Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ACTIVEPHANTOM (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Robot-assisted and minimally invasive medical procedures are impacting medical care by increasing accuracy, reducing cost, and minimizing patient discomfort and recovery times after interventions. Developers of commercial robotic surgical systems and medical device manufacturers look for realistic phantoms that can be used in place of animal experiments or cadavers to test procedures and to train medical personnel. Existing phantoms are either made from hard materials, or they lack anatomical detail, and they are mainly passive and thus unrealistic. Here, we use recently developed fabrication know-how and expertise within our ERC-funded research to develop the first active artificial urinary tract model that includes a kidney, a bladder, and a prostate. Rapid prototyping is combined with a fabrication step that we have developed to permit the incorporation of active elements, such as a peristaltic system and fluidic valves in the phantom. We have developed smart material composites that reproduce the mechanical and haptic properties, and that give ultrasound contrast indistinguishable from real organs, while permitting anatomical details to be reproduced with a mean error of as little as 500 microns. Feedback from a major medical device company indicates that ours is a unique phantom with unprecedented accuracy for which there is a market. Within this POC grant we want to develop a complete prototype, and to demonstrate a series of medical interventions on the phantom, including endoscopic diagnostic procedures (cystoscopy and ureterorenoscopy) and endoscopic treatment procedures (laser lithotripsy). The grant will allow us to protect our know-how, identify further markets, and develop a commercialization strategy. Overall, this project will generate the first active phantom system that permits the testing of surgical instruments and procedures, with a sizeable market potential.

Mots-clés : phantom,model,3d fabrication,3d printing,organ,medical device,training,teaching
Projet ERC : ActionContraThreat (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation. To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects. This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.

Mots-clés : defensive behaviour,threat related processes,defensive systems theory,anxiety disorders
Projet ERC : BIOLOCHANICS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Saint-Etienne — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CHU Saint-Etienne
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 79393.0 €

Rupture of Aortic Aneurysms (AA), which kills more than 30 000 persons every year in Europe and the USA, is a complex phenomenon that occurs when the wall stress exceeds the local strength of the aorta due to degraded properties of the tissue. The state of the art in AA biomechanics and mechanobiology reveals that major scientific challenges still have to be addressed to permit patient-specific computational predictions of AA rupture and enable localized repair of the structure with targeted pharmacologic treatment. A first challenge relates to ensuring an objective prediction of localized mechanisms preceding rupture. A second challenge relates to modelling the patient-specific evolutions of material properties leading to the localized mechanisms preceding rupture. Addressing these challenges is the aim of the BIOLOCHANICS proposal. We will take into account internal length-scales controlling localization mechanisms preceding AA rupture by implementing an enriched, also named nonlocal, continuum damage theory in the computational models of AA biomechanics and mechanobiology. We will also develop very advanced experiments, based on full-field optical measurements, aimed at characterizing localization mechanisms occurring in aortic tissues and at identifying local distributions of material properties at different stages of AA progression. A first in vivo application will be performed on genetic and pharmacological models of mice and rat AA. Eventually, a retrospective clinical study involving more than 100 patients at the Saint-Etienne University hospital will permit calibrating estimations of AA rupture risk thanks to our novel approaches and infuse them into future clinical practice. Through the achievements of BIOLOCHANICS, nonlocal mechanics will be possibly extended to other soft tissues for applications in orthopaedics, oncology, sport biomechanics, interventional surgery, human safety, cell biology, etc.

Mots-clés : biomechanics,aortic aneurism,rupture,full field optical measurement,inverse methods,distribution of material properties,nonlocal mechanics,soft tissues
Projet ERC : SENSATE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1648550.0 €

SENSATE proposes ground breaking ideas and concepts combining very innovative low dimensional thin film materials and highly asymmetric selective contacts with dipoles, for the development of non-intrusive and universal solar energy harvester. Materials, processes and devices design innovations will be combined in a straightforward manner, in order to develop next generation of cost-efficient and highly-stable/optically-tuneable photovoltaic (PV) devices. For achieving this, SENSATE proposes exploiting for the first time the full optical and electrical potential of one-dimensional (1D) thin film wide bandgap materials, including chalcogenide, halide and mixed chalcogenide/halide compounds. The use of 1D semiconductors as PV absorbers will represent a breakthrough thanks to their unique capability to exhibit excellent electrical properties in very thin layers when correctly oriented, keeping at the same time tuneable optical properties to ensure good transparency (AT > 50%), and very competitive efficiencies (>20%). A wide range of wide bandgap 1D semiconductors will be developed (Eg between 1.50-2.70 eV), including strategies for their 1D texturing using annealing at high pressure and under magnetic fields. This will be combined with disruptive selective asymmetric contacts based on electron and hole transport metal oxide layers, enhanced with superficial organic and inorganic dipoles, to develop a ubiquitous solar harvester with customized transparency/efficiency. If succeed, SENSATE will have an unprecedented impact in our perception of PV energy, opening the possibility to applications that nowadays are considered marginal. Transparent, semi-transparent and coloured devices for advanced BIPV applications and electronics, as well as top cells for very high efficiency and low cost tandem/multi-junction devices will benefit from this technology, setting the basis required for a massive PV implementation and contributing to change our energy consumption model.

