Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : UNEQUALWITHIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Chr. Michelsen institute — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CMI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 59823.75 €

To understand and mitigate economic inequalities, both locally and globally, we need to acknowledge inequalities within households. Yet, in most empirical studies, such intra-household inequalities are disregarded mainly because we lack appropriate measurement tools and data. Not only is this problematic for inequality measurement, this lack of understanding hampers the design of cost-effective poverty reduction and child development policies. This project has five general objectives. First, I will update the facts about inequalities through direct measurement of intra-household consumption allocations, and relate these to spousal income contributions. Second, I will develop and validate novel measures of parental resource-allocation preferences and use these to study whether children are likely to benefit more if mothers, rather than fathers, receive cash transfers. Third, I will develop and validate novel measures of household decision-making and use these to investigate how targeted transfers shape women’s empowerment. Fourth, I will study whether cash transfers or an educational parenting program is most cost-efficient for child development. Fifth, I will use an integrated framework and the new tools and data, to refine our understanding of the mechanisms behind inequalities among adults and child development. Concretely, the project will contribute to our knowledge in the following specific ways. I will carry out an extensive data collection on intra-household allocations, parental-allocation preferences and women’s empowerment, in ten very diverse countries, one from each decile of the world income distribution. I will engage in a local RCT in Tanzania on cash transfers and parenting, which also involves extensive data collection on household consumption, time use, preferences and decision-making. Finally, I will conduct lab experiments in Chile, India and Tanzania so as to validate the parental-allocation preference and decision- making measures.

Mots-clés : inequality,households,child development,gender equality
Projet ERC : EU-GUNS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999913.0 €

This research project is a comparative and transnational historical investigation of the lawful possession and use of small firearms by law-abiding civilians in Europe between ca. 1870 and ca. 1970. Over the course of this century-long period, Europe underwent a silent revolution, which led it from being a continent where guns were in daily use to becoming a place where weapons in civilians’ hands became associated with violence and crime. This led to the progressive establishment of gun control measures and to the cultural deglamorization and depoliticization of guns as a cornerstone of public order, social peace and, more generally, the smooth running of political systems. The overall goal of the project is to study the root causes of this shift and its impact on European history. The project provides a wide-ranging examination of the gun question. It adopts an integrated methodological approach that encompasses legislative measures, cultural representations and gun-related practices within a broad, comparative and transnational diachronic framework involving select countries in Western Europe (France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden). Heuristically, the project does not equate the possession and use of guns with political violence and warfare; instead, it focuses on lawful gun ownership and use. This constitutes a privileged point of view and a fundamental benchmark to fully grasp the impact and cultural roots of political violence. The project has the ambition to write the first political, social and cultural history of the gun question in Europe. It will not only fill a major gap in the current literature, but also newly address the relationship between processes of enlargement of states’ competences, the control of violence and the rights of individuals, which ultimately lies at the core of the making of modern and contemporary Europe and the nature of European citizenship.

Mots-clés : gun control gun cultures gun question citizenship sovereignty modern western europe
Projet ERC : INTERSECT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de Bielefeld — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1237026.0 €

The health effects of the migration trajectory, from pre- to post-migration in new environments, have yet been poorly studied. Methodological challenges and selection effects limit the possibilities for causal inferences on how differences in social, economic, or political factors at small-area level affect variation in health among migrants (e.g. differential mortality or self-reported health). Knowledge about such relations would not only inform better and health and integration policies for migrants. Considering migrants as humans in new environments (not as singularity), may allow to conclude on the relationship between context and health more general, and inform public health beyond immigration. However, randomisation of individuals into new contexts is not possible, and establishment of prospective cohorts (from pre- to post-migration settings) is challenging, resource-intensive and prone to selection bias. The aim of INTERSECT is to study human mobility and health consequences of different social, economic and policy environments at small-area level. To this end, INTERSECT builds on three innovations: i) it re-constructs the migration trajectory by using existing data among German-bound re-settlement refugees through data-linkage or distributed computation techniques, ii) it capitalises on mandatory dispersal as natural experiment to minimise selective migration into contexts, iii) it prospectively collects primary data on health of resettlement refugees and combines these with administrative and contextual data. Using these methodological innovations, INTERSECT creates a unique research infrastructure that allows answering important research questions on social, economic and political factors at small-area level which causally explain A) mortality differences among refugees while considering baseline health status; B) changes in self-reported health status depending on changes in contexts; and C) individual and/or contextual factors moderating such effects.

