Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : FEEDGALAXIES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Durham University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 592524.81 €

Galaxies reside within a web of gas that feeds the formation of new stars. Following star formation, galaxies eject some of their gas reservoir back into this cosmic web. This proposal addresses the fundamental questions of how these inflows and outflows regulate the evolution of galaxies. My research team will tackle two key problems: 1) how gas accretion regulates the build-up of galaxies; 2) how efficiently outflows are in removing gas from star-forming regions. To characterise these flows across five billion years of cosmic history, we will pursue cutting-edge research on the halo gas, which is the material around the central galaxies, within dark matter halos. We will focus on scales ranging from a few kiloparsecs, where outflows originate, up to hundreds of kiloparsecs from galaxies, where inflows and outflows have visible impacts on halos. We will attack this problem using both simulations and observations with the largest telescopes on the ground and in space. With novel applications of absorption spectroscopy, we will gain a new vantage point on the astrophysics of these gas flows. Exploiting unprecedented datasets that I am currently assembling thanks to ground-breaking developments in instrumentation, we will directly connect the properties of halo gas to those of the central galaxies, investigating the impact that the baryonic processes probed in absorption have on galaxies seen in emission. In parallel, using new hydrodynamic simulations and radiative transfer calculations, we will go beyond present state-of-the-art methodologies to unveil the theory behind the origin of these gas flows, a crucial aspect to decode the physics probed by our observations. As a result of this powerful synergy between observations and simulations, this programme will provide the most advanced analysis of the impact that inflows and outflows have on galaxy evolution, shaping the direction of future work at 40m telescopes and the next generation of cosmological simulations.

Mots-clés : halo gas,inflows,outflows,absorption line systems
Projet ERC : COEVOLUTION (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1975062.0 €

Galaxy formation is one of the most fascinating yet challenging fields of astrophysics. The desire to understand galaxy formation has led to the design of ever more sophisticated telescopes which show a bewildering variety of galaxies in the Universe. However, the degree to which an interpretation of this wealth of data can succeed depends critically on having accurate and realistic theoretical models of galaxy formation. While cosmological simulations of galaxy formation provide the most powerful technique for calculating the non-linear evolution of cosmic structures, the enormous dynamic range and poorly understood baryonic physics are main uncertainties of present simulations. This impacts on their predictive power and is the major obstacle to our understanding of observational data. The objective of this proposal is to drastically improve upon the current state-of-the-art by i) including more realistic physical processes, such as those occurring at the sphere of influence of a galaxy’s central black hole and ii) greatly extending spatial dynamical range with the aid of a novel technique I have developed. With this technique I want to address one of the major unsolved issues of galaxy formation: “How do galaxies and their central black holes coevolve?” Specifically, I want to focus on three crucial areas of galaxy formation: a) How and where the very first black holes form, what are their observational signatures, and when is the coevolution with host galaxies established? b) Is black hole heating solely responsible for the morphological transformation and quenching of massive galaxies, or are other processes important as well? c) What is the impact of supermassive black holes on galaxy clusters and can we calibrate baryonic physics in clusters to use them as high precision cosmological probes? The requested funding is for 50% of the PI’s time and three postdoctoral researchers to establish an independent research group at the KICC and IoA, Cambridge.
Projet ERC : AFIRMATIVE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1985288.0 €

