Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CONTREX (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 236958.13 €

The urgent need to reduce carbon emissions in order to mitigate climate change requires the development of clean, renewable energy sources. Solar power offers a virtually unlimited supply of energy, providing it can be harnessed efficiently. Traditional silicon solar cells demonstrate high performance (~20%) but their required method of manufacture prohibits large area production rendering them too expensive to be used on a global scale. Organic solar cells (made from conjugated polymers and fullerenes) have the potential to be fabricated by low cost printing methods allowing for large scale modules to be produced cheaply. Conventional organic solar cells function by generating charge from a singlet excited state. In order to achieve optimum performance the precise morphology of polymer and fullerene must be controlled which can be extremely challenging. These devices however, have attained good efficiencies (10%) but are hampered by severe loss mechanisms which generally involve the formation of a lower energy triplet excited state. We propose to develop novel materials for organic solar cells which will instead utilise this triplet excited state to generate charges. This will enable us to not only eliminate this loss mechanism but due to the unique properties of the triplet excited state will allow for numerous benefits. Firstly, the long lifetime of the triplet excited state will be exploited to allow for a simpler organic solar cell where precise morphological control is not required. Secondly, the proposed new materials will allow for the utilisation of near-IR light which is typically wasted in ALL current solar cell devices. Thirdly, exploiting a unique photophysical process we will produce materials capable of delivering efficiencies in excess of the theoretical limit available to conventional solar cells. Thus we propose that utilisation of triplet excitons is the required step-change to allow for organic solar cells to achieve their ultimate efficiencies

Mots-clés : conjugated polymers,organic solar cells
Projet ERC : HighPotOx (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Freie Universität Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1988280.0 €

The very well-known concept of formal oxidation states, used e. g. for redox reactions is one of the most fundamental ones in general chemistry. However, in the area of very strong oxidizers even the familiar oxido(-II) ligand becomes redox-innocent and assigning oxidation states becomes ambiguous. Very strong (super-) oxidizers are compounds whose oxidizing strength exceeds that of elemental F2. Anyhow, not only molecular oxidizer but also their interaction with the environment in different media needs to be considered, as these dramatically affect their intrinsic oxidizing strength. Here we propose novel conjugate oxidizer/Lewis or Brønsted acid systems with extremely high ox. power. These new ox. media make use of the alliance of high ox. strength and Lewis /Brønsted super acidity. The investigation and development of oxidizers is of essential interest in all areas of chemistry and beyond. Unfortunately a detailed understanding of this fundamental chemistry is still lacking. Here we describe based on three work strands PV, MI, and BP, how we aim at a more fundamental understanding of such systems. The undertaken research, which includes qc investigations, molecular characterizations in matrices and synthetic fluorine chemistry as well as oxido complexes is summarized in five work packages describing different prototype areas (organigram). Based on the gained knowledge, the project will rank and specify such oxidizers and the mechanism leading to ox. media. By using the threefold work strand approach, our project will guide us in a systematic discovery of the systems with high application potential in terms of selectivity and disposability, and oxidizing systems with high to ultrahigh oxidation potentials, and into the chemical terra incognita of fragile molecules at the edge of stability. We envision to highlight that the outcome of the project will be extremely useful for scientists from almost all fields of chemistry and related disciplines.

Mots-clés : inorganic molecular chemistry,fluorine chemistry,halogen chemistry,strong oxidizers,super acids,lewis acids,matrix isolation spectroscopy,quantum chemical calculations
Projet ERC : PEP2D (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : University of Pisa — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPi
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1350043.0 €

The vision behind the PEP2D project is to pioneer the realization of fully printed electronic circuits on flexible substrates as paper, leveraging the exceptional electronic properties of inks based on novel two- dimensional materials (2DMs), and through the wide-spread and low-cost inkjet printing technology. The development of fully printed electronic systems on flexible substrates as paper could have an unpreceded economical and societal impact on the European Union. Unleashing the potential of this technology could open new and wide applications, ranging from bio (e.g., smart patches for biometric readings), to food/medicine quality control (e.g, smart tags for checking the breaking of cold chain), or to anti-counterfeiting of valuable goods, just to cite few. Actually, technology is endeavouring to implement the main building blocks for electronic applications in the fast-growing market of flexible electronics expected to expand to 42 B€ by 2021, but available materials are missing the long-term stability and reliability, and device performance can be further improved. From this perspective, it is compulsory to develop new materials, and device architectures able to allow the fully printing of a working electronic system. PEP2D aims at designing a library of inkjet-printed electronic devices (transistors, and all linear and nonlinear components) and circuits (digital logic, memory circuits, amplifiers, transmitters, receivers) enabled by 2DMs based inks, to be eventually obtained through the use of a single tool as the inkjet process, without the need of any additional fabrications steps (i.e., use of resists, etching etc.) and in air (not in glovebox). Such a goal will be achieved by means of the synergic and complementary activities pursued within the project and based on advanced modelling and design of inkjet-printed devices and circuits, which will lead the activity on the realization and measurements of printed electronic systems.

