Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ExSMBHs (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Tel Aviv University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1684750.0 €

How do supermassive black holes (SMBHs) turn their accretion “on” and “off”? How fast can they grow? How is this related to their circumnuclear environments? What are the consequences for the emergence of the first SMBHs and their co-evolution with galaxies? The key to answering these and other questions is found in understanding SMBH accretion, in all possible modes and cosmic epochs. Recent progress in both theory and observations strongly support “extreme” modes of SMBH accretion, namely abrupt changes seen on timescales of weeks and the possibility of (also long-lived) super-Eddington accretion. Both of these sorts of extreme accretion are not yet well understood. Here I propose to change this, by leading a multi-faceted observational program that will reveal, survey, and characterize extreme modes of SMBH accretion. Some of the efforts I will lead include: (1) Responsive, multi-wavelength, and spectroscopic follow-up observations of hyper-variable and flaring accreting SMBHs, to provide new insights as to what starts or stops SMBH accretion, and a new way to study super-Eddington accretion; (2) Proprietary multi-epoch SDSS-V spectroscopy will allow me to determine how common these dramatic events are, and to look for trends with BH and host galaxy properties; (3) A complete, detailed survey of highly accreting SMBHs in the local universe; and (4) An exploratory survey of super-Eddington, advection-dominated SMBHs at significant redshifts. These and other new insights will be combined with newly established, highly complete distributions of the black hole masses and accretion rates at both low and high redshifts, to understand the role of extreme accretion modes in the general SMBH population and to help guide future surveys. This research has to be done now, as we try to complete our understanding of (cosmic) SMBH accretion and (co-)evolution; before we are flooded with millions transients; and before the next generation facilities and surveys are finalized.

Mots-clés : quasars  supermassive black holes,quasars  general,galaxies  nuclei,galaxies  active,galaxies  high redshift,surveys
Projet ERC : SECURITY VISION (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998320.0 €

How do technologies of computer vision, which promise to replace humans in the understanding of images, work in practice in the field of security, and what are their ethical and political implications? Vision, understood as the capacity not only to see but also to make sense of what is seen, is increasingly being delegated to autonomous computer systems which influence how human operators determine suspicious behaviour. We currently lack an understanding of how these technologies impact governmental and private sector actors, their decision-making, and their accountability as well as the fundamental rights of those who are targeted. This project address these challenges through an innovative theoretical and methodological framework which investigates the theoretical, empirical and political implications of the development of computer vision in the field of security. In order to carry out this task, the project builds on and advances debates at the intersection of critical security studies, science and technology studies, and visual ethnographic practices. Theoretically, the project advances the debates in International Relations and critical security studies by offering a synthetic framework of analysis of socially embedded technical devices. Methodologically, the experimental use of visual ethnography not only as a method of data collection and dissemination, but also of data analysis within a multi-modal research design will advance, through visual practices, debates in International Relations about the status of non-propositional knowledge as well as alternatives modalities of presentation of research. Empirically it will bring a new understanding of the workings of computer vision technologies in the fields of social media content moderation of extremist content, “smart” Closed Circuit Television Vision (CCTV) cameras and “lie detectors” deployed at the border, participating thus to the ethical and political debates in the public sphere.

Mots-clés : critical security studies,science and technology studies,social practices,computer vision,visual ethnography
Projet ERC : Human Decisions (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
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 : 1382642.5 €

