Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PUNCA (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Durham University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499952.0 €

In less than a decade, various large cosmological surveys, such as Euclid, DESI and eROSITA, will start collecting data. These aim to bring ground-breaking changes to our understanding of the accelerated cosmic expansion - one of the grand challenges in physics today - by improving the precision in determining key cosmological parameters to percent level and testing the various theoretical models, such as dark energy and non-standard gravity. They will, for the first time, allow General Relativity to be tested to such precision beyond the local Universe. However, such exciting goals can only be achieved if the accuracy of theory predictions is greatly improved to match that of observations. I propose to tackle this challenge by using state-of-the-art numerical techniques to study the leading theoretical models beyond standard LCDM in unprecedented accuracy, thereby preparing for their tests by 3 most promising cosmological probes - weak lensing, redshift space distortions and galaxy clusters. This numerically very demanding project is made possible by our recent developments of efficient simulation and analysis pipelines for each of these probes. I will build the PUNCA team which has a wide expertise to study constraints by these probes using accurate theoretical predictions from my planed simulations, and which will work closely to assess the power of novel joint constraints. To link model predictions to observations, and to understand critically their systematics, I will make realistic mock galaxy catalogs using simulations of unprecedented resolution and sophisticated galaxy formation models. The results will have important implications for fully exploiting the potential of upcoming surveys (e.g. Euclid, DESI, of which I am an active member, and eROSITA) in testing models. The pipelines and expertise developed will be useful for analysing real data from those surveys. Given the starting times (2017-20) of the latter, this project (2016-21) is extremely timely.

Mots-clés : cosmological tests of gravity,weak gravitational lensing,numerical simulations
Projet ERC : WELL-BEING (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999722.0 €

In light of major demographic trends, building and maintaining health and well-being amongst citizens is one of the most important societal challenges European countries face. People who feel well, function better, are less susceptible to mental illness, and thus are better able to retain competitive advantage and expand human capital. People who feel well also facilitate social capital by enjoying stronger and more-lasting relationships. Consequently, maintaining, facilitating, and building well-being (WB) would not only improve individual (health) outcomes, but also reduce economic and health care burdens. To sustainably facilitate and build WB, thorough understanding of its underlying dynamics, especially the interplay between an individual’s genetic makeup, epigenetic make-up, and (social) environmental exposure, is crucial. In this project, I will cross disciplinary boundaries to initiate the urgently needed integration of multiple layers of influence in the study of WB. The key objectives are to (1) identify, quantify, and integrate static and dynamic environmental and social exposures to build the well-being exposome, (2) understand the multi-layer interplay of the genome, the epigenome, and the exposome, and (3) integrate the empirical findings into a novel comprehensive framework of WB. I will employ an interdisciplinary approach, using association, real-life, and network methodology to assess the dynamics underling WB. To apply these state-of-the-art techniques, I will bring together longitudinal twin-family data, molecular genetic data, and big data from satellite positioning (GPS), bluetooth beacons, geographical information systems (GIS), ambulatory assessment, and social network linkage. This project will mark a shift in scientific approach and enables the development of interdisciplinary academic theories and health, social, and economic policies to maintain, facilitate, and build WB to withstand our demanding and rapidly changing world.

Mots-clés : well being,environmental and social exposure,genome,epigenome,exposome,multi layer interplay,methylation,database linkage
Projet ERC : BAR2LEGAB (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Barcelona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1495753.0 €

In many European countries with ostensibly liberal abortion laws, women face legal restrictions to abortion beyond the first trimester of pregnancy, as well as other barriers to legal abortion, in particular shortages of providers willing and able to offer abortion due to poor training and to conscientious objection among physicians. The Council of Europe has recognized that conscientious objection can make access to safe abortion more difficult or impossible, particularly in rural areas and for low income women, who are forced to travel far to seek abortion care, including abroad. The WHO also highlights that delaying abortion care increases risks for women’s reproductive health. Despite the relevance of this topic from a public health and human rights perspective, the impact of procedural and social barriers to legal abortion on women in countries with ostensibly liberal abortion laws has not been studied by social scientists in Europe. This five-year research project is envisaged as a ground-breaking multi-disciplinary, mixed-methods investigation that will fill this gap, by capitalizing on previous, pioneer anthropological research of the PI on abortion and conscientious objection. It will contribute to the anthropology of reproduction in Europe, and particularly to the existing literature on abortion, conscientious objection and the medicalization of reproduction, and to the international debate on gender inequalities and citizenship, by exploring how barriers to legal abortion are constructed and how women embody and challenge them in different countries, by travelling or seeking illegal abortion, as well as their conceptualizations of abortion and their self perception as moral/political subjects. The project will be carried out in France, Italy and Spain, where the few existing studies show that women face several barriers to legal abortion as well as in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain, where Italian and French women travel to seek abortion care.