Mots-clés : multi scale device simulations,two dimensional materials
Projet ERC : VarPL (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1013641.0 €

The visual system is equipped with a powerful plasticity mechanism, perceptual learning, which serves to improve perception of consistent inputs. However, the signals it receives are extremely variable. How variability affects perceptual learning is unclear. Here, I ask how the visual system tackles the challenge of variability for learning: variability could impair perceptual learning, or, like in language and motor learning, result in the ability to generalize from trained to new materials. To create effective training programs, e.g., for clinical applications, it is crucial to know how to reap the benefits of variability, or, conversely, to overcome the challenges variability poses. Yet, the neural mechanisms by which the visual system copes with variability are unknown, hampering this endeavor. To close this gap, I propose a new theory, derived from the architecture of cortex: I hypothesize that perceptual learning is not limited to early visual areas, but flexibly occurs at a ‘sweet spot’ along the visual hierarchy whose functional properties match the variability in the given environment. To test this theory, I build on a multimodal, multispecies approach I have previously developed to study learning: I will identify general principles by which variability affects perceptual learning in behavior, dissect the critical neural circuits in macaque monkeys and humans with neuroimaging, determine the functional characteristics of neurons contributing to learning by electrophysiology, and establish their causal relevance using electrical stimulation. This unique combination of species and techniques is ideally suited to unravel the neural mechanism for coping with variability in perceptual learning. By elucidating the computations and mechanisms by which the visual system handles one of the most characteristic aspects of its inputs, I aim to provide the basis for neuroscience-based training paradigms that help alleviate vision deficits.

Mots-clés : perceptual learning,vision,variability,human,macaque monkey,fmri,electrophysiology,microstimulation,psychophysics,inter species comparison
Projet ERC : CCLAD (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1471530.0 €

The way in which normative principles (“norms”) matter in world politics is now a key area of international relations research. Yet we have limited understanding of why some norms emerge and gain traction globally whereas others do not. The politics of loss and damage related to climate change offers a paradigm case for studying the emergence of - and contestation over - norms, specifically justice norms. The parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recently acknowledged that there is an urgent need to address the inevitable, irreversible consequences of climate change. Yet within this highly contested policy area - which includes work on disaster risk reduction; non-economic losses (e.g. loss of sovereignty); finance and climate-related migration - there is little consensus about what loss and damage policy means or what it requires of the global community, of states and of the (current and future) victims of climate change. Relying on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and an ethnographic methodology that traverses scales of governance, my project - The Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) - will elucidate the conditions under which a norm is likely to become hegemonic, influential, contested or reversed by introducing a new understanding of the fluid nature of norm-content. I argue that norms are partly constituted through the practices of policy-making and implementation at the international and national level. The research will examine the micro-politics of the international negotiations and implementation of loss and damage policy and also involves cross-national comparative research on domestic loss and damage policy practices. Bringing these two streams of work together will allow me to show how and why policy practices shape the evolution of climate justice norms. CCLAD will also make an important methodological contribution through the development of political ethnography and “practice-tracing” methods.

Mots-clés : socio legal studies
Projet ERC : LOFlu (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2870250.0 €

The world health organization monitors viral infections worldwide with the aim to coordinate strategies to control viral outbreaks. The on-demand development of vaccines or antibody treatment does not confer a first line of defense against unpredictable infections caused by new viruses in humans such as pandemic influenza, corona or Ebola viruses, and new approaches are needed. We propose to investigate the fundamental basis of novel host-pathogen interactions in influenza A virus (IAV) infection that may define new antiviral strategies. We discovered that the important pathogen IAV induces the intracellular assembly of viral inclusions that behave like liquid organelles. IAV inclusions serve as assembly sites for the IAV segmented genome, a key step in the viral lifecycle. We now find that the maintenance of the liquid character of IAV inclusions is essential for viral replication. As we identified some of the host and viral components of IAV inclusions, we now have the tools to interrogate how specific interactions and cellular processes result in phase-separated compartments. We aim to learn how the function of IAV inclusions is related to their material state and investigate the potential of imposing phase transitions in an organism to limit IAV infection. Phase separation provides a novel conceptual framework to tackle how viruses exploit cells to organize viral reactions in space and in time. It also provides alternative principles for exploring aspects of the IAV lifecycle not yet fully understood, including how influenza epidemic and pandemic genomes assemble. Taken together, we propose a new, integrated approach for studying phase separated phenomena, from the molecular to the organismal level, that will bring a deeper understanding and control to viral infections. Our work will also be of relevance to other fields of biomedicine, including in the science of soft matter that is involved in neurodegenerative diseases and some cancers.

