Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : QUEST (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
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 : 1761411.84 €

The quantum nature of an electronic fluid is ubiquitous in many solid-state systems subjected to correlations or confinement. This is particularly true for two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) in which fascinating quantum states of matter, such as the integer and fractional quantum Hall (QH) states, arise under strong magnetic fields. The understanding of QH systems relies on the existence of one-dimensional (1D) conducting channels that propagate unidirectionally along the edges of the system, following the confining potential. Due to the buried nature of 2DEG commonly built in semiconducting heterostructures, the considerable real space structure of this 1D electronic fluid and its energy spectrum remain largely unexplored. This project consists in exploring at the local scale the intimate link between the spatial structure of QH edge states, coherent transport and the coupling with superconductivity at interfaces. We will use graphene as a surface-accessible 2DEG to perform a pioneering local investigation of normal and superconducting transport through QH edge states. A new and unique hybrid Atomic Force Microscope and Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) operating in the extreme conditions required for this physics, i.e. below 0.1 kelvin and up to 14 teslas, will be developed and will allow unprecedented access to the edge of a graphene flake where QH edge states propagate. Overall, the original combination of magnetotransport measurements with scanning tunnelling spectroscopy will solve fundamental questions on the considerable real-space structure of integer and fractional QH edge states impinged by either normal or superconducting electrodes. Our world-unique approach, which will provide the first STM imaging and spectroscopy of QH edge channels, promises to open a new field of investigation of the local scale physics of the QH effect.

Mots-clés : low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy,quantum hall effect,graphene,proximity induced superconductivity
Projet ERC : CAPABLE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : National Research Council — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1831875.0 €

The quantum technology revolution promises a transformational impact on the society and economics worldwide. It will enable breakthrough advancements in such diverse fields as secure communications, computing, metrology, and imaging. Quantum photonics, which recently received an incredible boost by the use of integrated optical circuits, is an excellent technological platform to enable such revolution, as it already plays a relevant role in many of the above applications. However, some major technical roadblocks needs to be overcome. Currently, the various components required for a complete quantum photonic system are produced on very different materials by dedicated fabrication technologies, as no single material is able to fulfil all the requirements for single-photon generation, manipulation, storage and detection. This project proposes a new hybrid approach for integrated quantum photonic systems based on femtosecond laser microfabrication (FLM), enabling the innovative miniaturization of various components on different materials, but with a single tool and with very favourable integration capabilities. This project will mainly focus on two major breakthroughs: the first one will be increasing the complexity achievable in the photonic platform and demonstrating unprecedented quantum computation capability; the second one will be the integration in the platform of multiple single-photon quantum memories and their interconnection. Achievement of these goals will only be possible by taking full advantage of the unique features of FLM, from the possibility to machine very different materials, to the 3D capabilities in waveguide writing and selective material removal. The successful demonstration and functional validation of this hybrid, integrated photonic platform will represent a significant leap for photonic microsystems in quantum computing and quantum communications.

Mots-clés : femtosecond laser micromachining
Projet ERC : Rural Riches (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2354681.09 €

The question as to how Europe emerged from the collapse of the Roman state in the West has been the subject of academic debate for over a century. Most modern authors agree on the idea that the post-Roman economic development was the result of the initiatives and the demand of the elite. This paradigm of elite control of production and (long-distance) trade seems to be at odds with the vast amounts of objects, often precious and of exotic origin, that are found in the thousands of richly furnished cemeteries of even the smallest rural communities. This project will analyse the importance of the rural population as consumers with access to global trade networks to the post-Roman economic development in northwestern Europe. It is of great importance to analyse the early economic development of this region because it became ever more important in the economic development of Europe as a whole in the Middle Ages and the Modern Period. With this ambitious archaeological project we aim to contribute substantially to the age-old debate on the origins of the European economy and to a general debate on the role of the mass of the population in economic processes in the past. The project consists of five subprojects aimed at studying the ‘lay of the land’, the development of burial rite, the circulation of objects and the exchange mechanisms in place, the development of production and how it was embedded in social contexts and related to cosmology, and the presence and character of the elite. The main body of data will be the cemeteries and the vast amount of objects they contained. Sophisticated analyses of the objects’ deposition contexts and distribution patterns, using GIS and data from the ‘lay of the land’ project will be carried out to better understand these ‘Rural Riches’. An intensive programme of scientific research will contribute to understanding exchange, production and the use of objects in the communication and internalisation of shared values in rituals.

