Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DUPDOWN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : IRCCS
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 41655.0 €

ASD is a very prevalent neurodevelopmental condition affecting more than 1% individuals, and represents a major unmet medical need since no effective treatment is available. Despite the phenotypic convergence of its core symptoms (impaired language, restriction in sociability and stereotypies, invariably coupled to anxiety and often associated to varying degrees of intellectual disability), ASD is genetically highly heterogeneous, with hundreds of bona fide causative genetic lesions. This genetic architecture breaks down ASD into a collection of rare and highly penetrant genetic syndromes, presenting key challenges but also decisive applicative opportunities: i) the accelerated regulatory path for drug approval/repurposing; and ii) the possibility that few paradigmatic syndromes may yield generalizable therapeutic inroads for ASD treatment. Duplication at 7q11.23 (7Dup), encompassing 26-28 genes, is one of best characterized ASD-causing copy number variations and offers unique translational opportunities, also because hemydeletion of the same interval causes Williams-Beuren syndrome, a condition characterized by hypersociability and language strengths, thereby providing a unique reference standard to validate treatments for the core ASD symptoms. Within my ERC-Consolidator project we successfully completed a high-throughput screening on 7q11.23 CNV patient-derived neurons and discovered that deacetylase inhibition lowers the abnormal levels of a key gene underlying the cognitive/behavioral traits of 7Dup. Having defined robust 7Dup neurodevelopmental and electrophysiological phenotypes, both in patients’ neuronal lineages and in mouse models, we now aim to generate proof of concept for the preclinical validation of selected deacetylase inhibitors in rescuing ASD phenotypes in vitro and in vivo. For this we pursue an integrated experimental and business plan, buttressed by key industrial partnerships, to advance the most inhibitors towards ASD treatment.

Mots-clés : autism spectrum disorder  asd,sociability,preclinical validation,hdac inhibitors,induced pluripotent stem cells  ipsc,brain organoids,gtf2i
Projet ERC : ASTROFLOW (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 666139.01 €

ASTROFLOW aims to make ground-breaking progress in our physical understanding of exoplanetary mass loss, by quantifying the influence of stellar outflows on atmospheric escape of close-in exoplanets. Escape plays a key role in planetary evolution, population, and potential to develop life. Stellar irradiation and outflows affect planetary mass loss: irradiation heats planetary atmospheres, which inflate and more likely escape; outflows cause pressure confinement around otherwise freely escaping atmospheres. This external pressure can increase, reduce or even suppress escape rates; its effects on exoplanetary mass loss remain largely unexplored due to the complexity of such interactions. I will fill this knowledge gap by developing a novel modelling framework of atmospheric escape that will, for the first time, consider the effects of realistic stellar outflows on exoplanetary mass loss. My expertise in stellar wind theory and 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations is crucial for producing the next-generation models of planetary escape. My framework will consist of state-of-the-art, time-dependent, 3D simulations of stellar outflows (Method 1), which will be coupled to novel 3D simulations of atmospheric escape (Method 2). My models will account for the major underlying physical processes of mass loss. With this, I will determine the response of planetary mass loss to realistic stellar particle, magnetic and radiation environments and will characterise the physical conditions of the escaping material. I will compute how its extinction varies during transit and compare synthetic line profiles to atmospheric escape observations from, eg, Hubble and our NASA cubesat CUTE. Strong synergy with upcoming observations (JWST, TESS, SPIRou, CARMENES) also exists. Determining the lifetime of planetary atmospheres is essential to understanding populations of exoplanets. ASTROFLOW’s work will be the foundation for future research of how exoplanets evolve under mass-loss processes.

