Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MATRICAN (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997500.0 €

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is known to play a critical role in driving cancer progression, and yet we lack knowledge of its composition and structure. The goal of my ERC project is to investigate how alterations in biochemical composition and structural properties of the ECM during cancer progression impact on cell behaviour to drive metastasis, which is responsible for over 90% of cancer patient deaths. In order to do this, my lab has developed a method to in situ decellularise organs leaving structurally intact ECM scaffolds for subsequent analysis or for repopulation to study cell-ECM interactions in situ. We have deployed our method to decellularise primary tumour and metastatic organs in mice bearing orthotopic breast cancer tumours for subsequent quantitative global mass spectrometry (MS) proteomics, spatio-structural mapping of ECM components in 3D, and live imaging of repopulated cells. We observed fundamental alterations in ECM composition and structure between normal and tumour, and primary and metastatic tissue. We have selected two ECM components specifically upregulated in metastatic organs for subsequent validation. We discovered a marked decrease in proteins associated with fibrillogenesis in metastatic organs and will investigate the impact of this on metastatic ECM stiffness. We will decellularise organs from transgenic mouse models of breast and pancreatic cancer, at specific stages during cancer progression to determine the evolution of global ECM composition and structure, and how this impacts on cell behaviour through functional perturbation. Finally, we shall validate relevance of findings to human disease through use of human cancer lines and analysis of human patient samples. The research proposed will provide ground-breaking insight into how the ECM regulates cellular behaviour during normal and pathological conditions, and will test new strategies to combat metastasis that could be translated into the clinic to benefit cancer patients.

Mots-clés : metastasis,extracellular matrix
Projet ERC : CIMNAS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Fondation de coopération scientifique « Paris Sciences et Lettres » — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FCS PSL
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

The failure of metallic materials caused by corrosion strongly impacts our society with cost, safety, health and performance issues. The mechanisms of corrosion propagation are fairly well understood, and various means of mitigation are known even if research is still necessary to improve this knowledge or to develop corrosion protection for the application of new materials. The vision of CIMNAS is that a major breakthrough for corrosion protection lies in a deep understanding and control of the initiation stage triggering corrosion. Corrosion initiation takes place at the atomic/molecular scale or at a scale of a few nanometres (the nanoscale) on metal and alloy surfaces, metallic, oxidised or coated, and interacting with the corroding environment. The mission of CIMNAS is to challenge the difficulty of understanding corrosion initiation at the nanometric/atomic scale on such complex interfaces, ultimately aiming at designing more robust metallic surfaces via the understanding of corrosion mechanisms. The project is constructed on new ideas to achieve three knowledge breakthroughs, each answering a key question for the understanding of corrosion initiation on metal and alloy surfaces. It is envisioned that the model approach used and the achieved breakthroughs will open up a new horizon for research on corrosion initiation mechanisms at the nanoscale, and new opportunities for a knowledge-based design of novel corrosion protection technologies. Technologies presently at low TRL (Technology Readiness Level) will benefit from these breakthroughs. Resources will include a team of highly experienced and recognised researchers headed by the PI, a unique apparatus recently installed at the PI’s lab, integrating surface spectroscopy, microscopy, and electrochemistry for in situ measurements in a closed system, novel experimental approaches, and a strong complementarity of experiments and modelling.
Projet ERC : CIMNAS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
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 : 1562055.51 €