Mots-clés : merovingian archaeology
Projet ERC : BUNGEE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Inrae
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 361103.25 €

The rapidly changing climate puts commonly used crop plants under strong pressure. It is therefore essential to develop novel breeding technologies to rapidly enhance crops to better withstand newly emerging stresses. Interestingly, a clear link between transposable elements (TEs), crop improvement and varietal diversification exists. Furthermore, in recent years the importance of (TEs) in evolution and adaptation to stresses has been recognized. However the use of TEs in crop breeding is currently very limited because it is not possible to control TE mobility. My research group has identified a novel highly conserved epigenetic silencing mechanism that represses the activity of TEs in Arabidopsis. We also found drugs capable of inhibiting this mechanism. Because these drugs target highly conserved enzymes we were able to show that our drug treatment is also effective in rice. We are therefore able to produce TE bursts in a controlled manner in virtually any plant. We can thus, for the first time, generate and study TE bursts in crop plants in real time. More importantly, we found that the accumulation of novel insertions of a heat-stress inducible TE produced plants that, at a high frequency, were more resistant to heat stress. This suggests that the stress that was initially applied to activate a specific TE in the parent, lead to an improved tolerance to that specific stress in the progeny of that plant in a very straight-forward manner. In this project I propose to accelerate plant breeding by testing and implementing a revolutionary TE-directed crop improvement technology. For that I plan to 1. Mobilize TEs in crop plants using selected stresses 2. Using these mobilized stress-responsive TEs breed novel crop plants resistant to those selected stresses and 3. Study the genetic and epigenetic impact of TE mobilization on host genomes. This project will have a broad impact on crop improvement and on the basic understanding of the evolutionary importance of TEs.

Mots-clés : new crop breeding technologies,transposable elements,stress tolerance,epigenetics,rice,soybean
Projet ERC : D-TECT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : National Observatory of Athens — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NOA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1968000.0 €

The recent IPCC report identifies mineral dust and the associated uncertainties in climate projections as key topics for future research. Dust size distribution in climate models controls the dust-radiation-cloud interactions and is a major contributor to these uncertainties. Observations show that the coarse mode of dust can be sustained during long-range transport, while current understanding fails in explaining why the lifetime of large airborne dust particles is longer than expected from gravitational settling theories. This discrepancy between observations and theory suggests that other processes counterbalance the effect of gravity along transport. D-TECT envisages filling this knowledge gap by studying the contribution of the triboelectrification (contact electrification) on particle removal processes. Our hypothesis is that triboelectric charging generates adequate electric fields to hold large dust particles up in the atmosphere. D-TECT aims to (i) parameterize the physical mechanisms responsible for dust triboelectrification; (ii) assess the impact of electrification on dust settling; (iii) quantify the climatic impacts of the process, particularly the effect on the dust size evolution during transport, on dry deposition and on CCN/IN reservoirs, and the effect of the electric field on particle orientation and on radiative transfer. The approach involves the development of a novel specialized high-power lidar system to detect and characterize aerosol particle orientation and a large-scale field experiment in the Mediterranean Basin using unprecedented ground-based remote sensing and airborne in-situ observation synergies. Considering aerosol-electricity interactions, the observations will be used to improve theoretical understanding and simulations of dust lifecycle. The project will provide new fundamental understanding, able to open new horizons for weather and climate science, including biogeochemistry, volcanic ash and extraterrestrial dust research.
Projet ERC : FaultScan (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Université Grenoble Alpes — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1974630.0 €

