Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PEBBLES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 463947.7 €

The formation and properties of exoplanetary systems is a fascinating question, which has been at the heart of our quest to define mankind and the conditions for life to develop in a broader context.  Recent astronomical observations have deeply modified our paradigm of planet formation, as they suggest the so-called "proto-planetary” disks surrounding T-Tauri stars may actually already host planets. Moreover, we have obtained some of the first observational clues that the dust particles contained in the pristine disk-forming reservoirs that are the embedded protostars may already have significantly evolved from the submicronic dust populating the interstellar medium. These results suggest that dust evolves significantly already during the first 0.5 Myrs of the star formation process, and highlight the prime importance of understanding the properties and evolution of dust in young protostars.  The PEBBLES project aims at developing a thorough methodology to characterize the properties of dust in embedded protostars, where we know the star and its disk are forming concomitantly. Using an innovative methodology combining cutting edge observational datasets, dust models and numerical models, we aim to transform our understanding of: 1) The nature of the dust incorporated in the youngest disks, a key for models of disk evolution towards planetary systems 2) The processes at work for dust evolution in young protostars, from envelopes to disk scales 3) The efficiency of magnetic fields to couple to the star/disk forming material, and set the disk properties  By shedding light on early dust evolution, we will not only address one of the oldest and most challenging question regarding the initial conditions for planet formation in disks around solar-type stars, but also provide new insight to the conditions reigning and their impact on physical processes during the main accretion stage, during which stars acquire most of their properties.
Projet ERC : LANDRESPONSE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université norvégienne pour les sciences de la vie — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NMBU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2095696.0 €

Farmers and pastoralists in the Sahel continuously struggle to maintain control over land faced with rent-seeking elites, processes of modernization and uncertain land rights. The hypothesis of LANDRESPONSE is that smallholders who are dispossessed of access to land are more inclined to either migrate or resist violently. Violent resistance will be studied in this project with regard to the increasing numbers of armed groups labelled ‘jihadist’ in the Sahel and in particular in Mali. The project will investigate the nature of the links between land dispossession and elite capture on the one hand and violent jihadist resistance to governments as well as migration to North Africa and Europe on the other hand. These hypothesized links will be investigated using mixed methods with a particular focus on Mali as a ‘hub’ country in the Western Sahel in terms of both violence and migration. Following this conceptual framework, the objectives directing the project will be – first to investigate whether smallholders in the West African Sahel who are dispossessed of their land and/or fall victim to rent-seeking elites, are more inclined to either resist violently or migrate, and second try to assess why some smallholders are more prone to resist, even violently, while others remain compliant. With its pioneering engagement with these urgent political issues, the project will combine theoretical and empirical approaches from political ecology, critical agrarian studies and peace and conflict studies to generate novel insights about the motivations and agency of smallholders confronted with emerging challenges to their livelihoods. This interdisciplinary research will generate new knowledge on the interactions between land governance, violent conflicts and migration, which will both push the research frontier and provide new ideas for policy formulation.

Mots-clés : jihadism,migration,land dispossession,corruption,sahel,political ecology
Projet ERC : INTEGRATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Fondazione per la ricerca biomedica avanzata ets — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : VIMM
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 902736.25 €

Quality control processes maintain mitochondrial health, enabling cellular functions such as bioenergetics, metabolism, Ca2+ signaling, and cell death regulation. Mitochondrial proteases, unfolded protein response, asymmetric fission, vesicle shedding, and mitophagy all contribute to organelle quality. However, the specific triggers for these processes remain unclear. While unfolded protein accumulation appears to be a common trigger, the mechanism by which it initiates diverse responses remains uncertain. To investigate this question, we developed advanced tools for real-time imaging of protein aggregation in mitochondrial subcompartments. Aggregates in the matrix and intermembrane space induce mitochondrial fission and elicit distinct functional responses based on their location. Live imaging revealed that intermembrane space aggregates initially seed in the mitochondrial midzone and then sort through transient side-by-side fusion with neighboring mitochondria. In the matrix, aggregates seed at one pole and are selectively sorted to daughter mitochondria through asymmetric fission. Our preliminary experiments unveiled an early seeding and sorting process of protein aggregates according to their intramitochondrial location. In the INTEGRATE project, we aim to comprehensively understand the underlying principles and consequences of this process. By combining advanced imaging techniques, omics analysis, biochemistry, functional assays, and unbiased screenings, we will decipher the rules governing aggregate formation, seeding, sorting, cellular fate, and response in various mitochondrial subcompartments. INTEGRATE seeks to establish the occurrence and downstream responses of this newly discovered early phase of mitochondrial quality control. Clarifying this fundamental mechanism will provide insights into mitochondrial and cell biology, with significant implications for pathological conditions and aging, where mitochondrial quality control is compromised.

