Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : 1D-Engine (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Uppsala University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 728065.0 €

Correlated electrons are at the forefront of condensed matter theory. Interacting quasi-1D electrons have seen vast progress in analytical and numerical theory, and thus in fundamental understanding and quantitative prediction. Yet, in the 1D limit fluctuations preclude important technological use, particularly of superconductors. In contrast, high-Tc superconductors in 2D/3D are not precluded by fluctuations, but lack a fundamental theory, making prediction and engineering of their properties, a major goal in physics, very difficult. This project aims to combine the advantages of both areas by making major progress in the theory of quasi-1D electrons coupled to an electron bath, in part building on recent breakthroughs (with the PIs extensive involvement) in simulating 1D and 2D electrons with parallelized density matrix renormalization group (pDMRG) numerics. Such theory will fundamentally advance the study of open electron systems, and show how to use 1D materials as elements of new superconducting (SC) devices and materials: 1) It will enable a new state of matter, 1D electrons with true SC order. Fluctuations from the electronic liquid, such as graphene, could also enable nanoscale wires to appear SC at high temperatures. 2) A new approach for the deliberate engineering of a high-Tc superconductor. In 1D, how electrons pair by repulsive interactions is understood and can be predicted. Stabilization by reservoir - formed by a parallel array of many such 1D systems - offers a superconductor for which all factors setting Tc are known and can be optimized. 3) Many existing superconductors with repulsive electron pairing, all presently not understood, can be cast as 1D electrons coupled to a bath. Developing chain-DMFT theory based on pDMRG will allow these materials SC properties to be simulated and understood for the first time. 4) The insights gained will be translated to 2D superconductors to study how they could be enhanced by contact with electronic liquids.
Projet ERC : 1D-Engine (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Heriot-Watt University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 762948.0 €

Correlated electrons are at the forefront of condensed matter theory. Interacting quasi-1D electrons have seen vast progress in analytical and numerical theory, and thus in fundamental understanding and quantitative prediction. Yet, in the 1D limit fluctuations preclude important technological use, particularly of superconductors. In contrast, high-Tc superconductors in 2D/3D are not precluded by fluctuations, but lack a fundamental theory, making prediction and engineering of their properties, a major goal in physics, very difficult. This project aims to combine the advantages of both areas by making major progress in the theory of quasi-1D electrons coupled to an electron bath, in part building on recent breakthroughs (with the PIs extensive involvement) in simulating 1D and 2D electrons with parallelized density matrix renormalization group (pDMRG) numerics. Such theory will fundamentally advance the study of open electron systems, and show how to use 1D materials as elements of new superconducting (SC) devices and materials: 1) It will enable a new state of matter, 1D electrons with true SC order. Fluctuations from the electronic liquid, such as graphene, could also enable nanoscale wires to appear SC at high temperatures. 2) A new approach for the deliberate engineering of a high-Tc superconductor. In 1D, how electrons pair by repulsive interactions is understood and can be predicted. Stabilization by reservoir - formed by a parallel array of many such 1D systems - offers a superconductor for which all factors setting Tc are known and can be optimized. 3) Many existing superconductors with repulsive electron pairing, all presently not understood, can be cast as 1D electrons coupled to a bath. Developing chain-DMFT theory based on pDMRG will allow these materials SC properties to be simulated and understood for the first time. 4) The insights gained will be translated to 2D superconductors to study how they could be enhanced by contact with electronic liquids.
Projet ERC : TRIPLE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Geneva — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIGE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Cosmic reionization corresponds to the period in the history of the Universe during which the predominantly neutral intergalactic medium was ionised by the emergence of the first luminous sources. Young stars in primeval galaxies may be the sources of reionization, if the ionising radiation, called Lyman continuum (LyC), that they produce can escape their interstellar medium: the escape fraction of LyC photons from galaxies is one of the main unknowns of reionization studies. This ERC project will contribute to answer this question, by computing from simulated galaxies three indirect diagnostics of LyC leakage that were recently reported in the literature, and comparing the virtual observables with the direct escape of LyC photons from simulated galaxies, and with observations. The first diagnostic for LyC leakage relates the escape of the strongly resonant Lyman-alpha radiation from galaxies to the LyC escape. It was proposed by the PI (Verhamme et al. 2015), and recently validated by observations (Verhamme et al. 2016). The second diagnostic proposes that the strength of Oxygen lines ratios can trace density-bounded interstellar regions. It was the selection criterion for the successful detection of 5 strong Lyman Continuum Emitters from our team (Izotov 2016a,b). The third diagnostic relates the metallic absorption line strengths to the porosity of the absorbing interstellar gas in front of the stars. The increasing opacity of the intergalactic medium with redshift renders direct LyC detections impossible during reionisation. Indirect methods are the only probes of LyC leakage in the distant Universe, and the proposed diagnostics will soon become observables at the redshifts of interest with JWST. They have passed the validation tests, it is now urgent to calibrate these indicators on state-of-the art simulations of galaxy formation. This is the main objective of the proposed project.

