Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : Nano-Chip (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : UiT The Arctic University of Norway — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The invention of super-resolution optical microscopy, commonly referred to as optical nanoscopy, has provided a glimpse of future impacts on cell-biology and health. Imagine the possibilities of scientific discoveries if every research and clinical lab is equipped with an optical nanoscope that is capable of imaging with resolution of sub-50 nm. Even though nanoscopy offers unprecedented opportunities, the widespread adoption of present nanoscopy is limited due to its present limitations, mainly system complexity and high ownership cost, next to technical limitations such as low throughput, slow-imaging speeds and lack of multi-modality. In the ERC PoC project, I will develop user-friendly photonic chip-based nanoscopy, to be used in a standard microscope, where sample is placed on top of a photonic chip capable of both holding and illuminating the sample, enabling to acquire super resolved images. Photonic-chips together with coupling unit can be retrofitted to any existing standard microscope converting it to high-resolution optical nanoscope.

Mots-clés : super resolution microscopy,bio imaging,integrated optics
Projet ERC : SenPET (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Tübingen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The irreversible growth arrest, termed cellular senescence, plays a key role in tumor progression and promotion, as well as in many other physiological processes. It has been shown to be a predictive marker for the long term outcome of cancer treatment and novel therapies aiming at the elimination of senescent cells are under development (i.e. senolytics). Therefore, techniques for the detection of senescence are of utmost importance. However, in the current clinical setting this is only possible with histological staining after collection of invasive biopsies and a tool for non-invasive assessment and quantification of senescence is highly desirable towards improved patient care and personalized medicine. Within our current ERC project ImageLink we have developed a stable and reproducible synthesis protocol for a novel radiolabeled PET-tracer targeting ß-galactosidase, the “gold-standard” biomarker of senescence. The tracer was validated in several in vitro and in vivo human and murine tumor models. A clear distinction between senescent and non-senescent tumors was possible and the convincing results have encouraged us to translate our preclinical findings into a clinical setting. However, this step exceeds the scope of our current ERC project. Within the planned project SenPET we will establish an automated radiosynthesis of the tracer that is compliant with good manufacturing practice (GMP) and all necessary paperwork with the authorities for approval of a clinical study will be accomplished. Finally we will perform the first clinical proof of concept study of a senescence PET tracer in 10 patients suffering from gastrointestinal tumors. PET data with our novel tracer will be collected before and after a senescence inducing chemotherapy treatment and correlated with ex vivo markers of senescence. Since our tracer is protected by patent applications, the results of this study will help us to team up with industrial partners to perform larger clinical studies.

Mots-clés : tumor senescence,personalized medicine,theranostics,senescence monitoring by pet imaging,personalized medical treatment of cancer
Projet ERC : EDAX (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : University of Potsdam — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UP
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1909690.0 €

The key to move from a mere description of static materials properties to the determination and control of functionality and chemistry lies in understanding dynamic pathways through multidimensional energy landscapes. Through my efforts over the last decade my group accomplished breakthroughs towards the required excited states selectivity and to follow dynamic pathways with resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering (RIXS) in three aspects: Non-linear RIXS for materials science to boost scattering efficiency. Time resolved and Anti-Stokes RIXS for back-ground free detection of excited states. Sub-natural line width RIXS to map out potential energy surfaces at selected atoms. In the ERC research I link these unfolding fields and combine them with ab-initio treatment of excited states to create unprecedented back-ground free X-ray probes of excited states of matter and their dynamics. This will be femtosecond time resolved Anti-Stokes RIXS for excited state selectivity with transform limited pulses and doubly resonant soft X-ray 4 wave mixing to determine multi-center dynamics on atomic scales. The ERC grant will answer long standing questions on the governing principles of functionality, regarding chemical pathways and energy landscapes in molecules as well as phase transitions, driven phases and emergence in functional materials. These novel approaches become only now feasible through the unprecedented brilliance of Free-Electron Lasers and the efforts of my group over the last decade. The ERC grant will establish proof-of-principle at brilliant soft X-ray Free-Electron Lasers that will be followed by world leading, ideal conditions implemented at the European XFEL.

