Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ChloroMito (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
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 : 2419723.25 €

Photosynthesis emerged as an energy-harvesting process at least 3.5 billion years ago, first in anoxygenic bacteria and then in oxygen-producing organisms, which led to the evolution of complex life forms with oxygen-based metabolisms (e.g. humans). Oxygenic photosynthesis produces ATP and NADPH, and the correct balance between these energy-rich molecules allows assimilation of CO2 into organic matter. Although the mechanisms of ATP/NADPH synthesis are well understood, less is known about how CO2 assimilation was optimised. This process was essential to the successful phototrophic colonisation of land (by Plantae) and the oceans (by phytoplankton). Plants optimised CO2 assimilation using chloroplast-localised ATP-generating processes to control the ATP/NADPH ratio, but the strategies developed by phytoplankton are poorly understood. However, diatoms—ecologically successful ocean organisms—are known to control this ratio by exchanging energy between plastids and mitochondria. Is this mechanism a paradigm for optimisation of photosynthesis in the ocean? The ChloroMito project aims to first decipher the mechanism(s) behind plastid-mitochondria interactions. Thanks to a novel combination of whole-cell approaches, including (opto)genetics, cellular tomography and single-cell spectroscopy, we will identify the nature of the exchanges occurring in diatoms and assess their contribution to dynamic responses to environmental stimuli (light, temperature, nutrients). We will then assess conservation of this mechanism in ecologically relevant phytoplankton taxa, test its role in supporting different lifestyles (autotrophy, mixotrophy, photosymbiosis) encountered in the ocean, and track transitions between these different lifestyles as part of an unprecedented effort to visualise ocean dynamics. Overall, the ChloroMito project will alter our understanding of ocean photosynthesis, challenging textbook concepts which are often inferred from plant-based concepts

Mots-clés : acclimation of photosynthesis
Projet ERC : ChloroMito (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Inrae
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 78483.75 €

Photosynthesis emerged as an energy-harvesting process at least 3.5 billion years ago, first in anoxygenic bacteria and then in oxygen-producing organisms, which led to the evolution of complex life forms with oxygen-based metabolisms (e.g. humans). Oxygenic photosynthesis produces ATP and NADPH, and the correct balance between these energy-rich molecules allows assimilation of CO2 into organic matter. Although the mechanisms of ATP/NADPH synthesis are well understood, less is known about how CO2 assimilation was optimised. This process was essential to the successful phototrophic colonisation of land (by Plantae) and the oceans (by phytoplankton). Plants optimised CO2 assimilation using chloroplast-localised ATP-generating processes to control the ATP/NADPH ratio, but the strategies developed by phytoplankton are poorly understood. However, diatoms—ecologically successful ocean organisms—are known to control this ratio by exchanging energy between plastids and mitochondria. Is this mechanism a paradigm for optimisation of photosynthesis in the ocean? The ChloroMito project aims to first decipher the mechanism(s) behind plastid-mitochondria interactions. Thanks to a novel combination of whole-cell approaches, including (opto)genetics, cellular tomography and single-cell spectroscopy, we will identify the nature of the exchanges occurring in diatoms and assess their contribution to dynamic responses to environmental stimuli (light, temperature, nutrients). We will then assess conservation of this mechanism in ecologically relevant phytoplankton taxa, test its role in supporting different lifestyles (autotrophy, mixotrophy, photosymbiosis) encountered in the ocean, and track transitions between these different lifestyles as part of an unprecedented effort to visualise ocean dynamics. Overall, the ChloroMito project will alter our understanding of ocean photosynthesis, challenging textbook concepts which are often inferred from plant-based concepts

Mots-clés : acclimation of photosynthesis
Projet ERC : PHOTONET-C4 (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1482363.0 €

