Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : RHETORICAL (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université technique de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2103467.0 €

Language is the bedrock of human civilization. It shapes how we connect, communicate and collaborate, and how we think, feel and experience. Language is typically viewed as a left-brain function. In contrast, the role of the right brain in language processing is unclear and heavily contested. Compelling evidence suggests that the right hemisphere harbors a language system that is mirror-symmetric to the left and contributes to the reorganization of language functions after brain injury. However, because conventional neuroimaging and non-invasive electrophysiology do not have the necessary spatiotemporal resolution, the cellular and circuit mechanisms are unknown. My key objective is to provide the first investigation of right-hemispheric language processing at single-neuron resolution with coverage of multiple interconnected cortical hubs that serve linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive functions. I will address two central questions. First, how do individual neurons, neuronal populations and their circuits in right brain regions homotopic to the left language regions contribute to our ability to comprehend and produce language? My team and I will perform large-scale recordings from right-hemispheric microelectrode arrays implanted chronically in individuals with left-sided stroke that has compromised some, but not all linguistic skills. This will allow us to describe in unprecedented detail the right-hemispheric engagement in normal and impaired language functions. Second, can we target this right-sided network to drive language recovery after brain injury? My team and I will engineer the investigated circuits using closed-loop neurofeedback and intracortical microstimulation to explore their potential for treating acquired disorders of language. RHETORICAL will bring together my unique expertise in neurology, neuroscience and neurotechnology to propel forward our mechanistic understanding of this singularly and quintessentially human cognitive function.

Mots-clés : language,aphasia,microelectrode array,brain computer interface,extracellular single unit recordings,local field potentials,neurofeedback,intracortical microstimulation
Projet ERC : AiCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AWI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1880998.0 €

We are missing a central piece in the puzzle to understanding our Earth’s climate: Its dynamics fundamentally changed during the “Mid-Pleistocene Transition”, when some 1.2 million years ago the oscillation between warm periods and ice ages shifted its periodicity from 41 to 100 ka. A key set of information about this change was archived in the snow that fell at that time in Antarctica. At unique locations, that snow is still preserved today in the deepest ice layers– but does it still contain its original message? AiCE will answer this key question specifically using chemical impurity signals which make up a large part of the ice core record about past atmospheric conditions. For this purpose, we take a new approach to study the oldest and highly thinned layers at unprecedented detail. While conventional meltwater analysis delivers 1D cm-resolution signals, we go into 2D by imaging the chemical impurity distribution at micro-metric scale in the solid ice core. This way, we can retrieve crucial information that is inevitably lost by melting: The same ice matrix preserving the climatic record can act on it and ultimately destroy it through various processes, causing impurities to relocate away from their original layer. Hence, the goal is to identify the original layering, by detecting post-depositional change through analyzing highly-dimensional chemical images. However, human observers have clear limitations in detecting all the important details in such complex visual datasets. This is why AiCE will add deep learning to deep ice: Artificial intelligence (Ai) image analysis will be established through a comprehensive understanding of the chemical image features and their connection to post-depositional processes. With this, we can address the fundamental climate questions through deciphering deep ice – in Antarctica and elsewhere. Ultimately, AiCE could revolutionize how we interpret the oldest paleoclimate signals in ice cores and other archives.

Mots-clés : polar ice cores,ice core impurities,ice core record preservation,laser ablation,computer vision,beyond epica
Projet ERC : WaterSmartLand (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de Tartu — Pays : Estonie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1909500.0 €

With the growing human population, the diffuse nutrient emissions from agriculture are expected to increase with the rise of fertilizer use. This situation has created a need for “sustainable intensification” by increasing yields while simultaneously decreasing the environmental impacts. Nature-based solutions (NbS) such as wetlands and riparian buffer strips can efficiently reduce the nutrient runoff from agricultural catchments. However, most land and water management studies mostly do not identify specific priority areas where the nutrient runoff to the water bodies is the highest (hotspots) nor do they provide spatially explicit solutions to improve the environmental conditions. Identification of priority areas will be important for ensuring cost-effective interventions to reduce the impact of intensive agriculture. The aim of the proposed project is to develop an analysis, modelling, and machine learning (ML) framework for finding spatially optimal land management scenarios for implementing NbS such as wetlands and riparian buffer strips to reduce agricultural nutrient runoff from catchments at different scales. Moreover, the project will identify the landscape predictor variables at different spatial scales for nutrient concentrations and their cross-scale interactions using ML. We will implement a novel Discrete Global Grid System data cube to manage all environmental data needed for modelling. We will take advantage of the strength and flexibility of existing ML methods to deal with complex ecosystem responses, and to reveal new interactions among water quality predictor variables. ML together with geospatial analysis will help us to develop different spatially explicit NbS allocation scenarios which we will evaluate with process-based hydrological modelling. In addition, we will address the challenges of processing large datasets by using proven parallelisation and distributed computing toolkits.

