Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : LIVE-AR (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Institut de recherche pour le développement — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IRD
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499930.0 €

What are the biographical consequences and the social outcomes of revolutionary activism when the revolutionary moment turns into a civil war, an authoritarian restoration, a fragile democratic transition, or a return to the former 'years of lead'? LIVE-AR will develop a novel and ambitious analytical approach that will focus on the 'subsequent lives' of ordinary revolutionaries in four contrasted case-studies: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. By articulating the micro and meso levels, it will propose a groundbreaking three-fold shift from the usual viewpoint: a) from the revolutionary moment to the 'subsequent lives' of the women and men who participated in these events and a longitudinal analysis; b) from political and state institutions and macro-political transformations to the ordinary activists and the individual level; and c) from national studies to cross-national comparisons in order to comprehend patterns and variations depending on the political context. This analytical framework will unfold along four intertwined lines of research: 1) activist careers and biographical consequences, 2) 'emotional legacies', 3) revolutionary interpersonal networks, 4) revolutionary organizations. In so doing it will not only contribute to the literature on social movements, activism and contentious politics, by providing if not a collective biography at least a detailed 'mosaic of life-stories' of activists from the Global South, but also to the field of comparative politics to which it will offer original and empirically-grounded data to document the multiple possible social outcomes of revolutionary processes as they unfold in non-democratic contexts. The project will rely on a multidisciplinary skilled team and devise a diversified qualitative methodological 'toolkit' combining life story interviews with life calendars, an analysis of digital social networks and internet archives, ethnographic observations of daily life practices and encounters, and secondary sources.

Mots-clés : collective action revolutionary processes activism political commitment biographical consequences of activism social outcomes of revolutions comparative politics arab spring morocco tunisia egypt syria
Projet ERC : TouchCancer (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université Bar-Ilan — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BIU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2124896.0 €

Despite the constant surveillance of immune cells, tumour cells can still evade the immune response. Unravelling the interactions of T cells and B cells with tumour cells can shed light on tumour evasion. Extensive research is focused on the mechanisms of activation of an immune response in T cells. However, it is known that detection events, i.e., physical contact between individual surveying T cells and tumour cells, don’t necessarily lead to such activation. Little is known about physical interactions between T cells and tumour cells that do not end in activation. Here I suggest focusing on these detection-without activation events. In these cases, how is the detection information encoded in T cells? i.e., How are T cells and other immune cells affected by the interaction with tumour cells on the molecular level?. My working assumption is that the evading mechanism can be manifested as a physical change in immune cells upon touching tumour cells, and I suggest detecting the ‘smoking gun’ of this process in biopsies, in the form of changes in the gene expression program of touching immune cells. This was not done before because it is almost impossible to study single interacting cells in tumour tissues. It requires both high spatial resolution, to detect individually interacting cells, and high molecular resolution, to quantify cell types and states. Here, using a technology I developed for in situ sequencing with super-resolution, I will generate the first dataset of super-resolved spatial genomics mapping of human biopsies and detect tens of thousands of individual interactions between physically touching immune and tumour cell types. I will then build a new imaging technology to sequence T cell and B cell receptor in situ and detect tumour-specific ones, and will build a computational framework to detect genes and pathways involved in the immune-tumour crosstalk. This will reveal mechanistic insights into tumour evasion and suggest directions for its reversion.

Mots-clés : spatial genomics,imaging,biotechnology,bioinformatics,cancer biology,immunology
Projet ERC : HiMomPlas (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
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 : 1499951.0 €

We are in the midst of a technological revolution characterized by the large demand for small satellites. These satellites are cheaper to launch and allow for forming constellations, impossible with larger satellites. As a result, they require propulsion systems in order to control their trajectories. Electric propulsion (EP) largely reduces the operational costs, using less propellant, precisely controlling thrust, and operating for long times. The response to the demand for EP is currently at stake because of two reasons: 1) Most of the thrusters operate with an expensive and scarce propellant gas, xenon, and 2) The development of the engines follows an empirical approach that is long and expensive, which limits the optimization and conception of new prototypes. These limitations are due to the lack of models that capture the complex plasma physics in EP, in particular: 1) The impact of the plasma composition and thruster geometry on the performance, 2) The presence of multi-scale plasma kinetic instabilities, and 3) The erosion of the walls interacting with the plasma. Our objective is to develop advanced predictive plasma models, able to help to the conception of new thrusters operating with cheaper propellants, improving their stability and performance, and predicting their lifetime, without the need of expensive experimental campaigns. We will follow a multidisciplinary approach, integrating physicist, engineers, chemists, and applied mathematicians. Our methodology aims at extending the classical fluid equations by solving for higher-order moments, allowing to describe in an efficient manner microscopic (kinetic) processes. With advanced numerical techniques, we will propose multi-scale models able to describe the turbulent phenomena, the wall processes, and efficiently simulate the multi-scale nature of EP. The models will be integrated into a numerical tool that will be validated with experiments using cutting-edge uncertainty quantification techniques.

