Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SUBNORDICA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : TNO
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 185367.75 €

The landscapes that extended for millions of square kilometres offshore of the world’s coastlines due to low sea-level during the last glaciation and were then drowned by sea-level rise, are known to preserve valuable archives of landscapes, palaeoclimatic change and stratified archaeological remains, with the potential to transform understanding of human history in this period of dramatic change. The absence of archaeological sites across much of this vast area prevents realisation of this potential. In SUBNORDICA we propose a systematic approach to develop new methods for recreating the submerged landscapes and human settlement of NW Europe and assess the impact of postglacial sea-level rise. We will address two questions: (1) What changes to the topography and environment of the submerged landscape were brought about by rising sea level and climate change? (2) How was the distribution of archaeological settlements and other traces of cultural activity impacted by this changing palaeolandscape, and can we recover them in sufficient detail to investigate human impact and human response? Combining information from 4 regions in the southern North Sea and the southern Baltic, we will use artificial intelligence to develop machine-learning routines to (a) integrate existing and newly acquired geophysical and geological data to map key areas of the changing landscape, and (b) combine this information with data from known underwater archaeological sites to identify new targets of archaeological potential for more detailed investigation. Investigating these targets will use high-resolution geophysical methods, sediment coring, archaeological excavation, and geochronological, palaeoenvironmental, sedimentological and biological analyses of recovered deposits. We will reveal a new chapter in human prehistory, provide a world-leading model for the investigation of submerged landscapes, and offer improved policy guidance for underwater cultural heritage management.

Mots-clés : submerged landscape archaeology
Projet ERC : 4D-STAR (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2093212.5 €

Stars are the source of radiation, chemistry, and life in the Universe. Models of how stars live are key ingredients in planetary, astrophysical, and cosmological research. A star is a hot plasma rotating around an axis. Small stars like the Sun rotate slowly but bigger ones with more mass rotate faster, shaping them as flattened spheroids. Yet, current stellar models simplify the flattening or treat stars as spheres during their lives, using 1 spatial and 1 time dimension (1+1D). Rotation and magnetism induce transport processes in 3 spatial dimensions, which change over time, requiring a 3+1D treatment. Current age-dating of stars is done from 1+1D models, with uncertainties up to 1000%. Accurate ages of stars are the dominant missing ingredient to understand stellar and planetary evolution, the emergence of life, and the chemistry in our Universe. 4D-STAR will answer the fundamental question of how rotating spheroids evolve in time and build up their chemistry during their lives. We will develop a new 3+1D theory of stellar rotation for flattened spheroids evolving over millions to billions of years, from birth to death. Lifting stellar models to 3+1D can only be done now, using asteroseismic data of thousands of stars in all life phases. Such data reveal nonradial oscillations, or starquakes, allowing us to infer internal stellar rotation, magnetism, chemistry, and the ages of stars with 10% accuracy. 4D-STAR will provide open-source modules to compute the evolution of rotating magnetic stars in 3+1D, calibrated to asteroseismic observables of single stars and stars in binaries and clusters. 4D-STAR brings a paradigm shift based on mathematical modelling, astrophysics, and computational science. Its breadth, challenges, and goals require a transdisciplinary integration of four teams led by an asteroseismologist, a theoretician specialised in transport, a hydrodynamicist, and a stellar evolution software developer, each with proven track records.

Mots-clés : stellar evolution,stellar structure,asteroseismology,scientific software development,high performance computing,differential algebraic equations
Projet ERC : SUBNORDICA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Flanders Marine Institute — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : VLIZ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1038800.38 €

The landscapes that extended for millions of square kilometres offshore of the world’s coastlines due to low sea-level during the last glaciation and were then drowned by sea-level rise, are known to preserve valuable archives of landscapes, palaeoclimatic change and stratified archaeological remains, with the potential to transform understanding of human history in this period of dramatic change. The absence of archaeological sites across much of this vast area prevents realisation of this potential. In SUBNORDICA we propose a systematic approach to develop new methods for recreating the submerged landscapes and human settlement of NW Europe and assess the impact of postglacial sea-level rise. We will address two questions: (1) What changes to the topography and environment of the submerged landscape were brought about by rising sea level and climate change? (2) How was the distribution of archaeological settlements and other traces of cultural activity impacted by this changing palaeolandscape, and can we recover them in sufficient detail to investigate human impact and human response? Combining information from 4 regions in the southern North Sea and the southern Baltic, we will use artificial intelligence to develop machine-learning routines to (a) integrate existing and newly acquired geophysical and geological data to map key areas of the changing landscape, and (b) combine this information with data from known underwater archaeological sites to identify new targets of archaeological potential for more detailed investigation. Investigating these targets will use high-resolution geophysical methods, sediment coring, archaeological excavation, and geochronological, palaeoenvironmental, sedimentological and biological analyses of recovered deposits. We will reveal a new chapter in human prehistory, provide a world-leading model for the investigation of submerged landscapes, and offer improved policy guidance for underwater cultural heritage management.

