Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : COSMO-LYA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Institute for High Energy Physics — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IFAE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1885000.0 €

Key open questions in the boundary of cosmology and fundamental physics can be addressed by studies of the distribution of matter as a function of scale and time (or redshift). While the traditional approach has been to use large galaxy catalogues, during the last decade I have pioneered the use of an alternative probe: 3D correlations in the Lyman-α (Lyα) forest, absorption features in the spectra of high-redshift quasars caused by intervening neutral hydrogen. The Lyα forest provides a unique window to study the distribution of matter at earlier times and on smaller scales than those accessible with galaxy catalogues. I lead the Lyα analysis of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, and with ERC support I will be able to develop and apply new techniques to dramatically enhance its expected outcome. On one hand, COSMO-LYA we will use the correlations on large (> 30 Mpc) scales to obtain a 0.5% measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe at z > 2, four times better than the state-of-the-art. On the other hand, we will carry out the first coherent analysis of 1D and 3D correlations to provide a 1% measurement of the amplitude of density fluctuations on small (~1 Mpc) scales, unreachable by other probes. In combination with public CMB results, sensitive to the distribution of matter at early times and on the largest scales, we will be able to construct a cosmological lever arm covering 4 orders of magnitude in scale. This will enable my team to: i) increase by at least a factor of 2 the constraints on the sum of the neutrino masses, potentially leading to the first measurement of the absolute neutrino masses; ii) increase by at least a factor of 3 our constraints on the shape of the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations, an important step towards confirming or falsifying a large number of inflationary models. These results will have interdisciplinary impact, with wide reaching consequences into particle and fundamental physics.

Mots-clés : baryon acoustic oscillations spectroscopic surveys lyman alpha forest massive neutrinos primordial power spectrum
Projet ERC : SPRING (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2491486.0 €

Conversion between electrical and optical signals enabled the use of near-infrared (near-IR) photons for high data rate transmission through optical fibre networks. Likewise, coherent conversion between microwave and optical photons stands as a promising solution to transfer quantum states between remote quantum processors, thus enabling the development of large-scale quantum networks. However, the vast frequency difference between microwave (GHz) and near-IR (200 THz) optical photons hampers direct coherent conversion. This limitation could be circumvented by phonon-mediated transduction, which is a coherent two-step process, comprising electromechanical and optomechanical conversions. On-chip microwave-optical conversion mediated by GHz phonons has the potential to be extremely efficient due to the large optomechanical response of common materials, and the similar wavelength of GHz phonons and near-IR photons. Yet, it is an open challenge to achieve efficient electromechanical and optomechanical conversion simultaneously in a single integrated circuit. State-of-the-art demonstrations show that surface acoustic waves (SAWs) allow efficient electromechanical conversion, while cavity optomechanics utilize tightly confined optical and mechanical modes to yield strong optomechanical coupling. However, combining these two approaches is still considered challenging, if not impossible. The SPRING project will overcome these limitations by developing a fundamentally new optomechanical coupling approach to bridge SAW electromechanics and cavity optomechanics. The original idea is to use subwavelength nanostructuration of silicon cavities to couple tightly confined optical modes and SAWs. The SPRING strategy will be used to demonstrate coherent microwave-optical conversion of single photons and quantum state transfer between superconducting qubits, monolithically integrated in a silicon chip, opening a new path for applications in communications, sensing and computing.