The recent September 2017, magnitude 7.1, central Mexico earthquake that caused 370 casualties reminds us that earthquakes are among the most dramatic natural disasters worldwide. Causal physical processes are not instantaneous and laboratory and numerical experiments predict that earthquakes should be preceded by a detectable slow preparation phase. Despite considerable efforts, however, robust geophysical precursors have not yet been observed before damaging earthquakes. My FaultScan project will revolutionize our ability to directly observe transient deformation within the core of active faults and provide unprecedented accuracy in the detection of earthquake precursors. My ambition is to develop a new, noise-based, high resolution, seismic monitoring approach. I intend to grasp the opportunity of a recent step change in seismic instrumentation and data processing capabilities to achieve a dream for seismologists: reproduce repeatable, daily, virtual seismic sources that can probe the core of active faults at seismogenic depths using only passive seismic records. I plan to target the San Jacinto Fault (a branch of the San Andreas Fault system) that is currently believed to pose one of the largest seismic risks in California. It is an ideal fault for this project because it is very active, already extensively studied and easily accessible for the pilot field data acquisition work. This project is in collaboration with the Univ. of South. California, the Univ. of Cal. San Diego and specialists in earthquake mechanics and will include earthquake preparation processes and seismic modeling that will guide us for our long-term (3 years), breakthrough, passive seismic experiment and further data analysis and interpretation. I strongly believe that this project has a very high potential for providing fundamental results on the physics of earthquakes and faults and that it will have a major impact on earthquake prediction worldwide in the near future.

Mots-clés : noise based seismology,earthquake monitoring and prediction
Projet ERC : COSMYCA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inrae
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2745251.0 €

The recent activity of humans has had such a profound impact on the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere that ecosystems and societies face a ‘human-induced’ climate crisis. Given the key role of the biosphere in climate change feedbacks, the Paris Agreement emphasised every effort should now be taken to ensure ecosystems are managed to reduce the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 without altering climate. However, Land Surface Models (LSM) still lack consensus on critical processes driving the exchange of CO2 between ecosystems and the atmosphere. Variations in atmospheric carbonyl sulphide (COS) could provide independent constraints on LSM performance at large scales and evidence for the recent ‘CO2 fertilisation’ effect on the biosphere. Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) studies also reveal that, as CO2 rises, trees forming symbiotic relationships with ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi may accumulate biomass more readily than trees in symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, especially in nutrient-poor soils. So far, incorporating EM and AM functional traits into LSMs remains a challenge. Representing key differences in AM and EM plant root and fungal processes in LSMs such as the secretion of acids and enzymes into the soil will be necessary, as they augment organic matter mineralisation and soil weathering, impacting atmospheric CO2, and potentially COS budgets. Because EM plants tend to grow on acidic soils, EM fungi should express more carbonic anhydrase (CA) an enzyme that helps regulate their internal pH, with repercussions on COS fluxes. As nitrogen availability inhibits CA activity this may help explain why the growth of EM plants is reduced in acid environments. COSMYCA will quantify EM and AM fungal CA activity for the first time and characterise mechanistically how CO2 levels and nutrients drive changes in fungal enzyme activity, weathering rates and SOM mineralisation, and their large-scale consequences on the COS and CO2 budgets over the last century.

Mots-clés : soil,enzymes,fungi,atmospheric chemistry
Projet ERC : SecNine (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2245365.0 €