Mots-clés : soft x ray spectroscopy with free electron lasers and synchrotron radiation,european xfel,non linear x ray matter interaction,ultrafast switching,femtochemistry
Projet ERC : BuildingTomorrow (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997605.0 €

The landscape of post-Soviet Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrygzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan) is littered with the physical remnants of Soviet development, both positive –health clinics and schools – and negative - decaying factories, polluted soil, and dried out rivers. Less visible are Soviet development’s political, intellectual, and institutional legacies. Yet just as post-socialist states and international development organizations have been forced to deal with the physical legacies of socialism, their approaches to economic development, welfare provision, and governance has been shaped by the socialist past. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the newly independent states of Central Asia invited international institutions and foreign donors to help them achieve prosperity and transition to a market economy. At the time, most development institutions and national governments subscribed to the so-called “Washington Consensus” which emphasized financial discipline, minimum state regulation, and open borders. This project proposes to study the influence of Central Asian economists, activists, specialists, and government officials who straddled the Soviet/post-Soviet divide by going to work in national and international development institutions after independence. By studying these individuals and the legacies of their work will allow us to investigate how ideas and practices of economic development and welfare provision were shaped and reshaped at the local and international level. The project will uncover how international development transformed post-Soviet Central Asia, and how the encounter with post-socialist states transformed paradigms and practices of international development. The research will thus make an innovative scholarly contribution to understanding the legacy of socialism, the history of economic development, and the the global history of development.

Mots-clés : development,ngos,post socialism,central asia,cold war
Projet ERC : RTFT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1493934.54 €

The large-N limit in field theory restricts the perturbative expansion to specific classes of Feynman diagrams. For vectors the restricted class of diagrams is simple, and one can analytically solve the models. For matrices, the large-N limit is simple in zero dimensions but is exceedingly complicated in higher dimensions. I proved that going one step up in the rank and considering tensor fields things simplify again, but not to the level of the vectors. I established the 1/N expansion of random tensors and discovered a new (and the last possible) universality class of large-N field theories: the melonic theories. As pointed out by Witten, these theories yield nontrivial, strongly coupled conformal field theories in the infrared. The aim of this project is to perform an exhaustive study of the melonic universality class of tensor field theories and their infrared conformal field theories. I aim to extend maximally the melonic universality class, study the renormalization group flow in melonic theories and apply them to the AdS/CFT correspondence and quantum critical metals.

Mots-clés : large n limit,tensor models,conformal field theory
Projet ERC : ICEBERG (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Institute of Communication and Computer Systems — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ICCS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1117063.0 €

The large-scale integration of renewable resources in electric power systems requires the mobilization of flexible consumers who can adapt their consumption to the variable and uncertain fluctuation of renewable supply. The mobilization of demand-side flexibility remains an elusive goal in electric power systems, while the majority of flexible consumers are connected to distribution systems that are currently operated passively. The major obstacles towards the optimal management of demand-side flexibility include the enormous number of flexible consumers (with ensuing challenges for scalable optimization), the presence of uncertainty at all layers of the power grid, and the physical complexity of distribution system power flow. In this context, the ICEBERG project proposes a novel approach towards the proactive utilization of transmission and distribution system resources in a coordinated fashion. My approach to achieving this ambitious goal is based on three key ingredients. (i) The first ingredient is a novel approach for planning and simulating the dispatch of the system which exploits the structure of distribution networks and can scale to systems of arbitrary size. (ii) The second ingredient is an original optimization framework for tackling uncertainty and non-convexity at every layer of the system. (iii) The third ingredient is a novel implementation of this optimization framework in parallel and distributed computing infrastructure, which will enable the optimal short-term planning and real-time coordination of resources at all layers of the system. My vision is to break down the current barriers to renewable energy integration by mobilizing the as yet untapped flexibility that is present at all layers of the network. This will enable the achieving of ambitious sustainability targets with acceptable infrastructure upgrades and without any deterioration in the quality of electric power service, which consumers currently enjoy.

