Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : WEIRD (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1961250.0 €

A major adagio of the Sustainable Development Goals is “Leave no one behind” implying that actions addressing the sustainability challenges of our time should not be only ecologically beneficial, but also emancipatory for the most vulnerable and marginalized. Yet, many vulnerable and marginalized groups are often left behind in sustainability research and actions. Despite the increasing engagement of disabled and queer scholars and societal actors for environmental and climate justice, their voices are rarely considered in research and action on sustainability transformations. Using an inter and transdisciplinary approach, this project aims to understand and redefine the often-neglected contributions of disability and queer scholarship and societal initiatives around sustainability towards new theories, methodologies, and ethics of just and emancipatory sustainability transformations.  WEIRD will: (1) overcome the fragmentation of disability and queer scholarship around sustainability; (2) explain how disability and queer societal initiatives contribute to just sustainability transformations by subverting ableistic and cis/heteronormative social norms; (3) develop new theories of emancipatory sustainability transformations that rely on subversive social norms; (4) generate new transformative methodologies in sustainability science; (5) redefine transformative justice for sustainability and the ethics of sustainability science.  This project is groundbreaking because it will generate new theories, methodologies and ethics to systematically integrate issues of justice and emancipation in the study of sustainability transformations that are anchored in, but not limited to, disability and queer perspectives. Overall, through the synergistic achievement of all its objectives, WEIRD will enhance the potential of sustainability science to generate new knowledge about and for just sustainability transformations.

Mots-clés : sustainability transformations,environmental and climate justice,transformative research,disability studies,queer studies,vulnerability,research ethics
Projet ERC : PairNoise (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 747237.5 €

My aim with this proposal is to develop an electron pair microscope that can locally detect electron pairs without superconductivity, and to leverage this information to gain unprecedented understanding into quantum materials.  The electronic properties of most materials, including metals and insulators, are underpinned by single electrons. Superconductors are a notable exception: here, the charge carriers are electron pairs. It has been proposed, in order to explain quantum materials’ mysterious and potentially useful properties, that electron pairs exist without superconductivity and underpin the properties of materials that are not superconducting. Indeed, tantalizing signatures of electron pairs have been reported in high-temperature and disordered superconductors above their transition temperature Tc. However, experimental evidence of such electron pairing is highly disputed and controversial, because there exists currently no experimental probe to locally distinguish electron pairs without superconductivity from single electrons.  With PairNoise, I will develop and build a radically new electron pair microscope – based on a unique proof-of-concept instrument developed in my group – that can unambiguously detect electron pairs with atomic resolution. It combines scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), microfabrication, and shot-noise spectroscopy. With the electron pair microscope, I will determine the nature of the state above Tc in the most interesting superconductors, conclusively determine whether the pseudogap is due to pairing, and find what limits superconductivity at even higher temperatures in quantum materials. My track record of developing first-of-its-kind STM instruments, and their successful utilization for scientific progress, perfectly positions me to make PairNoise a success and to open up a new research field with further applications in the detection of fractional charges, Majorana modes, and dynamical processes.

Mots-clés : scanning tunneling microscopy,high temperature superconductivity,disordered superconductors,topological superconductors,shot noise
Projet ERC : COMFAM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 56649.0 €

Passive commuting–regularly recurring travel between home and work by a motorized vehicle or public transportation–is an integral part of our lives. Commuting may take a toll on the health of commuters and their family members. Current research offers a limited understanding of whether commuting’s health impacts are socially patterned. Information about whether long commuting affects family members is scarce. A comprehensive inquiry into this topic is needed to understand what commuting means for population health.  COMFAM’s main objectives are: 1) to investigate the impact of long commutes on commuters’ physical health, 2) to investigate whether long commutes have adverse effects on non-commuting partners’ health and well-being, 3) to assess the effects of parental long commutes on children’s health and social outcomes, 4) to examine whether changes in commuting during and after the COVID-19 pandemic have brought any changes to the health and well-being of the family members, and 5) to examine whether the health effects of long commutes differ across population subgroups, and whether these effects are short- or long-term.  COMFAM is ambitious and highly innovative. It will use high-quality Nordic register data, enabling us to examine comprehensive objective indicators of health, investigate the heterogeneous health effects of long commuting, and employ novel methods to address endogeneity and help establish a causal pattern. We will also leverage rich survey data from the UK, US, and Germany to investigate mechanisms that may underlie commuting-health relationships and assess health declines not yet requiring medical treatment.  COMFAM is also important. In addition to impacting population health, the negative health effects of commuting may reduce employee performance, induce premature exits from the labor force, and set children on problematic trajectories. Thus, the findings will have far-reaching public health, social, and economic implications across nations.

