Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : JuvenTwin (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Loughborough — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 359750.0 €

Whilst 30% of EU citizens will be over 65 and 10% over 80 by 2050, the healthspan accounts for only 80% of the total life expectancy according to Eurostat, due to the high prevalence of disabling diseases related to the age-induced arterial stiffening. The current paradigm in medicine is to palliate these diseases with sophisticated devices. In JuvenTwin, I propose a complete shift of paradigm by combatting the mechanobiological effects of vascular ageing. Vascular rejuvenation faces many challenges that have only been explored by molecular biologists. My ambition is to address these challenges with a high-risk approach relying on multiscale digital twins and enabling to simulate and screen effective rejuvenation treatments. My hypothesis, already supported by preliminary results, is that this can be achieved by doping the synergistic effects of mechano-regulation in human arteries, which are gradually compromised with vascular ageing. JuvenTwin’s four specific objectives are: 1/ Decipher how ageing affects cell phenotypes and the signalling pathways of mechano-regulation, 2/ Assess the effects of ageing on the mechanical interactions between cells and their matrix, 3/ Simulate computationally the multiscale synergies participating to patient-specific vascular mechano-regulation and finally 4/ Take the control of mechanobiology in aged arteries using small molecule inhibitors and cell mechanical stimulations. With my team, we will reach these objectives by developing two completely novel methodologies: a 4D high-resolution strain mapper and a micromechanical computational model simulating the dynamical interactions of 100,000 vascular cells in patient-specific arteries. Our interdisciplinary approach combining digital spatial transcriptomics, laser interferometry and neural networks will be of very high-gain for discovering therapies against the adverse mechanobiological effects of vascular ageing, potentially reaching the pre-clinical stage at the horizon 2030.

Mots-clés : multiscale computational model,digital twin,vascular aging,spatial transcriptomics,physics informed neural network,high resolution laser interferometry,focal adhesion dynamics,rejuvenation
Projet ERC : REACT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Loughborough — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1892372.0 €

We live in a time of endemic uncertainty and accelerating socio-economic exclusion. The collapse of the extractivist ideology of the neoliberal model of development has led to needs for other worldviews. Young people in the Global South are particularly impacted by the socio-economic consequences, affecting their ability to control their livelihoods. This is indicated by high unemployment, gender and job market inequalities, and the decline of living standards despite general economic growth.  REACT emerges as an ambitious, feasible project. The ambition is empirical, methodological and theoretical. REACT uniquely focuses on sourcing everyday activism outside of conventional activist spaces. A qualitative study of 300 youth across 5 cities combined with a survey (12.000) from 20 cities will generate insights on how young people negotiate and act upon their life circumstances. REACT applies a critical-creative pedagogy to foster critical hope via artistic expression, scenario building, urban manifestos, networking and cultural encounters across the Global South. Uncovering individuals’ everyday practices of activism generates insights about the formation of subjectivities in urban contexts, practices of communication in everyday life, perceptions and forms of activism, connects hope with citizenship, and individual action with collective action. These elements are deeply intertwined, hence the need for an interdisciplinary framework. Embedded in communication for social change, and drawing on cultural studies, urban studies, critical pedagogy and critical development studies, REACT will develop a novel interdisciplinary theory for the study of COMmunication, PArticipation and Social Change (COMPAS). REACT’s ambition is also geographical and epistemological; Conducting a study of young people across the geographical Global South can amend the cognitive injustice seen in the imbalance of knowledge production about youth, communication and social change.
Projet ERC : BONEREPAIR (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Lorraine — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2241107.0 €

Osteoporosis is a major concern in Europe, resulting in 4.3 million fragility fractures and health care costs in excess of €56 billion annually. Bone, a smart material, can detect microcracks or microdamages and to repair these microdefects due to its growth and remodeling capabilities in the presence of electro-mechanical stimuli. Dry and wet bone involve matrix piezoelectricity, namely a coupling between deformation and polarization. Flexoelectricity, the phenomenon coupling deformation gradients and polarization, still presents experimental and theoretical challenges. Bone biomechanics has been resistant to progress due to the complexity of the propagation of information across the scales of the bone hierarchical microstructure and the multidisciplinary nature of bone biomechanics. BONEREPAIR has the potential to provide a global vision of the effects of electro-mechanical signals on bone remodeling and healing, from the cellular to tissue level, by: 1) Characterizing the response of bone to electro-mechanical stimuli, from cellular to tissue level, via dedicated experiments on biomaterials and bone explants based on novel Bone-on-Chip systems, 2) Modelling the bone cells' response to electro-mechanical stimuli and their gradients, and incorporate them into a unified field theory of bone remodeling and healing, and 3) Designing adequate electro-mechanical stimuli promoting bone healing more efficiently. We hypothesize it is possible to heal bone by applying well-calibrated electro-mechanical stimuli, from the cellular level up to the tissue level, by using multiscale methods to upscale electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena – including piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity, and damage – from microcrack scale up to the tissue level. BONEREPAIR will moreover largely contribute to the development of novel homogenization methods towards generalized continua for composite materials showing multiphysical behavior like piezoelectricity and flexoelectricity.

