Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MitoContact (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3287500.0 €

Mitochondria are central to modern eukaryotic life, but how they carry out their functions in space and time within the cellular milieu is remarkably enigmatic. Contributing to the complexity of this question, mitochondria face dual existential challenges: supporting their life cycle as self-reproducing, DNA-containing organelles; and supporting the energetic and signaling needs of the host cell. A universal feature in how mitochondria address these challenges is via engagement in membrane contact sites (MCS) - sites of intracellular signaling or biomolecular exchange - with partner organelles. Candidate MCS proteins between partners range into the hundreds, driving speculation that diverse contacts exist. However, technological limitations in measuring the composition, structure, dynamics and physiology of transient MCS have hindered progress in dissecting their functional diversity.  Our project will develop and apply cutting-edge technologies to investigate the dynamics and molecular organization of MCS, to reveal how individual contacts locally coordinate mitochondrial physiology and function. We will deploy (1) chemical biology “recorders,” enabling us to trace the history of MCS and physiology. We will combine this with (2) live-cell “smart microscopy,” driven by closed-loop feedback through real time neural-network recognition of cellular events, to capture dynamics with high specificity and spatio-temporal resolution and (3) cellular cryo-correlative microscopy to obtain structural snapshots and gain insights into MCS molecular architecture. We will focus on heterotypic and homotypic contacts implicated in mitochondrial proliferation, degradation, molecular exchange, and metabolic states. Our synergistic approach will allow us to screen for MCS inhibitors or stabilizers and measure the impact of disrupting contacts. Thus, we expect our project to have broader implications for therapeutics, and our tools to impact fundamental biological discovery beyond MCS.

Mots-clés : mitochondria,membrane contact sites,fluorescence microscopy,electron microscopy,cryo em,smart microscopy,super resolution microscopy,fluorescent biosensors
Projet ERC : PSINumScat (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
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 : 2052819.0 €

Designing fast and reliable algorithms to numerically simulate the behaviour of high-frequency acoustic and electromagnetic waves is a longstanding open problem in computational mathematics. Furthermore, these waves underpin a plethora of communication and imaging technologies; therefore any progress towards solving this problem will have wide impact.  The project aims to design, analyse, and implement in open-source software new methods for the numerical solution of high-frequency acoustic and electromagnetic wave scattering problems. These methods will be faster, more reliable, and more widely applicable than current state-of-the-art methods, with this improvement achieved by exploiting techniques from pure mathematics specifically designed to study high-frequency problems; these techniques are from the area of semiclassical analysis and are based on studying functions in phase space (the combination of physical and frequency space). Since both numerical analysis and semiclassical analysis of high-frequency wave scattering problems are mature areas of mathematics, it is surprising that these two fields have operated largely in isolation from each other, with essentially none of the deep insights about high-frequency waves from semiclassical analysis used in the design of numerical methods for these problems. This project will exploit this untapped potential and implement the resulting methods in the open-source multiphysics finite-element software FreeFEM (https://freefem.org/) in easy-to-use packages. These packages will be designed for researchers in the applied sciences and industry seeking to simulate the behaviour of high-frequency acoustic and electromagnetic waves.  These goals will be achieved by combining the expertise of the three PIs: JG, an expert in semiclassical analysis, ES, an expert in the numerical analysis of high-frequency scattering, and PT, an expert in scientific computing and the lead developer of FreeFEM.

Mots-clés : high frequency,scattering,helmholtz,maxwell,finite element method,boundary element method,domain decomposition
Projet ERC : IRASTRO (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 5856310.0 €

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has ushered in a new era in observational astrochemistry. JWST's ability to obtain infrared spectra of molecular ices condensed on interstellar dust grains in dense, star-forming clouds and in protoplanetary disks is expected to revolutionize the field, since these ices are known to be important sources of complex organic molecules. On a fundamental level, the physico-chemical behavior of these ices obeys the laws of molecular quantum dynamics occurring in low-temperature condensed phases. This is a forefront research area in chemical physics that, unfortunately, remains poorly understood. This project establishes an interdisciplinary, synergistic research consortium to address this knowledge deficit, bringing together the unique expertise of the groups of Alec Wodtke (Chemical Physics at Surfaces), Liv Hornekær (Astrochemistry and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) and Peter Saalfrank (Theoretical Quantum Dynamics). Under IRASTRO, we will develop and employ advanced infrared technology based on superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) for new experimental capability in laboratory experiments directly relevant to astrochemistry. We will combine megapixel SNSPD arrays with échelle spectrometers enabling solid-state mid-infrared emission spectroscopy, including single-molecule mid-IR spectroscopy in a scanning tunneling microscope. With these new experiments and forefront quantum theory, we will tackle three research themes: 1) Infrared Spectra of Molecules on Surfaces under Interstellar Conditions, 2) Energy Dissipation Channels on Low Temperature Surfaces, and 3) Chemical Reactivity under Interstellar Conditions. IRASTRO’s focus on IR spectroscopy will make the project’s findings directly relevant to the interpretation of JWST observational data and, through a fruitful collaboration of experiment and theory, provide a better fundamental understanding of astrochemistry.

