Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SmartPhoneSmartAging (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : National University of Ireland — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : NUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 52137.5 €

This project will investigate fundamental changes in people’s relationship to age and health associated with the global rise of the smartphone. The aim is to combine an intellectual challenge in understanding the contemporary nature of age and the impact of new media, with an applied challenge to use this knowledge to help make mHealth a more effective intervention. Through simultaneous 15 month ethnographies in China, Japan, Iran, Ireland, Nigeria and Tanzania (and supplementary work in Trinidad) a team will explore the experience of age for those between 45-70 i.e. neither clearly young nor elderly, who represent an unprecedented population that has resulted from changed life expectancy and changed aspirations. We will examine how this shift in the experience of age is impacted by the rise of smartphones that bring access to technologies associated with the young. mHealth started with youth orientated issues of fitness and wellbeing but is increasingly becoming a significant intervention in helping older populations deal with disease and frailties. mHealth has potential both for helping those with low access to professional care but also threatens to bypass and undermine professional medical services. Our aim is to complement technology led mHealth interventions with ethnography led participatory design, consisting of a collaboration between mHealth professionals with our ethnographically informed team and our informants. The applied anthropology will inform our intellectual advances in the field of digital anthropology. Reflections on mHealth will contribute to the core aim of advancing our understanding of the experience of age in this new interstitial period of life, and to appreciate the major transformations in society and sociality represented by the new ubiquity of the smartphone. Both the intellectual and applied components will be shown to depend upon sensitivity to the forms of cultural diversity uncovered by our comparative ethnographic approach.

Mots-clés : smartphones,cultural diversity,ethnography,ageing,mhealth
Projet ERC : WIBARAB (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
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 : 2200751.0 €

This project will investigate the linguistic differences between originally nomadic and sedentary people, i.e. one of the key concepts in the history of the Arabic language and the grouping of its contemporary spoken varieties. While the dichotomy between Bedouins and sedentary communities is of crucial importance for the (social) history, economy, and linguistic identity of the Arabic speaking Middle East and North Africa, it is still insufficiently understood. WIBARAB aims to establish for the first time a robust set of linguistic phenomena that characterize the bedouin-sedentary split. To this end, it not only considers (1) phonological and morphological features as hitherto has been done, but also (2) typology, grammaticalization pathways, syntax, phraseology, and lexicon, and (3) the influence of intra-dialect contacts and historical migrations. WIBARAB will provide new data from three under-researched Arabic varieties and investigate linguistic attitudes towards bedouin-type dialects on the basis of five case-studies with different social and geographical settings. Its holistic approach challenges well-established views and methodically shows how diachronic linguistic data can provide proxy data for history and vice versa. WIBARAB also studies the impact of social settings, particularly tribal and patriarchal structures, as possible factors for the linguistic conservatism of contemporary bedouin-type Arabic. It includes recent findings in human genome analysis where appropriate and ethically acceptable, and makes ample use of the possibilities provided by digital humanities. WIBARAB adopts methods grounded in general linguistics, sociolinguistics, and historical interpretation to shed light on a phenomenon of fundamental importance in the history and the present of one of the world’s largest languages.

Mots-clés : arabic,spoken language,historical linguistics,language and dialect contact,dialectology,areal linguistics,language typology,nomadic communities
Projet ERC : RESP (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Verona — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1634000.0 €