Photosynthesis underpins life on earth. Despite its fundamental importance, our knowledge of the molecular regulators that control the expression of photosynthetic genes is limited, and only four transcription factors are known to regulate the expression of cohorts of photosynthetic genes in plants. This project aims to address this knowledge gap by identifying and characterising the molecular regulators that control the expression of photosynthetic genes. This aim will be achieved through an innovative high-throughput strategy that exploits a naturally occurring cellular subdivision of photosynthesis, known as C4 photosynthesis, that has evolved independently in over 60 different plant lineages. Using two species that represent independent origins of C4 (Setaria italica and Sorghum bicolor) and two related C3 species (Oryza sativa and Dichanthelium oligosanthes) the aims of this project will be achieved through the following objectives: 1) In each of the four species, characterise the DNA binding motifs of 100 (orthologous) transcription factors that are differentially regulated in the C4 species. 2) Identify candidate transcription factors whose targets are photosynthetic genes through comparative bioinformatic approaches. 3) Overexpress candidate transcription factors in rice (C3) and validate the downstream targets using transcriptomic approaches. My combined expertise in molecular biology and bioinformatics puts me in an excellent position to deliver this project and identify the transcription factors that regulate photosynthesis in plants. By focusing on C4 photosynthesis, this project will provide fundamental insight into both plant evolution and the regulation of photosynthesis. Moreover, it will accelerate international efforts that aim to introduce C4 traits into globally important C3 crops such as rice and wheat.

Mots-clés : transcription factors,gene regulatory networks,high throughput characterisation,photosynthetic control
Projet ERC : WakeOpColl (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Université Catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999591.25 €

Physics dictate that a flow device has to leave a wake or the signature of it producing sustentation forces, extracting energy, or simply moving through the medium; these flow structures can then impact negatively or favorably another device downstream. Wake turbulence between aircraft in air traffic and wake losses within wind farms are prime examples of this phenomenon, and incidentally constitute pivotal challenges to their respective fields of transportation and wind energy. These are highly complex and unsteady flows, and distributed control based on affordable wake models has failed to produce robust schemes that can alleviate turbulence effects and achieve efficiency at the scale of the system of devices. This project proposes an Artificial Intelligence and bio-inspired paradigm for the control of flow devices subjected to wake effects. To each flow device, we associate an intelligent agent that pursues given goals of efficiency or turbulence alleviation. Every one of these flow agents now relies on machine-learning tools to learn how to make the right decision when confronted with wake or turbulent flow structures. At a system level, we employ Multi-Agent System and Distributed Learning paradigms. Based on Game Theory, we build a system of interactions that incite the emergence of collaborative behaviors between the agents and achieve global optimized operation among the devices. We claim that the design of a system that learns how to control the flow, is simpler than the design of the control scheme and will yield a more robust scheme. The learning of formation flying among aircraft and of wake alleviation between wind turbines will constitute our study cases. The investigation will essentially be carried by means of large-scale numerical simulations; such simulations will produce the first ever realizations of self-organized systems in a turbulent flow. We will then apply our learning frameworks to a small-scale wind farm.

Mots-clés : aircraft wakes,wind turbine wakes,turbulence,flow control,wind farms
Projet ERC : SoftHandler (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 71750.0 €

Picking and placing objects that are orderly presented to a robot is a task that can be easily performed by current robots. However, grasping and manipulating objects randomly placed in an unstructured environment remains one of the hardest challenges for robots. Examples of complex picking industrial applications include (i) bin picking for part feeding, (ii) raw food handling and (iii) waste sorting for recycling. Within the "SoftHandler" ERC Proof of Concept project, we propose to develop new industrial-grade systems, comprised of end-effectors based on the "SoftHands" technology, integrated with a novel manipulator, for automated picking and placing of objects of heterogeneous dimension, shape, weight, position and strength. The Proof of Concept project will be focused on building a commercially viable prototype, and demonstrating it in real-world scenarios.