Mots-clés : social anthropology,reproductive politics,abortion governance,conscientious objection,stigma,gender and social inequalities
Projet ERC : MENTALPRECISION (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUNMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

In many areas of medicine, biomarkers have revolutionised diagnosis and personalised treatment allocation (‘precision medicine’). Psychiatry lags behind: disorders are still diagnosed by symptoms and no biomarkers have been found. However, addressing this is a formidable task because of a lack of analysis tools to understand the complex disruptions of mental disorders at multiple levels –from neurobiology to behaviour– and to tackle their extreme heterogeneity at every level. My vision is to provide a set of principled, next generation analysis tools to stratify mental disorders on the basis of biomarkers derived from population-scale neuroimaging and quantitative measures of behaviour from smartphone-based digital phenotyping. I will build generative models to chart variation in brain organisation across massive neuroimaging samples from more than 40,000 individuals based on ‘brain growth charting’ methodology I have pioneered. This will provide a universal platform to understand shared and distinct mechanisms of mental disorders at the level of the individual, simulate clinical brain states and test putative interventions using synthetic data. I will develop innovative machine learning tools to: (1) learn latent dynamics of digital phenotyping measures; (2) parse the dynamic interplay between brain systems and the behaviours they underpin; (3) integrate complementary information from distinct data modalities and (4) stratify mental disorders in a way that cuts across diagnostic classifications and accommodates different mechanisms converging on the same symptoms. These innovations will have far-reaching impact; here, I will showcase them by predicting trajectories of resilience and risk in major depression and bipolar disorder which are a leading cause of worldwide disease burden. This will bring precision medicine within reach for psychiatry allowing early, personalized intervention, preventative treatments and a better understanding of disorder entities.
Projet ERC : e-MICROBe (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999991.0 €

In many bioprocesses a broad bioproduct portfolio can currently only be obtained when microorganisms can access oxygen as an electron acceptor. For numerous target substances, however, oxygen is detrimental to product stability and the bioprocess operation. The central aim of e-MICROBe is to innately couple microbial metabolism and electrochemistry via a self-secreted soluble electron mediator to achieve efficient oxygen independent energy metabolism and to directly steer and control metabolism and product formation. This will require creating entirely new physiological traits for production and utilization of redox mediators to generate cellular energy. Thereby, mediators can either act as electron discharge shuttle to enable electro-respiration at an anode or they are employed as inorganic energy donor to deliver electrons from a cathode into the metabolism. We will clarify the underlying reaction pathways in known environmental microorganisms and re-engineer the energy metabolism of common biotech hosts. Thereby, we will switch cellular energy generation from aerobic respiration to anaerobic anodic electro-respiration or from hydrogen consumption as autotrophic electron donor to cathodic electron consumption. The latter process will provide a mechanism to store electrical energy in microbial products. For a new level of in situ insight into microbial energy metabolism, a novel micro-scale bioelectrochemical reactor coupled to microscopic observation and high performance analysis will be developed. With this technique two fundamental concepts for future mediator-based bioprocesses will be evaluated: An all-in-one strategy where one cell is generating the mediators and the targeted product as well as a co-culture system, whereby one cell produces the mediators and a partner cell utilizes them for electro-respiration and product formation. This concept will lay the foundation for a plug-and-play exchange of biotech strains in a mediator-producing co-culture system.