Mots-clés : satellite propulsion
Projet ERC : ZoomINs (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2012500.0 €

Rates of depression and anxiety are constantly surging, resulting in a growing global mental health crisis. These two disorders have a remarkably high prevalence of comorbidity, with anxiety generally preceding depression. However, the biological basis of these disorders and their comorbidity is poorly understood, leaving millions of patients with inadequate treatments and thus an urgent need for improved medications. Accumulating evidence suggests that both disorders involve GABAergic deficits, but the nature of these deficits is undefined and may be the holy grail for cracking the mysteries of depression and anxiety comorbidity. Here, I will apply cutting-edge technologies to focus on hippocampal GABAergic interneurons (INs) and propose a data-driven hypothesis for the cellular and molecular basis of anxiety and depression comorbidity. I suggest that INs selectively recruit microglia to reshape inhibition in the depressed brain. This hypothesis may provide the missing link between major hallmarks of depression: GABAergic deficits, synaptic loss, and neuroinflammation. I seek to unravel the molecular adaptations of INs to stress that lead to microglia recruitment and connect them with anxiety preceding depression. Finally, I will elucidate a novel model for innate anxiolysis mediated by local dendritic translation in INs. I will combine, for the first time, the robustness of two analytical methods: translating ribosome sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to identify the involved genes, the INs subtypes expressing them, and their hippocampal location. These data will be complemented by calcium imaging, behavioral tests, imaging, connectomics, and electrophysiology. ZoomINs targets an urgent public health concern by providing a novel hypothesis for a long-standing question: what causes anxiety and depression comorbidity? The results of this ambitious project will set the ground for the development of INs-targeting medications, giving hope to millions worldwide.

Mots-clés : depression,anxiety,hippocampus,interneurons,gaba
Projet ERC : VeriDeL (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Deep machine learning is revolutionizing computer science. Instead of manually creating complex software, engineers now use automatically generated deep neural networks (DNNs) in critical financial, medical and transportation systems, obtaining previously unimaginable results.  Despite their remarkable achievements, DNNs remain opaque. We do not understand their decision making and cannot prove their correctness - thus risking potentially devastating outcomes. For example, it has been shown that DNNs that navigate autonomous aircraft with the goal of avoiding collisions could produce incorrect turning advisories. Thus, the lack of formal guarantees regarding DNN behavior is preventing their safe deployment in critical systems, and could jeopardize human lives. Consequently, there is a crucial need to ensure that DNNs operate correctly.  Recent and exciting developments in formal verification allow us to automatically reason about DNNs. However, this is a nascent technology, which currently only scales to medium-sized DNNs - whereas real-world systems are much larger. Additionally, it is unclear how to apply this technology in practice. I propose to bridge this crucial gap through the development of novel, scalable and groundbreaking techniques for verifying the correctness of large DNNs, and by applying them to real systems of interest. I will do this by (1) developing search-space pruning techniques, which will enable us to verify larger DNNs; (2) creating novel abstraction-refinement techniques, which will allow us to scale to even larger DNNs; and (3) identifying new kinds of relevant specifications and key domains where DNNs are used, demonstrating the verification of real-world DNNs.  This project will result in a sound and expressive framework for automatically reasoning about DNNs, orders of magnitude larger than is possible today. This framework will ensure the safety and correctness of DNNs deployed in critical systems, greatly benefiting users and society.

Mots-clés : formal methods,verification,neural networks,abstraction refinement,residual reasoning,invariant generation,decision procedures
Projet ERC : TechFin (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499775.0 €

The use and importance of advanced technologies is continuously increasing in the corporate world. Technology is changing how investors interact with companies, how investors analyze and interpret the information provided by companies, and even the standard design of compensation in corporations. The goal of this study is to understand whether and how the increasing presence of technology is improving corporations and contributing to the wealth and prosperity of individuals/ investors, and when it is not. I will focus on the following three pillars that each focus on a unique technological development: (1) Communication with shareholders. Aim: To understand whether shareholders’ voice at shareholder meetings is muted following the shift of shareholder meetings from the in-person to the virtual-only arena (due to Covid-19). Initial findings indicate that this shift has minimized communication between shareholders and firms and allowed firms to strategically avoid addressing questions submitted by shareholders. (2) Environment and social (ES) issues. Aim: To understand whether investors pay attention to what firms say they do on ES issues, or what they actually do. Natural language processing (NLP) will be used to evaluate which actions firms state that they take with respect to ES, and these will be compared to the ES actions firms actually take. Initial results indicate that the market rewards firms that state they take actions promoting ES goals, but not firms that actually take such actions. (3) Compensation. – Aim: To examine how the characteristics of employees (e.g., gender) working in the tech industry relate to the EBC they receive, and their ability to maximize the value of their EBC and changes the economic landscape and welfare of individuals.