Mots-clés : cosmic reionisation,lyman alpha,resonant line radiation transfer simulations,radiation hydrodynamics simulations,lyman continuum escape from galaxies
Projet ERC : SoftBeam (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Technical University of Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Countless sophisticated macroscopic products rely on innovative materials with unique features, designed with nanoscale precision. To harness the variety of functionalities provided by biomolecules and other complex molecular species as the key ingredient for the design of prospective advanced nanosystems and materials, a current technological gap must be closed: the lack of a universal method capable to handle fragile molecules under vacuum conditions without compromising their integrity. With the present project we aim to introduce a versatile and powerful platform based on innovative methodological advances to overcome this obstacle. The envisioned technology is designated CIB (controlled ion beam) and will allow the generation of ultrapure ion beams from any solvable substance in a fully controlled manner using a cost-effective, marketable setup. The novel instrumentation capitalizes on achievements within the ERC project 'MolArt' and will be suitable for highly sophisticated deposition processes for nanofabrication and nanotechnology, while furnishing at the same time a general module integrable in analytical mass spectrometry (MS/ Proteomics). SoftBeam, the prototype instrument to be accomplished within this PoC project is our pilot application where CIB is firstly realized and validated. With this technology an entire new class of sensitive substances can be routinely processed in a size-selective manner. Boosted flux intensities reduce processing time and fully controllable energy of the molecules results in a highly increased reproducibility, cleanliness and homogeneity of molecular beams generated. The modular platform is adaptable to various disciplines and has the potential to become a standard tool in the nanotechnology and analytical (bio)chemistry community.

Mots-clés : mass spectrometry,quadrupole,ion guide,vacuum,deposition,nanotechnology,nanoscience,functionalized surface,new materials,molecular machines,self assembly
Projet ERC : TEXTCOURT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1991777.0 €

Court theater was a core part of Chinese court and performance culture for centuries, yet its texts have never been amply studied. There are several reasons for this: their low status in Chinese literary history as ‘authorless’ performer’s texts; the vast (20,000+) quantity of texts and the difficulty of accessing them; and the lack of an existing analytic framework to study anonymous Chinese performance texts on such a large scale. Chinese court drama thus remains a ‘closed’ textual world, neglected in literary history. The lacuna is especially glaring given the quantity and richness of the extant texts: performance practices and other aspects of material culture are preserved alongside dramatic content. Furthermore, court theater was among the most ‘outward facing’ of all Chinese genres, shown to foreign ambassadors. Many visitors recorded what was often their only impression of Chinese theater culture. Chinese court theater thus contains a complex series of closed, disjointed textual worlds. To re-link these textual worlds, this project will build the first digital archive of court drama scripts and related foreign records. Based on this resource, the project will trace internal links between scripts in the textual web of court drama; draw external links to individuals, occasions, and artefacts; and consider cross-cultural links to situate Chinese court drama in its global context. The project will produce the first textual studies of Chinese court drama, including a court drama textual database, a series of monographs and publications on extended text-based research topics, and an anthology of English translations for the general reader. These outputs will remedy the lack of textual studies on Chinese court drama, contributing towards our understanding of Chinese theater history and world court cultures. The methodology the project develops to study a large corpus of authorless texts could be applied to other Chinese genres such as folk tales and dialect songs.

