Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MemoryTracker (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Central Institute of Mental Health — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CIMH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1984125.0 €

The field studying the processing of memory during sleep has been gaining attention lately, leading to some significant progress in our understanding. However, the challenge now is to translate these in-sights into practical psychotherapeutic options for mental disorders that are traditionally hard to treat. Our research aims to address this gap by using innovative behavioral paradigms and advanced neuro-scientific methods to tap into the therapeutic potential of sleep.  Rather than treating clinical utility as an afterthought, we have integrated it into the core of our proposal (work package D). During sleep, memories undergo a replay process that strengthens and trans-forms them. We want to provide direct evidence of this phenomenon in humans, building on studies in rodents and humans. Our approach involves creating a reliable procedure to track memory reprocessing using a cutting-edge MEG scanner with machine learning to identify replay events during sleep. We'll also explore how complex memories unfold over several weeks and use a novel behavior-al paradigm to generalize how complex memories are consolidated. This will allow us to examine how depression can disrupt this process, offering new possibilities for therapy.  While developing these methods presents challenges and the outcomes are uncertain, we believe the potential benefits make it worthwhile. Success in our project could pave the way for future efforts to manipulate memory replay during sleep—an exciting possibility. The project provides a vital step to later establishing a closed-loop approach that both measures and responds to replay, e.g., by acoustic or electrical stimulation techniques. We hope in the end to pioneer techniques that can support therapy for prevalent mental health challenges like depression, schizophrenia, and addiction—issues that are particularly pressing in the European Union.

Mots-clés : sleep,long term memory,replay,depression,consolidation
Projet ERC : MiNet (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz de Hanovre — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2694623.0 €

Hundreds and thousands of fireflies synchronize their dazzling light in summer nights – one of nature’s most beautiful demonstrations on the importance of synchronization and scalability in a network. So we ask the question, is it possible and even necessary to synchronize all components in a complex large-scale quantum network?  This is not a question for the future. Rapid experimental progress in recent years has brought first rudimentary quantum networks within reach, highlighting the timeliness and need for unified frameworks. This proposal, MiNet, aims to establish a unified framework on "time", both experimentally and theoretically.  Similar to a classical network, a future quantum network may have to attach accurate timing stamps to all events occurred, such as the generation and storage of qubits. However, entanglement swapping, which will be used to scalably connect a large ensemble of quantum nodes, puts a stringent requirement on this timing task, making it beyond today’s technologies.  MiNet will build a large-scale multipartite entanglement testbed connecting two science cities in north Germany, Hannover and Braunschweig. Taking advantage of the latest metrology advances, MiNet will use a telecom fiber-based optical clock network to disseminate ultra-stable time/frequency information to devices in three remote laboratories in the two cities. The important requirement on scalability, on the other hand, will be provided by semiconductor quantum dot sources that have incredible improvement recently.  This project is at the forefront of semiconductors, quantum communication and metrology. MiNet will be the first of its kind, allowing one to gain the full advantages of available resources within a clocked quantum network. In the long term, the fiber-based optical clock network, as part of a Pan-European collaborative effort, may help to synchronize a large number of quantum computing and communication devices at large scales that can never be reached before.

Mots-clés : semiconductor quantum dot,single photon sources,entangled photon sources,entanglement swapping,quantum communication,metrology,telecommunication
Projet ERC : FROM STONE TO HOME (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université Aristote de Thessalonique — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 81875.0 €

