Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : RECODYN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Basque Centre for Climate Change — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BC3
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999315.0 €

Global change degrades ecosystems worldwide. To mitigate its effects is the environmental challenge of our age, and restoration has emerged as the main strategy to stem the biodiversity crisis and repair damaged ecosystems. Despite substantial progress on the number of restoration studies and datasets, there is a fundamental gap in our understanding and prediction of the patterns and mechanisms underlying ecological restoration and how they are altered by global change.  The goal of RECODYN is to determine the recovery rates and trajectories of biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities, and how climate change and habitat fragmentation – two of the largest threats to biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial systems – influence those dynamics. To achieve this, I will use an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term terrestrial mesocosm experiment. RECODYN is articulated around three objectives. First, I will investigate differences between natural assembly and recovery dynamics. Then, I will determine the effects of global change – i.e. climate change and fragmentation – on biodiversity, community structure, spatial and temporal stability, and key ecosystem functions of recovering ecosystems. Finally, I will provide creative solutions to restore ecosystems in a warmer and more fragmented world.  RECODYN proposes an ambitious integrative and innovative research program that will provide a much-needed new perspective on ecological restoration in an era of global change. It will greatly contribute to bridging the gap between theoretical and empirical ecology, and to move restoration from an idiosyncratic discipline to a more predictive science. RECODYN will foster links with environmental policy by providing new restoration measures that derive from our theoretical and empirical findings.

Mots-clés : ecological restoration,global change,climate warming,habitat fragmentation,communities,species interactions
Projet ERC : EAGL (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999598.0 €

The PI has recently developed new techniques to understand the structure of the double ramification cycle, a geometric object playing a central role in the degeneration of curves and jacobians. In this project we will use these tools and results to count algebraic curves in manifolds, and to count solutions in the rational numbers to polynomial equations. Our counts of curves will be algebraic Gromov-Witten invariants, which play a role in diverse areas including physics (where they are one of the two faces of mirror symmetry) and integrable systems (where their generating functions solve important hierarchies of PDEs). The strongest techniques currently available to understand Gromov-Witten invariants are to break the curve into simpler pieces (a cohomological field theory structure), or break the target into simpler pieces (enhancing to logarithmic Gromov-Witten invariants). This project will build the theoretical foundations needed to combine these two techniques, and explore the delicate combinatorial structures of the resulting invariants. The rational solutions we count will be torsion points on abelian varieties. Abelian varieties are algebraic analogues of compact Lie groups, and play a pivotal role in diverse areas such as cryptography, coding theory, and modular and automorphic forms. The size of the torsion subgroup is one of the key invariants for the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer. We will prove a formal immersion property in dimension 2. This is a major step towards the Torsion Conjecture in dimension 2, which predicts that the number of rational torsion points on abelian surfaces is uniformly bounded.

Mots-clés : gromov witten invariants,torsion conjecture,moduli of curves,jacobians,double ramification cycle
Projet ERC : BICROSS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : The University of Melbourne — Pays : Australie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 248398.0 €

BICROSS is an interdisciplinary project linking Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian and Arabic philology, New Testament textual criticism, manuscript studies, ancient history and digital humanities. Little is known about the bilingual New Testament manuscripts, although translations occur remarkably early. Their physical and textual characteristics, relations, tendencies and impact remain understudied despite their centrality to the understanding of the transmission of the New Testament and its reception in different cultures. For centuries New Testament manuscripts have been studied from a monolingual perspective which has obscured the fact that the textual transmission did not take place solely within the boundaries of a single-language tradition but also across languages. Uncovering and establishing the mutual exchange and cross-language interaction require a new multilingual approach to the New Testament tradition. BICROSS breaks through the current monolingual limitation by shifting the discipline’s focus to the overall New Testament tradition. Accepting the possibility that each variant reading could have had its potential source in a reading from a different language tradition and may likewise have caused a dependent reading in any of the other language traditions breaks new ground. The project’s bold and pioneering cross-language approach brings a fresh perspective to the discipline’s current search for new paradigmatic concepts to explain the relations of New Testament readings and manuscripts at large. BICROSS develops specific digital tools to process the vast and linguistically complicated manuscript data in order to pioneer an examination of the entire New Testament bilingual tradition on a larger scale than has ever been possible. The results will provide new insights into the formation and transmission of New Testament texts and will influence the understanding of historical, cultural and linguistic exchange in the East and West.

