Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ASENT (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
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 : 16112.25 €

The goal of ASENT is to construct solid conceptual and methodological foundations for the science of animal sentience. The term sentience refers to an animal’s subjective experience of the world and of its own body. In recent years, an interdisciplinary community of animal sentience researchers, drawn from neuroscience, comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, animal welfare science and philosophy, has begun to emerge. However, the field is characterized by foundational controversy over the nature of sentience and the criteria for its attribution, leading to heated debate over the presence or absence of sentience in fish and in invertebrates such as cephalopods and arthropods. ASENT aims to find ways to resolve these debates, enabling researchers to move beyond the impasses that result from deep foundational disagreement. What is needed is a conceptual framework for thinking about sentience as an evolved phenomenon that varies along several dimensions, a deeper understanding of how these dimensions of sentience relate to measurable aspects of animal behaviour and the nervous system, and a richer picture of the links between sentience, welfare and the ethical status of animals. ASENT will answer this need by providing: 1. An account of the basic functional capacities involved in sentience, and an evaluation of which capacities justify us in regarding an animal as a sentience candidate. 2. An overarching conceptual framework for understanding the dimensions along which sentience varies across the animal kingdom, based on distinguishing multiple structural properties of sentience; 3. A scheme of proposed experimental tests for constructing a species’ most likely sentience profile with reference to these dimensions, implemented with scientific collaborators using bees as a test case. 4. An assessment of which dimensions of sentience are most relevant to animal welfare and to the ethical status of animals.

Mots-clés : animal sentience,animal cognition,animal consciousness,animal minds,animal welfare
Projet ERC : BIOELECTRIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The goal of BIOELECTRIC is to fabricate and validate robust, durable and biocompatible soft bioelectric implants (SBI) that deliver ionic therapeutics. Fundamental science derived from our ERC Advanced Grant SYNTISU has generated a functional laboratory version of such an implant, but it is extremely fragile. Robustness and durability will be addressed by using advanced hydrogels to build the framework of the SBI and selected block copolymers to improve the performance of the essential membranes within them. These materials will be chosen with a view towards biocompatibility, which will be confirmed by a variety of tests on human cells. The functional properties of the SBIs will be tested on neurons and muscle cells in culture. Variations of the SBI device will be applicable to a wide range of medical conditions: for example, retina replacement, spinal cord regeneration, and wound healing. BIOELECTRIC will also enable us to work with a highly-qualified consultant to conduct market analysis and develop a strong business plan to increase investor confidence, which will in turn allow us to raise significant capital funding for a spin-out company: Soft BioElectric. Accordingly, the scientific program of BIOELECTRIC will culminate in the fabrication of a portable demonstration unit for presentation to potential investors, partner organisations and clinicians. Business planning will be carried out with the support of Oxford University’s technology transfer office (OUI) and a select international panel of advisors. The developing awareness that critical cell, tissue and organ behaviours are regulated by endogenous bioelectricity has opened up the new and vital area of bioelectronic medicine. Together, the scientific and business aspects of BIOELECTRIC will expedite the commercial application of SBIs in this emerging field and deliver significant value to the European economy.

Mots-clés : applied bioengineering,synthetic biology,chemical biology,nanobiotechnology,biomaterials,biomaterials synthesis,biological chemistry
Projet ERC : Nano Harvest (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1496571.25 €

