Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : A2B (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Why does the brain outperform AI? Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are at the core of the AI revolution. In the past years, enormous efforts have been made to unravel their mathematical properties, leading to fundamental insights and mathematical guarantees on when and why deep learning works well. ANNs are inspired by biological neural networks (BNNs) but differ in many respects: ANNs represent functions while BNNs represent stochastic processes, and the gradient-based deep learning applied for ANNs is very different from the local updating of BNNs. BNNs are superior to ANNs in the sense that the brain learns faster and generalizes better. Despite the urgency for answers and the rich and interesting mathematical structures that BNNs create, scarcely any theoretical attempts have been made to understand learning in the brain. The stochastic process structure of BNNs and the need to understand the statistical convergence behavior call for a mathematical statistics approach. This project proposes the development of advanced mathematical tools in nonparametric and high- dimensional statistics to analyze learning in BNNs as a statistical method. The starting point is a novel interpretation of the local updating of BNN parameters as a specific and non-standard, derivative-free optimization method. Whereas derivative-free optimization is thought to be slow, our conjecture is that it leads to favorable statistical properties in the setting underlying BNNs. If the research is successful, it has the potential to open a new research area in mathematical statistics and provide insights into how the brain learns. It could also lead to recommendations on how to make AI more efficient with less training data and how to train neuromorphic computer chips mimicking BNNs.

Mots-clés : nonparametric statistics,highdimensional statistics,statistics for stochastic processes,theory for neural networks,minimax estimation rates,nonparametric regression
Projet ERC : REDMIX (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1864059.0 €

The debate on mixed-race people is gaining momentum, and the Red Sea – located at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East, of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean – stands as a privileged venue to investigate mixedness. Focusing on a timeframe (1800s-2000s) marked by increasing mobilities and mixed-race unions and offspring (e.g. Afro-Arabs, Afro-Asians, Euro-Africans), REDMIX investigates the roots and routes of mixed-race people and groups through a bottom-up, long-term, and interdisciplinary perspective, to create a digital archive about mixedness in the Red Sea. African and Middle Eastern Studies have examined the Red Sea, its mobilities, and its entanglements, but mixedness has remained marginal in their thematic and methodological debate. Critical Mixed Race Studies has explored mixedness as a broad concept referring to individuals of mixed descent, yet without ever digging into case studies from the Red Sea. Thus, an extensive analysis of when, how, and why mixed-race people and groups have negotiated their position at political and social turning points in the history of the Red Sea is still lacking. REDMIX aims to fill this methodological and knowledge gap by overcoming the partitioned approach to the Red Sea and promoting a perspective centred on mixed-race people. The project intertwines African, Middle Eastern, and (Critical) Mixed Race Studies; brings together a rich corpus of archival and oral sources scattered across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; resorts to the digital humanities; and contributes to the conceptual framework of mixedness by applying global microhistory and comparatively investigating different case studies through synchronic and diachronic analyses. As the first comparative investigation into the history of mixedness in the Red Sea, REDMIX will take an active part in the mission of writing a more inclusive history of the area, one that firmly establishes the centrality of mixed-race people.

Mots-clés : mixedness red sea global microhistory
Projet ERC : Heartbeat (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : University Hospital Aachen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 969762.0 €

Generating 3D in vitro functional tissues and organs in the millimeter scale remains an unmet dream of modern medicine. Irrespective of great efforts in the field of tissue engineering to design injectable/pipettable hydrogels or implantable/non-pipettable scaffolds for 3D cell growth, it is not yet possible to generate functional and personalized tissues with native-like structures and mature blood vessels. The main reason for this limitation is that current materials do not recapitulate the complexity and dynamics of the native cell environment. To create personalized human tissues, patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells can differentiate in any cell type but controlling stem cell expansion, differentiation, and organization inside the same 3D scaffold is not possible up to now, as it requires biomimetic and interactive materials beyond simple hydrogels. HEARTBEAT will break with traditional ways to make 3D biomaterials by assembling and crosslinking a variety of unique pre-programmed, rod-shaped, and interactive microgels instead of molecular building blocks. The main aim is to achieve macroporous, aligned, actuatable, and on-demand degradable constructs after automatically pipetting/mixing different microgels and cells, which is not possible with conventional hydrogels. A compatible high-throughput system will be used to screen the innumerable combinations of design parameters to systematically study (stem)cell-material and cell-cell interactions to grow complex tissue. In HEARTBEAT, I will focus on using the interactive bottom-up microgel assemblies to generate millimeter-scale vascularized beating heart tissues. The project will elucidate how material properties, architectures, and actuation affect human heart tissue formation and vascularization and how the construct has to adapt to the growing tissue over time to provide the right extracellular environment.