Mots-clés : mitochondria quality control fusion fission
Projet ERC : CONFINED (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université d'Aalborg — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1521237.25 €

CONFINED will develop and validate an innovative, comparative, and global research agenda of confined lives. Confinement is a ubiquitous and unequally distributed human condition. While confinement sometimes can be protective, for some groups, not least the displaced on dangerous roads, the marginalized in urban slums and the detained in prisons, it can be a damaging experience linked to violence and inequality. With an empirical point of departure in different contexts across the global north and south, known to produce a variety of confined lives, CONFINED explores, 1) how certain people’s lives are rendered confineable; 2) how confineable groups and networks navigate discursive, actual, and potential practices of confinement, and 3) how and to what extent the concept of confined lives can transform our understanding of the practices and experiences of confinement across global divides in ways that drive theoretical innovation and help build new agendas for social justice. Through three interdependent and sequentially organized work packages, CONFINED proposes to explore confined lives contextually and ethnographically across the global North and South (WP1); to compare what confines people, how they make sense of their confined lives, and how they navigate confinement (WP2), and to conceptually develop and validate the approach through engagement with academics and experts locally and globally (WP3). CONFINED will carry out comparative, ethnographic field work to follow precariously situated translocal family network across four contexts as a privileged lens to understanding confined lives at the intersection of dangerous journeys, urban slums and prisons and camps: Denmark and Lebanon; South Africa and Malawi; Thailand and Myanmar and the UK and Sierra Leone. This will allow CONFINED to reframe the empirical field of confined lives and to generate a new conceptual language to understand one of the most important drivers of inequality world-wide.

Mots-clés : displacement,urban marginality,incarceration,family and kinship,state and non state violence
Projet ERC : SCHWARZITE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Wurtzbourg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Considerable progress has been made over the past thirty years in the synthesis and preparation of 0D, 1D, and 2D sp2-hybridized carbon materials, as well as for their smaller discrete nanosized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) counterparts. However, 3D sp2-hybridized carbon networks, called schwarzite carbons or Mackay-Terrones crystals – first proposed in the early 1990s – remain elusive, despite exciting electronic properties and important applications being predicted for these porous crystalline all-carbon solids by theoreticians. Little activity has been devoted to this new class of carbon materials due to the enormous challenges foreseen for their synthesis. Even research towards 7- and 8-membered rings, whose saddle-shaped structures are the prerequisite for schwarzite-type molecular carbon materials, has only recently become a research focus for a still small number of chemists. Based on an efficient synthetic method for heptagon-containing PAHs recently developed by our laboratory and the subsequent demonstration of the perfect schwarzite-like organization of four of such molecules around a C60-fullerene template, we herein propose rational strategies for both schwarzite-inspired saddle-shaped nanostructures as well as 3D schwarzite-like porous pi-conjugated solid-state materials. Thus, in this project, novel saddle-shaped PAHs bearing schwarzite-inspired sequences of hexagons and heptagons will be synthesized and self-assembled around fullerenes and other spherical template molecules, and characterized by supramolecular binding studies and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Various synthetic approaches will be pursued for the post-functionalization of these complexes to afford pi-conjugated cage molecules and schwarzite-type pi-conjugated 3D materials. The functional properties of these novel materials will be explored with a broad repertoire of available techniques in our laboratory.

