Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : TUNE (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : University of Luxembourg — Pays : Luxembourg — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2307932.0 €

Software-intensive systems pervade modern society and industry. These systems often play critical roles from an economic, safety or security standpoint, thus making their dependability indispensible. Software Verification and Validation (V&V) is core to ensuring software dependability. The most prevalent V&V technique is testing, that is the automated, systematic, and controlled execution of a system to detect faults or to show compliance with requirements. Increasingly, we are faced with systems that are untestable, meaning that traditional testing methods are highly expensive, time-consuming or infeasible to apply due to factors such as the systems’ continuous interactions with the environment and the deep intertwining of software with hardware. TUNE will enable testing of untestable systems by revolutionising how we think about test automation. Our key idea is to frame testing on models rather than operational systems. We refer to such testing as model testing. The models that underlie model testing are executable representations of the relevant aspects of a system and its environment, alongside the risks of system failures. Such models inevitably have uncertainties due to complex, dynamic environment behaviours and the unknowns about the system. This necessitates that model testing be uncertainty-aware. We propose to develop scalable, practical and uncertainty-aware techniques for test automation, leveraging our expertise on model-driven engineering and automated testing. Our solutions will synergistically combine metaheuristic search with system and risk models to drive the search for critical faults that entail the most risk. TUNE is the first initiative with the specific goal of raising the level of abstraction of testing from operational systems to models. The project will bring early and cost-effective automation to the testing of many critical systems that defy existing automation techniques, thus significantly improving the dependability of such systems.

Mots-clés : software testing,model driven engineering,search based software engineering
Projet ERC : FRAGMENT (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 553256.0 €

Soil dust aerosols are mixtures of different minerals, whose relative abundances, particle size distribution (PSD), shape, surface topography and mixing state influence their effect upon climate. However, Earth System Models typically assume that dust aerosols have a globally uniform composition, neglecting the known regional variations in the mineralogy of the sources. The goal of FRAGMENT is to understand and constrain the global mineralogical composition of dust along with its effects upon climate. The representation of the global dust mineralogy is hindered by our limited knowledge of the global soil mineral content and our incomplete understanding of the emitted dust PSD in terms of its constituent minerals that results from the fragmentation of soil aggregates during wind erosion. The emitted PSD affects the duration of particle transport and thus each mineral’s global distribution, along with its specific effect upon climate. Coincident observations of the emitted dust and soil PSD are scarce and do not characterize the mineralogy. In addition, the existing theoretical paradigms disagree fundamentally on multiple aspects. We will contribute new fundamental understanding of the size-resolved mineralogy of dust at emission and its relationship with the parent soil, based on an unprecedented ensemble of measurement campaigns that have been designed to thoroughly test our theoretical hypotheses. To improve knowledge of the global soil mineral content, we will evaluate and use available remote hyperspectral imaging, which is unprecedented in the context of dust modelling. Our new methods will anticipate the coming innovation of retrieving soil mineralogy through high-quality spaceborne hyperspectral measurements. Finally, we will generate integrated and quantitative knowledge of the role of dust mineralogy in dust-radiation, dust-chemistry and dust-cloud interactions based on modeling experiments constrained with our theoretical innovations and field measurements.

Mots-clés : dust aerosols,mineralogy,physics of emission,climate,modelling,spectroscopy
Projet ERC : PISCO (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2497742.0 €

Solar Solar energy is an unlimited renewable source of energy but its contribution to European energy production is still minor. It is therefore urgent to develop innovative photovoltaic (PV) technologies and products, and to implement them massively. Among emerging photovoltaics, Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) are competitive in terms of efficiency, cost, and more importantly stability. They can be made semi-transparent which is an appealing feature for building or automobile integrated photovoltaics. But to be efficient, they have to harvest a maximum of photons from the sun, thus the best-performing DSSCs cannot show a good transparency which impedes their use as windows. In 2017, I proposed a new concept to combine photochromism and photovoltaic, leading for the first time to efficient semi-transparent solar cells showing variable and self-adjustable optical transmission. These cells can simultaneously adapt their absorption depending on the weather conditions and produce electricity. Starting from this result, PISCO will widely explore this exciting concept and provide a breakthrough in photovoltaics by developing a novel class of multifunctional solar cells that could be massively integrated in buildings, automotive, or mobile electronics. The main objectives of PISCO are: 1) Design and synthesis of novel photochromic dyes with optimized optoelectronic properties and high stability. 2) Integration of these molecules in devices using methodologies to enable fundamental studies, to fully understand what factors are governing the photochromic behaviour, the generation of electrical power, and the interplay between them. 3) Inspired by the most relevant and recent concepts in the field, to develop robust and efficient photochromic solar cells and modules. PISCO will provide the step change expected in photovoltaics, it will change our conceit of optical properties of solar cells by providing a ground-breaking technology with widen potential applications.

