Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : B-WEX (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Providing clean water and energy simultaneously to a growing global population and under a changing climate is a major challenge. The demand for the two and their systemic interdependencies are particularly strong during droughts and heatwaves. Despite the recent growth in water-energy nexus studies, there is little fundamental understanding of the cascading effects and feedbacks between water and energy systems during extreme weather events. Because existing global model approaches mainly focus on whole-system optimisation and are based on coarse spatiotemporal water and energy system representations, we lack understanding on how water-energy system processes cascade in time and space under a changing climate and extremes. Yet such understanding is urgently needed so that we can balance clean water and energy provision in our changing world in which climate shocks are increasing.  In B-WEX, I will develop spatially explicit pathways that reveal how the provision of clean water and energy can be balanced under various water management and energy transition developments, including the feedbacks and cascading mechanisms under present to future droughts and heatwaves in regions worldwide.  With my team, I will build a novel global framework which will be the first to integrate high spatiotemporal resolution models of hydrology, water quality, water use and energy systems to estimate how water and energy system processes cascade in time and space. Together with key actors, we will also develop quantitative water management and energy transition (climate action) pathways, which we will then combine with our new framework, enabling us to estimate trade-offs between water and energy systems during present to future droughts and heatwaves. The B-WEX project will greatly deepen our understanding of the cascading effects and feedbacks between clean water and energy systems development that occur under changing climate and extremes, and including climate mitigation actions.

Mots-clés : water energy nexus,global water scarcity,energy transition,drought,heatwave,climate change,pathways,modelling,spatiotemporal analysis,cascade,feedback
Projet ERC : LOKI (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Oxygen (O2) is essential for efficient energy conversion by multicellular organisms, including plants. Therefore, environmental conditions where O2 is limited (hypoxia) such as during flooding stress, pose a severe threat to plant survival and can lead to death when prolonged. I recently discovered that plant stem cells of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) are embedded in a local hypoxic niche and that this condition is even important for meristem activity. This suggests that local hypoxia may play a positive role in regulating meristems, despite being harmful to other plant tissue. Safeguarding the stem cell pool of the SAM is especially important for plant fitness, since it not only produces all above ground tissue, but also specifies the germline. In this project, I will therefore challenge the paradigm of hypoxia as a solely stressful conditions and propose that local hypoxia might create a protective environment for stem cells, whereas oxygenation outside the meristem might allow growth of differentiating organs. I will address this hypothesis via three interlinked strategies. (1) Complete the development of prototype O2 biosensors, which will unlock the ability to visualize and understand the role of O2 gradients in plant tissue. (2) Employ genetic manipulation of the O2 sensing machinery to test if and how O2 gradients provide a positional cue that spatially organizes the SAM and its derived organs. (3) Investigate the role of meristem hypoxia in formation of DNA-damaging radicals from O2 metabolism and study the evolution of the hypoxic niche and its perception. Protection of meristems and differentiating organs is essential for plants to survive flooding events which are increasing in frequency due to global warming. The novel insights on how O2 levels regulate development and the tools developed in this project will therefore be fundamental to make the strides forward that are needed to face global climate change and secure crop productivity under stress

Mots-clés : oxygen,hypoxia,n degron pathway,abiotic stress,stem cells,meristem,biosensor
Projet ERC : QUAKEHUNTER (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GFZ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499731.0 €

A longstanding, lingering question in geoscience is whether earthquakes show a precursory nucleation process. Precursory signals from well-recorded large earthquakes displayed widely different amplitude or duration, and some large earthquakes displayed no detectable precursors. The main objectives of QUAKE-HUNTER are (1) to determine the most effective approaches to detect fault-related transients preceding moderate to large earthquakes, and (2) to monitor seismic and aseismic processes and infer from them the fault conditions under which earthquake nucleation processes emerge, and the optimal instrumentation required to capture them. To achieve these, we will develop different methodologies based on a combination of supervised and unsupervised artificial intelligence to identify retrospectively earthquake nucleation processes for active faults near earthquake-threatened urban areas. The ultimate goal will be to test the performance of this novel earthquake forecasting methodology in near-real time. We will analyze data from north-western Turkey, where the North Anatolian Fault is overdue for a magnitude M>7 earthquake directly adjacent to the Istanbul megalopolis with its >15M inhabitants. The groundbreaking part of QUAKE-HUNTER is that if earthquake nucleation processes could be discerned prior to large earthquakes in the Marmara region, then automated near-real-time detection could provide extended warning and preparation time. If successful, this could become in the future an essential ingredient for activating civil protection protocols to mitigate seismic risk. QUAKE-HUNTER aims at having a strong scientific impact on earthquake physics: we will be able to refine our knowledge on the physics of earthquakes shortly before their start, as well as the fault conditions favoring the identification of earthquake precursors. The first-time testing of such methodology in real-time will have a strong societal impact, potentially advancing earthquakes forecasting.

