Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : UnMySt (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3515500.0 €

Polaritonic Chemistry is a new and exciting field that has emerged from the fusion of chemistry and cavity quantum electrodynamics. In this innovative realm, and specifically under Vibrational Strong Coupling (VSC), hybridizing molecular vibrations with electromagnetic cavity modes has been shown to modify the rate and yield of reactions, solvent polarity and other molecular properties, in the absence of any illumination. The prospects for VSC as a versatile tool for chemistry and materials science have sparked a worldwide surge of interest, leading to substantial advances in recent years. Nevertheless, deciphering the underlying mechanisms by which VSC affects material properties still poses formidable challenges, impeding the utilization of VSC to its full potential. The goal of UnMySt is to construct a complete framework for cavity-controlled chemistry, built upon a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of VSC on both the molecular and supramolecular levels. As leading scientists in the field, we will pursue this goal by joining our forces in seeking answers to these pivotal questions: 1. What is the mechanism that links the local character of molecular reactivity with the collective nature of VSC? 2. Do the thermal equilibrium properties of materials change under VSC and how are such modifications expressed in polaritonic chemistry? 3. What are the manifestations of VSC on non-equilibrium dynamics such as solvent reorganization or charge transfer? 4. Can symmetry considerations provide intuitive guidelines for cavity-controlled chemistry? Can symmetries imposed or broken by the cavity be used to tailor its impact on reactivity? Our synergistic experimental and theoretical efforts will reveal novel physical mechanisms and will lay the qualitative and quantitative foundations for the rational design of strongly coupled molecular systems. The results of UnMyST will unleash the potential of polaritonic chemistry as a new tool for synthesis and materials science.

Mots-clés : cavity polaritons,polaritonic chemistry,vibrational strong coupling,spectroscopy,electronic structure,molecular dynamics,electronic structure methods,quantum electrodynamics density functional theory
Projet ERC : MANTRAMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2896495.0 €

Over 4 million people in Europe, including Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh minorities and Yoga practitioners, use mantras—sacred utterances, formulas, or syllables—for the purposes of ritual, prayer, contemplation and wellness. The term “mantra” itself has entered the vocabulary of most modern European languages. But how do mantras work? Where do they come from, and how did they spread around the globe? Despite their ubiquity and relevance, mantras have seldom been studied in their own right. This project will produce an unprecedented global history and anthropology of mantras, grounded in the PIs’ expertise on the very places and traditions where mantras originate–southern Asia, where mantras have been used in rites, meditation, worship, and healing for more than 3000 years. As mantras have been transmitted through diasporic networks, new religious movements, yoga and the internet, they have become central to religion and culture worldwide, while they also play a key role in traditional medicine and identity politics. Most scholarship to date has approached mantras through language and philology, privileging Sanskrit texts from elite contexts. Yet mantras have always been diverse, multimodal and multisensory, manifesting in manuscripts, on stones, in the voice through chanting, in the mind through meditation, and on the body through amulets, tattoos, and clothing. Bringing together leading scholars working across disciplines and cultural regions, this 6-year project will create sonic, visual and digital textual archives on the transcultural and multisensory lives of mantras, together with an exceptional array of academic deliverables and a museum exhibition. Raising awareness of mantras’significance from their origins in ancient South Asia to their modern ramifications in the global North, the MANTRAMS project will produce the first-ever scientific project entirely dedicated to understanding the relevance of mantras at a global scale.

Mots-clés : asian studies indology sound studies cultural anthropology
Projet ERC : GERACLE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GFZ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3297024.0 €

The intensity of Earth’s magnetic field, which forms an important shield for our habitat, drops dramatically during geomagnetic excursions and reversals (termed GERs). The Laschamps excursion (~41 000 years ago) occurred during profound climatic changes, possibly leading to drastic effects on the biosphere. While impacts of GERs on the atmosphere can be expected, the magnitude, time scales, and even the direction/sign of effects on our habitat are unknown. The significantly weakened magnetic field shrinks the magnetosphere, enhancing energetic particle fluxes from outer space to the middle and lower atmosphere and even ground. The impact of GERs on the energetic particle precipitation from the magnetosphere is also unknown. The dynamics of near-Earth space and the atmosphere during GERs and their potential impacts have not yet been addressed in full complexity, due to a lack of reliable data, precise models and interdisciplinary approaches. We will unravel key dynamics and connect physical processes during GERs and establish their environmental consequences by synergistically bringing together expertise from palaeomagnetism, magnetospheric, solar, heliospheric, atmospheric physics and climate. We will combine new data-based geomagnetic field models with state-of-the-art magnetospheric, atmospheric, and global Earth-system models for a complete process view. Expected breakthroughs will include new knowledge on the very existence and structure of the magnetosphere and radiation belts, radiation fields and ionization patterns in the atmosphere, and induced physical, chemical and dynamical effects and climate responses during GERs. Further emphasis will be put on potential hazards for our technological society during a potential future GER. GERACLE will go far beyond the current state–of–the–art, provide ground-breaking advances, and form a new paradigm of the consequences of past and yet unexplored GER events for our habitat and the impacts of possible future GERs.