Mots-clés : new testament textual criticism bilingual manuscripts ancient translations ancient bible translations greek latin coptic papyri
Projet ERC : TOPOMORPH (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 722051.25 €

Discovering new phases of matter in materials with superior properties is a central goal of condensed matter physics. Topological phases are a remarkable example: their robust and universal properties are key to groundbreaking technologies, notably robust quantum computation based on topological superconductors. However, our methodology to discover and classify topological materials relies heavily on crystal symmetry, thereby overlooking the largest, most affordable and scalable pool of materials - amorphous materials. Amorphous matter can outperform crystals, and is ubiquitous in technology: e.g. amorphous bismuth superconducts below 6K, a temperature 10,000 times larger than crystal bismuth, and amorphous silicon makes large-area solar cells affordable. This raises the fundamental question of whether we have overlooked new topological phases intrinsic to amorphous matter in materials with properties unparalleled by crystals. It is also unknown if any amorphous superconductor is topological. The core objective of this project is to harvest the superior properties of the vast pool of amorphous solids to find fundamentally distinct topological phases with high technological potential, via three specific goals: 1. Establish a predictive methodology to unlock the vast pool of amorphous matter to discover new topological materials. 2. Use this methodology to define unaccounted for amorphous topological phases with superior capabilities and no crystal analogues. 3. Use the above to predict the first amorphous topological superconductors. These goals will establish amorphous topological matter as a radically new direction to solve the challenge of finding novel platforms for topological superconductivity, where robust quantum computers can be based. This project will establish the necessary and currently absent theoretical background, guaranteeing a long-term impact on how we understand and discover new phases of matter with superior properties.

Mots-clés : topological insulators,topological metals,topological superconductivity,amorphous solids
Projet ERC : POSA (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BADW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999688.0 €

Spin-based information processing is a viable alternative to charge-based approaches, enabling low-power devices. In magnetically ordered systems, spin information can be transported via the quantized excitations of the magnetic lattice, called magnons. In an antiferromagnetic system, we generally find two degenerate magnon modes with opposite Néel precession chirality, i.e., opposite spin. These two modes can couple and give rise to complex dynamics and superposition states. I could show that these dynamics can be well described via the pseudospin and its dynamics. My group showed experimentally that electrical pure spin current injection and detection in hematite thin films gives access to the coherent pseudospin dynamics and leads to the manifestation of the magnon Hanle effect. I propose to investigate the coherent spin dynamics induced by pure spin currents in antiferromagnetic insulators, which open up new avenues for energy-efficient information processing beyond von Neumann architectures. The project aims to achieve three main objectives: 1) Establish an experimental platform for pseudospin-based antiferromagnetic magnonics with efficient generation, manipulation, and detection of pseudospin states utilizing antiferromagnetic insulators. This provides the potential for a paradigm shift in magnonics away from wave-based towards spin-based information processing and encoding. 2) Realize pure spin current-driven spin-torque oscillators in antiferromagnetic insulators. This enables the on-chip generation of frequency combs in the microwave and terahertz regime and coherent magnon generation. 3) Explore spiking artificial neurons based on antiferromagnetic spin-torque oscillators. This provides a pathway towards energy-efficient magnonic neural networks and reservoir computing. The successful project will have a transformative effect for energy-efficient information processing, on-chip generation of frequency combs, and hardware for artificial neural networks.

