Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : HEAVYMETAL (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3483901.0 €

The incredible density, gravity, and electromagnetic field strengths of neutron stars (NS) make them laboratories for physics under extreme conditions. But probing these exotic objects is difficult. With the 2017 gravitational wave detection of a NS-NS merger, the landscape changed, and we can now get high-quality spectra of the decompressed neutron-rich matter emerging from the collision. This is a new transient astrophysical phenomenon called a 'kilonova'. Kilonovae are a potential treasure trove of information on some of the biggest open questions in physics: understanding the nuclear and astrophysical pathways that created half of all the heavy elements (Z > 30) in the universe, and the physics of very hot and extremely dense matter. For this reason, they are considered a scientific priority and kilonova science is the target of several large new and upgraded facilities. But kilonovae are challenging: the phenomenon is short-lived, requiring rapid follow-up with large telescopes, the outflow is heavy element-dominated making it extremely demanding to model, and the merger itself covers a huge dynamic range and involves complex nuclear physics. To interpret the spectra we require new atomic data, which does not yet exist for most of the heavy elements. To tackle these challenges, HEAVYMETAL assembles experts in astrophysical observations, hydrodynamical merger simulation, numerical radiative transfer, and laboratory heavy element spectroscopy and atomic structure calculation. With this team we will be able to determine the structures and overall geometries of the merger outflow, the elemental abundances, and their stratification within the ejecta. By the full exploitation of kilonovae we will trace the nucleosynthesis pathways in NS mergers, and provide important insights on heavy nuclei, neutrino interactions, and the nature of high-density matter, and we will chart the role of compact object mergers as the cosmic forge of the heaviest elements.

Mots-clés : neutron stars kilonova radiative transfer laser produced plasma spectroscopy heavy ion spectroscopy gravitational waves r process origin of the elements
Projet ERC : D2Smell (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2959000.0 €

This proposal is framed by a technological goal: We aim to digitize smell. Achieving this is currently prevented by gaps in basic science. We aim to fill these gaps, culminating in a proof of concept for our model. The primary gap we identify is lack of data on what humans typically smell. Phrased conceptually, in Aim 1 we ask what are the natural statistics of human olfactory perceptual space. We address this in a series of three experiments, highlighted by one where we equip participants with a wearable sampling apparatus we designed and built for this proposal. The apparatus measures sniffing behaviour to identify odor sampling, measures neural activity to verify olfactory perception, takes video of the visual scene, analyses total levels of volatile organic compounds in real time, and collects odor samples for detailed analysis off line. In other words, we generate an olfactory equivalent of Google Street View, with the addition of chemical, perceptual and neural data. Using this we will characterise the natural statistics of human olfactory perceptual space. Moreover, a major contribution of this proposal will be in posting this massive data as a publicly available recourse. Next, in Aim 2 we will use this data to digitize human olfactory perceptual space. We build on a model that allows us to recreate odors using a restricted set of odor primaries. We will test our model in two frameworks: One we call SmelloVision, where we develop the algorithmic framework to generate an odor to match any digital image, and one we call TelleSmell, where we develop a device to sense the environment, the algorithmic framework to transfer the data, and a device to generate the corresponding odor remotely. We provide pilot data for Aim 2 where we sensed an odor in Mainz (Germany), transmitted the data over IP to Rehovot (Israel), where we successfully recreated the smell. This was, as far as we know, the first transmission of odor over IP.

Mots-clés : olfaction odor sniffing perceptual space chemical space
Projet ERC : CONCERT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique de Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : PoliMi
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2580191.0 €

