gravitational waves, there is no better time to question gravity at the fundamental level, to provide alternatives to dark energy and to determine their unique signatures.

Mots-clés : gravitation
Projet ERC : GenderedPeace (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced 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 : 1999705.0 €

The ambitious aim of this cutting-edge project is to develop the theoretical foundations for a ‘gendered international law of peace’. In so doing, the project will critically engage with the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, first set out in resolution 1325, 2000. By 2015, the Security Council had adopted seven further resolutions, which together provide a political agenda for change in international relations. Notwithstanding the body of research that has been generated over the 17 years, conceptual ambiguity, normative indeterminacy and conceptual knowledge gaps continue to limit the transformative potential of the WPS agenda. In addition, a lack of political commitment has perpetuated its marginalisation from other contemporary agendas and initiatives relating to sustainable peace. This project will address some of these knowledge gaps through engaging feminist methodologies to provide an enriched, and gender-sensitive reading of the international legal obligations of states, international governmental organisations and other non-state actors, and in so doing produce research of academic excellence. In developing an innovative conceptual framework for interrogating through a gender lens what is implicated by ‘peace’ and ‘security’, the research will disrupt current international legal orthodoxy in its scope and approach. Through four distinct but inter-linked streams of study, this project will develop a new understanding of the WPS agenda within the changed (and changing) geo-political context and so provide additional tools for furthering gender equality and women’s empowerment during and following conflict that will form the building blocks of a gendered international law of peace.
Projet ERC : TOPIOS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Utrecht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1276792.5 €

The amount of plastic in our ocean is exponentially growing, with recent estimates of more than 5 million metric tonnes of plastic reaching the ocean each year. This plastic infiltrates the ocean food chain and thus poses a major threat to marine life. However, understanding of plastic movement and its budget in the ocean is inadequate to fully establish its environmental impact, prompting the EU and G7 to recently make marine litter a top science priority. It is now recognised that the amount of plastic entering our ocean is several orders of magnitude larger than the estimates of floating plastic on the surface of the ocean. More than 99% of plastic within our ocean is therefore ‘missing’. This project will make breakthroughs towards closing the plastic budget by creating a novel comprehensive modelling framework that tracks plastic movement through the ocean. Building on well-established previous work to follow generic water parcels through hydrodynamic ocean models, this project will modify these ‘virtual’ parcels to represent pieces of plastic by, for the first time, simulating fragmentation, sinking, beaching, wave-mixing and ingestion by biota. The new parameterisations that underpin this modelling will be based on field data and new coastal flume wave tank lab experiments. The simulated plastic particles will be tracked within state-of-the-art hydrodynamic ocean models, in order to compute maps of pathways and transports around our oceans and on coastlines and in biota. This numerical modelling will be used to evaluate a broad suite of scenarios and test hypotheses, including where the risk to marine biota is greatest. The results from this project will inform policymakers and the public on which countries, for example, are responsible for which part of the plastic problem, crucial for mitigation and legal frameworks. It will also inform engineers on where and how to best invest resources in mitigating the problem of plastic in our ocean.

Mots-clés : marine plastic,ocean pathways
Projet ERC : PolarNon (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
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 : 150000.0 €

The analysis of materials is a key requirement for device quality control in medical, electronic and photonic industry. Currently, fluorescence imaging, electron microscopy and photoluminescence are typical tools for quality control in research and industry. However, they suffer from several limitations: complex samples preparation, special environments, destructive and time-consuming measurements. The development of new materials and components needs innovative approaches for fast and non-destructive testing (NDT). We propose to use nonlinear optical responses that are strongly dependent on material properties like crystal structure, defects and roughness for NDT. Despite the high potential of nonlinear optics in material sciences, the existing solutions are not convenient in terms of equipment, measurements methods, sample preparation and human resources costs. We propose the implementation and testing of a fully automated polarimetric nonlinear microscope ‘PolarNon’ as a hardware and software solution for NDT and quality control of materials or optoelectronic components in the semiconductor industry (Market segment I), and metallic or ceramic alloys in the aerospace industry (Market segment II). The PolarNon system overcomes the limitations of current methods: it does not require special sample preparation or measurement conditions, like low temperatures, vacuum or ultrathin substrates, and it can characterize materials already incorporated in a device. The PolarNon includes a method of per-pixel analysis of optical images to reconstruct the material crystalline properties down to the pixel resolution. We already successfully applied this approach to several materials for predicting samples inner structure. This project allows us to build an industrial prototype for future commercialization and secure the invention to create an engineering start-up focused on the development of nonlinear optical microscopy tools for material analysis.