Mots-clés : commuting,health,family health,child well being
Projet ERC : SCALEBIO (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999868.0 €

Sequencing technologies have developed to be cheap and accurate, leading to major breakthroughs, such as the complete sequence of a human genome, the creation of nationwide population gene banks, or the discovery of novel viruses. As the amount of data produced grows exponentially and their applications become more broad and complex, the community needs accurate computational methods that scale.  At the core of many algorithmic methods for processing sequencing data is the basic primitive of finding a set of paths or walks in graphs of various nature. Under different formulations and objective functions, the resulting problems can be NP-hard (e.g. flow decompositions) or polynomial-time (e.g. path covers), which are impractical on large graphs. Thus, many practical tools prefer fast heuristics to exact algorithms. While these may be optimized for specific inputs, they may not be reliable or accurate in general, which is a highly relevant issue in e.g. medical and life-science research.  This project will develop general methods to massively scale such exact graph algorithms. First, via novel graph structures usable in a preprocessing step: safety structures, e.g. sets of paths that can be quickly found to appear in all optimal solutions and thus simplify the problem; variation structures that limit the hardness of a problem only to graph areas rich in genetic variation. Second, via modern algorithmic techniques: parameterizing polynomial algorithms to run in time linear in the graph size and superlinear only in a small parameter; dynamic algorithms that, as the input grows, update solutions based only on the new data.  We will apply these methods in two high-impact applications: long-read RNA transcript discovery, and indexing massive and rapidly growing genomic databases.  This project paves the way for exact graph algorithms usable independently of the problem complexity or of the input size, applicable to real-world problems.
Projet ERC : ChronoHealth (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Individuals differ in daily timing of sleep–wake behavior, alertness, body temperature, cardiovascular functions and hormonal secretion, having innately different circadian types from morningness to eveningness. Evening-types show poorer health already since childhood with increasing severity of health issues at adulthood with major impact on performance/wellbeing and health care burden. However, it is largely unknown WHY health issues accumulate to evening-types. It is likely that underlying factors for health differences between circadian types include interplay between biological, behavioral and environmental factors. Project uses large population-based longitudinal and cross-sectional data across life span from early childhood to old age linked to national register data, including wellbeing and health surveys, objective circadian assessment, health measurements and genetic data. I will study which environmental, behavioral and biological factors influence circadian rhythms and their disturbances throughout life span and how these moderate/mediate the association between circadian type and health/wellbeing outcomes. Focus during early childhood will be in somatic and cognitive development, during adolescence in school adjustment, life habits and somatic/mental wellbeing, and during adulthood in disorders, hospital treatments, and mortality. I will examine the role of genetic predisposition, family/school/work/social environment, life habits and behavioral schedules. Besides the unique and versatile data available for the research, novel objective tools for assessing circadian misalignment is developed in the project. Along with my expertise on circadian research, this project has versatile data and statistical power to sort out whether health issues among evening-types are more due to biological liability, such as genetic risk, or due to e.g. higher risk for circadian desynchronization as behavioral and societal schedules are in mismatch with the innate rhythms.

Mots-clés : chronobiology circadian rhythms sleep mental health epidemiology nutrition stress work health school wellbeing
Projet ERC : SynCAR-Ts (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2501154.0 €

