Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : BlackHoleMaps (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Cardiff University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998009.0 €

Breakthroughs in numerical relativity in 2005 gave us unprecedented access to the strong-field regime of general relativity, making possible solutions of the full nonlinear Einstein equations for the merger of two black holes. Numerical relativity is also crucial to study fundamental physics with gravitational-wave (GW) observations: numerical solutions allow us to construct models that will be essential to extract physical information from observations in data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo, which will operate from late 2015. Complete signal models will allow us to follow up our first theoretical predictions of the nature of black-hole mergers with their first observational measurements. The goal of this project is to advance numerical-relativity methods, deepen our understanding of black-hole mergers, and map the parameter space of binary configurations with the most comprehensive and systematic set of numerical calculations performed to date, in order to produce a complete GW signal model. Central to this problem is the purely general-relativistic effect of orbital precession. The inclusion of precession in waveform models is the most challenging and urgent theoretical problem in the build-up to GW astronomy. Simulations must cover a seven-dimensional parameter space of binary configurations, but their computational cost makes a naive covering unfeasible. This project capitalizes on a breakthrough preliminary model produced by my team in 2013, with the pragmatic goal of focussing on the physics that will be measurable with GW detectors over the next five years. My team at Cardiff is uniquely placed to tackle this problem. Since 2005 I have been at the forefront of black-hole simulations and waveform modelling, and the Cardiff group is a world leader in analysis of GW detector data. This project will consolidate my team to make breakthroughs in strong-field gravity, astrophysics, fundamental physics and cosmology using GW observations.

Mots-clés : numerical relativity,general relativity,black holes,gravitational waves,waveform modelling
Projet ERC : BALaNCE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Turku — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer form and the leading cause of death among women while pancreatic cancer is the fourth commonest cause of cancer-related mortality across the world and very difficult to treat due to its aggressive nature and the relative lack of curative options. A major impediment in the identification of new therapeutic targets lies in our limited understanding of the exact mechanisms taking place within the tumor microenvironment that are responsible for the development of cancer, progression and metastasis. Based on our recent experiments, we have found that high expression of an actin-binding protein correlates with poor clinical prognosis in breast and pancreatic cancer patients. Drawing upon our recent findings, the target of the PoC project is two-fold. First, to (i) validate the clinical application of our novel therapeutic concept by conducting a series of in-vitro and in-vivo tests on a set of 22 Myo10 inhibitory lead-compounds (i.e. “hits”) which were identified via High-Throughput Screening (HTS). Second, to (ii) take the necessary steps towards the definition of the best business path in view of the strong pre-commercialization potential.

Mots-clés : novel therapeutic concept,myo10,breast cancer,pancreatic cancer
Projet ERC : SSTEEL (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499711.0 €

Brittleness limits the design and lifetime of some polymeric, metallic, and almost all ceramic materials in both structural and functional engineering applications, from the design of plane engine turbine blades to the newest solid-state electrolyte in batteries. This brittleness is intrinsically present in material composition that cannot plastically deform and make them sensitive to any defect introduced during their fabrication or usage. The goal of this project is to produce small Scale interlocking mechanism for Strong and Tough mEtamatEriaL (SSTEEL) that will provide a material independent solution to brittleness. Interlocking mechanisms provide in theory one of the most efficient way to increase toughness by creating crack blocking compressive stresses in response to tensile stresses. Because a brittle material strength is inversely linked to its size, my team and I first objective will be to develop a new process to form interlocking mechanism based on micron-sized elements using a combination of light-based additive manufacturing, shrinking ink design to access sub-printer resolution, and fragmentation. The second objective will be to implement this mechanism at an even smaller scale using rational material selection, solid state chemistry, and colloidal processing to fabricate an interfacial binder for the elements. The fracture process of SSTEEL sample will span several length scales and a specific task will be to use a combination of image correlation and modelling to fully characterise the existing damaging mechanism and inform the improvement of future designs. These new structures and concepts developed by my group will promote the development of tough structure for today’s and future structural and functional engineering applications by changing any brittle material to become strong, stiff, deformable, and reliable materials.