Mots-clés : social epidemiology migration trajectory natural experiments social policy small area contexts
Projet ERC : COLLECTIVEBYSTANDER (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999181.0 €

The public myth about passive bystanders originated 50 years ago with the case of Kitty Genovese, a young woman raped and murdered in New York. Reporters claimed 38 people witnessed the crime but did nothing to help her. Although the police case file later showed that some bystanders in fact had tried to help, the incident inspired decades of experimental studies trying to explain why bystanders in the presence of others remain inactive toward persons in need of help. While this ‘bystander effect’ is among the most replicated findings in the social sciences, recent video observations of real-life violent emergencies show that bystanders in groups are far from passive. This Collective Bystander program aims to explain why and how bystanders take action to help in public emergencies. Utilizing state-of-the-art video analysis, the largest dataset of CCTV footage ever assembled (4,000 clips of emergencies in Cape Town and Amsterdam), and virtual reality experiments, it will advance an explanatory model that identifies the causal mechanisms that drive helping—a model generalizable beyond experimental settings and violent emergencies. It breaks new scientific ground by: (1) offering a theory that can explain why bystanders take collective action in real-life emergencies, instead of assuming that helping is an individual decision and responsibility; (2) studying how helping happens, rather than focusing on the lack of helping or merely establishing whether bystanders help or not; (3) providing insight into how the type of emergency influences helping behavior; (4) elucidating the interactional mechanisms that prompt helping, moving beyond merely examining variables that correlate with helping; (5) integrating the real-life validity of video observation with the causality-testing capacity of virtual reality experimentation. In sum, the program will set a new research agenda that shifts the focus from individual inaction to collective action in explaining bystander helping.

Mots-clés : helping,groups,emergencies,conflicts,aggression,violence,peacekeeping,third parties,guardianship
Projet ERC : conNEctoER (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université de médecine de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995843.0 €

Compartmentalization into membrane-bound organelles is a key feature of all eukaryotic cells, and communication between organelles needs to be tightly controlled. A key organelle for the inter-organelle communication is the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which is the major site of lipid and membrane protein synthesis. The ER exchanges molecules by forming stable contact sites with multiple organelles such as mitochondria via specific tethering proteins and transporters. In contrast to these contact sites, the ER is linked to the nucleus via direct fusion to the outer nuclear membrane of the nuclear envelope (NE). These ER-NE junctions are essential for supplying the lipids and proteins that are synthesized in the ER to the NE. Hence, nuclear function and morphology depend on the proper communication via ER-NE junctions. However, the biogenesis, architecture and maintenance of ER-NE junctions have remained elusive. We have recently found that ER-NE junctions exhibit a narrow and constricted ultrastructure during the cell cycle in mammalian cells. These observations led us to postulate that ER-NE junctions are formed and maintained by specific membrane-shaping proteins that are crucial for nuclear function. Here, we propose to identify the molecular mechanism that governs the structure and function of ER-NE junctions. We will provide a quantitative and dynamic high-resolution view of these enigmatic structures by combining time-resolved electron microscopy and quantitative live imaging with molecular perturbations. Using these datasets, we aim to develop a mechanistic model of how ER-NE junctions form and contribute to nuclear function. The NE proteins supplied via ER-NE junctions have critical roles in gene expression, nuclear organization, and nuclear pore biogenesis, as well as in differentiation, development, and disease. Therefore, our research will provide a new conceptual framework that will open lines of investigation in many fields beyond ER/NE biology.