Mots-clés : acmcss2012  stochastic control and optimization,acmcss2012  operations research,decision analysis
Projet ERC : NEW_ABC (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
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 : 1135940.0 €

The last decade had seen an increasing recognition that financial markets play a key role over the business cycle. Still, there have not been many detailed, systematic, empirical investigations on the consumption, employment and investment effects of the interaction between macroeconomic policies and the evolving structure of credit markets. This proposal aims to develop a research agenda over the next five years that combines insights from disaggregated data sets --which are either newly available or I propose to construct-- on (i) mortgage originations, (ii) the supply of household financial products and (iii) firms’ debt originations, with the development of theoretical frameworks that introduce credit supply and demand heterogeneity in the analyses of consumption and investment decisions. Three features of this proposal make it of potentially high impact. On the empirical side, the analysis of existing and novel detailed households’, firms’ and lenders’ data sets will allow us to identify new stylized facts on the transmission of monetary policy to real activity through financial markets (and leverage and asset prices in particular). On the theoretical side, these stylized facts will be used to develop and discriminate among competing channels of macroeconomic policy transmission. Finally, the regularity highlighted in both the empirical and theoretical analyses will inform the public debate on the design of future monetary and macro-prudential policy interventions.Each project (i)-(iv) describes an overall theme, which is expected to have several ramifications in terms of publishable papers, policy reports and possibly dissertation contents for PhD student(s).

Mots-clés : monetary policy,mortgage market,household debt,house prices,consumption,investment
Projet ERC : COPMAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : National Research Council — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 808424.95 €

The last decades have witnessed major progress in our understanding of the basic physics of soft matter materials. At the same time, microfluidics has also undergone spectacular theoretical and experimental progress. The confluence of such major advances spawns unprecedented opportunities for the design and manufacturing of new soft mesoscale materials, with promising applications in tissue engineering, photonics, catalysis and many others. COPMAT is targeted at making the most this opportunity through the pursuit of a single general goal: the full-scale simulation at nanometric resolution of micro-reactors for the design and synthesis of new tunable porous materials. In particular, we shall focus on the microfluidic design of: multi-jel materials, trabecular porous media and soft mesoscale molecules. We shall also explore new designs concepts based on unexplored microscale phenomena, such as the interaction between plasticity and nano-rugosity. The complex interplay between the highly non-linear rheology of soft materials and the major experimental control parameters leads to an engineering design of formidable complexity, characterized by a strong sensitivity of the macroscale material properties on the details of nanoscale interfacial interactions. COPMAT will tackle this formidable multiscale challenge through the deployment of an entirely new family of multiscale techniques, centered upon highly innovative extensions of the Lattice Boltzmann method and its combinations with Immersed Boundary Method, Dissipative Particle Dynamics and Dissipative Voronoi Dynamics. The success of COPMAT will be gauged by its capability of inspiring and realizing the design of microfluidic devices for the synthesis of novel families of porous materials for bio-engineering applications. The new paradigm established by COPMAT for the computational design of soft materials is expected to extend well beyond the time-horizon of the project.
Projet ERC : IntRanSt (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : National University of Ireland — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1287861.18 €