Mots-clés : fault monitoring,seismic hazard,earthquake physics,earthquake forecasting,artificial intelligence,earthquake precursors
Projet ERC : SPINFIELD (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499625.0 €

Short pulses of light allow controlling electrons in solids with superb precision and outstanding speed, now reaching the sub-femtosecond timescale. Yet, our ability to act on the angular momentum of materials at these ultrafast time scales is surprisingly close to inexistent. This is because very little is known about direct, first-order coherent interactions between the electromagnetic field of light and angular momentum. Predictions show that these interactions are extraordinarily complex and comprise components of fundamentally different nature – originating from quantum many-body effects, relativistic quantum electrodynamics, or symmetry breaking. These coherent phenomena, however, have yet to be directly captured. The proposed research aims at unveiling this class of direct light-spin interactions for the first time. My strategy relies on the use of the shortest pulses of light available today – attosecond pulses – employed to probe systems which selectively enhance different components of the coherent response. We will establish spectroscopic schemes building upon mature state-of-the-art attosecond technology, providing clear-cut evidence of phenomena which are in the blind spot of current approaches. Two control scenarios will be explored – in the first one, ultrashort pulses will redistribute angular momentum among the system constituents, on sub-femtosecond timescales. In the second, the spin angular momentum of light pulses itself will be imparted to matter, thereby coherently controlling the magnetic and topological properties of materials. We aim to answer key fundamental questions reaching across several disciplines of physics. Because spin angular momentum in solids is intimately related to magnetism and topology, SPINFIELD will also provide a decisive blueprint guiding the design of a new generation of devices that can be optically controlled and switched at unrivaled speeds.

Mots-clés : attosecond,spin angular momentum
Projet ERC : F-AI-MILY (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499930.0 €

How we trust, feel, understand, and connect with family members shapes the well-being of all family members. With families increasingly inviting artificial agents into their life, questions arise how we can describe these dynamics in the age of artificial intelligence. Integrating insights and methods from family psychology, social neuroscience, and human-ai interaction, F-AI-MILY will 1) establish a new group-centred mobile-lab approach to study the neurocognition of family social dynamics, 2) describe the developmental aspects of changes in households’ social dynamic during long-term interactions with artificial agents, and 3) identify how sustainable interactions with artificial agents can provide support in households with chronic illness. First, we will develop a new group-centred mobile lab to study how the key mechanisms of social dynamics, similarity and distance between family members, are impacted by interactions with artificial agents. Using this innovative neurocognition-at-home approach we will measure both behavioural and brain measures of key attitudes and behaviours of all family members and uncover social dynamics with unprecedented detail and clarity. Second, we will test how child development interacts with the impact of artificial agents on social dynamics. Going beyond one-off interactions, we will directly test how long-term living with an artificial agent affects families with children (4-12 years) that differ in their flexibility to the influence of these agent. Third, we will use the neurocognition-at-home approach to guide the development of artificial agents to support vulnerable households. This artificial agent support system targets family coping with chronic illness and aims to change maladaptive to adaptive social dynamics. The innovative, interdisciplinary, and full circle approach of F-AI-MILY offers new ground-breaking vistas on family systems, neurocognition of social behaviour, and the developmental of artificial agents.

Mots-clés : social dynamics family artificial intelligence,neurocognition artificial agents social robots digital voice assistants social interaction
Projet ERC : STOP-OR-GO (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The repertoire of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in a cell dictates cell identity and function. Therefore, mRNA expression is tightly controlled. A previously underappreciated regulatory step is early transcription termination, which can abort the synthesis of full-length mRNAs. The early termination of many non-coding RNAs prevents transcriptional interference and genomic instability. Thus, cells need to correctly balance early termination and productive elongation at both coding and non-coding loci. Why elongation is favoured at some loci, and termination at others, is poorly understood. To understand how the balance between elongation and termination is achieved, we need to know what sequence elements and proteins are involved, and how they work together. These regulatory sequences and proteins have not been systematically identified. Using INSERT-seq, I have identified novel candidate regulators that I will study here in more detail. The same reporter setup will be adapted to identify novel trans-acting regulators of the elongation/termination balance. These approaches act synergistically to uncover the network of regulators. I will then apply a combination of unbiased and hypothesis-driven experiments to understand the mechanisms of regulation. We will also focus on understanding how early termination is promoted by ZC3H4 (Restrictor), a recently identified suppressor of non-coding RNAs. The work proposed here will uncover the principles that decide if transcription of a locus will terminate early, an essential step towards fully understanding transcription regulation. Knowing the sequence and protein regulators that determine the fate of early elongating RNAPII will open opportunities to study how disease mutations affect their function. Moreover, understanding the control of this elongation/termination balance will also provide us with tools to manipulate this balance. This will improve our ability to design sequences for optimal transgene expression in gene therapy.

