Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MultiQubit (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 228066.25 €

MultiQubit is built on the concept of a novel type of quantum dots — crystal-phase quantum dots — discovered and developed by the PI. Crystal-phase quantum dots have a unique advantage — growth control with the ultimate accuracy of a single atomic layer. This advantage will break the major limitation in the field of optically-active quantum dots — impossibility to build quantum devices with multiple quantum dots due to lack of the required growth control — and thus unlock their true potential for Quantum Technologies. Based on these, MultiQubit is committed to creating a robust technological platform for making solid-state multi-qubit devices with a photonic interface. This platform shall be a game-changer in Quantum Technologies, allowing to connect quantum computers across the world. In particular, MultiQubit will develop and demonstrate all the steps from the fabrication of basic quantum structures to distributed entanglement between remote nodes of a multi-qubit Quantum Information Network. For the successful realization of these ideas, the PI proposes three key objectives: 1. Explore and demonstrate a novel crystal-phase qubit — the central element of MultiQubit. This qubit is based on crystal-phase quantum dots, which are fully designable and scalable, because their geometry can be controlled with the ultimate accuracy of a single atomic layer during the growth. 2. Build the first designable and scalable multi-qubit quantum register with a photonic interface. This is one of the major components in Quantum Information Networks to be implemented. 3. Design and demonstrate a quantum network of multi-qubit photonic devices. This may be a potential prototype of the forthcoming Quantum Internet.

Mots-clés : quantum information networks,quantum dots,nanowires,quantum nanophotonics
Projet ERC : CULTEXP (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Université Paris Nanterre — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Paris Nanterre
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Multicultural societies need cultural expertise for solving conflicts. Cultural expertise is to date provided by specialists as specialised and expensive services of expert witnessing and conflict settlement in court and out-of-court. Cultural expertise is not available outside specialised circles of legal professionals. In order to foster the transfer of knowledge about cultural expertise, EURO-EXPERT created CULTEXP as the first multilingual, cross-jurisdictional legal database on cultural expertise. CULTEXP generates an expectation of impact including both societal and economic benefits for the resolution of conflicts and the ascertainment of rights that require cross-cultural knowledge. This PoC will test CULTEXP for its potential of social interest commercialisation. In the present form CULTEXP is a “stripped back” demonstrator holding about 4000 case law and 1000 expert reports from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, India, Malta, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. CULTEXP’s design is unprecedented for its focus on cultural expertise but also for its architecture which uses ad hoc created or adapted OA software allowing cross-jurisdictional and multilingual search, powered by a combination of human and machine translation. Compared with existing legal databases CULTEXP is extensively more performant because it reaches cross-sectorally most types of legal professions. CULTEXP searches simultaneously across fields of law and languages, provides country specific legal citations, and full texts with translation option; it is free for users, accessible without training, and inexpensive to run. If CULTEXP can be successfully tested, we will establish a start-up with a protect community interest focusing on Open Access, inclusion of non-Anglophone knowledge, inclusion of non-Anglophone users, benefit for disadvantaged social groups, and relief to the taxpayers.

Mots-clés : culture,conflict resolution,claim of rights,database,legal referencing,expert witnessing
Projet ERC : CULTEXP (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
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 : 150000.0 €

Multicultural societies need cultural expertise for solving conflicts. Cultural expertise is to date provided by specialists as specialised and expensive services of expert witnessing and conflict settlement in court and out-of-court. Cultural expertise is not available outside specialised circles of legal professionals. In order to foster the transfer of knowledge about cultural expertise, EURO-EXPERT created CULTEXP as the first multilingual, cross-jurisdictional legal database on cultural expertise. CULTEXP generates an expectation of impact including both societal and economic benefits for the resolution of conflicts and the ascertainment of rights that require cross-cultural knowledge. This PoC will test CULTEXP for its potential of social interest commercialisation. In the present form CULTEXP is a “stripped back” demonstrator holding about 4000 case law and 1000 expert reports from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, India, Malta, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. CULTEXP’s design is unprecedented for its focus on cultural expertise but also for its architecture which uses ad hoc created or adapted OA software allowing cross-jurisdictional and multilingual search, powered by a combination of human and machine translation. Compared with existing legal databases CULTEXP is extensively more performant because it reaches cross-sectorally most types of legal professions. CULTEXP searches simultaneously across fields of law and languages, provides country specific legal citations, and full texts with translation option; it is free for users, accessible without training, and inexpensive to run. If CULTEXP can be successfully tested, we will establish a start-up with a protect community interest focusing on Open Access, inclusion of non-Anglophone knowledge, inclusion of non-Anglophone users, benefit for disadvantaged social groups, and relief to the taxpayers.