Mots-clés : robotics,unstructured environment,material handling,soft manipulator
Projet ERC : FLEXOCOMP (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Piezoelectric materials transduce electrical voltage into mechanical strain and vice-versa, which makes them ubiquitous in sensors, actuators, and energy harvesting systems. Flexoelectricity is a related but different effect, by which electric polarization is coupled to strain gradients, i.e. it requires inhomogeneous deformation. Flexoelectricity is present in a much wider variety of materials, including non-polar dielectrics and polymers, but is only significant at small length-scales. Flexoelectricity has demonstrated its potential in information technologies, by flexoelectric-mediated mechanical writing in ferroelectric thin films at the nanoscale, or in flexoelectric electromechanical transducers. It has been suggested that flexoelectricity could enable piezoelectric composites made out of non-piezoelectric components, including soft materials, which could be used in biocompatible and self-powered small-scale devices. Flexoelectricity is a nascent field with major open questions. Furthermore, experimental devices and material designs are limited by what we can understand and analyze, and unfortunately, we lack general engineering analysis tools for flexoelectricity. As a result, current flexoelectric devices are only minimal variations of configurations conceived within the uniform-strain mindset of piezoelectricity. Our main objective in this proposal is to develop an advanced computational infrastructure to quantify flexoelectricity in solids, focusing on continuum models but also exploring multiscale aspects. We plan to use it to (1) analyze accurately flexoelectricity accounting for general geometries, electrode configurations, and material behavior, (2) identify new physics emerging flexoelectricity, and (3) propose, build and test a new generation of thin-film devices, composites and metamaterials for electromechanical transduction, genuinely designed to exploit small-scale flexoelectricity and make it available at macroscopic scales.

Mots-clés : flexoelectricity,computational mechanics of materials,multifunctional metamaterials,electromechanical modeling of solids,multiscale material modeling,ferroelectric materials,materials design
Projet ERC : IndDecision (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1996310.0 €

Pinpointing the mechanistic origins of inter-individual differences in decision making is a central goal of modern psychology and a considerable challenge because even elementary perceptual choices rely on a multitude of sensory, cognitive, motivational and motoric processes. For this reason, researchers have relied heavily on a set of mathematical ‘sequential sampling’ models that are designed to parse the latent psychological processes driving variations in choice behaviour. Although these models have been fruitfully employed in thousands of theoretical and neurophysiological investigations, they suffer from several limitations that particularly undermine their utility in inter-individual or -group comparisons including: A) parameter values are estimated on a relative, within-subject scale; B) the models come in many forms that can make identical behavioural predictions despite invoking fundamentally different mechanisms (‘model mimicry’); and C) they deal in abstract psychological constructs that are themselves dependent on multiple neural processes. The objective of this proposal is to address each of these issues by pioneering a ground-breaking decision modelling framework in which models are constructed and evaluated based on their ability to explain key observable aspects of the neural implementation of the human decision process in addition to its behavioural output. This ambitious goal is made possible by recent advances in non-invasive electrophysiology which enable direct observation, measurement and manipulation of the decision process as it unfolds in the human brain. Across a series of empirical investigations that will use adult aging as a test-bed for studying inter-individual and -group differences, this research will yield new methods for directly comparing model parameter values across subjects, resolve prominent theoretical debates regarding decision making algorithms and gain important new insights into their susceptibility to cognitive aging.

Mots-clés : perceptual decision making,sequential sampling models,electroencephalogram  eeg
Projet ERC : VapLoss (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Bayreuth — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 765946.66 €

Planets have long been thought to be made from building blocks of primitive (chondritic) meteorites. Yet it has become increasingly clear that such models fail to reproduce the composition of the best constrained planet, Earth. Problematically, no combination of chondritic meteorites can simultaneously explain Earth’s major element composition and isotopic characteristics. This striking dilemma points to the need for a radical reassessment of the current paradigm of planet formation. A tacit assumption of most previous models has been growth with a chemically closed system. Recent work has pointed to the likelihood of significant vapour loss during energetic, collisional accretion. Substantial modifications of the composition of a planet could occur as a result of vapour loss during this accretion. However, there is a critical lack of data to establish whether this drastically different model of planet formation accounts for the apparently conflicting perspectives on planetary origins from isotopic and elemental data. In this proposal I will therefore quantify the consequences of such major vapour loss during violent planetary growth. In a multi-faceted approach, I will undertake i) pioneering, high-temperature experiments mimicking partial vaporisation of molten planetary bodies, combined with ii) analysis of critical elemental and isotopic distributions between the liquid and co-existing vapour from the experiments as well as in key meteorites and terrestrial samples, and iii) numerical modelling to trace the chemical evolution of a planetary body as vapour loss proceeds in various astrophysical scenarios. In combination, this work will allow me to assess rigorously the value of promising models of vapour loss in accounting for the long problematic volatile contents of planetary bodies as well as the unique abundances of Earth’s main constituents.