The goal of NanoHarvest is to explore novel solutions for flexible photovoltaic and piezoelectric converters enabled by semiconductor nanowires. The first objective is to demonstrate an innovative concept of flexible solar cells based on free-standing polymer-embedded nanowires which can be applied to almost any supporting material such as plastic, metal foil or even fabrics. The second objective it to develop high-efficiency flexible and compact piezo-generators based on ordered arrays of nanowire heterostructures. The crucial ingredient - and also the common basis - of the two proposed research axes are the advanced nanowire heterostructures: we will develop nanowires with new control-by-design functionalities by engineering their structure at the nanoscale. The main focus of NanoHarvest will be on the III-nitride semiconductors, which are characterized by a strong piezoelectric response and have also demonstrated their ability for efficient photon harvesting in the blue and green parts of the solar spectrum. Our strategy is to address the physical mechanisms governing the energy conversion from the single nanowire level up to the macroscopic device level. The deep understanding gained at the nanoscale will guide the optimization of the device architecture, of the material growth and of the fabrication process. We will make use of Molecular Beam Epitaxy to achieve ultimate control over the nanowire morphology and composition and to produce control-by-design model systems for fundamental studies and for exploration of device physics. The original transfer procedure of the ordered nanowire arrays onto flexible substrates will enable lightweight flexible devices with ultimate performance, which will serve as energy harvesters for nomad applications.

Mots-clés : semiconductor nanowires,molecular beam epitaxy,energy harvesting,nitride semiconductors,nanoscale characterization,flexible devices,nanowire multi junction solar cell,nanowire piezogenerator
Projet ERC : SPHERES (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3078793.75 €

The goal of SPHERES is to understand the dynamics and consequences of adipocyte hypertrophy (enlargement) through investigation of its large lipid droplet (LD). The adipocyte LD is a unique organelle specialized in storing energy in triglycerides (TGs). Its surface is composed of a phospholipid monolayer and specific LD-associated proteins (such as perilipins, CIDEs and lipases), which jointly regulate LD stability and TG turnover. Adipocyte hypertrophy due to an increase in LD size may, irrespective of body fat mass, cause a wide range of pathological conditions, notably cardiometabolic diseases. SPHERES PIs (Langin, Rydén, Antonny) postulate that disturbances in the interactions between LD proteins and LD lipid composition lead to adipocyte hypertrophy and its deleterious consequences. We have identified three fundamental unanswered questions: what determines the unique structure and dynamics of large LD; why does increased LD size alter the functional phenotype of the adipocyte; which factors cause inter-individual variations in LD size. To address these questions, SPHERES gathers expertise in clinical and cellular studies on human adipocytes, in/ex vivo investigations in mouse models, and biophysical analyses of LDs. At the core of this application is the development of beyond-state-of-the-art models and methods (spheroid cultures, native large LD preparation and reconstitution, proximity labelling of LD proteins, gene editing in cell and mouse models, and advanced LD imaging), only achievable through joint integrated effort of the PIs and co-workers. Spanning from molecular, cellular to the whole-body level, SPHERES will link new knowledge on the formation and maintenance of large adipocyte LDs to the deleterious impact of adipocyte hypertrophy. Altogether, SPHERES has a strong potential to discover novel pathogenic mechanisms, leading to a better understanding of highly prevalent diseases and identification of therapeutic strategies targeting adipocytes.
Projet ERC : AI4REASON (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Czech Technical University in Prague — Pays : Rép. Tchèque — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ČVUT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499500.0 €

The goal of the AI4REASON project is a breakthrough in what is considered a very hard problem in AI and automation of reasoning, namely the problem of automatically proving theorems in large and complex theories. Such complex formal theories arise in projects aimed at verification of today's advanced mathematics such as the Formal Proof of the Kepler Conjecture (Flyspeck), verification of software and hardware designs such as the seL4 operating system kernel, and verification of other advanced systems and technologies on which today's information society critically depends. It seems extremely complex and unlikely to design an explicitly programmed solution to the problem. However, we have recently demonstrated that the performance of existing approaches can be multiplied by data-driven AI methods that learn reasoning guidance from large proof corpora. The breakthrough will be achieved by developing such novel AI methods. First, we will devise suitable Automated Reasoning and Machine Learning methods that learn reasoning knowledge and steer the reasoning processes at various levels of granularity. Second, we will combine them into autonomous self-improving AI systems that interleave deduction and learning in positive feedback loops. Third, we will develop approaches that aggregate reasoning knowledge across many formal, semi-formal and informal corpora and deploy the methods as strong automation services for the formal proof community. The expected outcome is our ability to prove automatically at least 50% more theorems in high-assurance projects such as Flyspeck and seL4, bringing a major breakthrough in formal reasoning and verification. As an AI effort, the project offers a unique path to large-scale semantic AI. The formal corpora concentrate centuries of deep human thinking in a computer-understandable form on which deductive and inductive AI can be combined and co-evolved, providing new insights into how humans do mathematics and science.