Mots-clés : water quality,sustainable agriculture,machine learning,hydrological modelling,geospatial analysis,data cube,discrete global grid system
Projet ERC : New Labour Law (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997511.0 €

Labour law gradually protects fewer of the worlds’ workers. Changes in work and capital structure, new technologies and evolving modes of supply and production (together: ‘supply chain capitalism’), lead to an incongruence between the distribution of market power and the premises and tools of labour law, creating barriers to workers’ organization and agency. This incongruence stems from the fact that labour law developed in industrial economies to respond to the power disparities between capital and labour, and is therefore tied to a dyadic employer-employee paradigm in which labour law seeks to empower workers vis-à-vis employers, the presumed owners of capital. Yet this is no longer the case in the era of supply chain capitalism, where the direct employer is often a supplier in a Global Value Chain (GVC), whose economic calculus is dependent on corporations in higher tiers of the chain. Given the crises of both labour law and GVC governance, this project offers a path to restructure labour law to fit new patterns of supply chain capitalism. The project includes three main components: 1) Theoretical: The project intervenes in existing literature and theory on GVC governance and on labour law to propose a new analytical framework for reconceptualizing the role of workers and of labour law in GVC governance. 2) Empirical: Current initiatives to improve workers’ rights in GVCs worldwide are based mostly on voluntary schemes, often perceived as ‘private’ or rooted in ‘soft-law’. The project will closely study existing initiatives and holistically analyse the studies development and examine whether and how labour law can be restructured to support existing successful initiatives and produce new sustainable paths to strengthen worker power in GVCs. 3) Normative: Based on the two preceding parts, the project will create a blueprint for a new, and overdue, labour law for supply chain capitalism.

Mots-clés : labour law,work and employment,global value chains,supply chains,sweatshops,worker organizing,transnational coalitions
Projet ERC : SlideTronics (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2061775.0 €

While the artificial design of pristine crystalline structures and the construction of dedicated periodic playgrounds for atoms and electrons in a solid have transformed our world, much is yet to be explored. I posit that the marvels of van der Waals polytypes should go much beyond and suggest that they offer a remarkable opportunity to rapidly, efficiently, and distinctively swap between numerous different crystals, symmetries, and dispersions at will. We have recently reported several new crystals made from identical 2D layers that differ only by their stacking symmetry. These perfectly commensurate and periodic di-atomic polytypes result in distinct electric potential steps and exclusive ladder-like polarizations owing to their various combinations of broken inversion and mirror symmetries. Our current research focus is mono-atomic polytypes that break both symmetries and offer further fundamental insight into the purely geometric impact of the atomic positions in the unit cell. Our preliminary experiments on graphitic polytypes detect novel internal polarizations, placing us in a great position to explore its interplay with superconductivity and orbital magnetization. The key challenge is to break the polytypes out of their commensurate meta-stable stacking and force the layers to slide at particular interfaces, only along armchair lattice orientation and for discrete inter-atomic distances. We have recently observed that such switching is possible using external electric fields, but only in the case of polar di-atomic bilayers. The swapping involves a thin incommensurate boundary wall encompassing a single stacking fault, which may slide rapidly in a super-lubric manner. Building on our ability to construct and distinguish adjacent polytypes, we aim to develop methods to efficiently switch between many distinctive polytypes and properties. With robust nano-meter and nano-second swapping capabilities, we envision ground-breaking SlideTronic technologies.

Mots-clés : van der waals interface,ferroelectricity,excitons in transition metal dichalcogenides,superlubricity
Projet ERC : INJECT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : École nationale supérieure de techniques avancées — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ENSTA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1915727.17 €

Climate change poses an imminent threat to our civilization. Prominent new technologies to fight climate change involve the earth’s underground renewable and sustainable energy resources and underground storage. However, all these technologies depend on the injection of fluids into the earth’s crust, which, in turn, can cause significant earthquakes. INJECT will solve this problem on the basis of a new, ground-breaking scientific method that will prevent human-induced seismicity and will maximize energy production and storage from renewable and sustainable natural resources. INJECT’s interdisciplinary methodology is based on an astute scientific programme that brings knowledge far beyond the current state of the art. It brings control theory and mathematics to the heart of this new challenging problem. Based on cutting-edge theoretical developments, robust controllers and observers will be designed to optimally adjust fluid injection rates, prevent induced seismic events over large regions and optimize energy production and storage. The controllers will be derived using rigorous mathematical proofs and will take account of the complexity, the heterogeneities and the various uncertainties of the underlying physical processes. INJECT’s innovative theoretical methods will be thoroughly tested through novel numerical models and original experiments. High-fidelity numerical models will account for poro-elasto-dynamics, Coulomb friction, multiphysics and reduced-order modeling, and will outpace any existing algorithms in fault mechanics, both in terms of speed and accuracy. The experimental plan will build on a novel laboratory-scale demonstrator and hybrid lab-computer testing that will be designed and constructed to experimentally validate INJECT’s new concepts. Only then will it be possible to apply INJECT’s methodology in practice and unlock the significant energy potential of the Earth, reduce carbon emissions and help save our civilization.