Mots-clés : silicon photonics,optomechanics
Projet ERC : COCONUT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1929470.25 €

The COCONUT project aims at developing predictive capabilities to understand how colloids (nanometals, fine particles, bacteria, viruses, asphaltenes..) control immiscible two-phase flow in complex geological formations. Colloids (including nanoparticles) have an incredible potential to remobilize non-aqueous phases trapped by capillary forces in soils and the subsurface, and then to remediate contaminated groundwater or to enhance oil recovery. Their use in daily engineering, however, is still underexploited because the lack of knowledge regarding their transport mechanisms is an obstacle to precise control of two-phase flow. Importantly, the presence of colloidal particles flowing in the subsurface challenges the standard modeling viewpoint of flow and transport based on Darcy's law. We posit that the precise control of colloids on the motion of two-phase flow can only be achieved by developing a deep knowledge of the coupled hydro-electro-chemical processes at the pore-scale. The COCONUT project uses a combined modelling-experimental strategy focusing on the pore-scale mechanisms and on the upscaling to the continuum-scale. The project is multi-disciplinary and uses computational and experimental sciences, fluid dynamics, electrochemistry, and mathematics. The project will require the development of hydro-electro-chemical computational models at different scales of interest (WP1). We will use high-resolution simulations to interrogate emergent physico-chemical processes and characterize the surface attractive and repulsive forces at the nanoscale (WP2). Then, we will decipher the mechanisms leading to the displacement of fluids trapped in an unsaturated porous medium in the presence of colloids using pore-scale modelling and microfluidic experiments (WP3). Finally, we will demonstrate and optimize the two-phase flow colloidal control in geological systems at the column-scale (WP4).

Mots-clés : porous media pore scale modeling microfluidics colloids hydro electro chemical coupling
Projet ERC : MEDMACH (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université Heinrich Heine de Düsseldorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The aim of MEDMACH is to write a new history of the Mediterranean after 1800 through images of movement: infrastructures and machineries of acceleration such as airports, train stations, motorway bridges, industrial ports, and engine-driven ships. These sites are often overlooked in overarching narratives of the region. The Mediterranean after 1800 typically appears either in decline or romanticized, therefore this ‘machinery room’ of modernity has never been at the center of attention. However, these sites of movement are connected to all the aspects which make the Mediterranean an emotive, politically relevant place today: migration, colonization and decolonization, the relation between Europe and the Islamic world, environmental and economic crisis. Conceptualizing the modern and contemporary Mediterranean through its ‘machinery rooms’ of movement will slice through the divisions of fragmented national histories, and provide a basis for the differentiated, yet connective history that is needed to face those challenges. This history will be based on images and image archives: In the modern period after 1800, images are increasingly made for distribution and circulation. They are entangled with the ambivalent modern notions of movement and acceleration. They are also ideal carriers of transnational and transregional knowledge. MEDMACH will advance epistemic knowledge about the modern and contemporary Mediterranean. Moreover, it will work with a visual approach to establish a new, systemic historical understanding which is urgently needed in current debates on travel, transit, migration, environment, and cultural encounter. Key words: Mediterranean, visual archives, infrastructure, mobility, acceleration, migration, modernity, circulation

Mots-clés : mediterranean,visual archives,infrastructure,mobility,acceleration,migration,modernity,circulation
Projet ERC : MIGRATe (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Hannover Medical School — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MHH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1933148.0 €

Myocardial infarction triggers a complex interplay between inflammation and fibroblast activation, which contributes to success or failure of adequate repair. Targeted therapeutic approaches to modulate these processes have not yet been implemented clinically. The dynamic and multicellular nature of the inflammatory and fibrotic repair process in the heart is thought to be variable among individuals. Additionally, cardiac injury and treatment affect distant organs through systems-based interaction. In MIGRATe, I will explore non-invasive molecular imaging approaches to interrogate inflammatory cell populations and fibroblast activation in the heart and networking organs, for precise guidance of targeted therapeutic interventions. Imaging will delineate optimal timing and/or targeting of treatment to support endogenous healing and prevent heart failure progression. MIGRATe will also bring together imaging methods and molecular biology to decode the tissue microenvironment and identify novel biomarkers amenable to imaging and treatment. A combination of in vivo molecular imaging, single cell sorting, and transcriptome data from regions with elevated and/or suppressed imaging signal will be exploited to identify disproportionate cell subpopulations that contribute to the prognostic signal and may be targeted by therapy. Whole body imaging will simultaneously reveal the impact of cardiac cell directed therapy on the heart, alongside distant organ function, providing new insights into inter-organ communication and supporting a wholistic approach towards repair. Experimental work in mouse models will be complemented by a proof-of-concept clinical study, establishing a translational environment. Taken together, MIGRATe is designed to optimize new imaging-guided, molecular-targeted treatment strategies to improve cardiac outcome after acute myocardial infarction with corresponding benefit for reciprocal organ systems.
Projet ERC : EDUPOL (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1930120.0 €