Mots-clés : automated reasoning,automated theorem proving,interactive theorem proving,formal mathematics,formal verification,formal libraries,isabelle,mizar,flyspeck,large theory automated reasoning
Projet ERC : Umem4QC (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Jožef Stefan Institute — Pays : Slovénie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IJS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 84998.0 €

The goal of the PoC is to take a newly discovered phenomenon in quantum electronic materials into a potentially disruptive memory technology offering unprecedented high speed, low energy consumption combined with low temperature operation. With the PoC grant we aim to establish (i) viability of such memory devices within the scope of ultrafast low-temperature quantum computing and clarify the most important outstanding technical issues for implementation (ii) generate a business plan and asses the timescale for exploitation, and (iii) establish an intellectual property portfolio with an exploitation strategy. The PoC will define key activities, build a value proposition for a startup company and identify customer segments with industry partners. The PoC would also prepare the ground, and establish vital parameters for a next stage of funding within the Quant-ERA-net project and the upcoming Quantum Technology Flagship. This proposal should be viewed against the backdrop of stalled Moore's law, remarkably fast increases in energy consumption of the information technology sector and overall direction of High Performance Computing (HPC) evolving into quantum technology. The successful completion of the PoC would an important contribution to the upcoming EU Quantum Technology Flagship, demonstrating leadership in competition with US, Japanese, and Chinese developments in HPC. The outcome of the project would be a breakthrough technology showcase opening the way to large strides in the development of future high-performance cryogenic computing.

Mots-clés : memory devisec,non volatile memory,ultrafast memory,low temperature memory,memristor,optical memory
Projet ERC : GroIsRan (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1789438.0 €

The goal of the project is to develop new techniques for estimation and evaluation of well-known asymptotic invariants of groups, including growth of groups, isoperimetric profiles, entropy and probability to return to the origin of random walks as well as of some more recent invariants related to the geometric criteria for construction of quotients of groups, which appeared in the joint work of PI with A.Karlsson (2010), and in a recent work of Ozawa (2015) giving a short functional analytic proof of the Polynomial Growth Theorem. We plan to work on the Gap conjecture of Grigorchuk, which states that any group of growth asymptotically strictly less than exp(n1/2) has polynomial growth, the question about the forms of Foelner sets in groups of intermediate and exponential growth and Kaimanovich and Vershik conjecture about characterisation of groups of exponential growth in terms of non-triviality of the Poisson boundary of some symmetric random walks. We plan to develop methods sharpening previous results of PI about isoperimetric inequalities for wreath products and relation between growth of groups and isoperimetry, and apply them for growth estimates and the description of the boundary. A further goal of the project is to introduce new constructions of non-elementary amenable groups which can show that necessary conditions in growth conjecture and isoperimetric inequalities cannot be weakened.

Mots-clés : growth of groups,groups of intermediate growth,isoperimetric inequalities,entropy,random walks on groups,poisson boundary,grigorchuk conjecture,grigorchuk groups
Projet ERC : SocialMedia (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
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 : 1170625.0 €

