Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : QGuide (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université autonome de Madrid — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 601875.0 €

What are the constraints that a low energy Effective Field Theory must satisfy to be consistent with a Quantum Gravity description at higher energies? Can we determine these constraints in a precise way and use them as new guiding principles to progress in High Energy Physics? Recently, novel quantum gravity criteria have been proposed that imply non-trivial constraints on models of Particle Physics and Cosmology and can provide the missing piece to solve the long-standing naturalness issues observed in our universe. However, none of these so-called Swampland constraints have been completely proven yet; and often, they even lack a precise formulation. The goal of my proposal is to determine the constraints that Quantum Gravity imposes at low energies by uncovering the fundamental principles underlying the Swampland conjectures and looking for new universal constraints in the context of string theory. To achieve this goal, I propose a novel approach based on cutting-edge mathematical techniques of algebraic geometry and the topological cobordism groups that extend the notion of symmetry. Each conjecture will be subject to scrutiny such that it gets either disproven or promoted to a sharp statement in the realm of well-established string compactifications. Specific goals include an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms by which string theory avoids new classes of generalised global symmetries, a complete classification of the field spectra emerging at the large field limits of flat space string compactifications, developing new methods to study the scalar potential at the large field limits and determining whether supersymmetry is a necessary condition to ensure vacuum stability. These new quantum gravity constraints will trigger a revolution in our understanding of the Quantum Gravity imprint at low energies, addressing questions about axions, neutrino masses, inflation, hierarchy problems, weakly coupled charged matter and the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Mots-clés : string theory,quantum gravity,string compactifications,swampland,weak gravity conjecture
Projet ERC : INTEL (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de l'est de la Finlande — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

INTEL makes a ground-breaking contribution to energy law scholarship by developing the general doctrine of energy law in a European context. While all well-established legal disciplines have an understanding of their doctrine, energy law does not. A general doctrine consolidates the foundations of a discipline and guides legislators, courts and lawyers in identifying, valuing and interpreting legal norms. In light of the energy transition and the energy crisis in Europe, it is imperative to solidify and cohere the foundations of energy law. INTEL will mark a breakthrough moment in energy law scholarship by putting forward a general doctrine for the field. This outcome will require constructing and analysing the concepts and principles that drive the field and abstracting its theoretical underpinnings from these analyses. INTEL is designed around five transversal Research Questions (RQs) that each unravel layers in the development of the doctrine. Together, the RQs explore the evolution of energy law (RQ1), the concepts and principles emerging from legal sources (RQ2) and the theories underpinning them (RQ3), the way in which legal professionals perceive doctrine (RQ4) and how doctrine can be authenticated by the broader energy law community (RQ5). The exploration of these RQs relies on a mixed methods approach, with each method implemented in its own Work Package (WP). These combine natural language processing and temporal network analysis (WP1), doctrinal legal research and jurisprudence (WP2), co-creation with the community of energy law scholars (WP3) and dialogue-driven expert interviews analysed through grounded theory (WP4). INTEL will advance the field of energy law by bringing coherence and predictability to the legal system governing energy, affording an understanding of the capacity of energy law to govern societal changes and advancing methodological diversity in legal research by creating a novel technique for constructing a general doctrine.

Mots-clés : energy law,natural resources law,european union law
Projet ERC : AQUAGUARD (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de l'est de la Finlande — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498561.0 €

Freshwater has a fundamental role in regulating the state of the Earth system. Various human actions modify the water cycle, disturbing the Earth system functions it provides, such as mediating the planet’s energy balance and sustaining ecosystems. Humanity’s impact on these functions has not been quantified comprehensively, nor do we know what human actions drive water cycle modifications (WCMs) in different parts of the world. This knowledge gap has made it impossible to acknowledge freshwater's crucial Earth system functions in decision-making. As human pressures on the water cycle continue to increase, there is an urgent need for bridging the gap between Earth system science and water management and governance, to safeguard freshwater’s life-supporting Earth system functions. AQUAGUARD rises to this challenge by 1) providing quantifications of the full extent of humanity's disturbance of the Earth system functions of freshwater, globally and in a spatially explicit manner, using novel indicators and spatial delineations; 2) using novel computational methods that will provide new insights into the complex driver interactions behind WCMs; 3) quantifying crucial Earth system impacts of WCMs, using modelling and meta-analysis, and 4) identifying feasible and just opportunities to safeguard freshwater’s Earth system functions, using AQUAGUARD’s quantifications combined with novel indicators of feasibility and equity aspects of freshwater change – at scales that are appropriate for water management and governance.  AQUAGUARD addresses fundamental knowledge gaps at the intersection of hydrology, ecology and biogeochemistry, and provides various new methods and ground-breaking scientific results that will illustrate water as an integral part of the Earth system. By doing so, the project opens up new research avenues within and across these fields and expands perspectives in water management and governance from predominantly local to local-to-global.