Mots-clés : solar energy,1d materials,thin film photovoltaics,selective asymmetric contacts,dipolar molecules,chalcogenides,halides,ubiquitous energy generation
Projet ERC : SOCSEMICS (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
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 : 1760037.5 €

SOCSEMICS aims at developing a set of integrated, groundbreaking methods to address the possible existence of so-called “filter bubbles” in the digital public space. In all generality, this phenomenon may be construed as communities whose actors are more or less prone to interaction and open to informations coming from “outside” of these communities. SOCSEMICS will contribute to the formalization and operationalization of this question by addressing three current challenges: (i) developing a comprehensive theory of reinforcing and self-sustaining socio-semantic communities by appraising the social, semantic and socio-semantic realms simultaneously, (ii) drastically improving content analysis by replacing classical distributional approaches with clause analysis, and thereby enabling quantitative analyses which render the linguistic complexity of utterances in web corpuses, (iii) fostering the interface between these methods and qualitative approaches, especially through a couple of broad case studies, together with the development of interactive platforms implementing the above innovations and facilitating digital social research.

Mots-clés : filter bubbles,socio semantic networks,digital public space,content and clause analysis,online conversation spaces,socio semantic visualization
Projet ERC : SOTMEM (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ICN2;ICN2-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

SOTMEM addresses the growing need for scalable ultrafast non-volatile memories (NVM) to improve the reliability of logic circuitry and to reduce the ever increasing power consumption and energy loss in microprocessors. Major technology actors and end-user companies are developing magnetic RAM (MRAM) as it is recognized as one of the most promising emerging NVMs. However, mainstream MRAM, relying on spin transfer torque, suffers from limited speed, and reliability and degradation issues. These three obstacles, which impede the widespread implementation of MRAM, can be mitigated using a novel device architecture based on spin-orbit torque (SOT). But even SOT-MRAM brings challenges in the form of too large writing current density and power dissipation . SOTMEM will validate SOT switches for SOT-MRAM using topological insulators embedded in a novel material stack that we have recently developed for optimal writing efficiency. Writing at ultralow power is therefore the key technical objective of this ERC Proof of Concept project. A successful outcome would represent a major breakthrough for SOT-MRAM commercialization. Therefore SOTMEM stands to have enormous impact in the transition towards low-power, power-fail protected microprocessors with non-volatile memories. Special efforts will be devoted to market analysis and patentability studies, as well as targeted industry engagement to allow the design of a nuanced business model aiming to deliver SOTMEM technologies and knowhow to potential end users.

Mots-clés : non volatile memories,spintronics,spin torque,topological insulators
Projet ERC : IBAF (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
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 : 2390625.0 €

Safe and efficient delivery of nucleic acids to tissues and cells is a shared challenge in the clinical translation of gene therapy and gene editing. At the intracellular level, DNA delivery is hindered by endo/lysosomal sequestration, inefficient transport into the nucleus and a retention mechanism mediated by the barrier-to-autointegration factor (BAF) protein that detects, clusters and locks away intruding double-stranded DNA in membrane cages. The first two of these intracellular obstacles are well-known bottlenecks and are being addressed by many laboratories. However, preliminary in vitro data suggest the detrimental impact of BAF’s mechanism on transgene expression is underestimated. We hypothesize that transiently suppressing BAF or one of its regulating factors will increase the cytosolic availability and mobility of transfected DNA, facilitating its transport to the nucleus and ultimately boosting transfection efficiency. We will tackle this rather uninvestigated mechanism through two parallel strategies: i) identifying novel small-molecule inhibitors of BAF or its regulators via high-throughput screening of chemical libraries, and ii) producing a recombinant kinase that phosphorylates BAF in situ and thus supresses its DNA-clustering function. The BAF suppressors will be co-delivered to cells with rationally-designed nucleoprotein nanoparticles consisting of a reporter plasmid and a dual-function fusion protein to facilitate endocytosis and endosomal escape. The combined transfection-enhancing effect of the BAF suppressors and the nanoparticles will be extensively characterized in vitro, and in vivo proof-of-concept will be obtained in mice. Besides expanding our fundamental knowledge on this unexplored DNA retention mechanism, the project will provide powerful transfection enhancers that can boost already-existing gene delivery platforms (viral and non-viral), so that these can reach their full potential for gene therapy and gene-editing applications.