Mots-clés : court culture,drama,performance texts,literary history,text editing
Projet ERC : CRYOSOCIETIES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Goethe University Frankfurt — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2497587.0 €

Cryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and the subsequent thawing of these at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. Although cryotechnologies are fundamental to reproductive technologies, regenerative medicine, transplantation surgery and conservation biology, they have largely escaped scholarly attention in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology. CRYOSOCIETIES explores the crucial role of cryopreservation in affecting temporalities and the concept of life. The project is based on the thesis that in contemporary societies, cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES generates profound empirical knowledge about the creation of “suspended life” through three ethnographic studies that investigate various sites of cryopreservation. A fourth subproject develops a complex theoretical framework in order to grasp the temporal and spatial regimes of the different cryopractices. CRYOSOCIETIES breaks analytical ground in three important ways. First, the project provides the first systematic and comprehensive empirical study of “suspended life” and deepens our knowledge of how cryopreservation works in different settings. Secondly, it undertakes pioneering work on cryopreservation practices in Europe, generating novel ways of understanding how “suspended life” is assembled, negotiated and mobilised in European societies. Thirdly, CRYOSOCIETIES develops an innovative methodological and theoretical framework in order to address the relationality and materiality of cryopreservation practices and to explore the concept of vitality and the politics of life in the 21st century.

Mots-clés : cryopreservation,biopolitics,life
Projet ERC : PREP-CRYPTO (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 890467.48 €

Cryptography currently faces fundamentally new challenges. Modern applications like Big Data or Cloud Computing require cryptographic methods that go far beyond secure communication. Such cryptographic methods have only been invented in recent years: namely, since 2009, several unexpected and game-changing *new cryptographic building blocks* have been introduced. Most prominently, constructions of fully homomorphic encryption, code obfuscation, and multilinear maps have been proposed. These constructions have opened the door to applications that were previously believed unattainable, such as the secure outsourcing of computations. However, the concrete schemes proposed are currently scrutinized for cryptanalytic attacks, and it appears that many of them are *considerably less secure* than initially hoped for. Moreover, most constructions of new cryptographic building blocks still constitute "possibility results" rather than practically relevant schemes. In fact, while being improved continuously, most existing constructions are still far too inefficient for practical use cases. The goal of this project is to *prepare these new building blocks for modern applications*. Specifically, we will give new constructions of these new building blocks that - are *secure in a strong sense*, - have a *significantly extended functionality*, and - are *efficient* when tailored to specific applications. The technical means to achieve our goals is to *combine* these new building blocks with well-established *algebraic* cryptographic tools. For instance, we plan to mesh obfuscation with cyclic groups, in order to obtain more secure and more powerful multilinear maps. Our work prepares the ground for *practical real-life applications* from new cryptographic building blocks.

Mots-clés : obfuscation,multilinear maps,fully homomorphic encryption
Projet ERC : STONECULT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Tübingen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499837.0 €