Mots-clés : influenza a virus,virology,cell biology,membraneless organelles,cellular structure,viral assembly
Projet ERC : Water-Futures (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Athens University of Economics and Business — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AUEB;OPA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2256250.0 €

The world population living in urban settlements is expected to increase to 70% of 9.7 billion by 2050. Historically, as cities grew, new water infrastructures followed as needed. However, these developments had less to do with real planning than with reacting to crisis situations and urgent needs, due to the inability of urban water planners to consider long-term, deeply uncertain and ambiguous factors affecting urban development and water demand. These, coupled with increasingly uncertain climate conditions, indicate the need for a more holistic and intelligent decision-making framework for managing water infrastructures in the cities of the future. This project aims to develop a new theoretical framework for the allocation and development decisions on drinking water infrastructure systems, so that they are socially equitable, economically efficient and environmentally resilient, as advocated by the UN Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals. The framework will integrate real-time monitoring and control with long-term robustness and flexibility-based pathway methods, and incorporate economic, social, ethical and environmental considerations for sustainable transitioning of urban water systems under deep uncertainty with multiple possible futures. The Water-Futures team will build on synergies from the four research groups, transcending methodologies from water science, systems and control theory, economics and decision science, and machine learning, into an integrated decision and control framework, to be implemented as an open-source research toolbox. The new science outcomes will be applied to three case studies exemplifying different types of urban water systems: a mature, relatively stable system; a mature and rapidly expanding system; and a relatively recent supply system in a developing country with high growth and special challenges, including limited resources, intermittent supply and high water losses.

Mots-clés : urban drinking water systems,computational intelligence,hydroinformatics,cyber physical systems
Projet ERC : DONNI (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498767.0 €

The “Developmental Origins of Health and Disease” (DOHaD) hypothesis states that insults in early life can have lifelong, irreversible impacts, affecting individuals’ health and well-being in older age. My proposed research builds on this in two main ways. First, I will use natural experiments to investigate the causal impact of early life circumstances on later life outcomes, focusing on novel (1) nutritional, (2) toxicological, (3) health and (4) economic environments in early life. Within these, I will consider insults (i) for which there is insufficient knowledge of their long-term impacts, (ii) which are relevant today, and (iii) importantly, which are modifiable. Second, I will go beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debate and investigate how individuals’ genes (‘nature’) interacts with the above early life environments (‘nurture’) in creating inequalities in health and well-being. Whilst neither the estimation of causal effects within DOHaD, nor the estimation of the gene-environment (GxE) interplay is new, their combination is. Indeed, it is currently not known how the early life environment interacts with genetic predisposition to causally shape later life outcomes, as well as whether certain environments exacerbate or reduce health inequalities in the population. Combining advancements across disciplines, I will evaluate the long-term effects of short-term variations in early life conditions (objective 1), and I will directly test the hypothesis that gene-environment interactions causally shape later life outcomes (objective 2). I will digitize historical data on early life environmental exposures and merge these with large-scale individual-level data. As such, my proposal will investigate the extent to which genes interact with the environment, using natural experiments to identify interventions that can ameliorate inequalities in health and well-being (objective 3).
Projet ERC : FeelSpeech (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université Paris Cité — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UP Cité
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149950.0 €

The “FeelSpeech” project will provide proof of concept of a novel prosthesis that will allow people with hearing loss to better understand speech. The prosthesis will be worn on the wrist and will resemble a wristwatch. A special, novel kind of tactile stimulation called “microstroking” provided by the device will supplement what a person hears, and this information will be unconsciously made use of by the user’s brain, providing improved speech perception even when the user has almost lost all hearing.

Mots-clés : hearing impairment speech prosthesis tactile sensory substitution
Projet ERC : INFRANORTH (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Vienna — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Univie
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499998.0 €

The “new Arctic” is attracting global attention for a variety of reasons, including geopolitics, militarisation, resource extraction, wilderness tourism, and calls for environmental protection in the face of rapid climate change. Many of these activities necessitate the construction or upgrading of transport infrastructures in this relatively remote, inaccessible and scarcely-populated part of the world. While these large-scale infrastructures are mostly sponsored by outside interests, they can have profound impacts on local residents. We propose to focus on how residents of the Arctic, both indigenous and non-indigenous, engage with these infrastructures, and to examine the intended and unintended consequences these projects have on their lives. Our challenge is to understand whether existing and planned transport infrastructures will support permanent human habitation and sustainable communities in the Arctic, or whether they will strengthen a trend of substituting permanent residents with “temporaries” like shift workers, tourists and military personnel. In addressing this challenge, we adopt a relational affordance perspective, which will document the material and non-material entanglements of local residents and transport infrastructures in three distinct arctic regions. Our approach combines ethnographic fieldwork with mapping exercises and archival research. Our project team of anthropologists and geographers will use quantitative population data to upscale to the regional level, and regional patterns will be contrasted and compared to reach conclusions on the panarctic level. We will use interactive scenarios to collect input and to develop decision options. Our overarching research question – What is the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining arctic communities? – is of urgent relevance on both theoretical and practical levels, and by addressing it we will contribute locally informed results to critical conversations about arctic futures.

Mots-clés : anthropology,arctic,infrastructure,transport,futures,sustainable communities,remoteness