Mots-clés : corporate governance,esg environmental,social,and governance,shareholders
Projet ERC : AquaAgeRate (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Every species experiences a unique pace-of-life, which determines the duration of its embryonic development, onset of puberty, and rate of aging. However, how these traits are scaled so differently between species is largely unknown. Here, I propose to develop the tools to systematically study how the pace of life is regulated in vertebrates. To date, progress in our understanding has been experimentally hindered by the relatively long lifespans of classical vertebrate models. To address this challenge, I recently pioneered a genetic platform for rapid exploration of aging in the naturally short-lived turquoise killifish. Killifish species display up to 10-fold differences in their lifespan, thus providing a “microcosm” of extreme life-history adaptations. Here, we will significantly advance the state of the art by transforming selected species into genetic models. Specifically, we will use unbiased chemical screens to explore the molecular switch that allows killifish development to be suspended for years, in a process called diapause. We will then use our findings to establish genetic control of diapause and the aging processes that co-evolved in this clade. Interrogation of the transcriptional networks in play will be made possible by developing a CRISPR screen platform for fish cells. Finally, we will explore the co-regulation of rapid puberty and compressed lifespan in killifish, by developing multiplexed and reversible genetic approaches.  Aging is the primary risk factor for many human pathologies. Thus, developing a quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the pace of life could revolutionize the way we manipulate aging, treat related diseases, and even control complex traits. Identifying such new principles will also have a broader impact, such as affecting developmental rates in in-vitro fertilization. Furthermore, providing precision genome editing tools for fish, and accelerating the generation time will greatly impact commercial aquaculture.

Mots-clés : ageing genetics genome engineering crispr embryonic diapause killifish fish model systems life history traits
Projet ERC : ChoiceSpace (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499721.0 €

One of the hallmarks of our cognition is the ability to decide by thinking several steps ahead using an internal cognitive map. In the wild, map-based decisions can enable animals to select a target location based on the amount of food available and the cost of reaching there. But how are such decisions made? For example, how does the brain evaluate a nearby location with a small amount of food versus a distal location with more food? What if the route to the distal location is steep? Such spatial decisions are unique because evaluating a location depends not only on the learned properties of the location but also on inferred properties, like distance, that are estimated from an internal map. However, where or how in the brain are these maps stored and how they enable spatial decision-making remains unknown. Here we will address this question through three specific aims. First, we will test how animals choose among reward sites located at various distances, each dispensing different reward amounts. Next, we will investigate how animals deduce the costs and benefits associated with different trajectories in an environment to make an informed decision. Finally, we will decipher how these internal cognitive maps are formed. These questions will be studied using novel behavior paradigms with rats as the animal model. As rats perform these tasks, simultaneous activity of hundreds of neurons will be recorded from multiple brain regions using novel custom-built devices. To study the internal map formation and the mechanism of map-based decision-making, the neural activity will be analyzed using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques. Finally, the causal role of the corresponding brain regions in spatial decision-making will be tested using optogenetic perturbation experiments. This multi-disciplinary approach will uncover how the brain makes map-based spatial decisions – a phenomenon that remains unexplored but yet of great importance across species.

Mots-clés : cognitive maps,decision making,spatial navigation
Projet ERC : MycoViralPath (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1673925.0 €

Fungal pathogens present a significant threat to global health. As eukaryotes, they share considerable homology with their hosts, necessitating the development of innovative, non-cross-reactive therapies. Mycoviruses, viruses of fungi, can transform fungal virulence. Yet, despite their ubiquity and importance, the underlying mechanisms driving mycoviral infection and their consequences on fungal pathogenesis remain understudied. Using a naturally mycovirus-infected Aspergillus fumigatus strain, a model human fungal pathogen, we found that the mycovirus bestows a survival benefit to the fungus under oxidative stress and in the murine lung. We posit that mycoviral pressure modulates fungal fitness and virulence, thereby shaping the fungal host repertoire and facilitating the emergence of new fungal diseases. The proposed research aims to elucidate the mycoviral, fungal and mammalian determinants governing fungal cell fate during infection. We will:1) determine the molecular details governing mycoviral impact on fungal fitness, virulence, and host adaptation, 2) identify fungal antiviral mechanisms, and 3) determine how mycoviral infection affects the mammalian antifungal response. This complex multipartite pathosystem (mycovirus-fungal host-mammalian host) is highly heterogenous and dynamic, and this diversity can trigger different infection outcomes. To this end, we have developed a suite of fluorescent probes of fungal and mycoviral infection and of fungal physiology that enable tracking of virus-fungus-host interactions at single-cell resolution, and assessment of the physiological state of phagocytosed fungi in the host tissue. We propose the first in vivo interaction map of a virus within a fungus within an animal in the context of in vivo infection. We anticipate that this work will fundamentally shift our paradigms of fungal pathogenesis, and lay the groundwork for the development of novel therapeutics that operate in an entirely unexploited target space.

Mots-clés : mycoviruses,invasive mycoses,aspergillosis,regulated cell death rcd,antiviral response,fungal pathogenesis