Conical intersections (CIs) are regions in the potential energy surface of molecules where different electronic energy levels intersect, leading to the breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and promoting non-adiabatic transitions between electronic states. CIs preside over essential ultrafast processes in photobiology, photochemistry, and materials science as they can be viewed as “doorways” through which a photoexcited vibrational wave packet (WP) is efficiently funnelled to a lower-energy electronic state. Despite theoretical predictions, CIs have been experimentally elusive so far, due to the extreme speed of the processes leading to and occurring at the CIs and to the associated large variation in the energetic landscape of the molecule, calling for extreme spectral and temporal resolutions. Leveraging recent experimental advances in the generation of ultrashort soft X-ray pulses and conceptual advances in nonlinear optical spectroscopy, CONCERT aims to: i) directly visualise the very moment in which the molecular WP passes through the CI and the associated quantum mechanical electronic coherences; ii) use this knowledge to control, using tailored light pulses, the WP dynamics in the vicinity of a CI and, ultimately, the outcome and the yield of a photochemical reaction by operating exactly where the fate of the process is decided. CONCERT will have both fundamental and applied impact. On the one hand, it will enable the understanding of the molecular mechanisms driving the passage of a WP through a CI, advancing our knowledge of nature and providing design guidelines for artificial molecular systems that mimic the natural ones. On the other hand, it will offer the ability to control the rates and branching ratios of photochemical processes by manipulating the excited state WP in the critical region that determines its ultimate path, fulfilling the long-held dream of using light as a photonic catalyst to control the outcome of chemical reactions.

Mots-clés : ultrafast spectroscopy conical intersections quantum dynamics
Projet ERC : 2DPolyMembrane (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Leyde — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3200000.0 €

Current separation technology is crucial for many aspects of human life and accounts for ~15% of the world’s energy consumption. While the particle flow through separation columns is directional at the atomistic scale, undirected Brownian motion dominates in state-of-the-art membranes. 2D membranes have the potential to overcome this intrinsic deficiency and shift the paradigm of particle transport from disordered Brownian motion to unidirectional flow. We will develop unprecedented 2D polymer heterostructure membranes (2DHMs) combined with functionalized graphene. They offer ultimate thinness (leading to shortest diffusion lengths), precision pore geometry/size (resulting in high size-selectivity, even for hydrogen isotopes), and high functionality (fostering chemical/charge selectivity and ionic gating), making them ideal membrane materials to realize selective and unidirectional ion transport. We will combine our complementary expertise in theory and prediction, chemical design, and on-water/liquid surface synthesis, as well as in-situ ion transport investigations to develop robust 2DHMs. We will synthesize 2DHMs in the form of horizontal and vertical heterostructures, for which reliable structure-property correlations will be established. We will take advantage of lattice vibrations, nuclear quantum, and electrochemical effects, and consequently reformulate classical diffusion theory to consider these game changers. As a result, we will achieve innovative 2DHMs for selective proton and ion transport with high permeance, laying the foundations for the next-generation membrane technologies. 2DPolymembrane will unlock the unique opportunities of 2DHMs for innovative energy device integrations (proton/aqueous metal batteries, fuel cells, and reverse osmotic power generators), where the merits of ultrathin precision 2DHMs will result in the highest selectivity and highest particle flow, and thus a fundamental device performance beyond the state-of-art.

Mots-clés : interfacial synthesis two dimensional polymer heterostructures hydron sieving ion transport separation membranes
Projet ERC : SAFEr Grid (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Aalborg — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3062532.8 €

Electrical power systems are experiencing significant challenges because of the substitution of fossil-based power plants with inverter-based renewable energy sources. This transition pushes power systems to the limits; first severe blackouts have already emerged in developed countries. Although applied for more than 100 years, the rigid coupling of the entire power system infrastructure to a global synchronous 50Hz-frequency is now turning into a liability, making a fundamental paradigm shift inevitable.  The ambitious goal of our project is the exploration, conceptualization, and evaluation of a radically new theory, architecture, and operational principle for power systems. The groundbreaking idea is to go beyond the synchronous balance of power and to replace it with an asynchronous balance of energy leveraging the established role-models from the Internet and telecommunications domain. The elimination of the global synchronicity requirement in power systems represents a quantum leap and is realized through the decoupling and asynchronous operation of independent subgrids. Our fully intrinsic, scalable, and gradually deployable approach is based on the store-and-forward balancing of energy. Networked control, the evolution of power electronics, and the availability of energy storage are the enabling technologies for this revolutionary approach. SAFEr Grid will enable a fundamental breakthrough in the stable, resilient, efficient, scalable, and fully automated delivery of energy and will stimulate widespread innovation in the energy sector--comparable to the rise of the Internet economy.  The project is clearly a high-risk/high-gain endeavour that requires the expertise of multiple research disciplines. The four PIs constitute a perfect team and the synergy of their expertise will successfully address Europe's most pressing grand challenge in terms of sustainability goals: energy supply, energy infrastructure, and energy independence.