Mots-clés : solar terrestrial relations magnetospheric physics
Projet ERC : MALINCA (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université Paris Cité — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UP Cité
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 256410.0 €

In the recent years, proof assistants have shown their astounding ability to tackle the complete formalisation of large pieces of mathematics, with the celebrated certifications of the Feit-Thompson theorem, of the Kepler conjecture, and more recently, the resolution of Scholze liquid tensor challenge. We believe that the time is ripe to demonstrate that they can tackle mathematics in the flexible and semi-formal way it is created and exchanged by the mathematicians. To that purpose, we aim to develop proof assistant technologies of an entirely new nature, including a formal language and a foundational approach to mathematical meaning, with the versatility necessary to represent the dynamic linguistic structures to be found in the daily practice of mathematics. The result will be a linguistic front-end that will allow mathematicians, and scientists in general, to express in proof assistants their proofs and computations the semi-formal way they think of them. Three research tracks stand out: the mathematical and linguistic foundations; formalisation of real-world vernacular mathematics into a high-level language of representation (Godement challenge); new techniques and software tools, based on natural language processing, to automate the formalisation process. The translation in the machine of semi-formal mathematics needs to go beyond the traditional view that reduces reasoning to logic, and requires to understand the dynamics of the discursive linguistic process which underlines mathematics. Building on advances of linguistics, mathematical logic, programming language semantics and machine learning, we will contribute significantly to the rise of a new generation of proof assistants, integrating at their heart a linguistic layer and automated guidance tools for mathematical proofs, theorems and definitions. The resulting high-level manipulation of concepts will lead to novel research outcomes supporting the daily activity of mathematical scientists.

Mots-clés : proof assistants,linguistic of mathematics,intelligent proof search,smart mathematics technology
Projet ERC : EUROpest (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Saragosse — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 245000.0 €

Born from years of interdisciplinary collaboration, EUROpest aims to articulate the complex ways in which social-ecological systems shape epidemics. It builds on resilience and actor-network theories to advance its own eco-bio-social paradigm that embraces a multi-causal understanding of disease transmission and disease impacts on human societies and ecosystems. While striving to develop and validate a general theoretical model, it takes the well-documented and highly diverse world of late medieval and early modern Europe as its laboratory – investigating its interconnected climatic, cultural, demographic, economic, ecological, and pathogenic history. With regard to the latter, EUROpest assumes malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis and enteric diseases were major components of a disease baseline over which the most devastating disease, plague (Y. pestis), occurred. EUROpest will carry out regional case studies – from Spain to Lithuania, Greece to England – selected on the basis of available and procurable written, scientific and archaeological data. It will holistically consider the contexts of plague outbreaks identified in those regions, to understand how context both facilitated outbreaks and also shaped them, and their short- and medium-term impacts. EUROpest combines archival source analysis with archaeology, archaeogenetics, paleoecology and paleoclimatology, and subjects case studies to novel human-supervised machine-learning to identify the causal role of factors influencing regional outbreaks. As the contemporary imagination is guided in its understanding of epidemic disease by the outbreaks of the past, EUROpest’s contribution will be critical to developing more nuanced and realistic scenarios of future pandemics, academic as well as popular. With EUROpest PIs already engaging policy makers, the mathematical precision of the eco-bio-social analysis EUROpest proposes will help design more successful and targeted interventions for future pandemic response.