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is a promising approach for cancer treatment with remarkable clinical outcomes. CAR T therapy involves the isolation of patients T cells that are genetically modified with an engineered antigen receptor to attack cancer cells. Despite the great promise, the rapid activation and proliferation of CAR T cells can lead to serious side effects. In addition, CAR T therapy is challenged by limited effectiveness, difficulties in infiltrating solid tumors, targeting of healthy cells, cell exhaustion and an expensive, lengthy and personalized manufacturing process. Over the past years, researchers have explored many strategies to improve and control CAR T cell function and to develop more universal CAR T cell platforms. Yet, an off-the-shelf approach that allows full control of CAR T effector function, that is flexible in use and can be obtained at low manufacturing costs, is currently not available. To address above challenges, I will develop a highly innovative, universal synthetic CAR (SynCAR) T cell platform where the antigen receptor is easily adaptable by using synthetic, functionalized targeting ligands to control T cell effector function in space and time. At the basis of this proposal lies the use of highly reactive and activatable aryl nitrenium ions for protein modification, drug delivery and as novel class of therapeutics. I will 1) tune nitrenium ion reactivity for bioconjugation and drug activation 2) use enzyme-activatable nitrenium ion precursors for synthetically modified antigen receptors, 3) develop novel nitrenium ion-based prodrug strategies to improve CAR T efficiency and 4) use innovative bioorthogonal chemistry to control CAR T activity in time and space. In this work, I will develop beyond the state-of-the-art chemical biology methods and molecular targeting tools to control, potentiate, and tune T cell activity with the ultimate goal to broaden the CAR T targeting landscape to solid tumors and beyond.

Mots-clés : chemical immunology,bioorthogonal chemistry,self labeling proteins,activity based probes,precision medicine,prodrugs,mechanism based inhibitor,nitrenium ion therapeutics,arylamine n acetyl transferase,chimeric antigen receptor t cells,living medicine
Projet ERC : ALTIBRAIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Capital Region of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : RH
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 580112.03 €

Cognitive decline is an urgent strategic treatment target to improve the lives of people with neuropsychiatric disorders and reduce associated societal costs but treatments with robust and long-lasting efficacy are essentially lacking. Neuroplasticity is pivotal for cognitive functions and its disruption is involved in cognitive decline. However, the mechanisms underlying long-lasting neuroplasticity are unknown, which impedes the discovery of effective treatments. To address this challenge, I have conducted multidisciplinary research over the past 15 years into the cognitive and neurobiological effects of erythropoietin (EPO), a body-own protein involved in neurodevelopment, neuroprotection and cognition. We discovered that upregulation of EPO in the brain by low ambient oxygen increased neuroplasticity and cognition in mice. Building on this discovery, ALTIBRAIN will test a novel model linking oxygen manipulation, increased brain EPO, neuroplasticity and cognition. Specifically, ALTIBRAIN will determine whether upregulation of brain EPO by low ambient oxygen is a novel mechanism of long-lasting neuroplasticity and increased cognitive functions. We will achieve this ambitious goal using a multidisciplinary translational research approach combining cutting-edge methods from neuropsychology, neuroimaging and neuroscience. In parallel studies in humans and mice, we will investigate whether 3-week intermittent low ambient oxygen combined with cognitive training induces expression of brain EPO sufficient to produce similar effects to those, which I found upon exogenous EPO treatment. We expect long-lasting increase in cognitive performance, hippocampal volume and function and in differentiation/maturation of neural progenitor cells and dendritic spines. The findings can lead to a breakthrough in the understanding of mechanisms underlying enduring neuroplasticity and a paradigm shift in treatment strategies targeting cognitive decline.

Mots-clés : multidisciplinary,translational research,neuroimaging,cognitive impairments,cognitive training
Projet ERC : ICE-EEVOLVE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
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 : 2195000.0 €

The origin of life is a profound and experimentally challenging question, with an inherent bias for handed molecules at a chemical level. Homochirality, specifically the preference for left-handed (L-) amino acids in Earth's life, has inspired numerous studies. Meteorite samples provide evidence that this bias originated long before Earth's formation, tied to water-rich interstellar ices and circularly polarized starlight. Yet, we still lack a complete understanding of the chiral photon interaction with organic molecules under realistic astrophysical conditions where chiral species are embedded in an amorphous water-rich ice matrix.  Intriguingly, amino acids in highly aqueous-altered meteorites show more than 20% enrichment in L enantiomers, indicating hitherto undiscovered asymmetric amplification mechanisms during secondary alteration processes within parent celestial bodies. While extraerrestrial amino acids have been extensively studied, sugar monomers and aminonitriles are equally important, potentially serving as precursors to amino acids. Neglecting their chiral bias and the prospects of a possible chirality transfer or mutual chiral amplification mechanisms between amino acids and sugars represents a gap in current research. The ICE-EEVOLVE project aims to unravel the journey of amorphous ice and chiral organics from molecular clouds to evolved planetary systems, exploring asymmetric chemical evolution influenced by circularly polarized starlight and alteration processes. This will be achieved through novel laboratory experiments on amorphous interstellar ices processed using synchrotron, laser, and hydrogen lamp sources, combined with enantioselective analyses of pristine extraterrestrial samples. Our research is guided by the idea that the co-evolutionary history of peptides and nucleic acids in biology is linked to the inherent chirality of their constituent monomers, possibly originating in presolar and Solar System (water-rich) bodies.