Mots-clés : power system dynamics,modeling and simulation of energy systems,power system control,power converters,power electronics,smart transformers,power hardware in the loop,environmental change,societal impact,communication systems,cyber physical networking,infrastructural internet of things,energy transition,open innovation,ecosystem emergence,ecosystem governance,transformation
Projet ERC : INSIGHT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Regensburg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3058076.5 €

Earth's growing population puts immense pressure on ecosystems due to increasing demands for natural resources, which are transformed into materials or energy for human use. Chemical catalysis is our primary tool for converting molecules, and advancements over the last century have made these processes more sustainable. While catalysis holds promise for addressing the urgent need for efficient, sustainable resource conversion, current discovery and optimization methods are too slow to meet global demands. The INSIGHT project, a collaboration between a synthetic chemist, mass spectrometry expert, and theoretical chemist, aims to accelerate this process. We are developing a workflow that rapidly generates knowledge in catalysis. Building on our discovery of adaptive dynamic catalysis, where the physical state of a metal ion is maintained in its active form by external stimuli (light or electrons), we integrate this approach with flow mass spectrometry. This enables us to explore an unprecedented number of parameter permutations, identify successful reactions, and gather kinetic data, which will inform theoretical models and provide deep insights into catalytic systems. Our project unfolds in three stages: First, we refine mass spectrometry techniques, generate data, and build models using well-established chemistry for cross-coupling carbon-halogen bonds. Next, we apply our discovery workflow to the underexplored area of carbon-oxygen bond activation, which holds significant potential for sustainable catalysis. Finally, we demonstrate the power of our method by tackling one of chemistry’s greatest challenges—carbon-carbon bond activation. By exploring a much larger chemical space for this transformation and using model-based knowledge generation, we aim to uncover innovative catalytic solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing resource challenges. This accelerated approach may revolutionize chemical catalysis, offering sustainable solutions.

Mots-clés : photoredox catalysis reaction monitoring in situ mass spectrometry
Projet ERC : ROTTnROCK (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Strasbourg — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNISTRA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2438213.0 €

More than 10% of the world’s population are at risk to the direct impacts of volcanic eruptions. Volcano monitoring aims to detect and correctly interpret volcanic hazards and to provide early and accurate warnings of impending eruptions. Yet, despite technical and scientific advances, volcanoes still produce unexpected explosive eruptions or sudden flank collapses. Each year, such unpredictable events result in volcanic disasters that devastate unprepared communities and destroy unprotected infrastructures. Previous work by the PIs indicates that volcanic hazards are caused by hydrothermal alteration, which progressively and imperceptibly changes the chemical and physical state of rocks inside a volcano, creating a soft and unstable (or “rotten”) interior. However, the link between “soft” volcanoes and unpredictable volcanic events remains enigmatic. The ROTTnROCK project aims to achieve a ground-breaking advance in our understanding of hydrothermal alteration processes that act inside active volcanic systems. Specifically, we will identify where and at which scales alteration occurs (WP1), explore the chemical fingerprint of alteration and effects on rock properties and strength using laboratory methods (WP2), and develop 4D volcano stability simulations and, therefore, an innovative and optimised hazard assessment workflow (WP3). The ROTTnROCK project combines innovative approaches from traditionally distinct geoscience disciplines (remote sensing, mineralogy and chemistry, rock mechanics, and modelling). This project will revolutionise our understanding of hydrothermal alteration and its effects on volcano hazards, and pave the way for strategies to forecast and mitigate unexpected volcanic events caused by hydrothermal alteration and circumvent disasters at volcanoes worldwide.

Mots-clés : hydrothermal alteration,rock weakening,risk awareness
Projet ERC : RECAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique Chalmers — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2394375.0 €