Mots-clés : organic materials,organic electronics
Projet ERC : PosthumanMusic (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Studies of Cultures and Arts
Entité participante : Orpheus Institute — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies are becoming increasingly intertwined with human creativity, leading to novel forms of ‘posthuman’ musical expression that decentralize traditional notions of creative agency, authorship, ownership, and the ontology of the artwork. This poses unprecedented challenges and opportunities for new creative practices that need to be investigated, both scholarly and artistically. This project explores the transformative impact of AI and blockchain on contemporary musical practices, investigating the evolving concept of Posthuman Music as a forward-looking perspective that brings together human and non-human creative agents. Through analysis of existing practices and experimental prototyping, this project aims to forge new conceptual frameworks and craft new creative tools to enhance emerging posthuman creative practices. Combining theoretical investigations with practice-based research across four Research Strands (RS) unified by a common interdisciplinary research field, the project focusses on: investigating the ontological and conceptual consequences of AI and blockchain for music (RS1); developing digital media frameworks for situating posthuman musical practices (RS2); creating innovative compositional tools and techniques using AI and blockchain (RS3); experimenting with smart contracts in music through an experimental Creative Lab, generating new works and prototypes (RS4). Outputs include monographs, papers, conferences, compositions, digital performances, NFTs, experimental toolkits, and a dedicated web platform. Led by an experienced ERC Principal Investigator and an international team from musicology, music philosophy, composition, digital media studies, and computer science, the project will develop innovative creative practices, transforming music concepts for the digital era. Supported by a seasoned advisory board, the project will adapt to evolving conditions, ensuring cutting-edge research.

Mots-clés : music composition music philosophy posthumanism assemblage theory art ai blockchain practice based research
Projet ERC : BetaRegeneration (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2446645.0 €

Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) therapy was shown to regenerate β-cells in mice, but this did not translate to human. Early or intensive insulin therapy maintains residual β-cell function, but also causes weight gain and hypoglycaemia. Thus, currently no drug treatment can safely stop the progression of diabetes, a disease characterized by loss or dysfunction of insulin-producing β-cells. In breakthrough discoveries we identified the insulin inhibitory receptor (inceptor) as a druggable target for β-cell insulin sensitization and protection without the side-effects of insulin. Moreover, we combined GLP-1-mediated safe β-cell delivery of estrogen together with 60% reduced insulin therapy to restore β-cell function for diabetes remission. The overarching goal of BetaRegeneration is to explore new avenues of targeted and combinatorial β-cell protection and regeneration therapy. In Aim 1 we will reveal whether inceptor, beside desensitizing the insulin receptor, has also a function as insulin receptor in starvation/stress-induced insulin degradation and as scavenger receptor for insulin lysosomal degradation. This will reveal if inceptor can be targeted to enhance β-cell insulin sensitization, secretion and function. In Aim 2 we will translate our basic findings to in vivo animal and human model systems to explore GLP-1-mediated β-cell delivery and targeting of WNT and β-cell insulin/IGF1 signaling to enhance specificity and target several pathways at once. Furthermore, we will genetically and pharmacologically target inceptor and test if monoclonal antibodies alone or as drug conjugates can promote β-cell protection and regeneration. Our approach will reveal if combinatorial targeting of survival and regenerative pathways can stop β-cell loss and dysfunction. Taken together, the identification of clinically relevant targets and ways of combinatorial β-cell protection and regeneration therapy could open new avenues to stop and revert diabetes progression.

Mots-clés : diabetes,cell regeneration,human,insulin igf1 signaling,wnt,glp 1 receptor,inceptor,antibodies,ipsc,targeting
Projet ERC : DeepCell (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2103910.5 €

Advances in single-cell genomics (SCG) allow us to read out a cell’s molecular state with unprecedented detail, increasingly so across perturbations. To fully understand a cellular system, one must be able to predict its internal state in response to all perturbations. Yet such modeling in SCG is currently limited to descriptive statistics. Building upon my expertise in machine learning, I propose to systematically model a cell’s behavior under perturbation, focusing on the largely untouched area of drug-induced perturbations with multiomics SCG readouts. A sufficiently generic model will predict perturbed cellular states, enabling the design of optimal treatments in new cell-types. In a pilot study, we predicted gene expression changes of a cell ensemble in response to stimuli. DeepCell builds upon this approach: Based on a multi-condition, multi-modal deep-learning approach for both normal and spatially-resolved genomics, we will set up a constrained, interpretable model for the cellular expression response to diverse perturbations. The added flexibility of the DeepCell model versus classical small-scale systems biology models will allow us to interrogate the effects of combined drug stimuli and characterize the gene regulatory landscape by interpretation of the learned deep network. DeepCell provides unique possibilities to capitalize on cell-based drug screens to address fundamental questions in gene regulation and predicting treatment outcomes. As a proof of concept, I will identify targets that regulate enteroendocrine lineage selection in the intestine. I will set up a 500-compound single-cell organoid RNA-seq screen based on compounds from a spatial imaging screen across 200,000 intestinal organoids, both of which we will model with DeepCell. We will leverage those models to predict optimal treatment for obese mice. DeepCell opens up the possibility of in silico drug screens, with the potential to expedite drug discovery and impact clinical settings.