Mots-clés : microgels,cardiac tissue,induced pluripotent stem cells,vasculogenesis,hydrogels,tissue engineering,in vitro tissue models,high throughput screening,hts
Projet ERC : APATHES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999587.0 €

Alongside Epicurus’ school, Stoicism is the most important current of thought in Hellenistic philosophy. The first phase of this school extends from Zeno of Citium (334/333–262/261 BCE) to Chrysippus’ followers (viz. up to the end of the 2nd century BCE). Apart from some fragments transmitted by the medieval manuscript tradition and by the Herculaneum papyri, only indirect witnesses on the early Stoics remain today. The huge corpus of this material was collected mostly in Hans von Arnim’s Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (1903–05). Despite some partial attempts to correct and integrate this collection, von Arnim’s pioneering work is still the reference point in studies on early Stoicism. The present project aims to remake this work entirely, through an innovative, interdisciplinary methodology (incorporating classical philology, the history of ancient philosophy, doxography, papyrology and epigraphy, new technologies for deciphering ancient manuscripts), and will be divided into the following steps: 1. a new critical edition of most of the fragments and testimonia at issue; 2. a wider selection of the sources and a revision of some manuscripts; 3. a new methodology for reading and reconstructing the papyrological sources; 4. an innovative historico-philosophical methodology for commenting on and interpreting the extant sources; 5. the creation of a website, along with a digital database publication of partial and comprehensive outcomes for the project. The editions will be divided into four parts, focused on Zeno of Citium, the disciples of Zeno (including the heterodox Stoics), Chrysippus, and the disciples of Chrysippus, respectively. Each volume will be accompanied by commentaries also devoted to Stoic figures sometimes neglected in scholarship (e.g., Diogenes of Babylon). This project aims to revolutionize our knowledge of this fundamental phase of Hellenistic philosophy, by throwing new light on the history of ancient physics, logic, and ethics.

Mots-clés : ancient ethics,ancient logic,ancient physics,classical philology,doxography,early stoicism,hellenistic philosophy,herculaneum papyri,textual criticism
Projet ERC : POLEDUC (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université Johann Wolfgang Goethe de Francfort-sur-le-Main — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999966.0 €

One of the most important changes of the last 200 years is the massive educational expansion and the related shift from industrial to post-industrial societies in countries around the globe. This educational revolution has reshaped our societies and economies. But it also transformed politics: Nowadays, education affects almost every aspect of politics. A new systematic conflict line has emerged: the educational cleavage. Its emergence has not gone unnoticed. But existing research remains scattered across disciplines and subfields and has not developed into a comprehensive research agenda yet.  POLEDUC offers a comprehensive research agenda on the POlitics of the Latent EDUcational Cleavage across countries, over time, and across three analytical levels: the micro-level of individuals’ attitudes, perceptions, identities, and behavior; the meso-level of organized political actors; and the macro-level of (unequal) representation in the politics of policy-making. POLEDUC develops a unified multi-dimensional theoretical framework and offers novel, ground-breaking empirical analyses, combining quantitative, qualitative, and experimental state-of-the-art methods. On the micro-level, POLEDUC uses existing and conducts new public opinion surveys to study the educational cleavage across countries and over time, surveying the general population and higher education students in particular. On the meso-level, we analyze the party politics of the educational cleavage using qualitative and machine learning tools plus an expert survey. On the macro-level we explore whether and why policy-makers are increasingly responsive to more educated citizens, using comparative case studies. Overall, POLEDUC studies a phenomenon of utmost social and scientific relevance. It breaks new theoretical and empirical ground on a core cleavage of contemporary politics, uncovering a defining feature of modern democracy and contributing novel insights to several fields and disciplines.