This project explores the emergence of value and wealth as a concept in human history. Social and economic changes accelerated during the Neolithic, but until now it remains unclear what triggered inequality in these communities. Thus, the project aims to nuance how inequality evolved in human history. To approach this key question the study will investigate social and economic transformations initiated by the appearance of polished stone tools (axes, adzes, chisels and wedges) recovered from Neolithic sites, burials, households and quarries from the 7th to the 4th millennium BC in the Aegean. The project hypothesis is linking the Neolithic human awareness of raw material availability and biographies of polished stone tool assemblages with the abstract concepts of the different kinds of value and wealth in these communities. The project will pursue its objectives by initiating four work packages which will, for the first time, document and compare polished stone tools made of rare (jadeitite, nephrite, omphacitite or eclogite) and common (serpentinite, andesite, basalt, gabbro and hematite) raw materials from sites, burials and households in selected synchronic and diachronic case studies. By revealing the location of previously unknown raw material sources and quarry sites of polished stone tools, the project will be able to discover the interrelations between local, regional and superregional exchange networks. Through techno-morphological, use-wear and contextual analysis of polished stone tools, it will be possible to qualify and quantify the different stages of the studied objects, from procurement, manufacture and usage to the final deposition. The data from the polished stone tool assemblages will be related to other materials (lithics, ceramics, bones, shells, obsidian, flint, copper and gold) from the studied sites, burials and households, in order to identify new aspects related to the value of objects and fluctuations in wealth and inequality.

Mots-clés : neolithic,stone tools,aegean,value,wealth
Projet ERC : LoCal (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1372986.0 €

This project addresses questions in the mathematical theory of inverse problems, a research field at the interface between pure and applied mathematics. The techniques that will be developed lie at the intersection of partial differential equations and geometry, with affinity to control theory and general relativity. The Lorentzian Calderon problem is central to the proposal. A physical interpretation of the problem asks us to recover a moving medium given data generated by acoustic waves probing the medium, and seen from the mathematical point of view, it is the simplest formulation of an inverse boundary value problem for a linear wave equation that is expressed in a generally covariant fashion. The project explores the geometric conditions under which the problem can be solved, that is, media that are visible to probing waves, as well as counterexamples violating such conditions, leading to invisibility. The Lorentzian Calderon problem is poorly understood in comparison to similar inverse problems for nonlinear wave equations. One of the guiding ideas in the project is to adapt techniques from the theory of these problems, developed recently by PI and others, to the Lorentzian Calderon problem. Another source of inspiration is the recent solution of the Lorentzian Calderon problem under curvature bounds by PI and his coauthors. The project develops a new approach to solve the Lorentzian Calderon problem, and this may also lead to a breakthrough in the resolution of the Riemannian version of the problem, often called the anisotropic Calderon problem. The latter problem has remained open for more than 30 years. In addition to being the hyperbolic analogue of this well-known problem, the Lorentzian Calderon problem can be viewed as a generalization of the even more classical inverse problem studied by Gelfand and Levitan in the 1950s.

Mots-clés : inverse problems,wave equation,lorentzian geometry
Projet ERC : JUSTIMINO (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Centres des sciences humaines de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GWZ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1996988.0 €

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are rarely associated with the ‘rule of law’. And yet, the notions of ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ greatly mattered in both: political and cultural elites invoked them as much as the wider citizenries. While existing literature has addressed ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ in studies of state policy and intellectual opposition to the two orders, there is little recognition of how instrumental they both were to ethnic and religious minorities. Whereas religion was one of the key determinants of rights, privileges, and obligations in the empire, ‘nationality’, understood in ethnic terms, replaced religious affiliation in this capacity under socialism. Being part of a minority could mean open or subtle forms of discrimination. Yet, such discrimination was neither automatic nor did it go unchallenged. This project therefore explores the ways in which minorities, from the Russian Empire’s ‘Great Reforms’ of the 1860s to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, routinely invoked and employed ‘legality’ and ‘justice’ to enforce their rights. It argues that the systems allowed, even encouraged, them to do so. What is more, minorities were also represented among the political and cultural elites, from imperial lawyers to Soviet party officials. What did minority actors expect when they called on ‘justice’ and ‘legality’? More importantly, how and to which degree did this strategy help them defend their rights in two highly authoritarian states? While there are obvious differences between the imperial and Soviet periods in this regard, there are also substantial similarities. To track these, the project proposes an ambitious multi-sited enquiry, combining an analysis of published sources with extensive work in regional and central archives, and oral history. This ground-breaking research will also create an online database on minority legal action that will be debated with NGOs and wider society in a variety of innovative knowledge transfer formats.