Mots-clés : correlative microscopy quantitative imaging nuclear envelope nuclear pore complex electron tomography
Projet ERC : PhaseShape (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université Radboud de Nimègue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Membranes are crucial for the functioning of living cells. They enclose and protect the cell and organize the cellular machinery in subcompartments. Membrane proteins regulate the transport of molecules entering and exiting the cell, which is essential for homeostasis and energy production. However, transmembrane transport, shape regulation and division also present major challenges for creating synthetic cells and integrating synthetic and living cells. Without complex transport proteins, vesicle-based synthetic cells cannot take up nutrients, excrete waste or stay alive. Moreover, connecting synthetic cells into functional synthetic tissues capable of communication has proven difficult. Emerging evidence shows that, in living cells, biomolecular condensates are involved in a wide range of functional interactions with cellular membranes, leading to signalling, membrane repair, remodelling and exocytosis.  This proposal aims to develop coacervate protocells with dynamically controlled properties that are capable of similar functional interactions in synthetic cells, and at the interface between synthetic and living cells. The coacervates proposed here have three vital functions: (1) supply nutrients and functional biomolecules via triggered delivery; (2) reshape and divide synthetic cells; and (3) connect cells into synthetic tissues with tunable communication and mechanical properties. Key to these coacervates is the ability to dynamically control their interaction with membranes, which we achieve via active (bio)chemical reactions that we develop. Controlling this unique coacervate-membrane interface will be a gamechanger for building viable synthetic cells and tissues, and synthetic/live cell hybrids by creating new opportunities for delivery, remodelling and signalling, and provide a fundamental understanding of condensate-membrane interactions in biology.

Mots-clés : synthetic cells coacervates liquid liquid phase separation systems chemistry
Projet ERC : ARCHIMEDES (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université de Tampere — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Traditional in vivo tesTraditional in vivo tests are hampering the development of new, safe and effective chemicals and drugs. If on one hand we need to ensure that dangerous chemicals do not emerge, on the other, we also need to promote rapid and sustainable innovation to successfully overcome the modern challenges of humankind. Toxicogenomics aims at clarifying the mechanism of action (MOA) of chemicals by using omics assays. The Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOP) concept is also emerging to contextualise toxicogenomics-derived MOA. Efforts are ongoing to anchor AOPs to molecular assays, but systematic embedding of AOP-derived in vitro tests and Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) are still unestablished. At the same time, toxicogenomics-based evidence still struggles to gain regulatory acceptance. I aim to implement an integrated strategy based on state-of-the-art big data science, artificial intelligence (AI), toxicogenomics, molecular assays and cell technology via a novel Knowledge Graph approach. I will do so by developing the Toxicology Knowledge Graph (TKG), an innovative data platform where the currently fragmented knowledge in the field is going to be curated and integrated. The TKG will serve as a learning platform for artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, which will be used to: 1) find new characteristics of chemicals/drugs; 2) infer associations between exposures and diseases; 3) select the most relevant cell lines to study specific phenotypes/chemical classes; 4) find the best genes to be used as reporters for specific AOPs; 5) define the applicability domain of computational, experimental and IATA models. I will also establish and validate regulatory-relevant high-throughput molecular assays to investigate the point of departure (PoD) of exposures. The ARCHIMEDES project will shift the paradigm of chemical and drug development, facilitating the emergence of new, smarter, greener, and more sustainable chemicals, drugs and materials.

Mots-clés : toxicogenomics,iata,chemical safety assessment,drug development,predictive toxicology
Projet ERC : HumInMedHum (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1979844.0 €

The last decade has seen a steady increase in the number of medical schools offering courses in the Medical Humanities, an interdisciplinary field that promotes the study of the Humanities in healthcare education as engendering greater awareness in practitioners in training and thereby better healthcare practice and dissemination. While research in the field is rapidly developing, it problematically remains largely theoretical, based on a single case study, and/or presents Humanities scholarship as merely additive to rather than integrated in education. It is therefore crucial to comprehensively examine how the Medical Humanities works—and can work—in and through practice. This project will critically elaborate the benefits of further integrating the Humanities in the Medical Humanities by examining and expanding the discourse on Graphic Medicine. A flourishing field attentive to the study and production of comics about health and healthcare, Graphic Medicine utilizes theoretical and artistic research practice in productive reciprocal exchange. As such, it is well suited to evaluate and develop the aims, current applications, and potential of the Medical Humanities to positively affect not only healthcare scholars and practitioners, but also comics artists, patients, their families, carers, and the public. Through cross-national, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic analyses of Graphic Medicine, from healthcare education to online information, and from individual artistic practices to collaborations between comics artists and healthcare institutions, this project’s five work packages will offer unprecedented comparisons and unprecedented reach to multiple stakeholders who can use the project’s findings for future research. In an era of global pandemic and rampant disinformation, the importance of improving healthcare training, keeping the public informed about healthcare, and creating new healthcare knowledge from the perspective of patients cannot be undervalued.