Mots-clés : mechanical properties,colloidal processing,additive manufacturing,toughness
Projet ERC : SOLWET (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 655687.5 €

Building fuel cells, electrolyzers or photoelectrochemical cells based on water (photo)electrolysis is extremely challenging. One origin of this challenge is the complexity of the underlying physical chemistry. Most such devices require transfer of electrons between solid(s) and water and thus building the best possible devices requires understanding the link between transient changes in bulk solid electronic structure, interfacial electronic structure and interfacial chemistry. Essentially all existing approaches address only part of this picture: e.g. they only probe electronic structure (optical absorption), or extracted current or provide elemental insight but are insensitive to the presence of hydrogen (x-ray absorption). In SOLWET, I will address this gap using interface-specific optical spectroscopies, in the visible and infrared, to probe interfacial electronic and vibrational transitions and their coupling. By combining these probes with an additional intense laser pulse I will watch (photo)electrolysis of water in real time as it happens. In particular, I will directly probe the coupling of transiently perturbed solid electronic structure to interfacial electronic structure and watch how this perturbation drives water’s oxidation, for a hematite photoanode, or reduction, for a Pt cathode, through the interfacial vibrational response. By describing how these couplings change with solid modification (e.g. an alumina overlayer on hematite) or changes in aqueous solution composition (e.g. changing the pH in contact with Pt) the results of SOLWET will offer the physical insights necessary to build the best possible hematite and Pt containing photoelectrochemical devices. Moreover, because the novel all-optical tools developed in SOLWET are not system-specific, the approach demonstrated in this work will be widely applicable.
Projet ERC : PD-GUT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DZNE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Burgeoning evidence shows that Parkinson's disease (PD) involves the gut before affecting the brain, leading to the fascinating hypothesis that the gut might be the site of disease initiation. Remarkably, the gut origin of PD is still poorly understood. Multiple triggers could serve as a first insult: infections, dysbiosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). All these conditions ultimately converge on intestinal inflammation. Thus, an intriguing hypothesis is that PD is a systemic illness that originates from an inflammatory insult in the gut. This hypothesis is based on the observation that genetic traits relevant for both sporadic and familial PD also modulate immune responses to enteric pathogens and confer risk to IBDs. To dissect shared mechanisms among these seemingly unrelated diseases, I envision a multi- and interdisciplinary project with a unique integration of competences in neuroscience, immunology, and microbiology. Moving beyond the state of the art, I will combine patient stem cell-derived organoid, organ-on-a-chip, and single-cell sequencing approaches to decode the role of intestinal inflammation in PD and to identify new mediators of immune cell contributions to neurodegeneration. Specifically, I will i) mechanistically dissect cell type-specific host immune responses to intestinal pathogens and their link to PD; ii) establish complex human pluripotent stem cell-derived intestinal organoids to investigate intestinal inflammation; and ii) implement patient multiorganoid platforms to identify key players in the communication between the inflamed gut and the brain. Unveiling the critical steps that initiate PD may lead to a conceptual leap forward in our understanding of how the gut affects the brain in both health and disease. The novel methodologies that will be developed will also lay the foundations for future interventions aimed at targeting intestinal inflammation in enteric and neurological diseases.

Mots-clés : parkinson s disease,innate immunity,intestinal inflammation,induced pluripotent stem cells,organoids
Projet ERC : PD-GUT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999722.5 €