Mots-clés : transcription productive elongation early termination mrnas non coding rnas sequence motifs zc3h4 tss proximal pausing metazoan
Projet ERC : MULTITUDES (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Institut Pasteur — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The mosquito virome constitutes not only human pathogenic arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) but also mosquito-specific viruses, whose host range is restricted to the mosquito. While metagenomics studies have revealed the mosquito virome to be richly diverse and abundant, our knowledge of these viruses is mostly limited to genome sequence information, and we have little insight into their biology and interactions with the mosquito host. Importantly, the cellular and immunological mechanisms by which mosquitoes deal with multitudes of concurrent viral infections remain to be understood. Furthermore, mosquito-specific viruses have been reported to inhibit or enhance co-infecting arboviruses, leading to substantial interest in leveraging these viruses as a tool to influence the transmission of deadly human pathogenic arboviruses, such as dengue virus. Through MULTITUDES, I will take the first steps in exploring the fundamental biology and ecology of mosquito-specific viruses and their virus-host interactions using established techniques from classical medical entomology to omics approaches. My hypothesis-driven aims are to: 1) characterise the biological properties of mosquito-specific viruses; 2) investigate the heritability and fitness cost of mosquito-specific viruses; and 3) examine the metabolic interactions between mosquito-specific viruses, arboviruses, and mosquito hosts. Given that mosquito-specific viruses are an inextricable part of arbovirus disease ecology, the insights revealed during this project will contribute towards a deeper understanding of mosquito-borne disease transmission under the One Health concept. As such, the knowledge generated has the potential to identify opportunities for improved arbovirus transmission risk mapping and for the future development of virome modification-based biological control interventions against arbovirus transmission.

Mots-clés : virus ecology,medical entomology,one health
Projet ERC : PHOENIX (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1464841.24 €

PositrPositron Emission Tomography (PET) constitutes the imaging modality of excellence in nuclear medicine. Conventional whole body (WB) PET are used for both adult and pediatric studies. However, these scanners are not large enough to image the entire infant body, are not optimized in terms of sensitivity imposing the injection of high radiotracer doses and their spatial resolution is as best 3-5 mm at the center of scanner, which is not enough for visualizing small lesions. Moreover, since PET imaging requires the injection of a radiotracer compound, its use is compromised in pediatric due to radiation regulations and patient safety.  To overcome these limitations, I aim to develop an affordable high-performance, high-sensitivity total body (TB)-PET for pediatric imaging. The system, named PHOENIX, targets for a high effective sensitivity of x25-30 the one of clinical WB-PET. To achieve this goal, we propose a large axial scanner of 54.5 cm with a bore diameter of 32 cm to cover all organs of children -without becoming claustrophobic- and, thus, permitting for dynamic multi-organ studies.  For the best cost-performance tradeoff, the PHOENIX detectors would be based on semi-monolithic BGO crystals coupled to SiPMs. This design allows characterizing the light distribution profiles to retrieve photon depth of interaction information (resulting in a uniform image spatial resolution <3 mm) while simultaneously providing time-of-flight (TOF) capabilities. To offer significant TOF information, I aim to exploit the low Cherenkov light yield produced in BGO. We will implement a scalable custom readout circuit composed of 3- stages: i) signal multiplexing, ii) event classification -Cherenkov and Scintillation-, and iii) commercial ASIC adaptation for digitization.  Developing the PHOENIX scanner constitutes a major research and technological challenge. If successful, will promote PET imaging of children, improve its diagnostic capabilities, staging and response assessment.

Mots-clés : molecular imaging,positron emission tomography pet,total body tb pediatric pet,compton kinematics,readout electronics multiplexing scheme,semi monolithic scintillators,bgo scintillators,silicon photomultipliers sipms,photon depth of interaction doi,time of flight tof,cherenkov and scintillation radiation,
Projet ERC : CLOVIS (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université Paris-Est Créteil — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPEC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1085000.0 €

Have you ever had that moment where you reach for something, convinced it is heavy, but it is actually light? Your arm jolts upward, correcting itself before you realise the difference. This split second adjustment is thanks to your cerebellum, the part of your brain responsible for fine-tuning movements by integrating sensory feedback. While the cerebellum is traditionally associated with motor control, it plays a similar role in cognitive functions. Despite occupying 10% of the brain’s volume, the cerebellum houses more than 50% of its neurons, many of which are integral to higher cognitive processes. Its extensive connections with brain regions responsible for complex thought and emotion make it a promising target for non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) especially in addressing the resistant cognitive and negative symptoms observed in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism. However, a significant challenge persists: clinical research on NIBS often relies on a trial-and-error approach, while fundamental research has yet to fully translate electrophysiological findings into circuit-level applications that can guide clinical interventions. To bridge this gap, I will develop normative models from large-scale MRI cohorts to identify patients who are most likely to benefit from cerebellar stimulation and then derive a personalised cerebellar target. Concurrently, animal studies using ultra-high field MRI will be conducted to determine optimal cerebellar stimulation parameters. With intracranial recordings, I will explore the neuroplastic changes induced by NIBS in humans. The project will culminate in a proof-of-concept clinical trial aiming at improving cognitive and negative symptoms across schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism with cerebellar NIBS. This multidisciplinary project has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of resistant psychiatric symptoms and catalyse advancements in the understanding of NIBS.

Mots-clés : cerebellum mri non invasive brain stimulation psychiatry schizophrenia negative symptoms transcranial magnetic stimulation