Mots-clés : photovoltaics,photochromism,organic dyes,solar cells,dye sensitized solar cells
Projet ERC : METAFOAM (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Eindhoven University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU/e
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Sound pollution is an omni-present problem in our modern society that affects our well-being and the quality of life. Technical solutions to reduce the impact of sound in a broad frequency range are therefore of vital importance. Moreover, solutions should be economically attractive, since the volumes of sound insulation required in our society are extremely large. Acoustic foams are nowadays one of the best available solution towards this problem, but they are mainly effective in the mid- and high-frequency regime. Novel technical solutions that target the lower frequency regime are therefore urgently needed. Within the ERC-AdG project MECHMAM, a possible solution has been proposed in the research on dynamical metamaterials. One particular category proposed in that ERC-project are acoustic metafoams. This novel class of materials are enriched acoustic foams, whereby a mass is implemented in the cavities of the foams. This combines two effective mechanisms, i.e. visco-thermal dissipation and local resonance. Interestingly, the project showed on a model-basis that the interaction between these two operating mechanisms may lead to an amplification of the damping within the material, leading to a potentially very efficient sound insulator. Within the ERC-AdG-project, most findings were still theoretical or model-based. This PoC-project aims to assess this basic idea and bring it to practice. In order to reach this objective, attention will be given to the metafoam manufacturing methods having potential for large volume production and the validation of the metafoam actual performance. Parallel to the technical activities, a competitive market analysis will be carried out to establish the IPR and the commercialization plan, in collaboration with industrial and societal partners. We will further explore technology transfer towards various end-users. Market outreach will be performed so that the metafoam products and services reach their potential customers.

Mots-clés : metamaterial,acoustic foam,sound insulation,noise mitigation,low frequency
Projet ERC : NEEM (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Hebrew University of Jerusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2009153.0 €

Southern India in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries comprised a single, strongly interwoven, multilingual cultural world that generated innovative literary, musical, theatrical and visual masterpieces as well as a theoretical erudite literature that explored the aesthetic and philosophical bases of these new works. New literary genres such as the compact, self-contained prabandha narratives crossed linguistic boundaries, emerging in and rapidly coming to dominate Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and the trans-local languages of Sanskrit, Persian, Marathi and Dakhni. Such texts, seen together with major genres evolving in the other expressive domains (the early varnams and kirttanas in music, the great mural paintings of the Tamil and Karnataka regions, Kudiyattam drama), were building blocks of an eco-system whose rules, themes, forms, and intertextual relations have never been studied as a whole. We propose to explore this large corpus in relation to the new grammars of language, poetics, music, drama, and painting that evolved at the same time. Among major themes common to all these traditions are the interiority and states of mind of the individual human person, the question of how such a person is created and fashioned, the problem of the fate or destiny that a person faces or generates out of himself or herself, and the autonomy of the natural world within which he or she lives and acts. All the major expressive domains, with their thematic and theoretical continuities, give voice to a historic shift in the dynamics and underlying axioms of south Indian civilization at the start of the modern age; this shift becomes fully articulate and apparent only when we see the expressive eco-system as a whole.

Mots-clés : south india,tamil,telugu,malayalam,kannada,sanskrit,persian,carnatic music,kerala theatre,kutiyattam,deccan sultanates,prabandha,poetics,grammar,dakhni,musicology
Projet ERC : CATCH (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Oulu — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Oulu
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999946.0 €

Spacetime defines existence and evolution of materials. A key path to human’s sustainability through materials innovation can hardly circumvent materials dimensionalities. Despite numerous studies in electrically distinct 2D semiconductors, the route to engage them in high-performance photocatalysts remains elusive. Herein, CATCH proposes a cross-dimensional activation strategy of 2D semiconductors to implement practical photocatalysis. It operates electronic structures of dimensionally paradoxical 2D semiconductors and spatially limited nD (n=0-2) guests, directs charge migration processes, mass-produces advanced catalysts and elucidates time-evolved catalysis. Synergic impacts crossing 2D-nD will lead to > 95%/hour rates for pollutant removal and >20% quantum efficiencies for H2 evolution under visible light. CATCH enumerates chemical coordination and writes reaction equations with sub-nanosecond precision. CATCH employs density functional theory optimization and data mining prediction to select most probable heterojunctional peers from hetero/homo- dimensions. Through facile but efficient wet and dry synthesis, nanostructures will be bonded to basal planes or brinks of 2D slabs. CATCH benefits in-house techniques for product characterizations and refinements and emphasizes on cutting-edge in situ studies to unveil photocatalysis at advanced photon sources. Assisted with theoretical modelling, ambient and time-evolved experiments will illustrate photocatalytic dynamics and kinetics in mixed spacetime. CATCH unites low-dimensional materials designs by counting physical and electronic merits from spacetime confinements. It metrologically elaborates photocatalysis in an elevated 2D+nD+t, alters passages of materials combinations crossing dimensions, and directs future photocatalyst designs. Standing on cross-dimensional materials innovation and photocatalysis study, CATCH breaks the deadlock of practical photocatalysis that eventually leads to sustainability.