Mots-clés : superconducting nanowire single photon detectors condensed phase tunneling mid infrared spectroscopy
Projet ERC : Resilience (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2089597.5 €

There is an urgent need to understand the catastrophic effects that global environmental and climate change can have on the Earth, its system components and ecosystems. One area of critical concern is the imminent high-impact, abrupt and irreversible tipping of ecosystems. Recent discoveries indicate that tipping could be evaded and even reversed in ecosystems through spatial pattern formation of vegetation, thereby creating pathways of resilience. Many undiscovered pathways of resilience through spatial pattern formation could exist for tipping-prone ecosystems. This resilience could be even enhanced by the unexplored connection between spatial pattern formation and community assembly. The aim of RESILIENCE is to fundamentally advance our understanding and predictions of tipping and critical transitions in ecosystems and reveal how these can be evaded and even reversed through spatial pattern formation. The RESILIENCE team consists of field-leading and complementary PI’s and is capable of addressing all aspects of this overarching project, linking theory and observation, spanning the fields of ecology, physics and mathematics. RESILIENCE will develop a new theory for emerging resilience through spatial pattern formation and link this with real tipping-prone biomes undergoing accelerating global change: savanna and tundra. Central to our theoretical approach is the novel mathematical connection between the origin of the formation of patterns and their resilience once they emerged. Our empirical approach will include the analysis of existing and new data from in situ observations and drone and satellite-based remote sensing. Our research will reveal which conditions and spatial patterns lead to the evasion and even reversal of tipping. Identifying these conditions and patterns will also expose how human interventions can prevent or reverse tipping and uncover that tipping-prone ecosystems could be much more resilient than currently thought.

Mots-clés : self organisation,spatial pattern formation,tipping points,critical transitions
Projet ERC : PROTOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
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 : 301322.5 €

All information humankind has of the ancient past of our planet comes from analyzing the geological record encoded in rocks. There is, however, no rock record of the first 600 million years of Earth’s history. Unlocking the secrets of this earliest period –the Hadean– is a fundamental task for science, as it is key to understanding how the planet became habitable, when the first forms of metabolism and self-replication developed, and life appeared. The lack of a geological record has led scientists to use computational modeling to make inferences about the conditions in Early Earth’s environments. Less common are laboratory experiments specifically targeted to simulating Hadean conditions. Based on ubiquitous carbonaceous chert deposits in the oldest rock record, it is widely accepted that many early Archean aquatic settings were reducing and rich in silica and some basic carbon-based molecules. We reason that such aquatic conditions were already established during the early Hadean, and inevitably led to the existence of a large-scale factory of simple and complex organic compounds, many of them relevant to prebiotic chemistry and to the route to biomimetic hybrid microstructures able to self-organize and catalyze prebiotic reactions relevant to the origin of life. Our project is aimed at understanding the crucial role of silica in directing the geochemical and protobiological processes, creating habitats for early life, and preserving early biomass on Earth’s surface during the first billion years of its history. PROTOS will use an array of laboratory experiments (the Hadean Simulator) to systematically study ab-initio reactions of water and gases with the earliest rock types in order to determine compositions of aquatic habitats and subsequent silica precipitation mechanisms, organic synthesis processes on silica/iron surfaces, and the preservation of the first remnants of life. PROTOS will change our view of the infancy of the planet.