This project will investigate the processes by which the representations of Roman emperors were created and disseminated from a new ‘peripheral’ perspective, which emphasizes the cultural, religious and artistic background of the local communities in the imperial provinces rather than the traditional ‘central’ one in Rome. It will study the ways in which Roman emperors were portrayed, celebrated and worshipped in the provincial cities, in the western and especially the eastern regions of the Mediterranean world, from the reign of Augustus to that of Diocletian (c. 31 BC – AD 297). By taking the point of view of the civic elites and of local artists in the provinces as the point of departure, the research will challenge the traditional ‘romanocentric’ approach to this subject to reassess imperial art and its broader ideological framework in a global context. It will provide the first comprehensive discussion on how the nature and significance of Roman power was interpreted and expressed on visual media in the provinces, and how it reflects the political and cultural strategies of the local elites. It will also challenge our perception and understanding of the relation between metropolitan and provincial production in imperial art by stressing the adaptation and independence of local visual culture from metropolitan canons. The research will consider all the media through which the imperial image was propagated, but will focus particularly on the comparative study of local coinage and local sculpture (both in the round and in relief representations). It will be informed by an interdisciplinary approach marrying classics, digital humanities and manufacturing studies. This will involve a new research methodology developed by the PI with the aid of project engineers and a 3D designer, which uses 3D imaging to compare, overlap and integrate the data provided by coinage and sculpture to trace and reconstruct models used in the provinces for imperial representation.

Mots-clés : roman empire,imperial provinces,roman imperial and provincial coinage,roman sculpture and portraiture,ancient visual and material culture,3d visualisation scanning and modelling,ancient techniques and technologies,art and craft production,dissemination and transfer of art and ideas
Projet ERC : RESP (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
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 : 247850.0 €

This project will investigate the processes by which the representations of Roman emperors were created and disseminated from a new ‘peripheral’ perspective, which emphasizes the cultural, religious and artistic background of the local communities in the imperial provinces rather than the traditional ‘central’ one in Rome. It will study the ways in which Roman emperors were portrayed, celebrated and worshipped in the provincial cities, in the western and especially the eastern regions of the Mediterranean world, from the reign of Augustus to that of Diocletian (c. 31 BC – AD 297). By taking the point of view of the civic elites and of local artists in the provinces as the point of departure, the research will challenge the traditional ‘romanocentric’ approach to this subject to reassess imperial art and its broader ideological framework in a global context. It will provide the first comprehensive discussion on how the nature and significance of Roman power was interpreted and expressed on visual media in the provinces, and how it reflects the political and cultural strategies of the local elites. It will also challenge our perception and understanding of the relation between metropolitan and provincial production in imperial art by stressing the adaptation and independence of local visual culture from metropolitan canons. The research will consider all the media through which the imperial image was propagated, but will focus particularly on the comparative study of local coinage and local sculpture (both in the round and in relief representations). It will be informed by an interdisciplinary approach marrying classics, digital humanities and manufacturing studies. This will involve a new research methodology developed by the PI with the aid of project engineers and a 3D designer, which uses 3D imaging to compare, overlap and integrate the data provided by coinage and sculpture to trace and reconstruct models used in the provinces for imperial representation.

Mots-clés : roman empire,imperial provinces,roman imperial and provincial coinage,roman sculpture and portraiture,ancient visual and material culture,3d visualisation scanning and modelling,ancient techniques and technologies,art and craft production,dissemination and transfer of art and ideas
Projet ERC : MNeuronic (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Pompeu Fabra University — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPF
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This project’s aim is the commercialization of a neurotechnology device, MNeuronic, that helps its users to improve their memory retention. MNeuronic can be used in cognitive rehabilitation on patients with mild to moderate decline in memory function as well as by healthy users, as a cognitive training method at home. The system will be mounted on wearable, relatively affordable hardware. Its core technology is grounded on principles and ideas developed in my current ERC-StG project on attention and perception. In particular, MNeuronic capitalizes on the natural fluctuations of neural excitability in the human brain using real-time phase prediction. This confers two important commercial strengths. One is efficiency, because MNeuronic anticipates upcoming optimal brain states before they occur, rather than reacting to past states. Second, MNeuronic affords unprecedented levels of temporal precision. Besides its direct application for memory enhancement, the core principles that ground MNeuronic are transferable to further applications in neurotechnology for learning/education, cognitive training, recreation (neurogaming) or, wellness. This opens a second commercialization route that reaches out to other neurotechnology companies, which will also be exploited in this project. The software implementing MNeuronic (real-time analysis filters and prediction algorithms) will be protected under a dual license that will allow us to combine a proprietary license offered to client companies, and open-licenses addressed to non-profit research and education organizations. Because MNeuronic offers non-invasive, stimulation-free solutions, it will appeal as a less aggressive rehabilitation support tool to be marketed in clinical contexts. In addition, with an effort toward affordable costs and wearable hardware, we intend to cater non-clinical, home-users. Home-use neurotechnology is becoming an increasingly important emerging market because its potential size and growth rate.