Mots-clés : chirality,asymmetric photochemistry,enantioselective resolution,gas chromatography,circular dichroism,interstellar ice,origin of life,meteorite,icy bodies in the solar system
Projet ERC : SymbioCues (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
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 : 1999672.5 €

Coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystems, but are currently threatened by anthropogenic stressors that disrupt the relationship between the coral host and its microbial symbionts (i.e., endosymbiotic microalgae and bacteria). While these symbionts are fundamental to coral health, corals do not generally transmit them to their offspring, who have to acquire them from the environment. Despite the critical roles of microbial symbionts for coral health, we still do not know how they find and colonise their coral hosts, which key compounds are exchanged between the various partners once in symbiosis, and to what extent bacterial symbionts contribute to coral growth.  My previous research has revealed the importance of chemotaxis in other marine symbioses, a behaviour allowing microbes to find their host by homing in on the chemical cues it produces. Building on my previous research and preliminary data, I hypothesise that coral symbionts also use chemotaxis to find and colonise corals. Using a unique combination of cutting-edge approaches, this project aims to characterise the onset and functional consequences of coral-microbe symbioses. More specifically, it will:  (1) identify the chemical cues underpinning the recruitment of coral symbionts, using analytical chemistry approaches and in situ chemotaxis assays that I previously developed; (2) determine how key bacterial symbionts colonise their coral host, through genetic engineering of the bacterial symbionts with live imaging and microscopy; (3) characterise the chemical exchanges between bacteria, microalgae, and their coral host, by combining co-culture assays, omics, and high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry.  By deciphering the chemical language of coral symbiosis, this project will reveal biological processes at the foundation of coral health, a game changer in the current context of widespread reef degradation.

Mots-clés : corals,chemotaxis,symbiosis,nanosims,symbiont acquisition,metabolic exchanges
Projet ERC : WaterTheft (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IMDEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Water theft claims between 30% and 50% of the global water supply, and despite policy efforts to tackle it, is still on the rise. The policy failure to tackle water theft has been attributed to the nonlinear adaptive responses by economic agents such as irrigators, which can affect and be affected by other socioeconomic (e.g., growing crop prices) and ecological processes (e.g., water scarcity) via feedback loops with cascading impacts that are difficult to foresee. This has led to adaptation surprises with unexpected policy consequences, which have increased rather than reduced water theft, thus depleting water bodies and hampering sustainable development. Here I aim to break new ground by developing a novel approach to forecast adaptation surprises in complex human-water systems. To this end, I will 1) combine microeconomic mathematical programming models with behavioral economic methods to forecast the nonlinear adaptive responses of individual agents over time; 2) integrate the behavior of individual agents into agent-based models and macroeconomic models to forecast nonlinear spatial trends emerging from human interactions at the local to global level; 3) endogenize these socioeconomic processes into human-water system models to forecast nonlinear socio-hydrological phenomena; and 4) use ensemble experiments to quantify scenario and modeling uncertainties, and forecast nonlinearities that may emerge or be amplified due to issues of model parameterization/structure or scenario design. These innovations will allow me to predict the emergence of nonlinearities and track their impact across coupled human-water systems, thus discovering adaptation surprises and their drivers. Methods will be empirically applied and tested in 3 living labs in Spain, Australia, and the US experiencing water theft.

Mots-clés : water scarcity,drought,water theft,coupled human and natural systems chans,nonlinearities,surprise