Mots-clés : education,politics of education,skills,cleavages,cleavage politics,comparative politics,political sociology,political behavior,attitudes,policy preferences,party politics,policy making,welfare state,comparative political economy
Projet ERC : ELECTROmonoLITH (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998615.0 €

The world is awakening to alarming environmental costs and geopolitical consequences of the ongoing Digital and Green revolution, which are replacing our reliance on fossil fuels with the one on critical raw materials (CRMs). Governments are anxiously searching for alternative sources of supply, and the importance of technology leadership in the recovery of CRMs and other valuable elements from secondary sources is evident. ELECTROmonoLITH project will develop a new technology for selective recovery of lithium and other valuable metals (e.g., cobalt, nickel, copper) from complex waste streams and natural/anthropogenic brines such as battery recycling wastewater, e-waste leachate, and geothermal brines. Long-standing challenges of electrochemically switched ion exchange - poor material stability, low recovery rates and capacities, insufficient selectivity, and high energy costs, will be overcome by developing monolith electrodes with mass transfer-enhancing structure, tailored for highly selective capture of specific metals from multi-component solutions using surface-imprinted ion-selective recognition units. Highly ordered electrode architectures with accessible active sites for metal ion cycling will endow the monolith electrodes with high space-time yields, minimize the pressure drop and thus hydraulic energy requirements, and enable the production of large volumes of high purity CRM concentrates in a more energy-efficient way. Given the inherent modularity of electrochemical systems, their scalability, autonomous operation and easy coupling to renewable energy sources, as well as the possibility to integrate electro-extraction of target metals with electrooxidation of organic pollutants, ELECTROmonoLITH project has the potential to provide a platform technology for both resource recovery and wastewater treatment, and to respond to major challenges of the water-energy nexus.

Mots-clés : 3d printing,electrochemical resource recovery,graphene
Projet ERC : DMPDE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Fondation Jean-Jacques Laffont - Toulouse sciences économiques — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : JJL-TSE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 850313.0 €

Improvements in technology are enabling firms to collect and process increasingly large amounts of detailed information about their customers and their competitors. This growing use of data is fundamentally changing the nature of competition. For example, it is affecting i) how firms compete, as they offer collections of services, ii) the level at which firms compete, as they make personalised offers to individual consumers, and iii) the complexity of firms’ strategies, as they increasingly delegate decisions to algorithms.  The research in this proposal will deepen our understanding of how data is changing market power, and how this should be reflected in antitrust and competition policy. There are four key themes:  1. Ecosystems. Many online services are grouped together in ecosystems. These services interoperate with each other and share data. The research will examine how data affects the boundaries of ecosystems. It will also analyse the welfare implications of policies that limit how ecosystems can use data.  2. Personalisation. Data can be used to give consumers a personalised experience. The research will look at how the ability to offer personalised products changes competition and efforts to acquire data. The research will also examine how personalisation affects the incentives to engage in anti-competitive practices like predation.  3. Consumer Search. Consumers often need to search in order to learn about firms’ product offerings. The research will explore how a consumer’s search behaviour generates data. It will also examine a firm’s incentive to manipulate the search process in order to learn more about a consumer’s preferences  4. Algorithms. Data is a crucial input into algorithms. The research will examine whether platform algorithms can use certain types of data to prevent sellers from charging less on other sales channels. The research will also investigate whether seller algorithms can autonomously learn anti-competitive behaviours like predation