Mots-clés : law and society research,imperial history,russia,soviet union,minorities,nationality
Projet ERC : RAMBAS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1963290.0 €

From first principles of quantum mechanics, physical properties of many-body quantum systems are usually encoded into Schroedinger equations. However, since the complexity of the Schroedinger equations grows so fast with the number of particles, it is generally impossible to solve them by current numerical techniques. Therefore, in practice approximate theories are often applied, which focus only on some collective behaviors of the systems in question. The corroboration of such effective models largely depends on mathematical methods. The overall goal of RAMBAS is to justify key effective approximations used in many-body quantum physics, including the mean-field, quasi-free, and random-phase approximations, as well as to derive subtle corrections in critical regimes. Building on my unique expertise in mathematical physics, I will 1) develop general techniques to understand corrections to the mean-field and Bogoliubov approximations for dilute Bose gases, 2) introduce rigorous bosonization methods and combine them with existing techniques from the theory of Bose gases to understand Fermi gases, and 3) employ the bosonization structure of Fermi gases to study the many-body quantum dynamics in long time scales, thus deriving quantum kinetic equations.  By applying and suitably inventing mathematical techniques from functional analysis, spectral theory, calculus of variations and partial differential equations, RAMBAS will take standard approximations of quantum systems to the next level, with special focus on those particularly challenging situations where the particle correlation plays a central role but is yet not adequately addressed. RAMBAS will thereby provide the physics community with crucial mathematical tools, which are at the same time rigorous and applicable.

Mots-clés : many body schroedinger equation,mean field approximation,bose einstein condensation,gross pitaevskii equation,bogoliubov theory,random phase approximation,correlation energy,boltzmann norheim equation
Projet ERC : BIOBANG (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999928.0 €

Human actions are eroding biodiversity and consequently reducing the contributions nature provides to people. Research has thus far had a strong focus on investigating the direct drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land use change, and their impacts on biodiversity. However, we are still lacking information about how sociocultural, economic, and other indirect drivers affect these direct drivers and consequently biodiversity. A key research priority is to investigate how societal values of nature and human behaviour underpin these indirect and direct drivers and consequently affect the transformative potential for positive and durable changes to human relationships with nature of conservation actions. The project draws from the emerging field of conservation culturomics that takes advantage of digital data sources and methods to study human-nature interactions and employs cutting-edge research methods, including Big Data analytics, video games, and online social surveys, to fill knowledge gaps at multiple scales. By combining social media data and online traditional surveys, it will be possible to understand preferences for species, diverse values of biodiversity, and the sentiment of people experiencing nature. Multimodal analyses of videos and video games will be used to study the potential for behaviour change, including for large carnivore conservation in Europe, and to understand what the diverse motivations supporting pro-conservation behaviour are. Biodiversity footprint calculations and a novel framework for species risk assessment will allow exploring impacts of international trade, culture, and other indirect drivers on biodiversity. Large language models and spatial prioritization will help identify priority conservation actions and areas where they should be implemented. When successful, the project will produce transformational knowledge on diverse perspectives and motivations for actions that can bring about change for biodiversity conservation.

Mots-clés : digital conservation natural language processing social media data spatial conservation planning
Projet ERC : HOME (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997921.0 €

From penthouses to igloos, homes are a cornerstone of human society, deeply entrenched in our evolutionary past. Their staggering array of architecture simultaneously shape and reflect our sociocultural traditions, structure our local economies, and have enabled us to inhabit all four corners of the earth. Yet surprisingly little is known about their earliest forms—Palaeolithic shelters. This is because no systematic attempts have been made to target their early archaeological signatures. HOME will search for a diversity of Palaeolithic shelters during the Late Pleistocene through informed systematic surveys and excavations of archaeological sites in East-Central Europe, a place where early mammoth bone structures suggest precocious shelters, but where the record remains inconclusive. This project’s goal is to uncover and assess a variety of Palaeolithic shelters with the aim to understand the diverse ways that humans lived and survived in some of the coldest, harshest climates. The objectives are to: (1) Recognize the factors that influence the location and design of forager shelters through a goal-directed study of ethnographic documentation. (2) Develop new geophysical methods to identify open-air shelter residues in large-scale archaeological surveys. (3) Determine how one of the earliest unambiguous built structures, a mammoth bone structure, was used with the latest techniques in archaeological science. (4) Compare and contrast how these open-air shelters relate to a regional cave occupation through targeted excavations. The results will elucidate how our ancestors adapted to past climate change and expanded into new biomes, ultimately leading to our ubiquitous population of the earth. In addition to its significance to archaeology and anthropology, the outcomes have implications for theories of culture, evolution and human resilience by helping us understand the physical building blocks of early societies.