In the last decades, profound socio-economic changes have posed unprecedented challenges to the traditional centralised model of state-provided education. This has led many countries to adopt neoliberal educational policies (NLPs) promoting school autonomy, competition and accountability as leverages for school effectiveness. Yet, given increasing societal inequalities, we are also witnessing a resurgence of democratic inclusive educational policies (DIPs) with egalitarian aims. Although these different policies can coexist, they have so far been scrutinised separately. EDUPOL develops the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the interplay between NLPs and DIPs. By building on the concepts of policy configurations and context-specific effects, the project proposes a paradigmatic shift from the focus on ‘what works’ to ‘what combinations of policies work for whom and in which circumstances’. It pursues four key aims: 1) to investigate the trends and diffusion of NLPs and DIPs across the globe in the last four decades; 2) to assess their effects on quality and equality in students’ (cognitive and socio-emotional) competencies and civic engagement; 3) to map within-country school-specific policies; 4) to uncover the heterogeneous effects of school-level policies across schools and territories. EDUPOL builds a novel macro-longitudinal dataset of educational policies and integrates insights from international repeated cross-sectional data, ground-breaking Italian big data (millions of student records, textual data from school reports, administrative archives, satellite data), student population panel data and qualitative interviews with key school actors to achieve its ambitious objectives. By combining qualitative comparative analysis, spatial panel regression, flexible machine-learning techniques and causal-inference methods, the project will significantly advance our understanding of the conditions under which educational policies work.

Mots-clés : educational policies social inequalities students schools big data evaluation
Projet ERC : T-REx (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
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 : 150000.0 €

Accurate and reliable analyses of medical images have become a key step to determine the presence or severity of diseases, directly impacting the clinical care for patients. Among the numerous and various biomedical image analysis, the identification of blood vessels and the associated vascular trees is one of the most central topics for diagnosis of the coronary, lungs, liver, or retina, which require detection methods to assist physicians. Many such methods show intrinsic limitations due to the required pre-processing of the images, to the approach used, e.g. limited training databases, etc. Complex filamentary patterns, such as the vascular trees, are common and widely observed in geology, astrophysics, etc. In astrophysics, elongated structures made of the alignment of galaxies, called filaments of the cosmic web (CW), reveal the nature of matter in the Universe and the way it assembles over the ~14 billion years’ history of the cosmos. For these reasons, detecting CW filaments and studying them is an increasingly important topic in astrophysics and is one of the aims of the ERC-Advanced project ByoPiC (Baryon Picture of the Cosmos). This proposal is a direct offspring of ByoPiC. It is the first step of a multi-step technology transfer strategy which aims at transferring an innovative algorithm to detect filaments in the distribution of galaxies to the analysis of biomedical images, laying the ground for applications in scores of other domains, e.g., satellite imagery, geophysical tomographic data, engineering, etc.
Projet ERC : MagnetoSense (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
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 : 150000.0 €