Gas turbines are an essential ingredient in the long-term energy and aviation mix. They are flexible, offer fast start-up and the ability to burn renewable-generated fuels. However, they generate NOx emissions, which cause air pollution and damage human health, and reducing these is an air quality imperative. A major hurdle to this is that lean premixed combustion, essential for further NOx emission reductions, is highly susceptible to thermoacoustic instability. This is caused by a two-way coupling between unsteady combustion and acoustic waves, and the resulting large pressure oscillations can cause severe mechanical damage. Computational methods for predicting thermoacoustic instability, fast and accurate enough to be used as part of the industrial design process, are urgently needed. The only computational methods with the prospect of being fast enough are those based on coupled treatment of the acoustic waves and unsteady combustion. These exploit the amenity of the acoustic waves to analytical modelling, allowing costly simulations to be directed only at the more complex flame. They show real promise: my group recently demonstrated the first accurate coupled predictions for lab-scale combustors. The method does not yet extend to industrial combustors, the more complex flow-fields in these rendering current acoustic models overly-simplistic. I propose to comprehensively overhaul acoustic models across the entirety of the combustor, accounting for real and important acoustic-flow interactions. These new models will offer the breakthrough prospect of extending efficient, accurate predictive capability to industrial combustors, which has a real chance of facilitating future, instability free, very low NOx gas turbines.
Projet ERC : AAV-FACTORY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Gene therapy is one of the most innovative and fastest growing fields in the pharmaceutical industry. The first approved gene therapy utilized a recombinant AAV vector (rAAV), and dozens of additional rAAVs for gene therapy are presently in clinical trials. rAAV gene therapy drugs have been priced in the region of € 500’000 and above, which is partially a result of them being manufactured by highly complex processes combining multiple components, requiring 5-7 separate GMP production runs. We intend to introduce the first scalable, single-virus rAAV production platform to resolve this bottleneck. The resulting significant reduction of manufacturing complexity will both lower the price of future rAAV gene therapies, and also deliver additional, currently unaddressed or unaffordable rAAV treatments for genetic diseases into the clinic by providing scientists operating at the laboratory R&D stage with more user friendly and productive tools. The proposed project also develops for PoC purposes an rAAV gene therapy candidate to treat the devastating childhood congenital disease known as steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome SRNS.

Mots-clés : adeno associated virus aav,viral vector,gene therapy,synthetic viral nanosystem snv,recombinant production,manufacturing,upscaling
Projet ERC : EnhancerDesign (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VIB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Gene therapy promises to become a durable clinical option for a whole range of diseases, including monogenic hereditary diseases, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. However, the development of new gene therapy-based treatments strongly depends on regulatory drivers that provide cell-type specific expression of the transgene, at high enough levels, yet without causing genotoxicity. The aim of the ERC PoC proposal is to validate a state-of-the-art pipeline, called EnhancerDesign, to design small, strong and cell-type specific human enhancers for gene therapy that will improve specificity and safety, the two major bottlenecks in gene therapy applications. The strength of our EnhancerDesign approach lies in understanding and exploiting the enhancer code by using several state-of-the-art bioinformatics and experimental techniques. We have designed and now aim to validate our pipeline consisting of four parts (1) Single-cell multi-omics profiling; (2) training enhancer models to gain understanding of the enhancer logic; (3) design synthetic sequences in silico; (4) high-throughput enhancer testing. The project outcome will be twofold. Firstly, the different modules in our pipeline will be further optimized to make the entire pipeline operational to be offered as a service to, or as an asset for collaborative projects with gene therapy companies. Secondly, this project will deliver novel enhancers for a set of chosen cell types, for which no specific enhancers exist, or for which the available enhancers are either too large, too unspecific, or too weak. Altogether, the development of optimized enhancers by our EnhancerDesign pipeline will allow for improved and cell-type specific expression of a transgene, and has therefore the potential to provide patients with a safer treatment, increased QoL and new treatment options for diseases where gene therapy was not yet an option.

Mots-clés : single cell,deep learning,enhancer,transcription factor binding site,cell type,cell state
Projet ERC : EPGR (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Sorbonne Université — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Sorbonne U
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 758750.0 €