Mots-clés : earthquake mechanics,control theory,soil dynamics,geomechanics
Projet ERC : FILM AND DEATH (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université nouvelle de Lisbonne — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1703834.0 €

FILM AND DEATH defends the hypothesis that to film-philosophize is to learn to die. This will be achieved by rethinking the innovations that film brings to recent philosophies of death and the metaphysics of time. A new paradigm for understanding the relationship between film and philosophy is proposed that claims 1) that film-philosophy’s methodology is a meditation on death, and 2) that ‘films think’ and have their own ways of creating novel thoughts that are not our own. One of these thoughts concerns death, a phenomenon of which we have no image but that film renders visible as a death-image (a direct image of passing time, facing the impossibility of any representation). We will assert that the cinematic experience is in itself equal to awareness of one’s own mortality, as a memento mori, without which we would not philosophize at all. The project has three key aims: 1) to demonstrate that film-philosophy contains significant philosophical insights; 2) to show that such insights are best understood by means of film’s novel ways of thinking of time, finitude, and death; and 3) to argue that film’s thinking about finite time gives new meaning to philosophy’s traditional role as a meditation on death. To support this, a new conceptual map for studying the ways in which death and time are linked through moving images is proposed. The project will offer a contemporary view on death as a cultural phenomenon that has shaped twentieth-century thinking in general and films in particular, putting the usual anthropocentric definitions of death into perspective. A timely undertaking given the ever-growing presence of film and moving media in our lives, it will probe and question our own paradoxical existential condition as members of a thanatophobic society that rarely focuses on death in the everyday but discusses it readily when it is depicted in movies and TV.

Mots-clés : philosophy of film
Projet ERC : MeioticCondensate (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998750.0 €

Meiosis universally relies on the formation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) to initiate a genome-wide recombination program that promotes genetic diversity and is required to produce chromosomally-balanced haploid gametes. DSB formation is catalyzed by Spo11, which in acts in conjunction with nine essential partners in yeast, including the RMM proteins. We previously found that RMM undergoes DNA-dependent condensation, and proposed that this organizes intracellular sub-compartments within which controlled DSB formation takes place. The RMM proteins connect DSB formation to chromosome structure, and are subject to overlapping regulatory pathways that control the timing, position, and number of DSBs. However, the molecular assemblies that catalyze DSB formation and the mechanisms whereby they are regulated remain poorly understood. Here, I propose an approach that takes advantage of our established biochemical and molecular genetics techniques, combined with the development of novel methodologies, to unravel the central role of RMM condensation in DSB formation. Specifically, we will address the following outstanding questions: (1) What are the mechanisms of post-translational control of RMM condensation? (2) How does transcription impact condensation and DSB formation? (3) How does the chromosome axis affect RMM condensation? (4) What are the quantitative molecular interactions that underlie condensation? (5) Which proteins associate with RMM condensates? (6) What is the impact of RMM condensation on chromatin structure? This proposal harnesses our current knowledge of the molecular properties of DSB proteins to explore new models and hypotheses regarding the relationships between the DSB machinery and the cell. My goal is to gain insights into the molecular processes that underlie genetic inheritance. In addition, this work will contribute to our understanding of the role of biomolecular condensation as an organizing principle of cellular structure and function.

Mots-clés : meiosis,dna recombination,phase separation,protein interaction,phosphorylation,atomic force microscopy,interactomics,chromatin structure,saccharomyces cerevisiae
Projet ERC : BildungLearning (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1987500.0 €

The main objective of this project is to compare the modern philosophy of Bildung and the contemporary paradigm of the Learning Society (LS) by systematically analyzing their homological structures. Through this comparison, we aim to expose the important conceptual mutations of the ideal of educational autonomy occurring from the first paradigm to the latter. This research combines history of philosophy and political philosophy and will follow a plan in four steps: 1. Historical reconstruction of the constellation of texts formed around the concept of Bildung in classical German philosophy, through an original typology of the contrasting positions of the main authors of this period, from Herder to Humboldt. 2. Identification and analysis of the most significant critical transformations of the Bildung concept by influential philosophers since the second half the 19th century. 3. Establishment of a corpus of scientific and political texts and discourses on the LS, for comparing the paradigm of LS to the modern philosophy of Bildung following an analytical grid pointing the conceptual and normative homologies and mutations between them. 4. Concrete application of this systematic comparison and testing of the heuristic potential of the Bildung philosophy in the particular context of the current debates on the transformations of the Idea of University. The novel aspects of the this project are twofold: (a) To provide an innovative comparative method for systematically analyzing the contemporary mutations of modern philosophical concepts. (b) To lay the foundations for a comprehensive philosophy of University and academic freedom. Through an analysis of political-educational narratives, we will show that the great narratives of the philosophical modernity – such as emancipation through self-cultivation – have not become obsolete or ineffective, but continue to be operating in current discourses under critical and fragmented forms.

Mots-clés : modern philosophy german idealism philosophy of culture idea of university