The failure of metallic materials caused by corrosion strongly impacts our society with cost, safety, health and performance issues. The mechanisms of corrosion propagation are fairly well understood, and various means of mitigation are known even if research is still necessary to improve this knowledge or to develop corrosion protection for the application of new materials. The vision of CIMNAS is that a major breakthrough for corrosion protection lies in a deep understanding and control of the initiation stage triggering corrosion. Corrosion initiation takes place at the atomic/molecular scale or at a scale of a few nanometres (the nanoscale) on metal and alloy surfaces, metallic, oxidised or coated, and interacting with the corroding environment. The mission of CIMNAS is to challenge the difficulty of understanding corrosion initiation at the nanometric/atomic scale on such complex interfaces, ultimately aiming at designing more robust metallic surfaces via the understanding of corrosion mechanisms. The project is constructed on new ideas to achieve three knowledge breakthroughs, each answering a key question for the understanding of corrosion initiation on metal and alloy surfaces. It is envisioned that the model approach used and the achieved breakthroughs will open up a new horizon for research on corrosion initiation mechanisms at the nanoscale, and new opportunities for a knowledge-based design of novel corrosion protection technologies. Technologies presently at low TRL (Technology Readiness Level) will benefit from these breakthroughs. Resources will include a team of highly experienced and recognised researchers headed by the PI, a unique apparatus recently installed at the PI’s lab, integrating surface spectroscopy, microscopy, and electrochemistry for in situ measurements in a closed system, novel experimental approaches, and a strong complementarity of experiments and modelling.
Projet ERC : PROSPERA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Universidade de Vigo — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1424375.0 €

The feasibility and desirability of endless economic growth is increasingly being questioned by scholars and activists. While envisioning alternative economic models is key to assure the sustainability and wellbeing of present and future generations, few studies have analysed what might be the role of ‘innovation’ in a post-growth era. Innovating has become the imperative for the survival and expansion of any form of organisation. But this ‘innovate or die mania’ underpins assumptions – such as technological determinism and productivism - that neglect the socially constructed character of technological development, its politics and its capacity to enable just and equitable societies but also dystopian technocratic futures. This project posits that untangling innovation from growth is key to imagining a post-growth era. If growth is going to be unsustainable, we need new narratives for innovation that would accordingly also have to change and increase the scope of the innovation concept itself, beyond technology, into cultural and institutional change, and indeed social life and social order. Organizations – in particular capitalist enterprises - are the core of modern industrial societies but are also one of the places in which the discourse of growth is legitimised and constantly reproduced. However, they can also be the places in which people can start to build the capacity for developing alternatives to challenges the growth ideology. But how organizations would look like in a different paradigm, in a system that is not based on and doesn’t not rely on endless growth? Under which conditions STI without growth would be able to flourish? What levels of technological complexity can we reach in a non-growing economy? What policies, infrastructures and organizational forms are needed or are more likely to facilitate this new paradigm of STI? These are questions, rarely asked by innovation, management and organization scholars, that the proposed project will address.

Mots-clés : post growth,degrowth,post capitalism,managing without growth
Projet ERC : Spontaneous ZeBrain (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1922360.0 €

The first behavioural theories conceived the organism as primarily driven by external sensory stimuli. However, the energy associated with momentary demands of the environment represent ~1% of the brain's total energy budget, implying that the intrinsic activity represents a major aspect of the brain's function. Indeed, more recent theories such as cognitivism and embodiment describe the organisms as capable of generating complex behaviours emerging from the brain's intrinsic dynamics. Past and current studies that investigated the neuronal basis self-generated behaviours mainly focus on the readiness potential (RP) signal, a build-up ramping activity in the premotor cortex, occurring ~ 2 sec before the movement's onset. However, the neuronal mechanisms underlying the generation of self-generated behaviours (how RPs are generated), the involvement of other regions, and how the brain codes the impending movements (activity predictive of the onset and type of movement), still remain poorly understood. The combination of light-sheet microscopy, optogenetics, and the zebrafish larva model enables monitoring whole-brain dynamics in an intact behaving vertebrate. Moreover, the diverse yet limited and well described repertoire of motor behaviours will enable to perform experiments in more natural unconstrained conditions, in comparison to previous studies, which were structured in trials and limited to one or two behavioural choices. These advantages will allow us to go beyond the current state-of-the-art in the field. More specifically, we propose to investigate the following specific aims: 1) Whole-brain dynamics basis and mechanisms underlying self-generated behaviours. 2) A comparison between the neuronal pathways underlying the initiation of self-generated and sensory induced behaviours. 3) The internal and external modulation of self-generated behaviours.