Mots-clés : water resources,earth system,global change,global modelling
Projet ERC : DIVREP (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1331375.0 €

Sweeping transformations in reproductive behavior are taking place worldwide. The DIVREP project investigates an unanticipated, yet critical dimension of these changes: increasing within-country disparities in childbearing age and fertility levels, identified primarily in nations with high levels of socioeconomic inequality. Such divergences and growing heterogeneity in reproductive behavior are vital aspects of social stratification that remain poorly understood and have never been scrutinized from a global perspective.  DIVREP goes beyond the state of the art by being the first comprehensive global study of the patterns, trends, and determinants of within-country heterogeneity in two key aspects of reproduction: the age at first birth and fertility levels. Through the novel application of powerful—yet neglected in research on reproductive behavior—measures of distributional variation and by leveraging data from over 120 nations, DIVREP will make innovative contributions to our understanding of global fertility change. DIVREP will:  1) Assemble microdata on the age at first birth and fertility levels for all countries with available information and estimate novel indicators of heterogeneity in reproduction, comparable across time and space. 2) Develop theories of fertility change by investigating global patterns and long-term trends in these indicators to uncover where and under what conditions reproductive trajectories diverge within countries. 3) Uncover the role of individual-level socioeconomic factors in driving divergences in reproduction by performing decomposition analyses. 4) Empirically study, for the first time, the links between macro-level factors related to socioeconomic inequality and reproductive divergences.  Thanks to its pioneering scope, depth, and application of methods, DIVREP will develop a global framework to theorize about the future of population change amidst a paramount societal challenge of our times: growing socioeconomic inequality.

Mots-clés : fertility childbearing age socioeconomic factors cross country analyses global perspective
Projet ERC : LipidBarriers (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1472710.0 €

Antimicrobial resistance is on target to become the leading cause of death by 2050. A major determinant of resistance in Gram-negative bacteria is the tripartite cell envelope, which forms a physical barrier to drugs. Understanding how this structure is made, therefore, is of critical importance. Despite this, how the lipids that make the cell envelope are delivered remains poorly understood. Recently, a family of proteins has emerged that likely holds the key to understanding these lipid transport mechanisms. The DedA family of membrane proteins is conserved across all domains of life and early evidence suggests they are central to lipid transport, antimicrobial sensitivity, and virulence in bacteria. We hypothesise that DedA proteins have fundamental lipid transport roles essential for biogenesis of the cell envelope, making them ideal targets for new approaches to combat antimicrobial resistance. However, the true functions of DedA proteins in Gram-negative bacteria remain unknown, and not a single DedA protein across life has been mechanistically characterised. Our goal is to reveal the first structure of a DedA family protein, using emerging methods including the use of nanobodies with cryo electron microscopy, potentially unveiling an entirely novel cross-kingdom transport mechanism. We will functionally characterise DedA proteins to identify their substrates using cutting-edge native mass spectrometry methods, and determine the route of lipid transport using a new in vivo cross-linking technique that I developed. Finally, we will study the cell envelope compositions of loss-of-function mutations in DedA proteins, and develop a technique to assess alterations in membrane lipid distribution. This research will generate detailed mechanistic insight into how this elusive protein family functions across life, while characterising how bacteria build their bacterial envelope barrier, which is central to their ability to tolerate and resist antimicrobials.

Mots-clés : lipid transport,membrane biogenesis,cryo em,biochemistry,antimicrobial resistance,gram negative bacteria
Projet ERC : WOMB2COT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499990.0 €

Over 25% of infants worldwide are born too soon and/or too small due to adverse exposures during pregnancy, such as maternal malnutrition and infections. Such exposures can also disrupt the maturation of the fetal brain, which is rapidly developing during pregnancy and the first year of life. Hence, these small vulnerable newborns (SVNs), if they survive, are at high risk of poor neurodevelopmental outcomes in later life.  Monitoring anatomical growth is key to optimising and determining SVN care pathways, especially in the first days after birth. Ultrasound (US) enables non-invasive imaging of fetal and neonatal brain anatomy, but growth assessments are based on coarse metrics (e.g., head circumference), with pre- and post-birth measurements rarely integrated. WOMB2COT will tackle these hurdles with a technically ambitious programme that combines US imaging with deep learning (DL) and computational neuroanatomy. We will develop advanced DL-based US image analysis techniques, including neural radiance fields, image registration, and domain adaptation, to quantify brain development in the most vulnerable preterm infants compared to their expected in utero growth trajectory. This approach will utilise longitudinal cUS scans collected in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), offering a more detailed, objective evaluation of neonatal brain growth and bridging the care gap as these infants transition from intra- to extra-uterine life. We aim to reduce US imaging artefacts (e.g., acoustic shadows) and enhance structural specificity to sub-millimetre resolution to extract brain morphometrics (BMs), surpassing coarse and qualitative assessments. Building on our population atlas of healthy brain maturation (Nature 2023) and advanced computational tools, we will compare SVN growth with age-matched healthy fetuses. To maximise its diagnostic utility, WOMB2COT will be developed for low-cost, point-of-care US equipment, benefiting regions with the highest SVN burden.