Mots-clés : neurotechnology,neurodevices,cognitive training,enhancement,cognitive neuroscience,rehabilitation,dementia,alzheimer s disease,memory,attention,integration,neural oscillations,prediction
Projet ERC : FAST_TOX (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Warwick — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This proof of concept grant will transform how liver cells are cryopreserved for the toxicological testing market, translating scientific findings emerging from an ERC starter grant from lab to real application. During the drug discovery process, the leading cause of new candidate drug rejection is the discovery of an unfavourable toxicological profile. It is essential to discover these as early as possible in the process to minimize costs and ensure favourable candidates are taken forward and to reduce the need for animal experimentation. The current standard screening method is using isolated hepatocyte (liver cells) to screen for toxicity. There is a disconnect however, in that these cells must be stored frozen in suspension, but all testing is undertaken on the cells grown attached to scaffolds as monolayers. It is not currently possible to cryopreserve cells as monolayers, and hence there is significant (time and financial) effort involved in processing, plating and growing the cells, acting as a bottleneck. This project will use unique cryoprotective polymers, developed in an ERC starter grant, to enable the cryopreservation of hepatocytes directly on the tissue culture plastic, enabling for the first time banking of the cells in an ‘assay-ready format’. We have established strong preliminary data demonstrating this concept in other cell lines, and have filed patents and shown the synthesis can be scaled up. In this project we will obtained essential data sets to demonstrate industrially-relevant cryopreservation of hepatocytes, but also emerging 3-D hepatocyte models (spheroids) to de-risk industrial translation and trigger licensing or investment. This will include not just scientific data but a cost-benefit analysis showing the economic gains due to reduced personnel effort required. There will be significant economic, but also societal benefit in optimising toxicological screening to improve the drug discovery process.

Mots-clés : cryopreservation,polymers,biomaterials
Projet ERC : BigFastData (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : École polytechnique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : X
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2472752.0 €

This proposal addresses a pressing need from emerging big data applications such as genomics and data center monitoring: besides the scale of processing, big data systems must also enable perpetual, low-latency processing for a broad set of analytical tasks, referred to as big and fast data analysis. Today’s technology falls severely short for such needs due to the lack of support of complex analytics with scale, low latency, and strong guarantees of user performance requirements. To bridge the gap, this proposal tackles a grand challenge: “How do we design an algorithmic foundation that enables the development of all necessary pillars of big and fast data analysis?” This proposal considers three pillars: 1) Parallelism: There is a fundamental tension between data parallelism (for scale) and pipeline parallelism (for low latency). We propose new approaches based on intelligent use of memory and workload properties to integrate both forms of parallelism. 2) Analytics: The literature lacks a large body of algorithms for critical order-related analytics to be run under data and pipeline parallelism. We propose new algorithmic frameworks to enable such analytics. 3) Optimization: To run analytics, today's big data systems are best effort only. We transform such systems into a principled optimization framework that suits the new characteristics of big data infrastructure and adapts to meet user performance requirements. The scale and complexity of the proposed algorithm design makes this project high-risk, at the same time, high-gain: it will lay a solid foundation for big and fast data analysis, enabling a new integrated parallel processing paradigm, algorithms for critical order-related analytics, and a principled optimizer with strong performance guarantees. It will also broadly enable accelerated information discovery in emerging domains such as genomics, as well as economic benefits of early, well-informed decisions and reduced user payments.