The goal of the project is to examine how advances in information technologies affect public policies. In particular, it will empirically investigate the causal effect of social media on political participation. The first part of the project will examine the effect of social media penetration on participation in political protest activities, as well as the mechanisms that drive these effects, using a specific example of protests activities in Russia in 2011-2012. We will exploit idiosyncratic variation in the early penetration of social media across cities to identify causal effect of social media penetration on participation in protest activities. We will also exploit the effects of early penetration on the distribution of users across competing online social networks to examine the role of coordination as a specific mechanism behind the effect. The second part of the project will use content analysis of the messages in social media and detailed information on the network structure and its evolution over time to study (1) the effect of network structure on the diffusion of information and subsequent actions; (2) the effect of offline events on network formation. Exogenous shock in the form of unexpected wave of protest activities will be used to identify the effects of interest. Smaller parts of the project will use survey experiments and cross-country comparison of the content of traditional and social media to provide additional evidence on the mechanisms behind the effects of social media. The project will be mainly empirical, but it will rely heavily on the theoretical advances in the fields of political economy and network analysis.

Mots-clés : economics of mass media
Projet ERC : ASTROROT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting 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 : 477478.34 €

The goal of the research program, ASTROROT, is to significantly advance the knowledge of astrochemistry by exploring its molecular complexity and by discovering new molecule classes and key chemical processes in space. So far, mostly physical reasons were investigated for the observed variations in molecular abundances. We here propose to study the influence of chemistry on the molecular composition of the universe by combining unprecedentedly high-quality laboratory spectroscopy and pioneering telescope observations. Array telescopes provide new observations of rotational molecular emission, leading to an urgent need for microwave spectroscopic data of exotic molecules. We will use newly developed, unique broadband microwave spectrometers with the cold conditions of a molecular jet and the higher temperatures of a waveguide to mimic different interstellar conditions. Their key advantages are accurate transition intensities, tremendously reduced measurement times, and unique mixture compatibility. Our laboratory experiments will motivate and guide astronomic observations, and enable their interpretation. The expected results are • the exploration of molecular complexity by discovering new classes of molecules in space, • the detection of isotopologues that provide information about the stage of chemical evolution, • the generation of abundance maps of highly excited molecules to learn about their environment, • the identification of key intermediates in astrochemical reactions. The results will significantly foster and likely revolutionize our understanding of astrochemistry. The proposed research will go far beyond the state-of-the-art: We will use cutting-edge techniques both in the laboratory and at the telescope to greatly improve and speed the process of identifying molecular fingerprints. These techniques now enable studies at this important frontier of physics and chemistry that previously would have been prohibitively time-consuming or even impossible.

Mots-clés : astrochemistry
Projet ERC : ASTROROT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1022425.66 €

The goal of the research program, ASTROROT, is to significantly advance the knowledge of astrochemistry by exploring its molecular complexity and by discovering new molecule classes and key chemical processes in space. So far, mostly physical reasons were investigated for the observed variations in molecular abundances. We here propose to study the influence of chemistry on the molecular composition of the universe by combining unprecedentedly high-quality laboratory spectroscopy and pioneering telescope observations. Array telescopes provide new observations of rotational molecular emission, leading to an urgent need for microwave spectroscopic data of exotic molecules. We will use newly developed, unique broadband microwave spectrometers with the cold conditions of a molecular jet and the higher temperatures of a waveguide to mimic different interstellar conditions. Their key advantages are accurate transition intensities, tremendously reduced measurement times, and unique mixture compatibility. Our laboratory experiments will motivate and guide astronomic observations, and enable their interpretation. The expected results are • the exploration of molecular complexity by discovering new classes of molecules in space, • the detection of isotopologues that provide information about the stage of chemical evolution, • the generation of abundance maps of highly excited molecules to learn about their environment, • the identification of key intermediates in astrochemical reactions. The results will significantly foster and likely revolutionize our understanding of astrochemistry. The proposed research will go far beyond the state-of-the-art: We will use cutting-edge techniques both in the laboratory and at the telescope to greatly improve and speed the process of identifying molecular fingerprints. These techniques now enable studies at this important frontier of physics and chemistry that previously would have been prohibitively time-consuming or even impossible.

Mots-clés : astrochemistry