How do we make reliable decisions given sensory information that is often weak or ambiguous? Current theories center on a brain mechanism whereby sensory evidence is integrated over time into a “decision variable” which triggers the appropriate action upon reaching a criterion. Neural signals fitting this role have been identified in monkey electrophysiology but efforts to study the neural dynamics underpinning human decision making have been hampered by technical challenges associated with non-invasive recording. This proposal builds on a recent paradigm breakthrough made by the applicant that enables parallel tracking of discrete neural signals that can be unambiguously linked to the three key information processing stages necessary for simple perceptual decisions: sensory encoding, decision formation and motor preparation. Chief among these is a freely-evolving decision variable signal which builds at an evidence-dependent rate up to an action-triggering threshold and precisely determines the timing and accuracy of perceptual reports at the single-trial level. This provides an unprecedented neurophysiological window onto the distinct parameters of the human decision process such that the underlying mechanisms of several major behavioral phenomena can finally be investigated. This proposal seeks to develop a systems-level understanding of perceptual decision making in the human brain by tackling three core questions: 1) what are the neural adaptations that allow us to deal with speed pressure and variations in the reliability of the physically presented evidence? 2) What neural mechanism determines our subjective confidence in a decision? and 3) How does aging impact on the distinct neural components underpinning perceptual decision making? Each of the experiments described in this proposal will definitively test key predictions from prominent theoretical models using a combination of temporally precise neurophysiological measurement and psychophysical modelling.

Mots-clés : perceptual decision making,sequential sampling,electroencephalogram,transcranial direct current stimulation,meta cognition,speed accuracy trade off,age related cognitive decline
Projet ERC : MyGardenOfTrees (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999999.64 €

How organisms adapt to their environments is the most fundamental question in evolutionary biology and is of utmost importance given climate change threats. Identifying key traits involved in adaptations and understanding how they interact with each other, and with the environment, is a particularly urgent task for foundation and resource-production species, such as forest trees. Existing experiments assessing local adaptation lack scalability and predictability in natural environments, especially at the species range margins. Landscape genomics studies could reveal adaptive loci across environmental gradients, but they are hindered by the assumptions of a neutral model and the highly polygenic nature of most traits. To address these shortcomings, I will conduct a species range-wide transplant experiment using participatory science and genomics to (i) reveal major patterns and drivers of adaptation and (ii) to build a predictive model for selecting optimal seed sources for a given location that accounts for gene-environment interactions and demography. I will develop a participatory network of foresters as well as ordinary citizens, who will establish a large number (>2500) of micro gardens (4 to 36 m2). Seeds source populations of Fagus sylvatica and Abies alba, and their sister species, will be selected from across their ranges. To evaluate plant performance in novel climate conditions, garden locations will also cover locations beyond the species' current distribution range. Early survival and growth traits, which are under the highest selection pressure in trees, will be monitored and analyzed herein. An unprecedented nearly full factorial design transplant data set will be obtained using a genomic prediction (GP) model that exploits the genetic similarity between populations and the environmental similarity between garden locations. Finally, I will implement the GP model for forest managers to aid assisted migration decisions with evoluti

Mots-clés : local adaptation,forest trees,transplant experiment,participatory science,genomic prediction,phenotypic plasticity,assisted migration,life history traits,biogeography,climate change,regeneration
Projet ERC : InPart (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Maastricht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499510.0 €

How to ensure meaningful public participation in governing matters of collective concern? With the growth of distrust and alienation between citizens and established political institutions, it urgent to improve democracy by finding new ways of involving citizens in decisions that shape their lives. I make a counterintuitive proposal to look for new modes of public participation in informal practices creatively employed by citizens to contest governance arrangements, especially in settings where they are discouraged from doing so. Scholarship traditionally defines public participation as dependent on making issues public, i.e. visible and debatable, whereas informality is considered dysfunctional and anomic, not least to democracy itself. Therefore, informal practices that involve working around formal procedures and public spaces, and depend on remaining invisible, have not been explored as modes of public participation. My project is the first comprehensive study of public participation by means of informal practices. It takes a qualitative approach inspired by the ethnographic ‘rear-mirror’ methodology to comparatively investigate local (Russian healthcare system) and global (pharmaceutical industry) sites where non-democratic situations abound and identify how informality mediates participation in health, a domain personally relevant for many citizens because their lives are at stake. I will elucidate the effects of this mediation and elaborate the theoretical significance of conceptualising certain informal practices as public participation. This project will offer a fundamentally novel insight into the impacts of informal practices on formulating and addressing matters of collective concern, enable discerning a wider spectrum of participatory modalities, and open up new avenues of democratisation. I will draw on my previous research on informality in health and pharmapolitics and on my extensive international network to achieve the project goals.