Mots-clés : culture,conflict resolution,claim of rights,database,legal referencing,expert witnessing
Projet ERC : MPCPRO (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Aarhus University — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2421995.0 €

Multiparty computation (MPC) is a cryptographic technique allowing us to build distributed computer systems for handling confidential data. We can control exactly what information is released from the system, and privacy of the input data is maintained, even if an adversary breaks into several of the machines in the system. The efficiency of MPC protocols has been significantly improved in recent years. There are countless applications and the techniques are just now entering the commercial domain. However, the theory of the area has in several respects failed to keep up with this development, and we are still very far from being able to apply MPC to large-scale applications. In this project, we propose that state of the art for MPC protocols can be dramatically advanced by 1) Developing a completely new theory for the performance of MPC protocols based on a more detailed model that better reflects what happens when protocols are executed on real platforms. 2) Use the new theory to guide development and implementation of new MPC protocols that will perform much better in practice. 3) Explore the limits of what we can achieve by showing new lower bounds for MPC protocols, attacking a number of long-standing open problems. This will enable us to focus our attention to where improvements are possible.

Mots-clés : multiparty computation,protocols
Projet ERC : MultiBD-CHALLENGE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Saarland University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Multiple bonds have an enourmous impact on our lives as they are extremely useful functionalities in important industrial chemical transformations and products. The new millennium has witnessed considerable progress in the chemistry of main group compounds with multiple bonds. In case of elements other than carbon, the utilization of bulky ligands, with the appropriate steric and electronic effects, is a crucial factor in the stabilization of such species. Nevertheless, heteronuclear compounds containing triple bonds between the heavier elements of Group 13 and Group 15 are so far unknown. This proposal will address this knowledge gap by the use of donor-acceptor interactions to stabilize such compounds. The hypothesis rests not only in the stabilization provided by the Lewis base species but also on the electronic features enforced by them. This proposal will utilize the tools of experimental and computational chemistry in tandem, as an efficient and predictive strategy to gain synthetic access to the hitherto unknown triple bonds. These structures will present a multifunctional character, by having two pi-bonds, a lone pair on the Group 15 element, and Lewis base donors. Thus, given the unique bonding situation, they are expected to serve as innovative reagents for the activation of organic small molecules, as well as excellent metal-free catalysts and versatile coordination ligands toward transition metals. Furthermore, the heteroatomic triple bond motif is expected to provide unprecedented precursors for growing high-quality III-V semiconductor films. Therefore, the specific aims of this project are: (i) to comprehensively design the syntheses of these unique compounds; (ii) to develop and exploit their reactivity and; (iii) to harvest their potential in materials science. Achieving these aims will have a tremendous impact on various areas of academic and industrial interest ranging from catalysis and energy storage materials to photovoltaic devices.