Mots-clés : hadean,early earth,mineral self organization,serpentinization,silica,self organization,prebiotic,chemistry,life detection,origin of life
Projet ERC : EUROpest (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université George-Washington — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GWU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 961250.0 €

Born from years of interdisciplinary collaboration, EUROpest aims to articulate the complex ways in which social-ecological systems shape epidemics. It builds on resilience and actor-network theories to advance its own eco-bio-social paradigm that embraces a multi-causal understanding of disease transmission and disease impacts on human societies and ecosystems. While striving to develop and validate a general theoretical model, it takes the well-documented and highly diverse world of late medieval and early modern Europe as its laboratory – investigating its interconnected climatic, cultural, demographic, economic, ecological, and pathogenic history. With regard to the latter, EUROpest assumes malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis and enteric diseases were major components of a disease baseline over which the most devastating disease, plague (Y. pestis), occurred. EUROpest will carry out regional case studies – from Spain to Lithuania, Greece to England – selected on the basis of available and procurable written, scientific and archaeological data. It will holistically consider the contexts of plague outbreaks identified in those regions, to understand how context both facilitated outbreaks and also shaped them, and their short- and medium-term impacts. EUROpest combines archival source analysis with archaeology, archaeogenetics, paleoecology and paleoclimatology, and subjects case studies to novel human-supervised machine-learning to identify the causal role of factors influencing regional outbreaks. As the contemporary imagination is guided in its understanding of epidemic disease by the outbreaks of the past, EUROpest’s contribution will be critical to developing more nuanced and realistic scenarios of future pandemics, academic as well as popular. With EUROpest PIs already engaging policy makers, the mathematical precision of the eco-bio-social analysis EUROpest proposes will help design more successful and targeted interventions for future pandemic response.

Mots-clés : adna studies,palaeogenomics,environmental history,interdisciplinary history,disease history,climate history,plague,smallpox,machine learning in historical applications
Projet ERC : MicroClock (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2938913.75 €

Circadian clocks are biological timekeepers. They structure processes - from molecular pathways to behavioural attributes - over the 24h day. They are pervasive in eukaryotes yet remain almost completely unknown in bacteria. We propose to address this major knowledge gap by capitalising on our recent breakthrough discovery of a circadian clock in Bacillus subtilis. Our unpublished data reveal that robustness of the B. subtilis circadian clock increases when co-cultured with either the plant Arabidopsis, or the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We propose that the mutualistic interactions between microbes and other organisms in their environment utilise circadian clocks, allowing us to propose the new concept of “temporal mutualism”. Within this project, we will identify and understand the molecular structure and function of the B. subtilis circadian clock (WP1), which will be the first detailed characterisation of a circadian clock in a non-photosynthetic bacterium. We will exploit the interactions that occur between B. subtilis and plant circadian clocks to define this new concept of temporal mutualism (WP2 and 3). Co-culture of B. subtilis with S. cerevisiae will identify regulatory nodes that are common to plant/bacterium and fungus/bacterium temporal mutualism (WP3). We will probe the novel hypothesis that biofilm enables intra-species temporal mutualism via differentiated cell populations within the matrix-bound structure (WP3). We will use circadian formalisms (behaviour), molecular systems analysis and state of the art technological approaches (e.g., combinations of microfluidics, microscopy, reporter gene technology and optogenetics), which is only possible through our interdisciplinary collaboration. This work will drive a paradigm shift, to open a completely new field that will change current thinking by bridging chronobiology with microbiology and ecology.

Mots-clés : circadian rhythm,circadian clock,chronobiology,bacillus subtilis,arabidopsis,saccharomyces cerevisiae
Projet ERC : MakingBlood (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Sanquin — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 4905272.0 €

Life-saving blood cell replacement depends on voluntary donors. Availability is a challenge for specific groups, and 25% of patients needing blood stem cell transplants lack a compatible donor. The ideal alternative is clinical-scale production of Haematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC) from laboratory-maintained tissue-compatible sources, to provide an off-the-shelf source of blood cells. HSC are generated in the aorta/gonad/mesonephros region of the embryo, expand in the foetal liver, and are maintained in the bone marrow of adults. Current attempts to generate HSC in vitro do not consider the changing cellular, chemical, and physical characteristics of the different environments met by HSC in vivo from embryo to adult, and have been unable to reliably produce functional HSC. MakingBlood aims to establish a proof-of-concept platform for robust generation of human HSC from pluripotent stem cells by developing a self-organising gastruloid model of embryonic HSC generation without genetic manipulation, and successively recapitulating the natural foetal and adult HSC development environments. MakingBlood brings together an expert in HSC embryonic development, a national blood bank research director with expertise in adult HSC, an expert in molecular regulation of cell fate choices, and a bioengineer with expertise in mechanical and chemical integration for tissue production to deliver this breakthrough platform. By using state-of-the-art technology and multidisciplinary approaches, we will systematically detangle cellular, chemical, and physical properties of natural HSC generation, amplification and maintenance microenvironments, and iteratively identify essential elements that enable and promote HSC function. We will integrate key elements into modular scalable engineered niches to establish a HSC production platform, which can be developed as a bioreactor for on-demand blood production, and eventually replace donations as the clinical source of HSC and mature blood cells.