General relativity has been introduced by A. Einstein in 1915. It is a major theory of modern physics and at the same time has led to fascinating mathematical problems. The present proposal focusses on two aspects of the evolution problem for the Einstein equations which has been initiated by the pioneering work of Y. Choquet-Bruhat in 1952. The Einstein equations form a nonlinear system of partial differential equations of hyperbolic type whose complexity raises significant challenges to its mathematical analysis. The goal of this project is to strengthen our understanding of two important themes concerning the evolution problem in general relativity. On the one hand, the control of low regularity solutions of the Einstein equations, a topic which is intimately linked with the celebrated cosmic censorship conjectures of R. Penrose, a major open problem in the field. On the other hand, the question of the stability of particular solutions of the Einstein equations in the wake of the groundbreaking proof of the stability of the Minkowski space-time due to D. Christodoulou and S. Klainerman. These directions are extremely active and have recently led to impressive results. More specifically, this project proposes to consider the following two work packages -Going beyond the bounded L2 curvature theorem. This result has been recently obtained by the PI in collaboration with S. Klainerman and I. Rodnianski and is the sharpest result in so far as low regularity solutions of the Einstein equations are concerned. Yet, the fundamental quest towards a scale invariant well-posedness criterion for the Einstein equations remains wide open. -The black hole stability problem. This problem concerns the stability of the Kerr metrics which form a 2-parameter family of solutions to the Einstein vacuum equations. Many results have been obtained concerning various versions of linear stability, but significant challenges remain in order to tackle the nonlinear stability result.

Mots-clés : einstein equations,cauchy problem,low regularity solutions,black hole stability problem
Projet ERC : MOLBEC (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 430080.29 €

Generating a Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC) or Fermi gas of molecules is a long-standing goal of modern molecular science. Molecular BEC is a macroscopic millimeter-size quantum object with a large number of molecules occupying the lowest center-of-mass quantum state. In stark contrast to atoms, molecules possess internal degrees of freedom and stronger interactions that lead to the emergence of new phenomena. Strong dipole-dipole interactions give rise to new ordered states of matter, quantum crystals. Many-body effects start dominating collision dynamics where even molecular rotational excitations are dissipated as angular-momenta-carrying quasiparticles within the condensate. Despite intense experimental efforts, these fascinating ideas remain in the realm of theory. The main difficulty in turning theory into reality has been the absence of general molecular cooling methods. Recently, we have demonstrated the first experiment where collisions between cold molecules trapped in a 1 K deep superconducting magnetic trap are achieved without laser cooling [Segev et al. Nature, 572 (2019)], opening a clear path to molecular evaporation. We here propose to cool molecules by removing the fastest ones from the trap and letting the rest thermalize to lower temperatures via collisions. This method has been used to produce atomic BECs and we are the first group reaching identical initial conditions that are necessary for the successful application of the evaporative cooling. Generality of our approach is the key to successful search for a suitable molecular candidate. As an alternative to evaporation we suggest applying direct laser cooling on magnetically stopped NH radicals. We are confident that one of our approaches will lead to the long-sought generation of molecular quantum degenerate gas. Our proposal opens new fields and will find applications in areas ranging from quantum chemistry to quantum information science.

Mots-clés : cold molecules,many body effects in chemistry
Projet ERC : GWAS2FUNC (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2378412.0 €

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of unprecedented sample size have recently provided robust insight into the polygenic architecture of many different brain disorders. Despite this exciting potential, GWAS results have rarely translated into mechanistic disease insight. This is because the detected genetic effects are small and numerous, and hardly ever directly actionable for functional follow-up. In addition, the polygenic nature of brain disorders comes with large genetic heterogeneity, where different patients with the same disorder may carry completely different combinations of genetic risk variants, possibly corresponding to different etiological mechanisms, requiring different treatment regimens. To benefit from GWAS, extensive biological interpretation and insight into genetic heterogeneity is needed. In this ERC I will develop much needed tools for (i) extensive biological interpretation at cellular resolution and (ii) assessing genetic heterogeneity, both aimed at formulating hypotheses that take into account the polygenic nature of brain disorders and can be tested in functional experiments. I will apply the developed tools to a wide range of brain-related traits, providing ample starting points for functional follow-up. As a proof-of-concept I will test the viability of two neuroscientific approaches (iPSC and DREADDs) for functional follow-up of GWAS results. First, I will conduct scRNA sequencing and electrophysiological assessments on iPSC derived neurons and astrocytes from genetically selected (schizophrenia) patients and controls. Second, I will use in vivo chemogenetic manipulation to target specific cell types that have been implicated by GWAS (for insomnia). The primary goal of this proposal is to bridge the gap between GWAS and function. The results will facilitate the translation of GWAS findings for brain disorders into functional mechanisms that are biologically important in disease pathogenesis and, ultimately, treatment design.