Mots-clés : multiple bonds,donor acceptor interactions,bonding analysis,main groups,reactivity,greenhouse gases,energy storage,inorganic aromatic rings,semiconductors
Projet ERC : 20SInhibitor (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a cancer of plasma cells, that is incurable, and the second most common form of blood cancer. Proteasome inhibitors (PIs) are considered a mainstay in the treatment of MM and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Current drugs, based on PIs however, target the chymotrypsin-like activity of the 20S proteasome, and inhibit the activities of both the 20S and 26S proteasomes. Thus, it is possible that selective drug intervention specifically inhibiting only the 20S proteasomes will reduce toxicity, and minimize the deleterious side effects of the current therapeutic regimens. Our preliminary work revealed a family of 20S proteasome inhibitors, which we termed Catalytic Core Regulators (CCRs) that selectively target the 20S proteasome rather than the 26S complex. Based on sequence motif and structural elements of the CCRs we have designed an artificial protein that is capable of inhibiting the 20S proteasome. We anticipate that these findings will lead to the design of synthetic proteins, peptides or peptidomimetic compounds targeting cancer cells more specifically. This specificity will pose the compounds in an attractive light for using them in various therapeutic applications. What is exciting from the commercialization perspective, is that pharmaceutical research has switched to revisit the use of peptides as therapeutics. Pharmaceutical companies have seen the development of peptides as a promising direction to lower their risk position. Overall, peptide therapeutics have a 20% chance of receiving regulatory approval, a probability that is 50% higher than that for the approval of small molecules, which form the basis of so called traditional drugs. In the project, we will carry out actions, which will equip us with the sufficient IP protection strategy, business strategy, industry networks and initial contacts for taking the innovation out from the laboratory to next phase in developing therapy first for MM and MCL later on.

Mots-clés : 20s proteasome,26s proteasome,proteasome inhibitors,peptide based drugs,multiple myeloma
Projet ERC : MELA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999978.0 €

Multiple registers coexisting within the same linguistic system and the creation of grammars codifying one of these registers as ‘the standard’ are phenomena common to many languages. The same issues are observed in the remarkable history of Greek, where the high-register variety has competed with other, lower-register varieties in a relation of mutual influence throughout the centuries. Recent scholarship has devoted attention to these dynamics, primarily focusing either on the earlier (Post-classical) or the later (Early Modern/ Modern) stages. The central period, essential to our understanding of the development of the language, has not received the same attention. Yet, the late Byzantine era provides exceptional sources: the very textbooks and manuscripts of the time, which offer a direct view onto the dynamic attitudes of medieval users toward their language. MELA maintains that, if studied with an innovative combination of philological and paleographical approaches, alongside new insights from the Digital Humanities, socio-linguistics and semiotics, these neglected sources will change our understanding of Medieval Greek language and literature. MELA will put Medieval Greek in dialogue with current debates in linguistics, and recast our view of such an important period for the cultural history of Europe. The project will create: 1) the first Digital Grammar of the high-register Greek taught at medieval schools; 2) a new theoretical framework to study (a) how languages and standardization work in general; (b) the dynamic relationships ‘language-society’, ‘language-human mind’, ‘linguistic register(s)-social functions’. The Grammar, a textual corpus database equipped with multiple search options will be the instrument that brings about a paradigm shift in the study of language by disclosing the perspective of medieval users. The theoretical framework will make Medieval Greek an important locus for applying, testing, and verifying current linguistic theories.

Mots-clés : historical linguistics,digital humanities,semiotics
Projet ERC : DecOmPress (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a paradigmatic progressive neuroinflammatory disease characterized by multiple lesions across the entire central nervous system including both gray and white matter areas. Deconvoluting the spatio-temporal cellular and molecular landscape is therefore key to understanding underlying disease mechanisms and to develop cell-type specific therapies. The DecOmPress proposal is about integrative human and mouse single-cell genomic strategies to track-down reactive cellular states in compartmentalized progressive neuroinflammation. DecOmPress has two major research tracks (RTs). RT1 is an MS tissue discovery pipeline utilizing single-nucleus RNA and open chromatin sequencing. RT1 is about developing novel integrative computational tools to process sequencing data from different anatomical lesion areas implementing a large multiplex single-nucleus genomic dataset from the anterior visual system. RT1 is also about decoding compartmentalized inflammation in meningeal versus perivascular tissue niches. RT2 is a functional validation pipeline utilizing complex transgenic and disease mouse models as well as human organoids in combination with single-cell physiology and genomics. RT2 is about dissecting glial-intrinsic mechanisms at the chronically inflamed white matter lesion rim focusing on MS-specific oligodendrocyte and microglia subtypes. RT2 is also about decoding neuron subtype specific pathologies focusing on projection neurons and the contribution of local (meningeal) and distant (white matter tracts) inflammation and demyelination to cell-type specific neurodegeneration. In summary, DecOmPress is a highly innovative and fully translational multidisciplinary proposal aiming at identifying novel cell-type specific disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets.