Mots-clés : perovskite nanomaterials,lithium niobate,barium titanate,mie scattering,dielectric particle,solution processed photonic crystal,nanoimprint lithography,nanowire,ultrafast photonics
Projet ERC : TB-RECONNECT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2035718.75 €

The annual decline in tuberculosis (TB) incidence is not greatly different from that of the ‘90s, when no coordinated efforts in global tuberculosis control were in place. The failure of current TB control programmes to accelerate TB elimination has multiple causes, including losses of TB cases at the different steps of the TB care cascade, and a chronic lack of funding hampering innovation. Additionally, we have failed to halt transmission in many settings, as we have failed to incorporate our improved understanding of transmission in TB control programmes. Our current approach to controlling TB is focused on a narrow view of who is transmitting the disease (symptomatically active TB cases), while there is a growing consensus that the traditional latent/active dichotomy is no longer valid, and that asymptomatic individuals with active TB signatures are also likely to be transmitting the disease. There is a critical lack of high-resolution data from different settings on the contribution to the transmission burden of cases with different infection statuses. To fill this evidence gap, I propose synergizing three recent TB research developments; We can now use host blood transcriptomics to discriminate between infection status within the latent pool of individuals. We can now quantify transmission at a resolution not previously available, using pathogen genome sequencing. We can now use phylogenetic and epidemiological models to identify when transmission has happened. Combining these three key developments with TB cohorts from multiple settings, and available tools from bacterial population genetics, high-throughput functional genomics and infection biology, we will be in a key position to answer these burning questions about the nature of TB transmission and the host and pathogen biology behind this. More importantly, we will reconnect transmission to TB control, to inform major shifts in global and local control strategies.

Mots-clés : tuberculosis,epidemiology,global health,infectious diseases,pathogen genomics,host transcriptomics,infection models
Projet ERC : COSMIC LENS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Manchester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997219.0 €

The apparent gravitational distortion of distant galaxies, ‘cosmic lensing’, allows us to map dark matter and hence unveil the nature of the mysterious dark energy. I will develop novel approaches to cosmic lensing and use these to place constraints on dark energy using the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Themes 1 and 2 address key systematic effects crucial for the extraction of cosmology in theme 3. Theme 1: The lensing community has spent two decades trying to find the perfect galaxy shape measurement method. We will take a unique approach by translating a technique common in particle physics and the CMB to lensing: we will simulate images matched to observed galaxy positions and shapes, and vary lensing to accurately calibrate shapes. We will make the code public and use it to produce the final public DES shear catalogues. Theme 2: We will exploit my innovative and successful program of coordinated international challenges from shear measurement and apply it to mitigating galaxy intrinsic alignments (IA). I have shown that knowledge of IAs is essential for leveraging the potential of cosmic lensing for cosmology and described a mitigation method, but this needs to be tested on simulations. I will coordinate international IA simulation efforts and identify the optimum method for removing intrinsic alignments and apply it to the DES data. Theme 3: We have developed a skeleton software framework for cosmology, CosmoSIS. We will write modules for cosmology from imaging data incorporating the main systematic effects, and use CosmoSIS to produce the final constraints on cosmology from DES lensing. We will incorporate constraints on sterile neutrinos from particle physics for the first time. If the current tensions between cosmic lensing the CMB are confirmed by this work we will have discovered the need for new physics. Furthermore, the work in this proposal will place us in prime position to exploit the main cosmology surveys of the next decade (LSST, Euclid, WFIRST).

Mots-clés : gravitational lensing
Projet ERC : CMBSPEC (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Manchester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1965170.98 €

The average spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has long been known to be extremely close to a perfect blackbody. Yet, several processes, standard and non-standard, exist that may cause deviations from a blackbody spectrum, commonly referred to as CMB spectral distortions. Classical distortion shapes are known as Compton-y and chemical potential (µ-type) distortions; however, recently it has been shown that more general distortions can be created at redshifts 10^4 < z < 3×10^5. This makes spectral distortions a unique and powerful probe of different early-universe processes. The immense potential of CMB spectral distortion measurements and their synergies with upcoming CMB anisotropy studies (Litebird, COrE+, Stage-IV CMB) has identified them as an important future target, with several innovative experimental concepts (e.g., PIXIE, APSERa) being actively discussed by the cosmology community. This proposal has one main goal: to transform the emerging field of CMB spectral distortions into a mature scientific discipline. The team will significantly expand and strengthen the spectral distortion science case with particular emphasis on novel time-dependent information from the recombination era (10^3 < z < 10^4) and various photon injection processes. By combining all available information, we will investigate what spectral distortions could teach us about early-universe physics and the cosmological ionization history. Novel foreground parameterizations and experimental setups will be studied and simulation pipelines will be developed. Our work could deliver new tests for inflation, reionization and particle physics as well as extend our ability to distinguish sources of different distortion signals in the presence of foregrounds. We will identify novel spectral distortion science goals that will drive the experimental designs of future CMB spectroscopy experiments, pioneering and facilitating spectral distortion activities in Europe and worldwide.

Mots-clés : cosmic microwave background,spectral distortions,cosmological recombination