Mots-clés : submerged landscape archaeology
Projet ERC : ATHENS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HGF
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 6605763.75 €

Information and communication technology (ICT) crucially relies on the combination of two highly complementary fields: Microelectronics, which excels in processing and storing information using CMOS circuits and photonics, which is key to fast and efficient transmission of information over large distances. Electrical-to-optical conversion in photonic integrated circuits is what links both fields. While efficient conversion from optical signals to electrical signals is straightforward even at a single-photon level, electrical-to-optical conversion represents a key challenge – with respect to efficiency, bandwidth and noise. This challenge does not only affect optical communications, where efficient generation of broadband data signals is key, but also prevents photonic integrated circuits from unfolding their full impact in highly relevant emerging application fields such as microwave photonics, artificial intelligence or quantum technologies. ATHENS aims at overcoming this deficiency by establishing the foundations of a new class of photonic integrated systems that offer unprecedented electro-optic conversion performance. The project builds upon a synergistic selection of highly disruptive approaches on the material, process and device level, reaching from theory-guided engineering of organic electro-optic materials and novel ‘crystal-on-insulator’ integration platforms to disruptive concepts for broadband optical on-chip amplifiers based on ion implantation or parametric interaction and to highly flexible photonic-electronic system-integration concepts based on additive nanofabrication. These technologies are combined on a system level, building a base for groundbreaking demonstrations in hyperscale communications, millimeter-wave signal processing and quantum technologies. The project is borne by an interdisciplinary and highly complementary team of scientist from organic chemistry, solid-state physics, quantum technologies and communications engineering.

Mots-clés : exa scale photonic computation,exa scale photonic computation,cryogenic photonic interconnects
Projet ERC : CHIRAL-PRO (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université du Michigan — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3025910.0 €

Chirality, or the absence of mirror symmetry, is omnipresent in both biological and abiological forms of matter. Rapid progress has recently been achieved in the synthesis of chiral inorganic nanoparticles (NPs), of great interest because of the giant optical activity observed in individual NPs and their assemblies. Such nanostructures yield chiral features at multiple length scales, resulting in a huge diversity of chiral morphologies. The field is expanding toward connecting chirality across the worlds of nano and bio, linking optical and biological chiral functionalities. However, what is currently hampering real-world applications is the step from intuitive synthesis of chiral nanostructures to a purposeful design for specific interactions with biological components. The main objective of CHIRAL-PRO is to develop a widely applicable methodology to design chiral NPs with exceptional optical activity, for strong and predictable enantioselective interactions with nanoscale biological entities, such as proteins and amyloid fibrils. The fundamental understanding of the role of chirality in the recognition between inorganic and biological chiral structures will be used for the programmed assembly into optically active nanofibers and for case studies in sensing and metamaterials. To reach this ambitious goal, the complementary expertise of all three partners involved will be essential: synthesis and assembly of chiral plasmonic NPs (Liz-Marzán); three-dimensional electron microscopy of NPs, and the visualization of their interactions with biomolecules in liquid (Bals); and self-assembly methods and computational predictions for chiral multiscale interactions (Kotov).  In addition to groundbreaking advancements in fundamental research, the high gain of this work can be found in the generation of a toolbox enabling the scientific community to shift from guessing to precise design of chiral nanostructures with predefined properties.