Mots-clés : microbial electrochemistry,extracellular electron transfer,mediated electron transfer,electro respiration,anaerobic metabolism,electron consumption
Projet ERC : MOR-PHON (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2605261.0 €

In morpho-phonological alternations the shapes of morphemes differ between morphologically related word forms. In these alternations the morphological environment is also implicated (revére ~ réverence verb [iː] ~ noun [ɛ] and stress differ) unlike alternations which are conditioned only by the phonological environment. The opaque phonological relationship between morphologically related forms has been a long-standing challenge in theoretical, historical, psycho- and neuro-linguistics, and computational linguistics alike. Morpho-phonological alternations of all kinds have been analysed across the languages of the world; but fundamental questions have remained controversial or indeed unasked: ▪ Why do they exist in the first place and why are they so widespread? ▪ How do they come about and what is their diachronic time-course? ▪ How are they represented in mental lexicons and how are they processed? Rather than setting morpho-phonological alternations aside as irregularities of morphology (requiring individual listing and storing), we recognise certain kinds of them (stress shifts, feature changes, deletions, and tonal changes) as something universally to be expected in mental lexicons and as something the brains of speakers and listeners can easily handle. The position that we advocate is that morpho-phonological variants are not listed and stored independently, but rather are mapped onto single abstract representations. This is a controversial position, and its defence requires the systematic study of types of alternations and their histories, and precise hypotheses about the nature of mental representations. What distinguishes our approach is that we combine expertise in (a) theoretical and typological linguistics, (b) brain-imaging methods, and (c) computational modeling to shed light on our questions concerning the existence and cross-linguistic incidence of morpho-phonological alternations, their diachronic profiles, their processing and mental representation.

Mots-clés : historical linguistics,morphology and phonology,psycholinguistics,neurolinguistics
Projet ERC : MeLiLoN (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
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 : 1941499.0 €

In most western countries, life expectancy is increasing by 3 months a year. As the average age of the population increases, so too does the prevalence of age-related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and neurodegenerative disorders. An essential component of ageing research is to understand the biological mechanisms that contribute to the ageing process at the cellular and molecular levels. This has major implications not only for the treatment of age-associated diseases but also for the promotion of healthy ageing. Studies of experimental animals and observations in humans have identified an array of genes and nutritional conditions that increase lifespan. However, these manipulations (genetic or nutritional) often have detrimental effects on other biological processes; for example, reproduction, metabolism, immunity or growth. This is an area of ageing research that has largely been ignored but that is critical to the success of strategies intended to slow ageing and thus the onset of disease. The primary goal of this research proposal is to understand how lifespan extension is linked to reproduction. We will use the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism to identify novel conserved genes, molecules, and metabolic networks that link reproduction and longevity through nutrition. The proposed study is based on a unique set of preliminary data that identifies the first clear molecular links between these traits: a steroid hormone receptor and a reproduction-responsive lipase, both of which modulate lifespan extension achieved through changes in nutrition. Understanding the regulation and function of these genes and pathways will clarify at the molecular level how reproduction is linked to longevity. This may ultimately lead to interventions that optimise metabolic activity to promote healthy ageing.
Projet ERC : LEIT (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : INL
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1641736.25 €

In nanoelectronic circuits, interconnects use more energy than microprocessors, a situation clearly undesirable for e.g. autonomous Internet of Things applications based on charge and other information tokens. Overcoming this issue and minimising overall power consumption will be of paramount importance as we move towards Beyond-CMOS circuits. A novel approach is required. In LEIT I propose to investigate phonons as information carriers with typical ultralow energies of a fraction of a meV. As quanta of lattice vibrations, the high interactivity of phonons presents two key challenges: phonon-phonon scattering and losses in waveguides caused by interaction with e.g. lattice defects. I propose to overcome this by engineering phonon-phonon scattering in custom-designed phononic crystal-based structures moving towards narrow frequencies and non-interacting phonons at room temperature. These structures will exhibit a unique combination of features to allow phonon filtering, reflection and confinement, as well as transmission from one element (source) to another (modulator and waveguides), all of which will serve to direct and guide the phonon waves. Phonon losses will be minimised even eradicated by using topological phononic waveguides to transmit phonons over micrometre distances. The technological platforms will be made from silicon (Si) and Si-compatible materials, also incorporating transition metal dichalcogenides in order to reach the higher frequencies. In LEIT I will draw on my extensive experimental research on phonons in semiconductor nanostructures, Si membranes and phononic crystals to demonstrate the viability of acoustic phonons as low-energy information carriers. By doing so I will lay the scientific and technological foundations of a new phononics-based approach to information processing, offering a means of transmitting information that is extremely low-power and lossless, while also compact and integrable with Si-technologies.