Burgeoning evidence shows that Parkinson's disease (PD) involves the gut before affecting the brain, leading to the fascinating hypothesis that the gut might be the site of disease initiation. Remarkably, the gut origin of PD is still poorly understood. Multiple triggers could serve as a first insult: infections, dysbiosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). All these conditions ultimately converge on intestinal inflammation. Thus, an intriguing hypothesis is that PD is a systemic illness that originates from an inflammatory insult in the gut. This hypothesis is based on the observation that genetic traits relevant for both sporadic and familial PD also modulate immune responses to enteric pathogens and confer risk to IBDs. To dissect shared mechanisms among these seemingly unrelated diseases, I envision a multi- and interdisciplinary project with a unique integration of competences in neuroscience, immunology, and microbiology. Moving beyond the state of the art, I will combine patient stem cell-derived organoid, organ-on-a-chip, and single-cell sequencing approaches to decode the role of intestinal inflammation in PD and to identify new mediators of immune cell contributions to neurodegeneration. Specifically, I will i) mechanistically dissect cell type-specific host immune responses to intestinal pathogens and their link to PD; ii) establish complex human pluripotent stem cell-derived intestinal organoids to investigate intestinal inflammation; and ii) implement patient multiorganoid platforms to identify key players in the communication between the inflamed gut and the brain. Unveiling the critical steps that initiate PD may lead to a conceptual leap forward in our understanding of how the gut affects the brain in both health and disease. The novel methodologies that will be developed will also lay the foundations for future interventions aimed at targeting intestinal inflammation in enteric and neurological diseases.

Mots-clés : parkinson s disease,innate immunity,intestinal inflammation,induced pluripotent stem cells,organoids
Projet ERC : PIX (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : University of Tartu — Pays : Estonie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2349965.0 €

Business processes are the operational backbone of modern organizations. Their continuous improvement is key to the achievement of business objectives, be it with respect to efficiency, quality, compliance, or agility. Accordingly, a common task for process analysts is to discover and assess process improvement opportunities, i.e. changes to one or more processes, which are likely to improve them with respect to one or more performance measures. Current approaches to discover process improvement opportunities are expert-driven. In these approaches, data are used to assess opportunities derived from experience and intuition rather than to discover them in the first place. Moreover, as the assessment of opportunities is manual, analysts can only explore a fraction thereof. PIX will build the foundations of a new generation of process improvement methods that do not exclusively rely on guidelines and heuristics, but rather on a systematic exploration of a space of possible changes derived from process execution data. Specifically, PIX will develop conceptual frameworks and algorithms to analyze process execution data in order to discover process changes corresponding to possible improvement opportunities, including changes in the control-flow dependencies between activities, partial automation of activities, changes in resource allocation rules, or changes in decision rules that may reduce wastes or negative outcomes. Each change will be associated with a multi-dimensional utility, thus allowing us to map a process improvement problem to an optimization problem over a multidimensional space. Given this mapping, PIX will develop efficient and incremental methods to search through said spaces in order to find Pareto-optimal groups of changes. The outputs will be embodied in a first-of-its-kind tool for automated process improvement discovery, which will lift the focus in the field of process mining from analyzing as-is processes to designing to-be processes.

Mots-clés : business process management,optimization
Projet ERC : 2D4D (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Brescia — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 717005.0 €

By 2040, all major sectors of the European economy will be deeply digitalized. By then, the EU aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60% with respect to 1990 levels. Digitalization will affect decarbonization efforts because of its impacts on energy demand, employment, competitiveness, trade patterns and its distributional, behavioural and ethical implications. Yet, the policy debates around these two transformations are largely disjoint. The aim of the 2D4D project is ensure that the digital revolution acts as an enabler – and not as a barrier – for decarbonization. The project quantifies the decarbonization implications of three disruptive digitalization technologies in hard-to-decarbonize sectors: (1) Additive Manufacturing in industry, (2) Mobility-as-a-Service in transportation, and (3) Artificial Intelligence in buildings. The first objective of 2D4D is to generate a one-of-a-kind data collection to investigate the technical and socio-economic dynamics of these technologies, and how they may affect decarbonization narratives and scenarios. This will be achieved through several data collection methods, including desk research, surveys and expert elicitations. The second objective of 2D4D is to include digitalization dynamics in decarbonization narratives and pathways. On the one hand, this entails enhancing decarbonization narratives (specifically, the Shared Socio-economic Pathways) to describe digitalization dynamics. On the other hand, it requires improving the representation of sector-specific digitalization dynamics in Integrated Assessment Models, one of the main tools available to generate decarbonization pathways. The third objective of 2D4D is to identify no-regret, robust policy portfolios. These will be designed to ensure that digitalization unfolds in an inclusive, climate-beneficial way, and that decarbonization policies capitalize on digital technologies to support the energy transition.