Mots-clés : neuronal circuit dynamics,spim,zebrafish,optogenetics,behaviour,internal decisions,computational neuroscience,calcium imaging
Projet ERC : DEMOBLACK (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Padua — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIPD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1806358.3 €

The first direct detection of gravitational waves demonstrated that double black hole (BH) binaries exist, and can host surprisingly massive objects (> 20 solar masses). Most theoretical models do not predict the existence of such massive BHs, and the formation channels of BH binaries are essentially unconstrained. Dynamically formed BH binaries are the most elusive ones: current models either neglect them or study them in idealized systems. With DEMOBLACK, I will draw the first satisfactory picture of BH binary demography, by modeling realistic BH dynamics in a well-motivated cosmological context. I propose a novel approach for the study of BH dynamics: I will simulate the formation of BH binaries in star clusters self-consistently, starting from the hydrodynamics of the parent molecular cloud and accounting for the impact of stellar evolution, feedback, and dynamics on BH binaries. The key tool of DEMOBLACK is SEVN, my new population-synthesis code. With SEVN, I predicted the formation of massive BHs from metal-poor stars, before the first direct detection of gravitational waves. I will interface SEVN with a hydrodynamical code and with an N-body code, to study the formation of BH binaries self-consistently. I will then model the history of BH binaries across cosmic time, accounting for the evolution of metallicity. This novel approach is decisive to break degeneracies between dynamically formed and primordial BH binaries, and to make predictions for future observations by ground-based and space-borne gravitational wave interferometers.

Mots-clés : stellar dynamics,star clusters,black hole binaries,population synthesis codes,n body codes,stellar mass black holes and intermediate mass black holes,gravitational wave sources
Projet ERC : STAREX (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Geneva — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIGE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

The first stars in the Universe are extreme objects. Extreme in their composition: they are made of material having been processed only by the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and having a content in dark matter likely very different from the one of the present-day stars. Extreme in their properties: one of the most important properties is their mass that might reach values as high as even 100 000 solar masses (supermassive black-hole seeds). Their properties may differ from the today massive star populations also by their likely fast axial spins, the processes of mass loss, their magnetic fields, multiplicity. Extreme in their physics: born in over densities made mainly by dark matter, the physics of candidate dark matter particles may have a significant effect on their evolution and produce what has been called dark or frozen stars, i.e. stars sustained by dark-matter particle annihilation. The aim of STAREX is to determine which observable features can be used to constrain the composition (baryonic and dark matter), the properties (masses, rotation, magnetic field, multiplicity) and the physics of the first stars in the Universe. These observables will be collected by present-day and future facilities as, for instance, the JWST, ELT, adLigo, VIRGO, LISA and are linked to ionising fluxes, nucleosynthesis, radiation of both stellar populations and transient events, and gravitational waves. STAREX will explore new physical processes, build and use new numerical tools, provide observables that will account together for a sophisticated description of the physics of individual stars, single or in binary systems, and for the dynamics of the stars in the first stellar clusters. STAREX is at the crossroad of topics such as stellar physics, nucleosynthesis, hydrodynamics, evolution of galaxies, and will potentially engender ground-braking consequences for observational cosmology, astrophysics and even fundamental physics (fluid dynamics, dark matter properties).

Mots-clés : stellar physics,supermassive stars,dark matter,transients,pop iii stars
Projet ERC : TRANSDESIGN (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Montanuniversität Leoben — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499679.0 €

The first technological use of non-equilibrium phase transitions in metals for designing properties is documented as ~800 BC, but the time has come to make a leap forward. Nearly all classes of materials show non-equilibrium phase transitions. Understanding how fast these transitions occur is a key question in materials science. In metals, kinetics is connected to diffusion via atomic lattice vacancies. However, there is no universal sound and predictive physical understanding of the kinetics under non-equilibrium situations so far, because theory cannot be verified experimentally. The in-situ measuring of non-equilibrium vacancy evolution is not possible at industrially relevant and controlled high thermal rates today. Moreover, direct microscopic observation of vacancies in bulk metals has not yet been achieved. The development of unique strategies for in-situ measuring of non-equilibrium vacancy evolution and the microscopic observation of atomic lattice vacancies and their motion will be the main breakthroughs of TRANSDESIGN. Observing non-equilibrium vacancy annihilation via ultrafast chip calorimetry offers unique advantages and will be a ground-breaking step to understand non-equilibrium diffusion. Moreover, this will also establish novel chip calorimetry as a standard in thermal analysis of relevant metals. Within TRANSDESIGN we utilize high image contrast solutes, which trap vacancies, as markers for an identification of vacancies via field ion and scanning transmission electron microscopy. This unique strategy will enable the observation of “vacancies at work” in the bulk of metals. The project will close longstanding experimental-theoretical gaps with significant impact on the optimization and design of new kinetically driven processes and products in the field of metallurgy. However, the fundamentals gained within TRANSDESIGN are universal and will significantly contribute to the advancement of the European competence in materials science.
Projet ERC : ForM-SMArt (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Institute of Science and Technology Austria — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ISTA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997918.0 €