Mots-clés : nanoparticle synthesis,chirality,metal nanoparticles,nanoplasmonics,nanoparticle assemblies,transmission electron microscopy,electron tomography,predictive machine learning,nanoparticle protein interactions,protein detection
Projet ERC : REVEAL (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : AURA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

For millennia people have wondered, “Do other Earths exist?” “Are they common?” “Would they show signs of life?”. We now have the technical capability to answer these questions. New radial-velocity spectrometers are capable of detecting the reflex motions of stars hosting Earth-mass planets in their habitable zones; the James Webb Space Telescope has the power to probe the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets. Yet the unprecedented precision of these instruments’ measurement capabilities is up against a fundamental astrophysically-imposed barrier to achieving these goals: contamination of exoplanetary signals by stellar activity and variability. Further progress is contingent on solving this “variability problem”.  REVEAL gathers world-leading experts in exoplanetary and stellar physics to tackle this problem in synergy:  - We will build on recent advances in magnetohydrodynamic simulations of stellar atmospheres, and data-driven efforts to separate the exoplanet signal from the stellar variability.  - We will simulate the “ground truth” of the turbulent physics of entire stellar photospheres resolved at the level of individual convective cells for a broad class of stars.  - We will model the emergent spectra of these “virtual” stars and “observe” them using the same data-processing pipelines as stellar radial-velocity and transit-spectroscopy observations.  We will continue to observe the Sun and stars hosting small planets found with TESS and PLATO. The stars’ own spectra will REVEAL the clues needed to disentangle stellar variability from our measurements of their planets’ masses and the fingerprints of molecules in their atmospheres. Our unified efforts will enable the new cutting-edge space observatories and ground-based facilities to realize the full potential of their designs, bringing us closer to the most profound discoveries we could hope to achieve in our lifetimes - the identification of another Earth or even possible signs of life on another planet.

Mots-clés : detection and characterization of exoplanets habitability of exoplanets stellar activity stellar variability
Projet ERC : BubbleLife (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Dortmund — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2980132.5 €

The origin of life on Earth is one of humanity's profound mysteries that lacks scientific answers. We aim to answer this fundamental question by performing pioneering experiments starting from the Darwinian evolution of RNA and peptides to the emergence of cellular life, all in a single environment with only a small selection of starting molecules. We are an interdisciplinary team with diverse backgrounds in chemistry, physics, and biochemistry, and we have a proven track record of strong interdisciplinary collaborations.  Preliminary experiments have revealed the remarkable potential of heat-exposed air bubbles for molecular evolution. BubbleLife connects long evolutionary timescales through targeted experiments, bridging from amino acids and nucleotides to the emergence of protocellular life in one unified environment. Our experimental studies indicate a chemical cooperation of amino acids, nucleoside monophosphates and lipids, driving their Darwinian co-evolution towards modern biochemistry. The non-equilibrium at heated air bubbles promotes RNA oligomerization and template-directed ligation, fostering the emergence of autocatalytic replication networks, including the first RNA catalysts (ribozymes). Co-accumulating lipids form membrane vesicles at heated air-water interfaces that autonomously encapsulate RNA. Driven by prebiotic phosphorylation, amino acids polymerize into peptides in the same alkaline environment. Subsequently, they form RNA-peptide hybrids, revealing intriguing modes of early proto-translation. By combining our unique expertises in a synergistic manner, our work will ultimately culminate in "protocell generators" that feed and encapsulate not only primitive RNA-based replicators, but also modern transcription-translation-based systems.  BubbleLife will reshape our understanding of the origin of life on Earth and potentially elsewhere in the universe.

Mots-clés : prebiotic chemistry,origins of life,rna,lipids,peptides,ribozymes,cell free systems,in vitro translation
Projet ERC : PROTOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Donostia International Physics Center — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DIPC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2430140.0 €

All information humankind has of the ancient past of our planet comes from analyzing the geological record encoded in rocks. There is, however, no rock record of the first 600 million years of Earth’s history. Unlocking the secrets of this earliest period –the Hadean– is a fundamental task for science, as it is key to understanding how the planet became habitable, when the first forms of metabolism and self-replication developed, and life appeared. The lack of a geological record has led scientists to use computational modeling to make inferences about the conditions in Early Earth’s environments. Less common are laboratory experiments specifically targeted to simulating Hadean conditions. Based on ubiquitous carbonaceous chert deposits in the oldest rock record, it is widely accepted that many early Archean aquatic settings were reducing and rich in silica and some basic carbon-based molecules. We reason that such aquatic conditions were already established during the early Hadean, and inevitably led to the existence of a large-scale factory of simple and complex organic compounds, many of them relevant to prebiotic chemistry and to the route to biomimetic hybrid microstructures able to self-organize and catalyze prebiotic reactions relevant to the origin of life. Our project is aimed at understanding the crucial role of silica in directing the geochemical and protobiological processes, creating habitats for early life, and preserving early biomass on Earth’s surface during the first billion years of its history. PROTOS will use an array of laboratory experiments (the Hadean Simulator) to systematically study ab-initio reactions of water and gases with the earliest rock types in order to determine compositions of aquatic habitats and subsequent silica precipitation mechanisms, organic synthesis processes on silica/iron surfaces, and the preservation of the first remnants of life. PROTOS will change our view of the infancy of the planet.