Mots-clés : digitalization,decarbonization,additive manufacturing,mobility as a service,artificial intelligence
Projet ERC : So2Sat (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Technical University of Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1440250.0 €

By 2050, around three quarters of the world’s population will live in cities. The new dimension of ongoing global migration into the cities poses fundamental challenges to our societies across the globe. Despite of increasing efforts, global urban mapping still drags behind the geometric, thematic and temporal resolutions of geo-information needed to address these challenges. Nowadays diverse sets of incomplete data exist. For example, Earth observation (EO) satellites reliably provide geodetically accurate large scale geo-information of the cities on a routine basis from space. But the data availability is limited by resolutions and acquisition geometries of the sensors. Complementarily, massive imagery, text messages and GIS data from open sources and social media are temporally quasi-seamless, spatially multi-perspective, but with diversely unknown qualities. With So2Sat I will jointly exploit big data from social media and satellite observations for global urban mapping, and aim at breakthroughs in 3D/4D urban modelling, infrastructure occupancy classification, and very high resolution population density mapping on a global scale for revolutionizing urban geographic research. The following methodological and application objectives will be addressed: improving urban-related information retrieval from EO satellite data (MO1), mining urban imagery and text messages from social media data (MO2), information fusion from heterogeneous data sources (MO3), big data processing (MO4), as well as pilot applications in informal settlements classification (AO1) and global population density estimation (AO2). The outcome of So2Sat will be the first and unique global and consistent spatial data set on urban morphology (3D/4D) of settlements, and a multidisciplinary application derivate assessing population density. This is seen as a giant leap for urban geography research as well as for formation of opinions for stakeholders based on resilient data.

Mots-clés : remote sensing,earth observation,urban geographic research,global urban mapping,signal processing,big data fusion,social media data
Projet ERC : Atto-Zepto (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Université Grenoble Alpes — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UGA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 44530.0 €

By enabling the conversion of forces into measurable displacements, mechanical oscillators have always played a central role in experimental physics. Recent developments in the PI group demonstrated the possibility to realize ultrasensitive and vectorial force field sensing by using suspended SiC nanowires and optical readout of their transverse vibrations. Astonishing sensitivities were obtained at room and dilution temperatures, at the Atto- Zepto-newton level, for which the electron-electron interaction becomes detectable at 100µm. The goal of the project is to push forward those ultrasensitive nano-optomechanical force sensors, to realize even more challenging explorations of novel fundamental interactions at the quantum-classical interface. We will develop universal advanced sensing protocols to explore the vectorial structure of fundamental optical, electrostatic or magnetic interactions, and investigate Casimir force fields above nanostructured surfaces, in geometries where it was recently predicted to become repulsive. The second research axis is the one of cavity nano-optomechanics: inserting the ultrasensitive nanowire in a high finesse optical microcavity should enhance the light-nanowire interaction up to the point where a single cavity photon can displace the nanowire by more than its zero point quantum fluctuations. We will investigate this so-called ultrastrong optomechanical coupling regime, and further explore novel regimes in cavity optomechanics, where optical non-linearities at the single photon level become accessible. The last part is dedicated to the exploration of hybrid qubit-mechanical systems, in which nanowire vibrations are magnetically coupled to the spin of a single Nitrogen Vacancy defect in diamond. We will focus on the exploration of spin-dependent forces, aiming at mechanically detecting qubit excitations, opening a novel road towards the generation of non-classical states of motion, and mechanically enhanced quantum sensors.

Mots-clés : optomechanics,nanomechanics,casimir force,quantum optics,ultrasensitive force sensors,spin qubit