Mots-clés : winds of low mass stars,mass loss in exoplanets,magnetic fields
Projet ERC : ASTROFLOW (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1333816.99 €

ASTROFLOW aims to make ground-breaking progress in our physical understanding of exoplanetary mass loss, by quantifying the influence of stellar outflows on atmospheric escape of close-in exoplanets. Escape plays a key role in planetary evolution, population, and potential to develop life. Stellar irradiation and outflows affect planetary mass loss: irradiation heats planetary atmospheres, which inflate and more likely escape; outflows cause pressure confinement around otherwise freely escaping atmospheres. This external pressure can increase, reduce or even suppress escape rates; its effects on exoplanetary mass loss remain largely unexplored due to the complexity of such interactions. I will fill this knowledge gap by developing a novel modelling framework of atmospheric escape that will, for the first time, consider the effects of realistic stellar outflows on exoplanetary mass loss. My expertise in stellar wind theory and 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations is crucial for producing the next-generation models of planetary escape. My framework will consist of state-of-the-art, time-dependent, 3D simulations of stellar outflows (Method 1), which will be coupled to novel 3D simulations of atmospheric escape (Method 2). My models will account for the major underlying physical processes of mass loss. With this, I will determine the response of planetary mass loss to realistic stellar particle, magnetic and radiation environments and will characterise the physical conditions of the escaping material. I will compute how its extinction varies during transit and compare synthetic line profiles to atmospheric escape observations from, eg, Hubble and our NASA cubesat CUTE. Strong synergy with upcoming observations (JWST, TESS, SPIRou, CARMENES) also exists. Determining the lifetime of planetary atmospheres is essential to understanding populations of exoplanets. ASTROFLOW’s work will be the foundation for future research of how exoplanets evolve under mass-loss processes.

Mots-clés : winds of low mass stars,mass loss in exoplanets,magnetic fields
Projet ERC : AstroGeo (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Sorbonne Université — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Sorbonne U
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 231250.0 €

According to Milankovitch (1941), some of the large climatic changes of the past originate in the variations of the Earth’s orbit and of its spin axis resulting from the gravitational pull of the planets and the Moon. These variations can be traced over several millions of years (Ma) in the geological sedimentary records. Over the last three decades, the Earth’s orbital and spin solutions elaborated by the PI and his group (Laskar et al, 1993, 2004, 2011) have been used to establish a geological timescale based on the astronomical solution (e.g. Lourens et al, 2004; Hilgen et al, 2012). Nevertheless, extending this procedure through the Mesozoic Era (66-252 Ma) and beyond is difficult, as the solar system motion is chaotic (Laskar, 1989, 1990). It will thus not be possible to retrieve the precise orbital motion of the planets beyond 60 Ma from their present state (Laskar et al, 2011). The PI's astronomical solutions have been used by geologists to establish local or global time scales. AstroGeo is designed to achieve the opposite. We will use the geological record as an input to break the horizon of predictability of 60Ma resulting from the chaotic motion of the planets. This will be done in a quantitative manner, and aims to provide a template orbital solution for the Earth that could be used for paleoclimate studies over any geological time. This project stems from the achievement of Olsen et al (2019) where for the first time, in a study that involves the PI, it was possible to precisely recover the frequencies of the precessing motion of the inner planets. AstroGeo will not provide a single or a few solutions, but a whole database of solutions that would equally fit all available astronomical observations. This will open a new era where the geological records will be used to retrieve the orbital evolution of the solar system. It will thus open a new observational window for retrieving not only the history of the Earth, but of the entire solar system.

Mots-clés : milankovitch cycles  celestial mechanics,chaos,solar system evolution,earth moon system evolution
Projet ERC : MESOPROBIO (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
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 : 1091688.0 €

According to biologists, there is a need for quantitative models that are able to cope with the complexity of problems arising in the field of life sciences. Here, complexity refers to the interplay between various scales that are not clearly separate. The great challenge of the MESOPROBIO project is to analyse complex PDE models for biological propagation phenomena at the mesoscale. By analogy with the kinetic theory of gases, this is an intermediate level of description between the microscale (individual-based models) and the macroscale (parabolic reaction-transport-diffusion equations). The specific feature common to all the models involved in the project is the local heterogeneity with respect to a structure variable (velocity, phenotypical trait, age) which requires new mathematical methods. I propose to push analysis beyond classical upscaling arguments and to track the local heterogeneity all along the analysis. The biological applications are: concentration waves of bacteria, evolutionary aspects of structured populations (with respect to dispersal ability or life-history traits), and anomalous diffusion. The mathematical challenges are: multiscale analysis of PDE having different properties in different directions of the phase space, including nonlocal terms (scattering, competition), and possibly lacking basic features of reaction-diffusion equations such as the maximum principle. The outcomes are: travelling waves, accelerating fronts, approximation of geometric optics, nonlocal Hamilton-Jacobi equations, optimal foraging strategies and evolutionary dynamics of phenotypical traits. Emphasis will be placed on quantitative results with strong feedback towards biology. The project will be conducted in Lyon, a French hub for mathematical biology and hyperbolic equations. There will be close interaction with biologists in order to establish the most appropriate questions to answer. Several collaborations in Europe (UK, Austria) will be developed.