Mots-clés : hadean,early earth,mineral self organization,serpentinization,silica,self organization,prebiotic,chemistry,life detection,origin of life
Projet ERC : DynAMiCs (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 4632980.75 €

Discrete dynamical systems pervade the quantitative sciences, and lie at the heart of central computational challenges in a wide variety of areas, from program analysis and computer-aided verification to neural networks and theoretical biology. Such systems are typically simple to describe, yet give rise to a rich algorithmic and mathematical theory that is replete with easily stated and compelling open problems. One such example is the famous Skolem Problem: does the orbit of a given linear dynamical system ever hit a given hyperplane? The decidability of this question is a longstanding open problem going back nearly a century!  The main goal DynAMiCs is to achieve major advances in the algorithmic theory of discrete linear dynamical systems and related formalisms. Whilst our motivation and outlook originate from computer science and automated verification, we approach these challenging problems from both mathematical and computational angles, combining tools and techniques from number theory (e.g., Diophantine approximation, transcendence theory, continued fractions), symbolic dynamics (e.g., word combinatorics, subshifts, numeration systems), and mathematical logic (e.g., monadic second-order logic, Presburger arithmetic, automata theory). One of our leading objectives is to substantially broaden the classes of dynamical systems and properties that can be algorithmically handled via model checking. We aim to achieve these ambitious advances by pursuing new approaches to central open problems in linear systems, such as the Skolem Problem, building on recent breakthroughs in these areas (some of which from the PIs and their groups).  We take on this challenge with a team of PIs consisting of international leaders in algorithmic verification, symbolic dynamics, and analytic number theory. We believe our complementary expertise places us in a unique position to achieve major breakthroughs in longstanding fundamental problems in the area of discrete dynamical systems.

Mots-clés : model checking decidability linear dynamical systems recurrence sequences diophantine approximation symbolic dynamics continued fractions monadic second order logic presburger arithmetic
Projet ERC : nilomorph (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy 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 : 1997065.0 €

NILOMORPH sets out to explain how linguistic evolution took a highly unexpected turn in one family of languages spoken in East Africa. They have evolved a morphological system where multiple grammatical categories are expressed simultaneously within a single syllable, through subtle modulations of its phonological properties. For example, in the Dinka language the word tèm, meaning ‘to cut’, can be made to mean ‘she cuts it for someone’ by lengthening the vowel, changing the low tone to high, and pronouncing it with breathy voice quality: té̤ːm, and more than dozen other contrasts can be generated by similar means. A sin-gle monosyllabic word in language like Dinka attains a degree of information density unparalleled else-where in the languages of the world. Surprisingly, comparative evidence suggests that the West Nilotic lan-guages were once much more conventional, using suffixes to mark grammatical categories. As has hap-pened in many other languages, such as English, these suffixes were lost over time. But rather than simply disappearing, they were transformed into suprasegmental phonological properties pronounced concurrently with the word stem. The aim of NILOMORPH is to reconstruct this evolution. But because of the extreme rarity of this morphological type, we need to explain not just how it happened here, we also have to explain why it did not happen in other language families. It is therefore not enough just to retrace the history of linguistic forms. NILOMORPH proposes a transformative step in historical linguistics: the reconstruction not just of external features, but of the cognitive motivation behind them. This will be achieved through the synergy of three teams, DESCRIPTION, MORPHOLOGY and RECONSTRUCTION, employing a combination of field linguistics, acoustic analysis, experimental linguistics, computational simulation, typology, and the historical-comparative method.

Mots-clés : linguistic morphology,inflection,phonology,nilo saharan languages,africa,language documentation,agent based modelling,artificial language experiments,linguistic reconstruction,digital humanities