Mots-clés : semiconductor photocatalysis,low dimensionality,heterojunction,thermodynamics and kinetics
Projet ERC : BARRIERS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Gothenburg — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 975521.88 €

Speciation is a central process in evolution that involves the origin of barriers to gene flow between populations. Species are typically isolated by several barriers and assembly of multiple barriers separating the same populations seems to be critical to the evolution of strong reproductive isolation. Barriers resulting from direct selection can become coincident through a process of coupling while reinforcement can add barrier traits that are not under direct selection. In the presence of gene flow, these processes are opposed by recombination. While recent research using the latest sequencing technologies has provided much increased knowledge of patterns of differentiation and the genetic basis of local adaptation, it has so far added little to understanding of the coupling and reinforcement processes. In this project, I will focus on the accumulation of barriers to gene exchange and the processes underlying increasing reproductive isolation. I will use the power of natural contact zones, combined with novel manipulative experiments, to separate the processes that underlie patterns of differentiation and introgression. The Littorina saxatilis model system allows me to do this with both local replication and a contrast between distinct spatial contexts on a larger geographic scale. I will use modelling to determine how processes interact and to investigate the conditions most likely to promote coupling and reinforcement. Overall, the project will provide major new insights into the speciation process, particularly revealing the requirements for progress towards complete reproductive isolation.

Mots-clés : speciation,local adaptation
Projet ERC : Honeyguides-Humans (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1408260.0 €

Species interactions such as mutualism, parasitism and predation underpin much of life’s diversity. We aim to understand the mechanistic role of learnt traits in the origin and maintenance of mutualistic interactions between species, and to test their evolutionary and ecological consequences. To do so, we shall study a remarkable mutualism: the foraging partnership between an African bird species, the greater honeyguide Indicator indicator, and the human honey-hunters whom it guides to bees’ nests. Honeyguides know where bees’ nests are located and like to eat beeswax; humans have the ability to subdue the bees and open the nest, thus exposing beeswax for the honeyguides and honey for the humans. This model system gives us a wonderful opportunity to study mutualisms, because local human and honeyguide populations vary strikingly in whether and how they interact, and because we can readily manipulate these interactions experimentally. We have already demonstrated that it is fully feasible to carry out observational and experimental work at a study site we have established in cooperation with a honey-hunting community in northern Mozambique. Here, and at a series of comparative field sites we have identified in south-eastern Africa, we shall ask: is learning involved in maintaining a geographical mosaic of honeyguide adaptation to local human cultures? How does reciprocal communication between humans and honeyguides mediate their interactions? What are the effects of cultural co-extinctions on each partner and their ecosystems, and how quickly can such cultures be re-ignited following their loss? In so doing we shall test for the first time the hypothesis that reciprocal learning can give rise to matching cultural traits between interacting species. Understanding the role of such phenotypic plasticity is crucial to explain how and why the outcome of species interactions varies in space and time, and to predict how they will respond to a rapidly changing world.

Mots-clés : avian behavioural ecology,human animal ecological interactions,learning and cultural evolution
Projet ERC : CODE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : Oslo University Hospital — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 594375.0 €

Specific recruitment of different proteins to distinct intracellular membranes is fundamental in the biology of eukaryotic cells, but the molecular basis for specificity is incompletely understood. This proposal investigates the hypothesis that coincidence detection of proteins and lipids constitutes a major mechanism for specific recruitment of proteins to intracellular membranes in order to control cellular membrane dynamics. CODE will establish and validate mathematical models for coincidence detection, identify and functionally characterise novel coincidence detectors, and engineer artificial coincidence detectors as novel tools in cell biology and biotechnology.

Mots-clés : membrane traffic,endocytosis,phosphoinositides
Projet ERC : JSPEC (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 346265.0 €

Spectroscopy is a powerful tool to probe matter. By measuring the spectrum of elementary excitations, one reveals the symmetries and interactions inherent in a physical system. Mesoscopic devices, which preserve quantum coherence over lengths larger than the atomic scale, offer a unique possibility to both engineer and investigate excitations at the single quanta level. Unfortunately, conventional spectroscopy techniques are inadequate for coupling radiation to mesoscopic systems and detecting their small absorption signals. I propose an on-chip, Josephson-junction based spectrometer which surpasses state-of-the-art instruments and is ideally suited for probing elementary excitations in mesoscopic systems. It has an original design providing uniform wideband coupling from 2-2000 GHz, low background noise, high sensitivity, and narrow linewidth. I describe the operating principle and design of the spectrometer, show preliminary results demonstrating proof-of-concept, and outline three experiments which exploit the spectrometer to address important issues in condensed matter physics. The experiments are: measuring the lifetime of single quasiparticle and excited Cooper pair states in superconductors, a topic relevant for quantum information processing; determining whether graphene has a bandgap, a fundamental yet unresolved question; and recording a clear spectroscopic signature of Majorana bound states in topological superconductor weak links. Various applications of the superconducting circuits developed for the spectrometer include a Josephson vector network analyzer, a cryogenic mixer, a THz camera, a detector for radioastronomy, and a scanning microwave impedance microscope. In itself the proposed JJ spectrometer is a general purpose tool that will benefit researchers studying mesoscopic systems. Ultimately, Josephson junction spectroscopy should not only be useful to detect existing elementary excitations but also to discover new ones.

Mots-clés : josephson junction,andreev bound states,cooper pair,quasiparticle,spectroscopy