Mots-clés : mathematical biology,collective motion,evolutionary dynamics,anomalous diffusion,travelling waves,accelerating fronts,kinetic equations,hamilton jacobi equations
Projet ERC : COLLEXISM (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Université Le Havre Normandie — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNILEHAVRE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 240820.66 €

Accurate determination of physical conditions of interstellar molecular clouds is a crucial step to better understand the life cycle of the interstellar matter and particularly the formation of stars and planets as well as the synthesis of organic molecules that may lead to emergence of life in the universe. A key parameter for the determination of these conditions from interstellar spectra is the calculation of accurate collisional rate coefficients of interstellar molecules with the most abundant species (H, He, H2 and e-). Whereas the knowledge of collisional processes has reached a certain level of maturity for collisions involving non-reactive molecules, very few reliable data exist for collisions involving reactive radicals and ions. The computation of such data is a real challenge since inelastic and reactive processes compete during collisions. In this project, we plan to overcome this complex problem and to provide collisional data for these radicals and ions in order to derive as much information as possible from the molecular spectra collected by current telescopes. As it is hardly possible to consider both collisional and reactive processes simultaneously, we will set up a new methodology based on quantum approach that allows obtaining accurate data. We will focus on molecular hydrides that are good candidates because of both their astrophysical importance and their quantum accessibility. We will carry out the determination of interaction potentials using quantum chemistry ab initio methods while the treatment of the dynamics of the nuclei will primarily be done using quantum time-independent reactive and non-reactive approaches. When exact quantum calculations will not be usable, innovative statistical quantum mechanical methods will also be explored. The new data will then be used in radiative transfer models and the predictions will be finally compared to observations in order to derive the abundances of reactive radicals with unprecedented accuracy.

Mots-clés : laboratory astrophysics,collisional rate coefficients,molecular abundances,radiative transfer
Projet ERC : PIRATE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Manchester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Accurate real-time temperature measurement is very important in many applications. In particular, contact-type temperature sensors for nano or microscope measurement of temperature are expected to strongly rise in the next future due to their use in wearables, smartphones, and other consumer electronics devices. However, the development of sensitive and localised temperature sensor is a strong technical challenge, in particular when coupled with flexible substrates, such as those used for packaging and wearables, and the reduced manufacturing cost required for a sensor to be commercially suitable for many IoT applications. The aim of this project is to develop a printed thermocouple made of carbon-based inks, offering accurate temperature measurements as well as better sustainability and biocompatibility, compared to existing solutions.

Mots-clés : printable electronics,temperature sensors,internet of things,carbon inks
Projet ERC : FREENERGY (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Naples Federico II — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1098750.0 €

Achieving zero net carbon emissions by the end of the century is the challenge for capping global warming. The largest share of carbon emissions belongs to the production of electric energy from fossil fuels, which renewable energies are progressively replacing. Sunlight is an ideal renewable energy source since it is most abundant and available worldwide. Photovoltaic solar cells can directly convert the sunlight into electric energy by making use of the photovoltaic effect in semiconductors. Halide perovskites are emerging crystalline semiconducting materials with among the strongest light absorption and the most effective electric charge generation needed to design the highest efficient photovoltaic solar cells. The PI has the ambition to reinvent halide perovskites as environmentally friendly photovoltaic material, aiming at: (i) Removing lead: state-of-the-art perovskite solar cells are based on lead, which is in the list of hazardous substances of the European Union. The PI will prepare new tin-based perovskites and prove them in the highest efficient solar cells. (ii) Solvent-free crystallisation: organic solvents drive the crystallisation of the perovskite in the most efficient solar cells. However, crystallising the perovskite without using solvents is more environmentally friendly. The PI will establish physical vapour deposition as a solvent-free method for preparing the perovskite and the other materials comprising the solar cell. (iii) Durable power output: the long-term power output defines the solar energy yield and thus the return on investment. The PI aims to make stable tin-based perovskites addressing the oxidative instability of tin directly. The quantified target of FREENERGY is demonstrating a tin-based perovskite solar cell with power conversion efficiency over 20% and stability for 25 years. The research strategy to enable this disruptive outcome comprises innovative perovskites formulations and unconventional supramolecular interactions