Mots-clés : planetary chemistry,formation of earth,experimental petrology
Projet ERC : VapLoss (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIMI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 107753.99 €

Planets have long been thought to be made from building blocks of primitive (chondritic) meteorites. Yet it has become increasingly clear that such models fail to reproduce the composition of the best constrained planet, Earth. Problematically, no combination of chondritic meteorites can simultaneously explain Earth’s major element composition and isotopic characteristics. This striking dilemma points to the need for a radical reassessment of the current paradigm of planet formation. A tacit assumption of most previous models has been growth with a chemically closed system. Recent work has pointed to the likelihood of significant vapour loss during energetic, collisional accretion. Substantial modifications of the composition of a planet could occur as a result of vapour loss during this accretion. However, there is a critical lack of data to establish whether this drastically different model of planet formation accounts for the apparently conflicting perspectives on planetary origins from isotopic and elemental data. In this proposal I will therefore quantify the consequences of such major vapour loss during violent planetary growth. In a multi-faceted approach, I will undertake i) pioneering, high-temperature experiments mimicking partial vaporisation of molten planetary bodies, combined with ii) analysis of critical elemental and isotopic distributions between the liquid and co-existing vapour from the experiments as well as in key meteorites and terrestrial samples, and iii) numerical modelling to trace the chemical evolution of a planetary body as vapour loss proceeds in various astrophysical scenarios. In combination, this work will allow me to assess rigorously the value of promising models of vapour loss in accounting for the long problematic volatile contents of planetary bodies as well as the unique abundances of Earth’s main constituents.

Mots-clés : planetary chemistry,formation of earth,experimental petrology
Projet ERC : BLASTOFF (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : UK Research and Innovation — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKRI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 617706.0 €

Plant NLR-type immune receptors tend to have a narrow spectrum of pathogen recognition, which is currently limiting their value in agriculture. NLRs can recognize pathogen effectors through unconventional domains that have evolved by duplication of an effector target followed by fusion into the NLR. One NLR with an integrated domain is the rice resistance protein Pik-1, which binds an effector of the blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae via its Heavy-Metal Associated (HMA) domain. We solved the crystal structure of the HMA domain of Pik-1 in complex with a blast fungus effector and gained an unprecedented level of detail of the molecular interactions that define pathogen recognition. This led to the overall aim of this proposal to generate a complete picture of the biophysical interactions between blast fungus effectors and HMA-containing cereal proteins to guide the retooling of the plant immune system towards resistance to blast diseases. M. oryzae is a general cereal killer that infects wheat, barley and rice, which are staple food for a majority of the world population. The central hypothesis of the proposed research is that mutations in cereal HMA-containing proteins will result in broad-spectrum resistance to blast fungi. To achieve our goal, we will pursue the following objectives: 1. BIOPHYSICS. Define the biophysical properties that underpin binding of M. oryzae effectors to HMA-containing proteins of cereal crops. 2. RECEPTOR ENGINEERING. Develop Pik-1 receptors that respond to a wide-spectrum of M. oryzae effectors. 3. GENOME EDITING. Mutate HMA domain-containing genes in cereal genomes to confer broad-spectrum blast resistance. At the completion of this project, we will generate a thorough understanding of the biophysical properties of pathogen effector binding to cereal HMA proteins, and deliver traits and non-transgenic cultivars for breeding blast disease resistance in cereal crops.

Mots-clés : plant pathology