The last few years have seen significant advances in the discovery and development of integrable models in probability, especially in the context of random polymers and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation. Among these are the semi-discrete (O'Connell-Yor) and log-gamma (Seppalainen) random polymer models. Both of these models can be understood via a remarkable connection between the geometric RSK correspondence (a geometric lifting, or de-tropicalization, of the classical RSK correspondence) and the quantum Toda lattice, the eigenfunctions of which are known as Whittaker functions. This connection was discovered by the PI and further developed in collaboration with Corwin, Seppalainen and Zygouras. In particular, we have recently introduced a powerful combinatorial framework which underpins this connection. I have also explored this connection from an integrable systems point of view, revealing a very precise relation between classical, quantum and stochastic integrability in the context of the Toda lattice and some other integrable systems. The main objectives of this proposal are (1) to further develop the combinatorial framework in several directions which, in particular, will yield a wider family of integrable models, (2) to clarify and extend the relation between classical, quantum and stochastic integrability to a wider setting, and (3) to study thermodynamic and KPZ scaling limits of Whittaker functions (and associated measures) and their applications. The proposed research, which lies at the interface of probability, integrable systems, random matrices, statistical physics, automorphic forms, algebraic combinatorics and representation theory, will make novel contributions in all of these areas.
Projet ERC : ARTIST (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : TU Wien — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUW
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The long list of software failures over the past years calls for serious concerns in our digital society, creating bad reputation and adding huge economic burden on organizations, industries and governments. Improving software reliability is no more enough, ensuring software reliability is mandatory. Our project complements other advances in the area and addresses this demand by turning first-order theorem proving into an alternative, yet powerful approach to ensuring software reliability, Saturation-based proof search is the leading technology for automated first-order theorem proving. The high-gain/high-risk aspect of our project comes from the development and use of saturation-based theorem proving as a unifying framework to reason about software technologies. We use first-order theorem proving methods not only to prove, but also to generate software properties that imply the absence of program errors at intermediate program steps. Generating and proving program properties call for new methods supporting reasoning with both theories and quantifiers. Our project extends saturation-based first-order theorem provers with domain-specific inference rules to keep reasoning efficient. This includes commonly used theories in software development, such as the theories of integers, arrays and inductively defined data types, and automation of induction within saturation-based theorem proving, contributing to the ultimate goal of generating and proving inductive software properties, such as invariants. Thanks to the full automation of our project, our results can be integrated and used in other frameworks, to allow end-users and developers of software technologies to gain from theorem proving without the need of becoming experts of it.

Mots-clés : formal methods,automated reasoning,first order theorem proving,formal verification
Projet ERC : VISONby3DSTIM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Hungarian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MTA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The long-term aim of the investigation is to assess the feasibility of creating an “artificial sense” and, thereby, a possible sensory (visual) prosthetic. While working towards this goal, we will have to address the question of how neural assembly activity relates to subjective perceptions. Finding and understanding these functional assemblies will make it possible to reactivate them in a precise, biologically relevant manner to elicit similar cortical activation as visual stimulation. Recent publications suggest that cortical connectivity can be mapped by two-photon microscopy. Here we want, therefore, to develop a novel 3D Electro-Acousto-Optical microscope for high-throughput assembly mapping. The microscope will be capable of scanning neuronal activity with one order of magnitude higher speed (300-500 kHz/ROI) and simultaneously photoactivate neurons with three order of magnitude higher efficiency (2,500 – 25,000 neurons/ms) than existing 3D microscopes while preserving the subcellular resolution required to simultaneously measure the somatic, the dendritic and axonal computation units in the entire V1 region of the cortex. The microscope will be based on our current 3D AO technology; on novel ultra-fast scanning technologies; new, 10-fold faster AO deflectors; and novel (multi-ROI) scanning strategies. Using our microscope in combination with novel caged neurotransmitters and optogenetic tools, we want to map cell assemblies and to understand how they form larger clusters and how they are associated with visual features. Furthermore, as a proof-of-concept of this grant, we want to restore visual perception by recreating previously mapped assembly patterns with 3D artificial photositmulation in behaving mice and see if the animal responds to the artificial stimulus in the same way as to the visual stimulus. Moreover, we want to restore visual information based spatial navigation in head restrained animals orienting and moving in a virtual labyrinth for reward.

Mots-clés : 3d acousto optic two photon microscopy,visual system,cortical processing,cell assemblies,uncaging,optogentics,3d imaging,visual restoration,virtual reality