Mots-clés : photovoltaic
Projet ERC : TOP (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HZDR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499625.0 €

Actinide and lanthanide chemistry is currently experiencing a renaissance, due to the prospects of obtaining novel materials relevant for applications in chemical synthesis, electronics, materials science, nanotechnology, biology and medicine. Most of the fascinating properties of the lanthanide and actinide materials are related to the partially filled 4f/5f valence shell and in contrast to the rest of the periodic table, are poorly understood. This includes the surprising reactivity, magnetic and crystal structure properties and, the rather unpredictable, covalent or ionic nature of their bonds. It is now possible to study the chemistry of the f-block elements using state-of-the-art techniques that were not available before. Two new synchrotron-based techniques, high energy resolution fluorescence detection (HERFD) X-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS), can now provide unprecedented detailed information on processes such as the electron-electron interactions, hybridization between molecular orbitals, the nature of their chemical bonding, and the occupation and the degree of the f-electron localization. Therefore, I propose to apply these cutting-edge techniques to advance the fundamental understanding of the lanthanide and actinide nanoparticles, an outstanding problem in materials science, chemistry and environmental science technology. The research will be conducted at the European Synchrotron (ESRF), at the Rossendorf Beamline (ROBL) dedicated to actinide science, where we recently installed a novel X-ray emission spectrometer with ground-breaking detection limits. The experimental work will be complemented by electronic structure calculations. The combined experimental and theoretical data will provide an essential knowledge of lanthanide and actinide chemistry, significant for topics of high societal relevance, like green chemistry, renewable energy and catalysis.

Mots-clés : f electron systems,lanthanide,actinide,herfd,rixs,nanoparticles
Projet ERC : OrFuNCo (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Toulouse — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 88237.5 €

Activation and transformation of dinitrogen (N2) into other nitrogen-containing compounds is a challenge for chemists due to the inertness of this molecule. The well-established Haber-Bosch process allows transformation of dinitrogen into ammonia (NH3) at the industrial scale through heterogeneous catalysis, but it is an energy-demanding process (1-2% of the World's annual energy consumption). The ammonia thus produced is almost totally converted into more value-added chemicals. Similarly, in Nature, the nitrogenase enzymes are able to convert N2 into NH3 catalytically, spending a high amount of energy to produce a molecule which is subsequently transformed into amino-acids or nucleotides. At a time where energy savings have become a major issue, alternatives to the Haber-Bosch process are desirable. Improving ammonia synthesis still prevails in current dinitrogen chemistry, despite the relative lack of utility of this molecule. Conversely, a catalytic process affording a nitrogen-containing product directly from N2 does not exist yet, and remains a highly attractive, though challenging, goal. Given this context, the PI proposes to investigate novel molecular chemical tools capable of direct conversion of N2 into nitrogen-containing organic compounds under mild conditions, while approaching the catalysis problem from a new direction. Two unprecedented strategies relying on the symbiotic reactivity of two partners towards dinitrogen will be detailed herein. In the first one, metal-boron frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) will help activate and functionalise N2, thus unlocking the thus far missing FLP chemistry of this small molecule. In the second one, it is proposed to explore the virgin territory of N2's cycloaddition reactivity, thanks to bimetallic cooperativity. By the careful examination of stoichiometric reactions considered as key steps of putative catalytic cycles, tackling the "Holy Grail" of catalysis will be facilitated.

Mots-clés : dinitrogen,frustrated lewis pairs,organometallic chemistry,cycloadditions