Mots-clés : graphic medicine,comics studies,critical medical and health humanities,artistic research practice
Projet ERC : NONPHARM (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998168.0 €

Infectious diseases cripple well-being, batter economies, and kill millions annually. These negative consequences can be drastically reduced via nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – behaviors that reduce the spread of pathogens. A wealth of recent theoretical and empirical work has illuminated how and why disgust intuitively motivates some NPIs, such as avoiding bodily wastes and spoiled foods. However, disgust does little to inhibit transmission via aerosols, respiratory droplets, and fomites – key pathways for the respiratory pathogens that circulate seasonally, have caused recent pandemics, and will cause the pandemics of the future. Hence, even with advances in our understanding of disgust, the psychological underpinnings of the less-intuitive NPIs that inhibit respiratory pathogens – such as handwashing, barriers to respiratory droplets and aerosols, and self-isolation while infectious – remain mysterious. This project addresses the urgent need to better understand these NPIs using theory and methods that cut across social psychology, evolutionary psychology, health psychology, and behavioral genetics. First, it catalogs and explains cross-cultural differences and similarities in NPI practices with an unprecedented survey of 50 nations, and it uses a state-of-the-art nuclear twin family design to assess within-population genetic and cultural transmission of NPIs. Second, it uses experimental methods to test the roles of folk theories of immunity, moralization, and conflicts between individual and collective interests on NPI practices. Third, it develops novel, theory-based interventions for increasing handwashing and voluntary quarantining while sick and uses objective assessments of soap use and total daily movements to evaluate those interventions. By providing groundbreaking data, theory development, and empirically-supported interventions, this project will arm science and society with critical new knowledge in our battle against infectious disease.

Mots-clés : disgust,evolutionary psychology,behavioral immune system,disease,emotion,health
Projet ERC : SPOTLIGHT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1962253.0 €

The aim of the SPOTLIGHT project is to design, build, measure, and explore a novel class of light sources based on hot-electron emission in silicon bowtie structures. We will pioneer hitherto unexplored light sources that use strongly enhanced light-matter interaction to dramatically increase the radiative decay rate of hot electrons, i.e., electrons injected in high-energy bands. These high-energy bands do not play a role in light sources today because electrons in solids couple so strongly to phonons that they decay rapidly by phonon emission before any appreciable light emission can occur. As a result, even if electrons are injected at energies high up in the conduction bands, they decay non-radiatively to the conduction band edge on a picosecond timescale. This implies that essentially all electronics and photonics today rely on physical processes occurring close to the band gap and this holds for transistors, resistors, lasers, light-emitting diodes, single-photon sources, and much more.  My idea builds on a recent breakthrough in my group where we demonstrated a novel type of nanocavity, capable of confining light to optical mode volumes so small that they were considered fundamentally impossible just a few years ago. These unique concepts enable speeding up the radiative processes by orders of magnitude, turning hot electrons in any semiconductor into a bright light source whose wavelength will be determined by the cavity, not the band gap. Our material of choice will be silicon, not only because it is the most important material in micro- and nanoelectronics for which an integrated light source is a long-sought goal, but also because silicon offers the most advanced nanotechnology. This will be crucial for our exploration of this uncharted frontier of semiconductor devices with unprecedented dimensions and unprecedented light-matter interaction strengths where new insights may have profound impact on nanotechnology, photonics, and beyond.

Mots-clés : photonic nanocavities,photonic nanophysics,nanoscale light sources,light matter interaction