Mots-clés : gwas,genome wide association studies,brain disorders,brain related traits,statistical genetics
Projet ERC : cfChIP (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
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 : 2962500.0 €

Genomic DNA is packaged by histone proteins that carry a multitude of post-translational modifications, which reflect cellular transcriptional states. When cells die, fragmented chromatin retaining histone modifications is released to the circulation. Recently, we pioneered chromatin immunoprecipitation of cell-free nucleosomes carrying active chromatin marks followed by sequencing (cfChIP-seq). Our results show that cfChIP-seq provides multidimensional epigenetic information and that the plasma epigenome contains rich information about the identity and the transcriptional state of the originating cells. Liquid biopsies already entered the clinical practice, yet current methodologies use them to assess genetic information. Our breakthrough methodology opens an unprecedented opportunity to delineate the transcriptional state of specific cell types and different pathologic states. Here we aim to translate plasma epigenomic information into medically relevant findings. The challenge is recovering the states of the cells represented in the circulation and relate these to pathological processes. Our working hypothesis is that this task is attainable by probabilistic modeling exploiting knowledge about epigenomics and transcription programs in health and disease. In this project we will assay plasma samples from multiple patient and donor cohorts to characterize the relation between tissue gene expression and circulating chromatin profiles, to recover the immune system status and chart how it changes with disease progression and response to treatment, and to monitor transplant patients for early detection of rejection. Our extensive preliminary data, our expertise in probabilistic modeling and genomics and our collaborators’ access to relevant patient cohorts support the projects’ feasibility. Plasma epigenomics will open a new non-invasive window into tissue dynamics in living humans, beyond current liquid biopsy technologies, with far-reaching medical implications.

Mots-clés : liquid biopsy,cell free nucleosomes,cell free chromatin,diagnosis of disease,monitoring treatment efficacy,transplant rejection
Projet ERC : GENIE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Wisconsin System — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 946058.75 €

Geoengineering technologies, such as solar radiation management (SRM), and negative emissions technologies, such as greenhouse gas removal (GGR), are emerging options to address climate change. This project will investigate the environmental, technical, social, legal, and policy dimensions of GGR and SRM. We provide an urgently needed interdisciplinary and holistic perspective of these technologies in order to understand conditions under which they might be deployed at scale. Our meta-analytical framework integrates insights from social science, engineering and physical science disciplines to provide a comprehensive view of GGR and SRM in the transition to climate neutrality in Europe and the world. The project will conduct excellent research and generate a robust, scientific assessment for evidence-based policymaking. Our research framework consists of three pillars—techno-economic systems, socio-technical systems, and systems of political action—within which we place six work packages (WPs). These are: (1) Understanding the current state and future potential of GGR and SRM technologies in terms of their technical and economic features; (2) Analysing bottlenecks in transitions to climate neutrality and their implications for deployment; (3) Identifying social acceptance and legitimacy constraints, (4) Learning, diffusion, and adoption; (5) Implications for Sustainable Development Goals of archetypical mitigation pathways; and 6) Policy options and governance. A crosscutting WP7 synthesizes research along three salient, but under-researched themes: A) Socio-technical change; B) Managing transition risks; and C) Political economy and feasibility of deployment. WP8 focuses on stakeholder engagement, entailing scenario co-design, science-policy dialogue formats, and specific outreach formats for target groups.

Mots-clés : negative emissions,geo engineering,solar radiation management,carbon dioxide removal,climate policy,energy policy