The epoch of Reionization marks the last major transition of the Universe: approximately 400.000 year after the Big bang, the neutral intergalactic medium, mainly composed of hydrogen atoms, started to be ionized by high-energy radiation from the first cosmic sources, stars, galaxies. The onset, timeline and topology of the Reionization process are all tightly linked to the nature of the sources of ionizing radiation: by identifying and studying them we can gain fundamental insights into what shaped the evolution of the universe, from the smooth matter distribution of early times, as revealed by the CMB, to the wealth of structures, like galaxies and clusters of galaxies that formed at later epochs. Our project will exploit the critical synergies in expertise of the 4 PIs and their teams, from the modeling of the intergalactic medium ionization and metal enrichment, to detailed observations of the ionizing sources, to shed light on their properties, their environment and the complex energy and baryon exchange between them and the intergalactic medium. We will exploit new extensive datasets coming from state-of-the-art facilities, such as the recently launched JWST, present and future VLT instrumentation and ALMA. To support and drive the interpretation of these new observations, we will develop a novel algorithm to model a self-consistent non-equilibrium 3D multi-frequency radiative transfer through H, He, metals and dust and produce both large scale and zoomed-in simulations that can be readily compared to real data. The proposed research aims at making fundamental steps to decode the mysteries of Cosmic Dawn and solve some of the puzzles in our current theories of early galaxy formation.

Mots-clés : epoch of reionization intergalactic medium
Projet ERC : MOSAIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Bologne — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2119375.0 €

“Mapping Occult Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures” (MOSAIC) is the first major project to investigate Islamic and Eastern Christian occult-scientific sources, spanning from late antiquity to the nineteenth century and from Iberia to India, in a vast continuum of languages (Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Turkish). It is generally acknowledged that occult sciences—alchemy, astrology, geomancy, lettrism, magic and a wide range of other operative and prognosticative disciplines—are integral to any history of science and technology. By including the far larger non-Latinate occult-scientific archive, equally integral to this history, MOSAIC is poised to bring about a paradigm shift. We untangle the term “occult” in all its diversity and test a more expansive definition to account for the specific epistemologies driving its multifarious applications. This dynamic and adaptive heuristic not only opens new avenues in the study of body-mind, nature-culture relationships in the historical construction of natural and mathematical science; it also reveals new paths of dissemination and crosspollination of the occult sciences in Islam and Byzantium, restoring a vast textual and artifactual record largely neglected to date. Retrieving occult science will require an unprecedented degree of synergetic expertise, international collaboration and the training of a new generation of highly qualified scholars. We will (1) identify, investigate, catalogue and interpret a critical mass of highly technical sources, making them available through editions, translations, surveys, studies, exhibitions and conferences; (2) combine, as feasible, the study of scientific theories with their technological practice, including through experimental reconstruction; (3) develop a suite of open-access digital tools of immediate use to specialists and nonspecialists alike, and (4) integrate all our findings in a print and born-digital Master Synthesis as an engine for the field going forward.

Mots-clés : greek,syriac,arabic,persian,turkish,artifacts,manusripts,byzantium,islam,occult sciences,encyclopedism,experimental reconstruction,knowledge organisation,critical editions,digital tools
Projet ERC : GlycanSwitch (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Genos (Croatia) — Pays : Croatie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2364750.0 €

Autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are often life-threatening disorders with increasing disability having a negative impact on patients’ quality of life. Mechanisms leading to the breach of tolerance in development of autoimmunity are still largely unknown. Protein glycosylation is an essential regulatory mechanism in the immune system. We recently demonstrated that N-glycosylation of the variable region (Fab) of autoantibodies is a hallmark of RA development and progression. We also demonstrated that autoantibodies acquire these Fab glycosylation signatures already many years before disease onset. We herein hypothesize that Fab glycosylation at the level of the B cell receptor is a key molecular switch promoting the selection, activation and proliferation of autoreactive B cells leading to the concomitant breach of immunotolerance. Within GlycanSwitch, we will map the Fab glycome of various types of RA autoantibodies and autoreactive B cells. We will study the factors and underlying cellular mechanisms that regulate Fab glycosylation of B cell receptors and autoantibodies. We will investigate the immunological effects of Fab glycosylation and the impact in B cells signalling and activation in the context of molecular and cellular interacting partners in the immune microenvironment. Finally, we will test in relevant mouse models how Fab glycosylation of autoantibodies and autoreactive B cells contributes to the breach of tolerance. We expect that the obtained insights into the role of glycans as key checkpoint for the selection of autoreactive B cells and the rise of autoimmunity will provide leads for targeted therapeutic interventions as well as rationales for the early detection of RA and autoimmune diseases in general. We foresee that the knowledge generated will allow us to embark on a targeted prevention clinical study in patients at risk for RA to turn off the GlycanSwitch leading to chronic RA.

Mots-clés : autoimmunity,tolerance