Sensorial and tacSensorial and tactile information represent the base of all surgical procedures in medicine. The vision sense has been and continues to be developed extensively by use of micro-cameras, MRI, X-rays and many others. Nonetheless, in many cases, the vision is not enough. The touch sense is necessary to identify the stiffness of the underlying organ or tissue and press more or less to perform a cut, remove a tumor or even move a catheter inside a curved vain. This stiffness is transmitted to the finger of the surgeon as a “pressure-deformation” information. This haptic sense is present naturally in our fingertips. Nevertheless, with the recent development of non-invasive techniques, the surgeon operates robotic devices that deliver optical information via a screen but loses all haptic information since his/her fingers are not in direct contact with the organ. The present project aims at proposing a novel material, a magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) membrane as a haptic sensor. MREs are soft elastomeric materials comprising magnetic particles thus being able to deform significantly upon application of an external magnetic field. Recently, it was shown that by fabricating them in exotic or slender geometries one can exploit their resulting instabilities to shape surfaces, induce programmable swelling and deswelling, or even create swimming microrobots and externally controllable catheters. All those applications use MREs as actuators. By contrast, here, we plan to exploit the reverse operation that of sensing, i.e., induce magnetic field changes via deformation. The principle lies in using the inherent magneto-mechanical coupling to induce readable magnetic fields when the MRE deforms. The reading of the fields can then be translated back to a deformation and a force thus being able to sense soft or stiff objects. The very soft nature of MREs will allow for a very sensitive measurement of forces as low as those felt by touching a soft gel or baby-skin.
Projet ERC : Sugar-enabledVAC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The objective of this ERC PoC project is to establish technical and commercial feasibility of our recently developed glycan-engineered red blood cells (RBCs) for antigenic characterization of circulating influenza A/H3N2 viruses. Due to the rapid evolution of influenza A/H3N2 viruses, antigenic characterization by the widely used hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay is not possible anymore. Continuous antigenic characterization of influenza A viruses is, however, essential for the development of protective seasonal vaccines. The ERC program “sugar-enable” has developed glycoengineered RBCs that make it possible again to antigenically characterize circulating A/H3N2 viruses by the standard HI assay, and it is expected that the cells will find application in hundreds of laboratories worldwide.
Projet ERC : ArcHealth (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de médecine de Graz — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40000.0 €

Beside Bacteria and fungi, Archaea, the "third domain of life" have been described as a stable component of the human microbiome. Yet, only few archaea have so far been isolated from humans. The project aims to demonstrate that a fundamentally new product, derived from archaea, revolutionizing current standards of treatments for human health, can be developed from our initial breakthrough achievement, the cultivation of these archaea. The benefits of using archaea derived from human bodies, promise a sustainable, safe and beneficial treatment in the future.
Projet ERC : ARIA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université technique du Moyen-Orient — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ODTÜ
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 110000.0 €

Cochlear implants (CIs), which electrically stimulate the auditory nerve to repair hearing in people with severe-to-profound hearing loss, are used for more than 40 years. However, conventional CIs have major drawbacks, one of which is the use of magnet in the implanted unit of the CI to help perfect alignment of the coils that are used for RF Link between external and implanted units. However, using magnets prevents the CI users from accessing some of the medical treatment and examination methods like MRI, and may lead to damage on the skin. To eliminate the drawbacks of conventional CIs including the magnet utilization, we introduced FLAMENCO concept, which has demonstrated that a fully implantable cochlear implant (FICI) mimicking the natural hearing mechanism of the ear is feasible. In the ERC FLAMENCO project, we developed the FICI as a magnet-free device, which necessitated development of a novel wireless power and data transfer (WPDT) application to minimize transfer losses, thus the duration for utilization of external wireless unit to charge the implanted rechargeable battery. By introducing a unique multi-mode rectifier circuit charging the load for an extended coupling range and eliminating the requirement of alignment magnets, the efficiency loss is reduced and the charging efficiency is maximized. In the ARIA project, which stems from the developments within the ERC FLAMENCO project, we will perform technological and commercial validation of WPDT unit according to the market standards; then optimize the unit for fabricating a demonstrator to be integrated to the FICI. We will also look into the potential for integration with other Active Implantable Medical Devices (AIMDs). If implemented successfully, the ARIA WPDT not only would be a major step for commercialization of our FICI which has already triggered interest of CI makers, users and investors, but also could lead to new applications of AIMDs.