Mots-clés : antiferromagnetic spintronics,spin waves,antiferromagnetic insulators,topological magnonics,spin torque oscillators,artificial neural networks
Projet ERC : ECoFly (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Champalimaud Foundation — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999970.0 €

To survive in natural habitats, animals move through space according to their goals. However, the uncertainties of the environment, alongside inevitable variations in neuromuscular signals, change the context in which a walking step occurs, leading to unintended movement. Thus, task performance can be jeopardized if the erroneous action is not rapidly corrected based on current posture and behavioral goals. How these aspects of control functions are implemented and coordinated across the Central Nervous System remains unknown. Here we propose studying the circuits involved in monitoring our movements, since they are key intermediaries between motor planning and posture-dependent execution. Using the compact brain of the fly Drosophila melanogaster, we will ask two fundamental questions: how is neural activity distributed across multiple networks integrated to estimate self-motion? How is this internal estimate used to correct erroneous movement? Using a self-paced behavior, in which a fly drifting from a stable heading turns based on an internal drift estimate, we have found a circuit sensitive to angular velocity, richly interconnected to the fly’s analogue of the spinal cord and higher-order brain areas, and critical to drift-based turns. We will leverage these results, and combine them with electron microscopy, behavior, physiology, optogenetics and modelling to study circuit mechanisms for course correction. We will: 1) use connectomics and manipulations of neural activity to identify pathways involved in corrective turns, 2) record from the identified neurons and correlate their activity with behavior, 3) perturb cell type-specific neurons to test their role on self-motion computations and on corrective turns, and 4) test neural activity in different behavioral contexts. These experiments will establish unprecedented causal relationships between neural computations and movement and reveal the functional organization of distributed circuits for walking control.

Mots-clés : motor control,drosophila,circuits,proprioception,corollary discharge signals,internal models,steering,locomotion
Projet ERC : ZoomNMR (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999969.0 €

Small molecules are critical players in the chemistry of life. In the role of substrates, cofactors, solvent, inhibitors or activators, they steer the activities of proteins and nucleic acids. For mechanistic studies, it would be desirable to single out a small ligand from a large macromolecular complex, even if their sizes lie several orders of magnitude apart, and follow its fate during chemical and structural transformations. Few experimental techniques would achieve this under native conditions. NMR spectroscopy grants insights into molecular motions, interactions and chemical transitions at atomic-level resolution. However, it faces challenges when observing small-molecule ligands within large complexes: The first prerequisite are NMR active nuclei. Unlike biomolecular NMR, where isotope labelling is routine, the site-directed introduction of desired nuclei into small molecules still requires lengthy, individual synthesis. Second, transverse-relaxation optimised experiments have been instrumental in pushing the size limits of protein-observed NMR into the biologically relevant range of tens to hundreds of kilodaltons. Such experiments are not directly transferable to the small molecule space due to its different chemical build-up. ZoomNMR proposes to cover this blind spot with a spectroscopic toolbox for ligand-detected NMR of large macromolecular complexes. Our approach capitalizes on late-stage isotope labelling strategies, inspired by organic chemistry, in conjunction with relaxation interference phenomena to maximize sensitivity and resolution. The tools will be implemented on a prototypical human enzyme and three exemplary ligand classes. We will deliver a proof-of-concept that our novel methodology can tackle diverse research problems, from fundamental mechanistic enzymology to the design of drug molecules. Our future vision is that ligand-observed NMR of large complexes will become as straightforward and efficient as protein-observed NMR is today.

Mots-clés : nmr spectroscopy,solution state nmr,solid state nmr,magic angle spinning,enzymes,substrates,protein ligand interactions,binding,conformational dynamics,small molecules,ligands,drug discovery,isotope labelling
Projet ERC : SCARCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université technique Carolo-Wilhelmina de Brunswick — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Braunschweig
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998500.0 €