Mots-clés : multiple sclerosis,neuroinflammation,single cell genomics,systems biology,demyelinating diseases,neurodegeneration,glia biology
Projet ERC : RNAVirFitness (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
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 : 1495625.0 €

Mutations are fundamental drivers of evolution. Characterizing how mutations affect fitness is critical across diverse fields: from pathogen biology, to human genetic diseases, and models of population extinction. RNA viruses, notorious for their high mutation rates and rapid generation times, are ideal models for studying the effects of mutations. To date, deleterious mutations (i.e., mutations with a fitness cost) have been understudied as compared to beneficial mutations, mainly since it has been technically unfeasible to sequence each single rare deleterious mutation. Using novel next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques, we and others have recently overcome this gap, and shown that an appreciable proportion of viral genetic diversity is a consequence of a multitude of rare deleterious mutations. Here, we suggest investigating the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) across a diverse array of RNA viruses, spanning representatives of each class of major human pathogens, both in vivo (in patients) and in vitro (in cell culture). Next, we will focus on genetic linkage and context-dependent fitness effects of mutations. We postulate that over- and under-represented sequence contexts may represent signatures of host anti-viral activity. Finally, we will investigate how the DFE changes following an environmental perturbation (physical and metabolic changes, tissue type, and sex of the host). We will explore how the accumulation of deleterious mutations following rapid perturbations may lead to the extinction of the viral population, and how this can be used as a novel strategy to tackle viral epidemics. To this end we will integrate state-of-the-art NGS, population genetics modelling, and reverse genetics validation. Beyond their contribution to evolutionary biology, we anticipate that our results may be harnessed for the design of safe and effective attenuated vaccine strains, and the development of broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutic strategies.

Mots-clés : virus evolution,population genetics
Projet ERC : TARGETMENISCUS (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Lund University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1973764.0 €

My goal is to determine the molecular degradation of meniscus tissue, a “new” disease that leads to degenerative meniscus tears and osteoarthritis (OA). My prior research has revealed that meniscus tears are a frequent entity in OA, not typically caused by knee trauma. By focusing on the meniscus, we aim to discover novel biomarkers and new targets for pharmaceutical intervention against OA, by preventing meniscus degradation and stimulating its regeneration. In our ageing population, the burden of OA is rapidly increasing, making the first disease-modifying OA treatment an urgent matter. The proposal is based on my biobank consisting of human tissue from total knee joint replacements, knee arthroscopies, and healthy donor knees, including menisci, synovial fluid, hyaline cartilage, and blood. The two linked work packages are: WP1 Proteomics: Identification of the proteome of the meniscal matrix and biomarkers of degeneration using exploratory and targeted mass spectrometry. WP2 7T imaging: Arthroscopy patients will undergo ultra-high field 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pre-operatively and at two follow-ups. Using both high-resolution and emerging compositional imaging sequences, we will determine meniscus matrix degradation and hyaline cartilage quality changes after knee surgery. Importantly, we will link proteomics with early stage knee OA development to provide proof-of-concept that the identified biomarkers and molecular treatment targets are associated with OA. My key team members include orthopaedic surgeons, an analytical chemist with expertise in mass spectrometry, a medical physicist with expertise in MRI, and a biostatistician. We further work in international collaborations. As the principal investigator, I have an internationally recognized track record in OA research, with a novel focus on the meniscus. We will accomplish our goals by our combined expertise, unique materials, state-of-the-art methods, dedication, and continued hard work.

Mots-clés : biomarkers,proteomics,orthopedics,rheumatology,magnetic resonance imaging,osteoarthritis,biomechanics,mass spectrometry