Mots-clés : big data analytics,data management systems,parallel data processing,data stream processing,query optimization
Projet ERC : Cu4Peroxide (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This proposal aims at determining the market value of hydrogen peroxide (HP) that is produced via our electrochemical methods that have been developed as part of the ERC-StG Cu4Energy project. HP is often shipped, stored and handled in very concentrated and therefore dangerous form, and used in a very diluted form in many products such as stain removers and disinfectants. Our method allows for production of HP in low and safe concentrations and in a continuous fashion and therefore allows production of HP as needed and at a small scale at the site where HP is consumed. By direct consumption of HP in the aqueous electrolyte solution wherein it is produced via our methods laborious and dangerous purification of HP as is necessary in the current industrial processes can be avoided.

Mots-clés : homogeneous catalysis,electrochemistry,hydrogen peroxide
Projet ERC : DENDRITECIRCUITS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
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 : 2495563.0 €

This proposal aims to address a simple question: what is the fundamental unit of computation in the brain? Answering this question is crucial not only for understanding how the brain works, but also if we are to build accurate models of brain function, which require abstraction based on identification of the essential elements for carrying out computations relevant to behaviour. In this proposal, we will build on recent work demonstrating that dendrites are highly electrically excitable to test the possibility that single dendritic branches may act as individual computational units during behaviour, challenging the classical view that the neuron is the fundamental unit of computation. We will address this question using a combination of electrophysiolgical, anatomical, imaging, molecular, and modeling approaches to probe dendritic integration in pyramidal cells and Purkinje cells in mouse cortex and cerebellum. We will first define the computational rules for integration of synaptic input in single and multiple dendrites by examining the somatic and dendritic responses to different spatiotemporal patterns of excitatory and inhibitory inputs in brain slices. Next, we will determine how these rules are engaged by patterns of sensory stimulation in vivo, by using various strategies to map the spatiotemporal patterns of synaptic inputs onto single dendrites. To understand how physiological patterns of activity in the circuit engage these dendritic computations, we will use anatomical approaches to map the wiring diagram of synaptic inputs to individual dendrites. Finally, we will perturb the dendritic computational rules by manipulating dendritic function using molecular and optogenetic tools, in order to provide causal links between specific dendritic computations and sensory processing relevant to behaviour. These experiments will provide us with deeper insights into how single neurons act as computing devices.

Mots-clés : dendrites,neural circuits,neural computation,optogenetics,connectomics,dendritic spike,synaptic plasticity
Projet ERC : CRESUCHIRP (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Université de Rennes — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIVRENNES
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2100230.0 €

This proposal aims to develop a combination of a chirped-pulse (sub)mm-wave rotational spectrometer with uniform supersonic flows generated by expansion of gases through Laval nozzles and apply it to problems at the frontiers of reaction kinetics. The CRESU (Reaction Kinetics in Uniform Supersonic Flow) technique, combined with laser photochemical methods, has been applied with great success to perform research in gas-phase chemical kinetics at low temperatures, of particular interest for astrochemistry and cold planetary atmospheres. Recently, the PI has been involved in the development of a new combination of the revolutionary chirped pulse broadband rotational spectroscopy technique invented by B. Pate and co-workers with a novel pulsed CRESU, which we have called Chirped Pulse in Uniform Flow (CPUF). Rotational cooling by frequent collisions with cold buffer gas in the CRESU flow at ca. 20 K drastically increases the sensitivity of the technique, making broadband rotational spectroscopy suitable for detecting a wide range of transient species, such as photodissociation or reaction products. We propose to exploit the exceptional quality of the Rennes CRESU flows to build an improved CPUF instrument (only the second worldwide), and use it for the quantitative determination of product branching ratios in elementary chemical reactions over a wide temperature range (data which are sorely lacking as input to models of gas-phase chemical environments), as well as the detection of reactive intermediates and the testing of modern reaction kinetics theory. Low temperature reactions will be initially targeted; as it is here that there is the greatest need for data. A challenging development of the technique towards the study of high temperature reactions is also proposed, exploiting existing expertise in high enthalpy sources.

Mots-clés : gas kinetics,low temperature rate constants,experimental astrochemistry,fundamental reaction kinetics,product branching ratios,elementary reactions