This project aims at making a breakthrough contribution in optimal control and decision making for nonlinear processes that take place on network structures and are dynamic in time and/or space. The setting has a wide range of potential domains of applicability, comprising thermal, electric, or fluid dynamics in energy networks, logistics, disease spreading dynamics, or cell signalling in biomedicine. The project will pursue the following objectives: To contribute new theory, to develop numerical approximation methods, to implement algorithmic methods in software, and to conduct proof-of-concept studies. Research in the young field of mixed-integer optimal control (MIOC) has recently seen increased momentum together with numerical approximation algorithms and control theory. Despite initial successes, key questions remain unsolved because of a lack of analytical understanding, a lack of tractable formulations, the unavailability of efficient solvers or the insufficiency of existing implementations. This project focuses on pivotal but poorly understood topics: decomposition, relaxation, and approximation; domains admitting homogenization and limiting processes using weak topologies; tractable approximations of direct costs of decisions; efficient distributed and parallel nonlinear solvers; and robustness of approximate nonlinear decision policies under uncertainty. These key issues appear systematically in a wide range of control tasks of high societal relevance. By addressing them, the project helps to bridge a persistent and pronounced gap in simulation & optimization practice. Due to non-trivial interactions emerging in theory and the unavailability of comprehensive algorithms, these topics cannot be suitably handled by merely combining the respective states of the art. A focused effort to decisively extend MIOC to optimal decisions for dynamics on networks is therefore a timely endeavour that will help to address the challenging demands of practitioners.
Projet ERC : PredictCOPD (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FCRB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 875443.75 €

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) has been traditionally understood as a self-inflicted disease caused by tobacco smoking occurring in old individuals. Over the past few years, however, our group and others have proposed that the pathogenesis of COPD goes beyond smoking, and that there is a range of lung function trajectories through life (trajectome); some of them have roots in early life and can lead to COPD, cardiovascular and metabolic morbidity as well as premature death, while others are associated with healthy ageing. Here I propose that, detrimental gene (G) and environment (E) interactions occurring early in life (T) constitute a ‘first injury hit’ that alters the normal lung developmental program and modify the pace of normal lung aging by reducing the resilience of the lungs to future GxExT interactions. Accordingly, lifelong GxExT interactions determine the individual trajectome and, eventually, the occurrence of COPD and associated multimorbidity. PredictCOPD aims to identify the interactions and mechanisms that determine which individuals will develop COPD and multimorbidty at some point of their life. The specific aims are: 1) to identify the lifelong environmental and host risk factors associated with the trajectome, COPD and multimorbidity, 2) to use a novel liquid biopsy method to identify biological factors driving the trajectome, COPD and multimorbidity; 3) to identify clinically relevant preventive and/or early therapeutic targets integrating the results from aims 1 and 2 with novel analytical approaches and 4) to validate findings both in vitro and in other available cohorts. The project will leverage from several available population and COPD patient studies with available clinical data and biological samples. The results of PredictCOPD have the potential to: 1) promote healthy ageing by preventing and eventually eradicate COPD and associated multimorbidity; and, 2) change COPD treatment from palliative to causal.

Mots-clés : lung trajectories,copd,multiborbidity,aging
Projet ERC : NG-Quapi (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999491.0 €

The inevitable interaction of a quantum system with the environment leads to energy relaxation and decoherence which can result in novel phenomena and opportunities not present in isolated quantum systems. Of particular interest is the non-equilibrium relaxation dynamics subject to non-Markovian memory and at strong interaction with the environment. In such situations, novel and generally applicable computational methods are necessary for precise and reliable simulations of the many body dynamics of open quantum systems.  For this purpose, a hierarchy of methodological developments is proposed within the framework of the quasi-adiabatic propagator path integral (Quapi) method that address (i) the generalization of the method to more complex environments, (ii) its numerical efficiency and scalability, and (iii) employ neural networks to leverage algorithm performance. Finally, (iv) a quantum algorithm-based strategy is pursued for accelerated numerical propagation algorithms on near-term quantum devices. The hierarchy of developments facilitates simulations of condensed phase quantum dynamics for more complex systems and ever complex environments to address highest relevance open questions and research objectives in the understanding of condensed phase quantum dynamics, specifically, if the interactions of a system with its environment potentially can affect the system’s coherence, the underlying mechanisms leading to complex many body phenomena and the possibility of control of the system dynamics and its decoherence.  Ultimately, the algorithm developments and novel conceptual approaches will yield a comprehensive numerical path integration software platform for condensed phase quantum dynamics simulations that has groundbreaking potential by facilitating extremely challenging simulations that are not yet possible on classical computers or only envisioned on tailor made quantum devices.

Mots-clés : open quantum systems,quantum dynamics,non markovian memory,solar energy conversion,solvated electrons,superconducting qubits