Mots-clés : adna studies,palaeogenomics,environmental history,interdisciplinary history,disease history,climate history,plague,smallpox,machine learning in historical applications
Projet ERC : COGNECTOMICS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FMI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3328050.0 €

Intelligent behavior is based on internal models of the world that enable mental simulations and strategic planning. A leading model to study such “cognitive maps” are networks of place cells and grid cells in the mammalian hippocampal-entorhinal system. These neurons are active at defined locations and collectively represent a physical environment as a low-dimensional topographic map in neural activity space. However, a mechanistic understanding of the underlying computations and their biological implementation remains elusive. Using new methods for brain-wide activity imaging during behavior, members of our team discovered an abundance of place cells in the telencephalon of zebrafish. We will combine this approach with volume electron microscopy to reconstruct large-scale connectivity in the same brains at synaptic resolution and with transcriptomic profiling to identify molecular cell types, taking advantage of small brain size. The joint analysis of network connectivity and population dynamics will allow us to determine how functional properties of place cells are established by interactions between specific subsets of neurons across brain areas, and how network structure constrains population activity to topographically organized attractor manifolds. The results will disambiguate computational models that make conflicting assumptions about network connectivity. We will further explore the emergence of cell types during development and the concomitant structural and functional maturation of neuronal circuits. The relevance of cognitive maps for neuronal computations and behaviors involving internally generated predictions will be explored by activity measurements in a virtual reality and by functional manipulations of genetically targeted neurons. Capitalizing on the unique combination of expertise among team members, this project is expected to fundamentally advance our mechanistic understanding of biological and potentially artificial intelligence.

Mots-clés : cognitive map,connectomics,transcriptomics,neuronal network,neuronal connectivity,neuronal dynamics,zebrafish,place cell
Projet ERC : D2Smell (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : KTH Institut royal de technologie — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2453789.0 €

This proposal is framed by a technological goal: We aim to digitize smell. Achieving this is currently prevented by gaps in basic science. We aim to fill these gaps, culminating in a proof of concept for our model. The primary gap we identify is lack of data on what humans typically smell. Phrased conceptually, in Aim 1 we ask what are the natural statistics of human olfactory perceptual space. We address this in a series of three experiments, highlighted by one where we equip participants with a wearable sampling apparatus we designed and built for this proposal. The apparatus measures sniffing behaviour to identify odor sampling, measures neural activity to verify olfactory perception, takes video of the visual scene, analyses total levels of volatile organic compounds in real time, and collects odor samples for detailed analysis off line. In other words, we generate an olfactory equivalent of Google Street View, with the addition of chemical, perceptual and neural data. Using this we will characterise the natural statistics of human olfactory perceptual space. Moreover, a major contribution of this proposal will be in posting this massive data as a publicly available recourse. Next, in Aim 2 we will use this data to digitize human olfactory perceptual space. We build on a model that allows us to recreate odors using a restricted set of odor primaries. We will test our model in two frameworks: One we call SmelloVision, where we develop the algorithmic framework to generate an odor to match any digital image, and one we call TelleSmell, where we develop a device to sense the environment, the algorithmic framework to transfer the data, and a device to generate the corresponding odor remotely. We provide pilot data for Aim 2 where we sensed an odor in Mainz (Germany), transmitted the data over IP to Rehovot (Israel), where we successfully recreated the smell. This was, as far as we know, the first transmission of odor over IP.

Mots-clés : olfaction odor sniffing perceptual space chemical space
Projet ERC : CircuitEvolution (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université Rovira i Virgili — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1021005.0 €

Animals display remarkable diversity in their behaviors, yet very little is known about how nervous systems evolve to generate such variation. CircuitEvolution will answer two fundamental questions: 1. How does brain wiring change across species as novel behavioral traits evolve? 2. What core features of brain circuits are deeply conserved across species? We will use electron microscopy connectomics, the only method that enables unbiased, brain-wide structural analysis of the synaptic connectivity between all neurons. Building on recent rapid progress in Drosophila melanogaster, the frontier of whole brain connectomics, we will target drosophilids at a strategically selected range of evolutionary divergences. Two PIs (Cardona, Jefferis) are pioneers in Drosophila connectomics, and our third PI (Ruta) and collaborators (Prieto-Godino, Benton) have pioneered molecular genetic investigation of behavioral and circuit evolution across drosophilids. Crucially, with our fourth PI (statistical physicist, Sales Pardo), we will identify conserved and divergent neurons and circuits across increasingly distant species, developing new inference methods for connectome alignment, simplification, and neuron annotation. Working together on this project we can develop a new field of whole-brain comparative connectomics. With cutting edge technology, we will obtain and share multiple connectomes for 7 species. These unique datasets will allow comparisons across species, sexes and developmental stages and support three areas of biological investigation within this grant: olfactory circuits, courtship behavior and the conserved core of the insect brain. This will generate many hypotheses that will be tested experimentally by the PIs, collaborators and laboratories worldwide. The insights and methods will have a major impact on understanding conserved and evolving circuit function across phyla all the way to mammalian brains and impact the design of artificial intelligence systems.