Mots-clés : single cell genomics,machine learning,deep learning,drug screening,gene regulatory networks
Projet ERC : cICMs (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UKE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499250.0 €

Functional coupling is a hallmark of brain networks, and there is a wealth of studies that have observed a relation between functional connectivity and cognition or sensorimotor processing. However, the vast majority of studies on this topic are correlative in nature, and causal evidence for the role of functional coupling is almost completely lacking. This project aims to fill this gap. Most of the coupling is intrinsically generated and occurs at multiple spatial and temporal scales. We will focus on two different types of such intrinsic coupling modes (ICMs): phase ICMs, arising from phase coupling of oscillatory signals, and envelope ICMs, resulting from coupled fluctuations of signal envelopes. The central hypothesis of this project is that both types of ICMs have causal relevance for cognitive processing and behavior. We will systematically manipulate, analyze and model the different types of ICMs to establish an integrated view on their functions and interrelations which currently is still lacking. Specifically, we aim to obtain the missing causal evidence on functional roles of ICMs, to unravel how phase and envelope ICMs differ in their relation to cognition and behavior, to reveal differences in the underlying mechanisms, and to unravel potential interactions between both types of ICMs. We will apply a translational approach which combines MEG recordings and tACS in humans with invasive electrophysiology and optogenetics in ferrets. We will use targeted multi-site interventions to dissect ICMs, independently manipulate phase and envelope coupling, and test the impact on cognitive processing and behavior. The experiments will be complemented by information-theoretic analyses and computational modeling of ICMs. This cutting-edge research program will yield an integrated multiscale framework for ICMs that is likely to have far-reaching implications for a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cognition and the complexity of the human mind.

Mots-clés : cognition,attention,bistable perception,multisensory processing,sensorimotor integration,coupling,functional connectivity,effective connectivity,network dynamics,brain stimulation,meg,tacs,optogenetics,modeling,information theory
Projet ERC : TiPPi (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2490000.0 €

The Minor Bodies of the Solar System, Asteroids, Trojans, Comets and Kuiper Belt Objects are left over planetary building bricks called planetesimals once abundant in the solar nebula. Via collisions and accretion of large grains, aka Pebbles, they grew into planets. The efficiency of Planetesimals formation via a gravitational collapse of Pebble clouds and the characteristics of the forming planetesimals are determined by the size distribution and local concentration of the largest grains, both being regulated by gas turbulence. But turbulence itself is dependent on the abundance of small grains, by regulating the ionisation level and the radiative cooling process. In this project we will develop radically new types of numerical experiments of three stages of planetesimal formation, with the goal of a self-consistent turbulence and pebble size distribution: 1. Development of tools to measure the transport, diffusion, and collisions of dust grains for arbitrary MHD or Radiation Hydro disk simulations to derive via an Coagulation Code and Machine Learning Technique a consistent particle size distribution for consistent opacities and ionisation rates to feed back into the turbulence simulation. 2. Implementation of a tree-solver for the gravitational attraction among pebbles in self-consistent turbulence simulations to identify the properties of pebble clouds that can undergo gravitational collapse. 3. Integration of an implicit solver for our Lagrangian Particle scheme to model the collapse of pebble clouds, while not only deriving a mass function and multiplicity, but with a model for elasticity and porosity analyse the spin, shape, and compression for the forming planetesimals, comets and asteroids. In close collaboration with our scientific community we will calibrate our turbulence models and the planetesimal formation process on the observation of disks around young stars as well as observational and laboratory data on Minor Bodies in the Solar System.

Mots-clés : asteroids,comets,kuiper belt objects,pebbles and planetesimals,turbulence,numerical simulations,magneto and radiation hydro dynamics,n body simulations,lagrangian methods,machine learning