Mots-clés : barrier to autointegration factor,gene delivery,nanoparticles
Projet ERC : PedSarc (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : German Cancer Research Center — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DKFZ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499375.0 €

Sarcomas are an extremely heterogeneous group of mesenchymal tumors that arise in a multitude of tissues from many different cell types. Several genetic events have been identified in different sarcoma sub-types, but very few models were developed to study their role in tumorigenesis aiming at exploiting them as therapeutic vulnerabilities. As a result, the treatment of sarcoma has extremely limited advancement in therapeutic options compared to other cancers. Therefore, the generation of faithful in vitro and in vivo models for sarcoma research is urgently needed to provide insights into the pathobiology of these tumors and discover novel vulnerabilities in these lethal but yet understudied disease. Many types of soft tissue sarcomas arising in children and young adults have a unifying underlying genetic mechanism, where chromosomal translocations generate fusion oncoproteins that serve as drivers of the disease. Exploiting this genetic simplicity provides an exceptional opportunity to develop effective and specific therapies. My past research has applied cutting edge technology to define epigenetic vulnerabilities associated with the SS18-SSX gene fusion, the defining event in synovial sarcoma (one subgroup of pediatric sarcomas), and to study its chromatin occupancy genome-wide. In this proposal my team will combine a toolbox consisting of CRISPR/Cas9, RNAi technology and expertise in mouse models to systematically elucidate key genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in the pathobiology of pediatric sarcomas. This work will help to understand key players in epigenetic deregulation in pediatric sarcomas, generate new sarcoma models to assist clinical translation, and identify new therapeutic targets for these deadly diseases.
Projet ERC : BioCom4SavEn (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : AGH University of Krakow — Pays : Pologne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AGH UST
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1694375.0 €

Saving energy together with energy harvesting is demanded by increasing power consumption. The energy industry requires new materials not only for construction but also in cabling infrastructure. Moreover, the trend of portable and small devices causes a significant challenge in heat dissipation technologies. The need for sustainable technology in thermal insulation and cooling solutions to decrease power consumption requires new innovation. My ambition is to bring novel solutions inspired by nature to the thermal management challenges such as: - constructing light and more efficient thermal insulation; - developing cooling system based on the fibrous membranes to dissipate effectively heat, both leading to lower power consumption; - building mechanically robust and integrated system with conductive or piezoelectric properties, including thermal insulation and cooling system designed together for small devices and smart textiles. The aim of the project is therefore to both comprehensively evaluate natural design strategies and develop structural equivalents using novel composite manufacturing routes. Key to composite production is electrospinning allowing engineering the novel composites based on the porous membranes that will transform thermal energy management efficiency, allowing to increase the savings in daily life. The novelty of the project is the combined effort of complex composite membranes that have been never performed before. The interdisciplinary team of postdocs and PhD students working in parallel on the divided but interlayered topics, will lead to break-through in engineered multifunctional thermal materials for various geometries from buildings to cables.

Mots-clés : electrospinning,fibers,polymers,thermal insulation,biomimetic,cooling,pores,porosity,membrane,composite,energy
Projet ERC : NanoBubbles (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université Sorbonne Paris Nord — Pays : France — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : USPN
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1863947.5 €

Science relies on the correction of errors to advance, yet in practice scientists find it difficult to erase erroneous and exaggerated claims from the scientific record. Recent discussion of a “replication crisis” has impaired trust in science both among scientists and non-scientists; yet we know little about how non-replicated or even fraudulent claims can be removed from the scientific record. This project combines approaches from the natural, engineering, and social sciences and the humanities (Science and Technology Studies) to understand how error correction in science works and what obstacles it faces, and stages events for scientists to reflect on error and overpromising. The project’s focus is nanobiology, a highly interdisciplinary field founded around the year 2000 that has already seen multiple episodes of overpromising and promotion of erroneous claims. We examine three such “bubbles”: the claim that nanoparticles can cross the blood-brain barrier; that nanoparticles can penetrate the cell membrane; and the promotion of the “protein corona” concept to describe ordinary adsorption of proteins on nanoparticles. Findings based on error (non)correction in nanobiology should be generalizable to other new, highly interdisciplinary fields such as synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. We trace claims and corrections in various channels of scientific communication (journals, social media, advertisements, conference programs, etc.) via innovative digital methods. We examine error (non)correction practices in scientific conferences via ethnographic participant-observation. We follow the history of conferences, journals, and other sites of error (non)correction from the 1970s (before nanobio per se existed) to the present. And we attempt to replicate nanobiological claims and, in case of non-replication, document obstacles to correcting those claims. Finally, we will spark a dialogue within the nanobiology community by organizing workshops and events at c

Mots-clés : conference studies,scientometrics,controversy studies,sociology of science,scientific publishing,cell imaging,blood brain barrier,endocytosis,text mining,post publication peer review