Mots-clés : gastruloids,engineered stem cell niches,mechanobiology,hematopoietic stem cells,developmental hematopoiesis
Projet ERC : SUNRISE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Barcelone — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2630432.0 €

Paediatric tumours represent a challenge in the landscape of cancer research. Unlike adult cancers, they typically originate from embryonic cells, from which they inherit characteristic embryonic features. This is exemplified by neuroblastoma (NB), the most common solid tumour in young children. NB is a heterogeneous cancer with aggressive metastatic forms, which emerges from neural crest cells. These cells normally undergo a complex migratory process that depends on the functions of cell surface signalling receptors. In a recent, ground-breaking study we found that NB cells co-opt one specific family of these receptors (UNC5) and the ligand GPC3 to disseminate (Cell 2022). Disruption of this interaction in vivo impacted on cell cohesion, migratory properties and redirected tumour localisation. Here we provide unpublished data analysis, suggesting that an entire UNC5 interaction network, involving multiple different ligands besides GPC3, is at play in malignant NB. Understanding the mechanisms driving NB cell aggressive behaviours requires investigation of this network in the embryonic context. A key strength of the proposal is our unique approach bringing molecular/structural biology to in vivo experiments. Our strategy maximises the use of targeted, structure-based perturbation experiments, where we control the activity of individual receptor interaction precisely, in vivo. We also have the necessary access to patient samples and will use our innovative avian xenograft model which recapitulates the embryonic environment of NB. In a final workpackage we will apply our strategy, developed with a focus on NB, to two other paediatric cancers where UNC5 is expressed. In sum, the results of SUNRISE will produce a first detailed picture of the ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ UNC5 network interactions drive paediatric cancer biology, and could lead to new therapeutics, for example, using nanobody technology.

Mots-clés : membrane receptor,cell migration,cell cell interactions,neuro developmental cancer,neuroblastoma,structural biology,embryonic neuro development
Projet ERC : SWIMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2714222.5 €

SWIMS vision is to propose a bio-inspired paradigm change for the design and hardware of future smart wireless multimodal sensory systems that will operate with stochastic spikes, offering a breakthrough with unrivalled energy efficiency at system level, for event detections and communication. The scientific breakthroughs proposed here are sine qua non advancements for a sustainable deployment of billions of future Internet of Things nodes to support smart economy and society development, with large energy savings and limited impact on environment. The synergistic interaction of four complementary skilled PIs enables the realization of a radically-novel end-to-end stochastic analog spiking neuromorphic concept for SWIMS nodes, offering solutions to challenges of sensor spiking signal generation, processing and communication with disruptive innovations at all levels, inspired by the biological model of a small insect. SWIMS involves many beyond state-of-the-art scientific advancements from technology to system level to enable a neuromorphic architecture with i) as input neuron layer, new heterostructure spiking sensor arrays based on transition metal oxides/2D semiconductor, covering infrared, ultraviolet, acoustic and electromagnetic detections, ii) hidden layers in tiny spiking neural networks based on novel CMOS Fe-FET concepts capable of efficiently dealing with inherent stochastic noise when processing spiking signals on-chip, iii) a spiking emitter as output layer for event-driven wireless transmission using optimized spike modulation and encoding, and iv) a modelling framework embedding stochastic effects in task-based electronic system design and biologically inspired recurrent neural networks. The synergistic interaction will enable unique design and experimental validations of first of their kind event-driven demonstrators with optimized all spiking multi-modal sensor nodes and energy consumption more than 100x lower than existing state of the art.

Mots-clés : cmos,iot edge nodes,integrated circuits,ultra low power,phase change and ferroelectric devices,modulation and coding,non gaussian uncertainties,stochastic spiking sensors