Mots-clés : ultrasound brain development deep learning medical image analysis segmentation fetus neonate preterm birth fetal growth restriction
Projet ERC : ImmunoSynergy (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2495392.08 €

Antibiotics are among the greatest medical achievements of the 20th century and have significantly extended human lifespan. Nevertheless, bacterial infectious diseases continue to be a leading cause of death worldwide. Antibiotic treatment failures are common and typically linked to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), though resistance genes are not always present in such cases. Innate immune cells, particularly phagocytes serve as the first line of defence against infection, but they can paradoxically become reservoirs for certain pathogens. Within host cells, these bacteria are shielded from many antibiotic classes and may adopt persister phenotypes that confer tolerance, enabling them to survive phagocytosis and reinfect patients. My conviction is that tackling AMR and tolerance requires sophisticated approaches, where we need to find complementary pathways between immune response and antibiotic activity. Recent advances in super-resolution imaging will allow me to scrutinise molecular mechanisms in both host and pathogen that directly influence the outcome of phagocytosis. I propose to i), develop a super-resolution model of phagocytosis, using major AMR pathogen Staphylococcus aureus and host Drosophila melanogaster, to provide ground-breaking insights into the mechanisms of infection; ii), investigate how bacteria coordinate the cell cycle during infection, to identify vulnerabilities and test strategies to kill the internalised pathogens and iii), explore the roles of the host centrosome during phagocytosis, to determine how this organelle regulates the cytoskeleton and assess its potential as a target for immunomodulation. I will harness cutting-edge imaging technology to significantly advance the field of host-pathogen interactions. My main objective is to identify molecular targets and pathways that potentiate phagocytosis of bacteria and use that knowledge to develop synergistic therapies, which I hope can help reduce the global burden of AMR.

Mots-clés : phagocytosis,super resolution microscopy,cell wall,centrosomes,cytoskeleton
Projet ERC : KEYLESS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université technique de Graz — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Graz
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1497941.0 €

Cryptographic primitives are the foundation of security in any secure information system. Permutations and similar keyless cryptographic primitives have risen to great popularity in recent years thanks to their flexibility and performance. They power new lightweight cryptography standards or serve as core building blocks of post-quantum cryptography and advanced privacy-preserving protocols. However, the security analysis of these designs still follows the traditional cryptanalytic methodology based on decades of research in block ciphers, largely ignoring the substantial differences between the two design paradigms.  In KEYLESS, we propose new methodologies to achieve an accurate, transparent security evaluation of keyless primitives. This has the potential to enable drastic performance improvements as well as prevent security vulnerabilities arising from hidden dependencies. We will establish new, fine-grained models of keyless primitives to obtain tighter proofs and lightweight designs. This allows to simultaneously improve both security and efficiency. We will tackle the challenges of keyless settings with novel cryptanalytic techniques and develop formal methods to prove optimality of attacks. In particular, we will systematically take dependencies between rounds or primitive calls into account and thus achieve complete models of complex attacks. Finally, we will explore the full potential of keyless primitives to not only provide efficient security, but also practical robustness and resilience under suboptimal conditions, including misuse and side-channel attacks. Unlike previous work, we will study robustness properties in conjunction to exploit synergies, and obtain new designs that achieve full robustness while maintaining efficiency.  KEYLESS will fund 4 PhD students in the research group of Maria Eichlseder, co-designer of the new NIST standard for lightweight cryptography.

Mots-clés : lightweight cryptography,hash function,permutation,authenticated encryption,cryptanalysis techniques,security model,efficient security,robustness,side channels
Projet ERC : NetZero-Opt (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université technique de Graz — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Graz
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499888.0 €

One of the fundamental problems of using optimization models that represent complex systems – e.g. power systems on their path towards achieving net-zero emissions – is the trade-off between model accuracy and computational tractability. Many applied optimization models that use different time series as data input have become increasingly challenging to solve due to the large time horizons they span and the high complexity of technical constraints with short- and long-term time dynamics. To overcome computational intractability of these optimization models, the dimension of input data and model size is commonly reduced through time series aggregation (TSA) methods. However, applying TSA for optimization models that are governed by varying time dynamics simultaneously is quite challenging. TSA methods mostly focus on short-term dynamics, and rarely include long-term dynamics due to the inherent limitations of TSA. As a result, longer-term dynamics are not captured well by aggregated models, which is imperative for reliably modelling many complex systems. Moreover, traditional TSA methods are based on the common belief that the clusters that best approximate the input data also lead to the aggregated model that best approximates the full model, while the metric that really matters –the resulting output error in optimization results – is not well addressed. This belief is mainly based on the lack of theoretical underpinning relating inputs and output error, rendering existing methods trial-and-error heuristics at best. We plan to challenge this belief by discovering the currently unknown relation between input and output error, and to overcome existing TSA shortcomings by developing the novel theoretical TSA framework for optimization models with varying time dynamics, thereby tapping into unprecedented potential of computational efficiency and accuracy. If this project is successful, it would have untangled the Gordian knot of data aggregation in optimization.

Mots-clés : time series aggregation,optimization,modeling,aggregate modeling,data aggregation,power system models,clustering,linear programming