The recently-discovered Type IX Secretion System (T9SS) is a protein transport pathway that exports proteins across the outer membrane of Gram-negative of the phylum Bacteroidetes. It is an essential pathogenicity determinant in severe periodontal disease and in the major bacterial diseases of farmed fish. It is also required for the unique Bacteroidete gliding motility. The components required to catalyse T9SS export are still not fully defined, but include at least 18 authenticated proteins. Possible functions can currently only be assigned to some of these T9SS components. However, it is clear that the pathway involves a number of interacting protein complexes. Our current understanding of the T9SS is superficial and lacking in molecular level structural and mechanistic detail. In a landmark recent study we have identified and structurally characterized the multi-protein outer membrane protein conducting channel of the T9SS. Our ambitious goal is to apply similar state-of-the-art experimental methods to systematically characterise the full T9SS pathway. We will systematically characterise the component protein complexes that make up the T9SS by: - Defining their composition through co-purification from native sources. - Determining their molecular structures by cryo-EM. - Assessing their dynamic interactions through live cell fluorescence imaging, biochemical experiments, and structural characterization. In addition, we will use single molecule tracking methods to follow substrate molecules through the steps of the T9SS transport cycle in real time in live bacterial cells and apply this methodology to elucidate T9SS mechanism.

Mots-clés : bacterial protein transport,gliding motility,molecular motor,cryoem,live cell single molecule fluorescence
Projet ERC : WU TANG (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Delft University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The recycling of CO2 will play an important role in mitigating the energy and environmental problems that our future societies will no doubt face. Electrochemistry is a powerful technology that can make use of renewable electricity from solar and wind to power the transformation of CO2 and water to valuable chemicals and fuels. However, the electrochemical conversion of CO2 is not ready for large-scale deployment due to the poor activity, selectivity, and stability of the current catalysts used. The only way to be able to achieve better understanding of this complicated system is through careful characterization of the catalyst/electrolyte interface during electrochemical measurements, as well as the development of new theoretical models that include the effects of the electrolyte. In this proposal, I will develop an integrated approach to study the effects of the catalyst and electrolyte compositions on the formation of desired chemical products during electrochemical CO2 reduction. To ensure a robust model of the catalyst/electrolyte interface can be established, I will focus on manipulating the catalyst and electrolyte compositions in parallel, while observing the formation of reaction intermediates as a function of applied potential. The proposal will focus on Cu-based electrodes, as Cu has uniquely shown the ability to form hydrocarbon products. To understand how the product formation changes, operando techniques will be used to monitor the reaction intermediates during electrochemical cycling, to reveal new insights to the reaction pathway for a given product. A theoretical model will be developed in parallel that focuses on understanding the nature of the electrochemical activity of ions used in this reaction. Finally, the transport and reactivity of these ions will be evaluated in use with a bipolar membrane, which can effectively separate the electrochemical environments of the CO2 reduction reaction and corresponding water oxidation reaction.

Mots-clés : operando characterization,spetroelectrochemistry,co2 conversion
Projet ERC : TRANSREGULON (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496250.0 €

The regulation of gene transcription by RNA polymerase (Pol) II underlies cell differentiation and organism development, and its dysregulation causes many cancers. Transcription regulation occurs during initiation, when Pol II assembles with initiation factors on promoter DNA, but also during mRNA chain elongation, when Pol II pauses near the promoter before it restarts upon activation. Our previous ERC Advanced Grant ‘TRANSIT’ enabled us to provide molecular insights into yeast Pol II initiation and its regulation by the Mediator coactivator complex (Plaschka et al., Nature 2015; Sainsbury et al., Nature 2012, Lariviere et al, Nature 2012). Here, with our new proposal ‘TRANSREGULON’ we wish to open a new frontier and provide the structural basis for mammalian Pol II regulation during elongation. We will use an integrated structural biology approach combining X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, and crosslinking, to obtain the first atomic structure of a mammalian Pol II enzyme (aim 1), the structure of the negative elongation factor NELF (aim 2), which is required for promoter-proximal pausing by mammalian Pol II, and the threedimensional architecture of the promoter-proximally paused Pol II complex (aim 3) containing the multiprotein pausing factors NELF and DSIF, and eventually also the pause release factor p-TEFb. This ground-breaking work will make the transition from yeast to human structural biology of transcription, will provide the molecular basis for a central mechanism of cellular regulation, and will advance structural biology methods for dissecting large and transient mammalian multicomponent complexes.