Mots-clés : geoarchaeology,environmental archaeology,excavation
Projet ERC : CoM-BraiN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Capital Region of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RH
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499000.0 €

Axonal bundles in cerebral white matter form the structural basis of functional brain networks, enabling effective integration of neural activity. The axonal connections are not homogenous structures. Axons differ in diameter and myelination, enabling signal conduction at different velocities. This axonal diversity is a clinically relevant microstructural feature, as neurodegenerative or neuroinflammatory processes can affect axon diameters differently. Recent advances in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have enabled the non-invasive mapping of the microstructural properties of brain network connections in live brains. But attempts to correlate these structural features with brain function have not yet been successful. I have pioneered the mapping of axon diameters that are directly linked to the conductive properties of axonal connections by using diffusion MRI in living human brain. Also, I have established an unique cross-disciplinary validation setup for such methods by combining nanoscopic 3D Synchrotron Radiation Imaging and functional cell-specific targeting techniques. By Conduction Velocity Mapping in Brain Networks (CoM-BraiN) I will be able to unravel the altered functional dynamics of the microstructural connections in the diseased brain. Methodologically, I will push the frontiers of MRI by creating a new translational CoM-BraiN framework for non-invasive and in-vivo studies in animals and humans. Clinically, CoM-BraiN will provide a new window into the characterization of neuropathological changes in the diseased brain and contribute to the identification of structure-function fingerprints of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders that are thought to be a major pathogenic factor in many brain diseases.

Mots-clés : brain network,mri,degenerative disease,animal,human,axon,myelin,validation
Projet ERC : STRONGER (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université d'Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999754.0 €

Cancer therapy resistance is a complex, dynamic process. Pre-existing heterogeneity in cell states provides substance for evolutionary selection, and their plasticity enables adaptation during the therapy. Recently, we discovered a stress-related, immunocompromised cell state underpinning both intrinsic and adaptive resistance in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) metastatic tumours, suggesting that pre-existing stress improves the resilience of cancer cells during neoadjuvant chemotherapy.  To unveil how past stress responses prime cancer cells’ adaptation during therapies, I suggest a novel approach that combines dynamic stress recording with the identification of pre-existing resistant states via my novel methodology, ReSisTrace. We will apply this ground-breaking approach in patient-derived organoids to reveal how past stress signalling of a single cell is reflected in its adaptive stress responses and survival upon chemotherapy or cytotoxic immune attack. We will further characterise subclonal and spatial enrichment of the identified resistant phenotypes in longitudinal clinical specimens to incorporate the effect of tumour microenvironment in discovered mechanisms.  Importantly, simultaneous characterisation of primed and adaptive resistance enables us to overcome both of them by a sequential combination of drugs where the first will drive cells to identified sensitive states prior the treatment, and the second will block identified adaptive responses during the treatment. After finding the most effective pre-sensitisers and anti-adaptive drugs in the organoids, we will validate most promising combinations in patient-derived xenograft models to pave the way for clinical translation. By targeting both pre-existing cell states and their plasticity, my novel approach will lead to a paradigm shift by providing novel, sequential therapeutic strategies to mutually overcome intrinsic and adaptive resistance in the treatment of cancer.

Mots-clés : single cell rna sequencing,adaptive resistance,stress,high grade serous ovarian cancer