Mots-clés : data,multiproduct,ecosystems,personalisation,consumer search,algorithms
Projet ERC : TalesfromDeath (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IRCCS
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Gene therapy (GT) with integrative vectors has emerged as a revolutionary intervention for the treatment of inherited and acquired disorders. Despite the great achievements, a major challenge pertains to the heterogeneity of responses that can be obtained in patients. The success of these applications critically depends on the ability of engineered cells to functionally integrate within the patients’ tissues to re-establish the physiological functions. Intrinsic features of the cellular drug product, and inter-individual factors present at the time or after cell infusion may modulate the clinical outcome. The proposed investigation aims at characterizing cell-free (cfDNA) signatures in patients who underwent GT. Epigenetic studies on cfDNA will capture the organism-wide changes induced by disease progression and consequent to the treatment in a non-invasive fashion. Furthermore, the retrieval of integration sites on cfDNA will provide molecular insights into the activity, clonality and persistence of engineered cells in peripheral organs. The translational relevance of this proposal will be directly assessed in unique clinical settings represented by patients treated with hematopoietic stem cell GT for the correction of inherited metabolic disorders, and with engineered T-cells to fight hematological and solid tumors. By correlating patient-derived cfDNA signatures with clinical variables outcomes, I will establish if these analyses can predict the impact of engineered cells at the whole organismal level potentially highlighting mechanisms of therapeutic success and failure that have not yet been explored. The advanced knowledge gained with this project may prompt a more accurate diagnosis evaluation, assist in selecting patients who will benefit from GT, and provide early insights on the efficacy and toxicity of cellular therapies guiding for a more personalized therapeutic intervention to reduce inter-individual variability.

Mots-clés : cell free dna biomarker gene therapy metabolic disorders car t
Projet ERC : CAMP (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université Pompeu Fabra — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPF
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1928226.0 €

CAMP investigates long-term pastoral dynamics in drylands, by developing an innovative and reliable methodology to study archaeological pastoral sites. Pastoralism has been recently endorsed by the FAO as a successful strategy to achieve food security by efficiently exploiting the inherent variability in natural resources. Modern pastoral systems represent the legacy of animal domestication processes that started before the beginning of the Holocene. However, our understanding of ancient pastoralism is hampered by the lack of a proper methodology that can overcome the ephemeral evidence that characterize pastoral sites. CAMP will pave the way, through methodological innovation, to a more thorough investigation of past adaptation to dryland environments. Highly controlled data on the anthropic markers for pastoral activities (chemical multi-element by portable X-Ray Fluorescence, phytoliths, organic residues and isotopes) will be collected in pastoral ethnographic settlements and analyzed to create models that will then be used to interpret the archaeological evidence. CAMP will advance research in: (a) methods and theory in the archaeology of pastoralism; (b) anthropic activity markers and the use of pXRF in archaeology; and (c) adaptive strategies in drylands. This project is a unique opportunity to strengthen the study of pastoralism by providing a widely applicable methodology that can augment our knowledge on past human adaptation to drylands and inform the design of sustainable and historically-grounded development strategies for pastoral futures. CAMP methodology will be potentially exportable to other archaeological sites, independently of their chronology, cultural or geographic context, representing an invaluable advance to archaeological methods at large.

Mots-clés : pastoralism geo ethnoarchaeology drylands anthropogenic deposits multi element analysis pxrf geostatistics
Projet ERC : MAMBA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université d'Exeter — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 405034.0 €

The discovery of large accumulations of woolly mammoth remains together with Upper Palaeolithic artefacts has fascinated both researchers and the general public since the 19th century. Despite many years of scientific research and dispute our knowledge about these sites and the relationship between mammoths and contemporaneous Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers remains incomplete. This project focuses on the mammoth bone accumulations found in the West Carpathian forelands and seeks to establish why they formed and their function for hunter-gatherer groups 35,000-25,000 years ago – a period of major techno-cultural and environmental change in approaching the Last Glacial Maximum. For the first time we will study materials covering the full chronological range of this archaeological phenomenon, considering both existing collections alongside new fieldwork at the key sites of Dolní Věstonice I, Kraków Spadzista and Langmannersdorf. Site-specific signals of human-mammoth interaction within their local palaeoenvironmental context will be used to investigate chrono-spatial changes in both mammoth populations and hunter-gatherer societies. We will employ standardised field and laboratory protocols that utilise recent methodological and technological advances in ancient DNA research, stable isotope studies, radiometric dating, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and palaeodemographic modelling. The resulting dataset will allow an integrated investigation of the formation of mammoth bone accumulations and produce a statistically analysable dataset expected to reveal the interactions between human and mammoth populations in Central Europe in the context of palaeoenvironmental changes. This will have great impact not only for Upper Palaeolithic research in Central Europe, but will on a general scale also contribute to an improved understanding of human behaviour, cultural developments, and human adaptation to dynamically changing climatic and environmental conditions.

Mots-clés : upper palaeolithic,pleistocene