Mots-clés : connectomics,neuronal evolution,neural circuits,drosophila,olfaction,sexual dimorphism,network analysis
Projet ERC : 4D-BioSTEM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EPFL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2491073.0 €

Electron Microscopy (EM) has transformed research in the Life and Physical Sciences separately. Cryo-EM in Life Sciences allows the 3D structure determination of proteins down to 1.0 Å resolution in case they are large enough and present in high numbers in homogeneous states. For many molecules involved in diseases like neurodegeneration, however, structure determination is still severely hampered due to their insufficient contrast when imaged in vitreous ice or in their native cellular environment. To date, EM in the Physical Sciences generated utmost contrast for light atoms and established a resolution in the range of 0.2 Å limited only by thermal motion. This record was achieved by evolving scanning transmission EM (STEM) from a 2D to a 4D imaging technique combining imaging with diffraction. In this project, we will work out 4D-BioSTEM methodologies and develop a cryo-EM tool that maximizes contrast and resolution by bringing together EM groups from Life and Physical Sciences. 4D-STEM imaging of frozen biological specimens will be approached with unique and specialized hardware, theory and simulation, the development of microscope operation routines, and image reconstruction algorithms. In particular, we will acquire sparse 4D data using ultrafast detectors, employ methods for direct phasing (differential phase contrast, DPC) and establish advanced, so-called ptychographic, techniques to gain maximal signal from noisy 4D cryo-STEM data that are limited in their electron dose budget. We will make use of synergies between recently separated fields in order to make proteins smaller than 50 kDa amenable to structure elucidation. Furthermore, we will expand 4D-STEM to tomography, to obtain high-contrast 3D reconstructions from cellular samples, human brain tissue of neurodegenerative diseases, and vitrified organic energy materials. A new comprehensive structural imaging framework will be put forward and benchmarked as to its utility in Life and Physical Science applications of cryo-EM.

Mots-clés : electron microscopy,cryo em,stem,scanning transmission electron microscopy,phase contrast imaging,image processing,automation,imaging neurodegeneration
Projet ERC : SWIMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EPFL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3948477.25 €

SWIMS vision is to propose a bio-inspired paradigm change for the design and hardware of future smart wireless multimodal sensory systems that will operate with stochastic spikes, offering a breakthrough with unrivalled energy efficiency at system level, for event detections and communication. The scientific breakthroughs proposed here are sine qua non advancements for a sustainable deployment of billions of future Internet of Things nodes to support smart economy and society development, with large energy savings and limited impact on environment. The synergistic interaction of four complementary skilled PIs enables the realization of a radically-novel end-to-end stochastic analog spiking neuromorphic concept for SWIMS nodes, offering solutions to challenges of sensor spiking signal generation, processing and communication with disruptive innovations at all levels, inspired by the biological model of a small insect. SWIMS involves many beyond state-of-the-art scientific advancements from technology to system level to enable a neuromorphic architecture with i) as input neuron layer, new heterostructure spiking sensor arrays based on transition metal oxides/2D semiconductor, covering infrared, ultraviolet, acoustic and electromagnetic detections, ii) hidden layers in tiny spiking neural networks based on novel CMOS Fe-FET concepts capable of efficiently dealing with inherent stochastic noise when processing spiking signals on-chip, iii) a spiking emitter as output layer for event-driven wireless transmission using optimized spike modulation and encoding, and iv) a modelling framework embedding stochastic effects in task-based electronic system design and biologically inspired recurrent neural networks. The synergistic interaction will enable unique design and experimental validations of first of their kind event-driven demonstrators with optimized all spiking multi-modal sensor nodes and energy consumption more than 100x lower than existing state of the art.

Mots-clés : cmos,iot edge nodes,integrated circuits,ultra low power,phase change and ferroelectric devices,modulation and coding,non gaussian uncertainties,stochastic spiking sensors