Mots-clés : phonon signal transmission,phonons in si,si membranes,phononic crystals,low energy phonon transport,phononic interconnects,topological phonon waveguides,surface acoustic waves,brillouin scattering,ir imaging
Projet ERC : QDLight (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Intellisiv ltd — Pays : Israël — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Intellisiv ltd
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 50000.0 €

In optical microscopy low-cost solid state LEDs and lasers have replaced traditional light sources. Major drawbacks of such, typically fiber-coupled light sources are poor flexibility, low modularity and high cost. Since a complete separate system is needed for every excitation color, the size of the economical investment is hindering the adoption of the technology directly contributing to improved research quality in multiple disciplines. This PoC project derives from SINSLIM ERC Starting grant project, which developed new light sources for sub-diffraction limited imaging. The PoC project demonstrates an inexpensive and versatile fiber-coupled incoherent light source. The light source is based on polymer fibers incorporating luminescent nanocrystals, which are essentially light-absorbing and light-emitting threads. The nanocrystal properties in the fiber enable flexible tuning of the emitted light color. The brightness of the novel light source will exceed the current state-of-the-art fiber-coupled LED brightness by nearly an order of magnitude. The demonstrated light source can play an important role in optical imaging and therapy applications due to the ability to achieve high fluxes in small area fibers, replacing costly and cumbersome halogen lamps. The innovation can also be applied in new specific light emitting and light harvesting applications as it delivers powerful multi-wavelength light and also collects it through small areas. The PoC project combines the earlier scientific SINSLIM discoveries with state-of-the-art industry manufacturing knowledge paving the way for creating practical, cost-efficient, bright and tunable future light-source applications. The disciplines directly benefiting from the PoC results comprise Biomedical imaging, highly growing Optogenetics, Photodynamic Therapy, Biolight therapy and completely new industry segments addressing the $100B lighting markets.

Mots-clés : semiconductor quantum dots,polymer optical fibers,optical microscopy,lighting
Projet ERC : GeneREFORM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1478284.0 €

In order to fully understand the complexity of biological processes that are reflected by simultaneous occurrences of intra and inter-cellular events, multiplexed imaging platforms are needed. Fluorescent reporter genes, with their “multicolor” imaging capabilities, have revolutionized science and their founders have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Nevertheless, the light signal source of these reporters, which restricts their use in deep tissues and in large animals (and potentially in humans), calls for alternatives. Reporter genes for MRI, although in their infancy, showed several exceptionalities, including the ability to longitudinal study the same subject with unlimited tissue penetration and to coregister information from reporter gene expression with high-resolution anatomical images. Inspired by the multicolor capabilities of optical reporter genes, this proposal aims to develop, optimize, and implement genetically engineered reporter systems for MRI with artificial “multicolor” characteristics. Capitalizing on (i) the Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST)-MRI contrast mechanism that allows the use of small bioorganic molecules as MRI sensors, (ii) the frequency encoding, color-like features of CEST, and on (iii) enzyme engineering procedures that allow the optimization of enzymatic activity for a desired substrate, a “multicolor” genetically encoded MRI reporter system is proposed. By (a) synthesizing libraries of non-natural nucleosides (“reporter probes”) to generate artificially “colored” CEST contrast, and (b) performing directed evolution of deoxyribonucleoside kinase (dNK) enzymes (“reporter genes”) to phosphorylate those nucleosides, the “multicolor” genetically encoded MRI “reporter system” will be created. The orthogonally of the obtained pairs of substrate (CEST sensor)/ enzyme (mutant dNK) will allow their simultaneous use as a genetically encoded reporter system for in vivo “multicolor” monitoring of reporter gene expression with MRI.

Mots-clés : chemical exchange saturation transfer  cest  mri,molecular and cellular imaging,mri reporter genes,mri of gene expression