Cultural – not genetic – adaptations have allowed humans to colonise the planet. While discovering the roots of human culture has been described as one of the 125 most pressing scientific questions of our time (Science, 2005), it remains unclear when such forms of culture first arose in our lineage. Previous research has argued that similar social learning mechanisms underlie modern human as well as early hominin technology. But the latter shows periods of stasis – suggesting the underlying mechanisms were different. A better model for early hominins might be living non-human great apes. Instead of copying the behaviour from others with high fidelity (as modern humans do), ape approaches seem to be based on socially mediated individual reinventions (latent solutions; Tennie et al. 2009). Unlike high fidelity copying, latent solutions do not lead to 'cumulative cultural change', in which technological changes accrue over generations. Latent solutions are thus a core candidate to account for early hominin stone tools because, among other things, they provide an explanation for their stasis. Using both a top-down and a bottom-up testing approach, STONECULT will experimentally test whether early stone tools are manifestations of cumulative culture – currently the null hypothesis in the field – or whether they are best accounted for with the latent solutions model. That is, STONECULT will evaluate whether early stone tools were more similar to modern ape or modern human technologies. The outcomes and conclusions of STONECULT will therefore inform several fields at once (e.g. anthropology, archaeology, comparative psychology, ethology and primatology). This proposal is the first to test the new latent solutions account of early stone tools. If its predictions are confirmed, then cumulative culture will have emerged millions of years later in our lineage than is currently assumed. STONECULT will radically transform our understanding of the evolution of human culture.

Mots-clés : cumulative culture,innovation,tool use,tool making,cultural transmission,imitation
Projet ERC : BAS-SBBT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VIB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1989488.75 €

Curli are functional amyloid fibers that constitute the major protein component of the extracellular matrix in pellicle biofilms formed by Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. Unlike the protein misfolding and aggregation events seen in pathological amyloid diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, curli are the product of a dedicated protein secretion machinery. Curli formation requires a specialised and mechanistically unique transporter in the bacterial outer membrane, as well as two soluble accessory proteins thought to facilitate the safe guidance of the curli subunits across the periplasm and to coordinate their self-assembly at cell surface. In this interdisciplinary research program we will study the structural and molecular biology of E. coli curli biosynthesis and address the fundamental questions concerning the molecular processes that allow the spatially and temporally controlled transport and deposition of these pro-amyloidogenic polypeptides. We will structurally unravel the secretion machinery, trap and analyse critical secretion intermediates and through in vitro reconstitution, assemble a minimal, self-sufficient peptide transport and fiber assembly system. The new insights gained will set the stage for targeted interventions in curli -mediated biofilm formation and this research project will develop a new framework to harness the unique properties found in curli structure and biosynthesis for biotechnological applications as in patterned functionalized nanowires and directed, selective peptide carriers.

Mots-clés : protein transport,self assembly,functional amyloid,bacterial secretion system,biofilm
Projet ERC : ReverseAndCat (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Strasbourg — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNISTRA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1211450.0 €

Current methods in organic synthesis only enable reactions at the most reactive bonds or at bonds predisposed by specific directing groups. Consequently, many less reactive bonds, including numerous C-H and C-C bonds, cannot be functionalized, enormously limiting the scope of possible transformations. To overcome these limitations, I propose Reverse&Cat, a revolutionary strategy using a novel method to change the reactivity pattern of molecules. This strategy combines the dynamic equilibrium mediated by the first catalyst and a functionalization reaction catalyzed by the second catalyst. The originality of the transformation stems from exploiting three simultaneous processes: (i) the dynamic exchange of one functional group (FG) for another FG that modulates the reactivity of the substrate; (ii) the functionalization of the temporarily activated bond; and (iii) the restoration of the initial FG. In essence, the processes (i) and (iii) – the components of the dynamic equilibrium – realize the novel concept of the temporary creation of non-inherent reactivity of a substrate. The program is divided in three phases, which will establish the full potential of the strategy. In phase A, I will develop a set of new reactions enabled by the bi-catalytic systems. I will exploit two types of reversible reactions: (1) reversible oxidation of alcohols, which delivers temporarily activated aldehydes/ketones, with the distinct reactivity of their C-H bonds; and (2) reversible retro-hydrofunctionalization of nitriles or their analogues, which delivers temporarily activated alkenes, containing allylic C-H and C=C bonds. In phase B, I will conduct detailed mechanistic studies to gain the mechanistic understanding and enable further rational development. In phase C, I will establish the utility of this new strategy in practical organic synthesis. Overall, the strategy will open a new dimension of reactivity, with prospective applications in production of fine-chemicals and materials.

Mots-clés : dynamic equilibrium,reversible reactions,catalytic reactions,multicatalysis