Mots-clés : public participation,informality,postsocialism,democratisation
Projet ERC : MitoVin (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : University of Münster — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WWU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1868993.0 €

Human Papillomavirus Type 16 (HPV16), the paradigm cancer-causing HPV type, is a small, nonenveloped, DNA virus characterized by its complex life cycle coupled to differentiation of squamous epithelia. Due to this complexity, how HPV16 infects cells is an understudied field of research. Our previous work to define the cellular pathways that are hijacked for initial infection revealed uptake by a novel endocytosis mechanism, and the requirement for mitosis for nuclear delivery. Our findings indicated that nuclear envelope breakdown was required to access the nuclear space, and that the virus associated with mitotic chromatin during metaphase. This prolonged mitosis, a process beneficiary for infection. The viral L2 protein as part of incoming viruses mimics this on its own. The aim of this proposal is to reveal how HPV16 differentially modulates or takes advantage of the mitotic machinery for nuclear import in cells, tissues or during aging, and whether malignant cellular consequences arise. On the viral side, we will define the minimal properties of L2 to mediate association with cell chromatin and mitosis prolongation. On the cellular side, we will identify the protein(s) that mediate recruitment, and how it occurs in a detailed temporal/spatial manner. To elucidate the mechanism of mitotic prolongation and consequences thereof, we will identify which regulatory complex of mitosis is targeted, how it is induced, and whether it causes DNA damage or segregation errors. Finally, we will ascertain the influence of tissue differentiation and aging on this process. Using systems biology, proteomics, virology, cell biology, biochemistry, and a wide range of microscopy approaches we will unravel the complex interactions between HPV and the host cell mitosis machinery. In turn, as viruses often serve as valuable tools to study cell function, this work is likely to uncover new insights into how cells spatially and temporally regulate mitosis in differentiation and aging.
Projet ERC : Metacontrol (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Human behavior is commonly understood as emerging from a struggle between will and habit, i.e., between “intentional” processes driven by the current goal and “automatic” processes driven by available stimuli. This scenario suggests that it is mainly the goal-related processes that render behavior adaptive. Based on a novel theoretical framework (the Metacontrol State Model, combined with the Theory of Event Coding) that is motivated by recent behavioral and neuroscientific observations, I suggest an alternative view and argue that people can control the relative contributions of goal-driven and stimulus-driven processes to decision-making and action selection. In particular, people regulate the interaction between these processes by determining the ratio between (goal) persistence and flexi-bility, depending on task, situation, and personal experience—a process that I refer to as “metacontrol”. The project aims to identify and trace individual “metacontrol policies” (biases towards persistence or flexibility) and task- and condition-specific changes therein by means of behavioral, computational, and neuroscientific techniques, and by using virtual-reality methods. I shall study, account for, and try predicting individual differences in the choice and implementation of such policies, identify and explain the cognitive and social consequences of adopting a particular policy, and investigate whether and how people can adopt meta¬control policies from others—either intentionally or automati-cally. I shall also study whether and to what degree people use situational cues to automatize the implementation of suitable policies, and whether often-used, highly practiced policies can become chron-ified and turn into a trait-like processing style, as suggested by cultural studies.
Projet ERC : HANDMADE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1889292.0 €