The formal analysis of stochastic models plays an important role in different disciplines of science, e.g., probability theory, evolutionary stochastic processes in biology. In computer science, such models arise in formal verification of probabilistic systems, analysis of probabilistic programs, analysis of game-theoretic interactions with stochastic aspects, reasoning about randomized protocols, etc. At the heart of the analysis methods are algorithmic approaches that lead to automated tools. Despite significant and impressive research achievements over the decades, many fundamental algorithmic problems related to formal analysis of stochastic models remain open. Moreover, the emergence of new technologies and the need to build more complex systems, require faster and scalable algorithmic solutions. The overarching theme of the project is algorithmic approaches for formal methods to analyse stochastic models. Our main research aims are: (1) Finite-state models: Develop faster explicit and implicit algorithms, and establish conditional lower bounds, for finite-state probabilistic systems. (2) Probabilistic programs: Develop efficient algorithmic approaches and practical techniques (e.g., compositional and abstraction techniques) for the analysis of probabilistic programs. (3) Stochastic and evolutionary games: Develop algorithmic approaches related to stochastic games and evolutionary games, which bring together the two different fields of game theory. (4) Application domains: Explore new application areas in diverse domains to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new algorithms developed. The project’s success will significantly enrich formal methods for analysis of stochastic models that are crucial in the development of robust and correct systems. Since stochastic models are foundational in several disciplines, the new algorithmic solutions are expected to lead to automated tools beneficial to other disciplines.

Mots-clés : formal verification,model checking,probabilistic systems,stochastic games,omega regular,objectives,probabilistic programs,reactive systems,almost sure winning
Projet ERC : MarineIce (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Leeds — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2681881.0 €

The formation of ice in clouds is fundamentally important to life on our planet since clouds play a key role in climate and the hydrological cycle. Despite the significance of ice formation, our quantitative understanding of sources, properties, mode of action and transport of Ice-Nucleating Particles (INP) is poor. In order to improve our representation of clouds in models we need to understand the ice-nucleating ability of all major aerosol types, including those from the world’s oceans. Despite oceans covering over 70% of the planet and sea spray being one of the dominant aerosol types in the atmosphere, its role in the formation of ice in clouds remains poorly understood. There are strong indications that biological organic components of sea spray can nucleate ice, but there is a lack of data to quantify it. In contrast, the ice-nucleating ability of major aerosol species from terrestrial sources, such as mineral dusts or bacteria, has received significant attention over the past few decades. A similar effort now needs to be made to understand marine INP. The key limitation to accurately representing INP in models over the world’s oceans is the lack of field data, a deficiency which I intend to address during this ERC fellowship. I propose to develop and deploy a new semi-autonomous INP instrument based on novel microfluidics technology which will cover the full range of mixed phase cloud conditions, unlike existing instruments. It will be housed in a unique highly instrumented mobile laboratory, which will allow us to access the remote oceans from atmospheric observatories and research ships. The data from these campaigns will be used to constrain the oceanic INP source and define the spatial and temporal distribution of marine INP in a state-of-the-art global aerosol model. In combination, these activities will allow us to quantify this potentially important source of INP which is needed to underpin the next generation of weather and climate models.

Mots-clés : ice nucleation,ice nuclei,ice nucleating particles  inp,marine aerosol,aerosol cloud interactions,marine organic aerosols,biogenic ice nuclei,exopolymer secretion,marine gels,marine colloid