Human beings have always relied on the skills of the hand for exploring their creative potential. The process of making by hand lies at the intersection between embodied cognition and material culture – linking the plasticity of the brain to the incredibly variety of bodily techniques, materials and forms of material culture. Still, the full creative dimensions of this process as well as the changing relationship of the human hand with past and present material culture are not well understood and require cross-disciplinary research. This project aims to fill this gap in our knowledge focusing on one specific material with long archaeological history and cross-cultural significance, i.e., clay and the craft of ceramics. The morphogenetic potential and plasticity of clay offers a unique kinaesthetic resource for studying the creative ecology of handmaking and exploring questions about skill, memory, distributed intelligence, material agency, tradition and innovation. Our plan is to study pottery making at first hand through sustained multi-sited participant observation in several traditional ceramic workshops spread around mainland Greece and the Islands. We will use a combination of methods from anthropology, archaeology and embodied cognitive science to record, measure, describe, compare and analyse the exact ways by which craft practitioners use their hands to produce a variety of material forms. We shall be collecting our data using extensive video recording, photography as well as through semi-structured interviews and interaction analysis. Our research procedure, grounded on material engagement theory, is designed to facilitate a heightened responsiveness to the details of action and the properties of the materials and the tools involved. Our broader aim is to use our knowledge about the creative entanglement of the hand and the clay and lay down the basic conceptual foundation for an archaeology of handmaking over the long term.

Mots-clés : making,material engagement,embodied,extended,enacted and distributed cognition
Projet ERC : ENCOUNTER (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1083431.0 €

Human history is punctuated by episodes of large-scale diffusion of new ideas and people that lead to era-defining transitions in past societies. Investigating what promotes these events, how societies react to these, and what are their long-term consequences is a key to understand the fundamental drivers of cultural change. ENCOUNTER will push forward this research agenda by investigating the Jomon-Yayoi transition, a demic and cultural diffusion event that led the predominantly hunting, gathering, and fishing-based communities of the Japanese islands to adopt rice and millet farming during the 1st millennium BC. The continental migrants who triggered this transition event did not bring just a new economy, but also new technology and culture, deeply impacting the indigenous society. The transition was however not uniform, as different regions responded to the new culture in different ways. Some immediately adopted the new cultural repertoire to its full extent, others embraced only certain elements, and still others resisted for over 1,000 years, generating cultural, linguistic and genetic clines that are still tangible today. ENCOUNTER will investigate this pivotal moment in Japanese prehistory, seeking to determine why the indigenous inhabitants responded so differently to the arrival of the new culture. It will examine the dynamics of this transition by: synthesising one of the richest archaeological records available in the world; combining new and old lines of evidence across different disciplines, including organic chemistry, palynology, and material culture studies; and developing a suite of computational techniques to reconstruct patterns of demographic change and cultural diffusion. It will question the existing narrative that farming is inevitable and instead put new emphasis on the incumbent hunter-gatherer populations to understand their motivations to change subsistence strategies with respect to their environment settings and cultural affinities.
Projet ERC : DEVOMIND (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1761190.0 €

Human social interaction and learning depends on making the right inferences about other people’s thoughts, a process commonly called mentalizing, or Theory of Mind, a cognitive achievement which several decades of research concluded was reached at around age 4. The last 10 years has radically changed this view, and innovative new paradigms suggest that even preverbal infants can think about others’ minds. This new developmental data has created arguably one of the biggest puzzles in the history of developmental science: How can infants be mentalizing when years of research have shown that a) pre-schoolers fail at mentalizing tasks and b) mentalizing depends on the development of cognitive control, language, and brain maturation? The key issue is whether behaviour that looks like infant mentalizing really is mentalizing, or might infants’ success belie alternative processes? The most powerful strategy for resolving this puzzle is to look to brain activity. By applying the same methods and paradigms across infancy and early childhood, DEVOMIND will investigate whether infants’ success on mentalizing tasks recruits the same network of brain regions, and neural processes, that we know are involved in success in older children and adults. In the second half of the project, we will use our neural indicators of mentalizing to test a completely novel hypothesis in which infants’ success is possible because they have a limited ability to distinguish self from other. Although novel, this hypothesis deserves to be tested because it has the potential to explain both infants’ success and preschoolers’ failures under a single, unified theory. By bringing a neuroimaging approach to the puzzle of early mentalizing, DEVOMIND will allow us to move beyond the current impasse, and to generate a new theory of Theory of Mind.

Mots-clés : infants,mentalizing,theory of mind,neuroimaging,social cognition,social neuroscience