Mots-clés : bone remodeling electrical stimulation piezoelectricity flexoelectricity bone healibg damage repair multiscale models multiphysical models measurements bone on chip
Projet ERC : MechanoSynth (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IBEC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499875.0 €

Our understanding of cell biology has reached the point in which cells can be exogenously engineered to carry out specific tasks. This is typically applied to generate gene circuits that respond to biochemical interactions between specific molecules. However, cells sense not only biochemical but also mechanical signals, in the process of mechanotransduction. Here, we propose to re-engineer cell mechanotransduction from scratch, in a manner that is not based on any endogenous cell signalling pathway. We will achieve this by harnessing our novel findings that force application to the cell nucleus regulates transport through nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), in such a way that proteins can be made to translocate to the cell nucleus with force by appropriately tuning their active and passive transport properties. First, we will implement a mechanosensing element, involving a precise understanding of the mechanical parameters regulating nucleocytoplasmic transport, and subsequent design of molecules with optimal mechanosensitivity (that is, force-dependent nuclear localization). Second, we will implement a control element, enabling a system to control to what extent, and for how long, force reaches the nucleus and triggers subsequent mechanosensing. Finally, we will implement a functional element, by which mechanosensitive molecules will be engineered to trigger the transcription of specific genes in the nucleus. As a proof-of-concept, we will apply this system to re-engineer three main properties of fibroblasts and mesenchymal cells (matrix remodelling, migration, and epithelial/mesenchymal plasticity), all involved in pathological responses to altered tissue mechanics. This project will deliver synthetic mechanotransduction, a novel tool that will be orthogonal and compatible with existing cell engineering approaches. Further, it will provide an answer to the fundamental question of how a functional, biological mechanotransduction system can be generated de novo.

Mots-clés : nuclear mechanics,nuclear pore complexes,fibroblasts
Projet ERC : PLUMAGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Collège de France — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 176352.81 €

Most animals display striking patterns (i.e., spatial arrangement of characters in typical geometries). Natural patterns vary extensively, but also display trends within given taxa. A major biological challenge is to identify the pattern-forming events that shape this typical phenotypic landscape. Here, we propose to study the mechanisms responsible for the formation and evolution of the avian colour pattern (i.e., the spatial distribution of colour across the plumage). We test the provocative idea that despite enormous apparent diversity, variation in avian colour patterns is in fact very limited due to early developmental constraints, most variation resulting from colour choice changes in a common template. To test this hypothesis, we designed a step-wise approach organised in 4 specific research objectives: first, we will identify broadly shared and group-specific colour domains in the avian plumage by performing a quantitative survey across the entire bird phylogeny. Second, we will pinpoint the embryonic origin of these colour domains by constructing a lineage map of the developing skin. Third, we will identify positional cues controlling the establishment of embryonic blueprints of the future colour pattern by performing comparative expression analyses and functional tests in species displaying relevant pattern variation. Fourth, we will uncover changes in mechanisms through which embryonic blueprints implement the pattern in the late skin by pinpointing genetic loci co-evolving with pattern changes and testing their effect in an ex vivo system. In each objective, our methodology opportunistically uses non-model species of birds and robust functional testing performed in multiple species. Together, this proposal represents the largest comparative study of developmental processes undertaken in natural populations of birds. Results will provide a comprehensive understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying trends and variation in natural patterns.

Mots-clés : colour pattern,developmental constraints,phenotypic survey,cell lineage,functional tests,bird embryos,non model species
Projet ERC : NFITSC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de Haïfa — Pays : Israël — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 135000.0 €

Information-theoretic secure computation is a general-purpose technique for processing sensitive data without compromising its confidentiality or integrity even in the presence of a computationally-unbounded all-powerful adversary. This notion plays an important role in cryptography, both as a stand-alone object and as a tool for computational constructs. Despite its increasing importance, we have a very limited understanding of the *intrinsic complexity* of information-theoretic security, and some of the most central feasibility questions in this area have remained open for more than three decades.  In this proposal, we aim to decipher the power and limitations of this notion. We will focus on three main objectives. First, we aim to improve the complexity of general *secret sharing schemes* and exploit such improvements towards realizing highly-efficient general-purpose zero-knowledge proofs. The second objective is to explore the complexity of Secure Non-Interactive Reductions and Multiparty Randomized Encoding -- a powerful generalization of information-theoretic garbled circuits that was recently presented by the PI. The third objective is to expand our theoretical understanding of constant-round information-theoretic protocols, optimize their round complexity, and study their concrete and asymptotic computational complexity.  Being part of several recent exciting developments in these areas, we believe that it is now possible to make progress in some of these basic open problems. The suggested research will bridge across different regions of computer science such as coding theory, cryptography, and computational complexity. It is expected to impact central problems in cryptography, while enriching the general landscape of theoretical computer science.

Mots-clés : secure multiparty computation,secret sharing,information theoretic cryptography
Projet ERC : MemoryIndex (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 37500.0 €

Episodic memories make us who we are, yet how these memories are coded in the human brain remains an open question. We know that the human hippocampus is essential for turning unique experiences into memory episodes, such as a memory from the last concert you have attended. We also know that the human hippocampus has two types of neurons that could be critical for coding such episodic memories. These are Concept Cells, which store general semantic concepts (i.e. the artist, or the location where the concert was), and Episode Specific Neurons, which hold together all the elements that belong to an episode (i.e. seeing Taylor Swift performing in Edinburgh). Concept cells, which are well-known, represent a context invariant and highly abstract code for certain elements that matter to us, such as a certain place, or a certain person. In contrast, Episodic Specific Neurons, which have only recently been observed, represent a conjunctive code that uniquely identifies individual episodes. However, how these two types of neural codes are used by the hippocampus to code episodic memories is unclear. Specifically, we don’t know whether and how Episode Specific Neurons and Concept Cells interact with each other and with the neocortex. We don’t know where in the hippocampus they are, how they are allocated to code for a memory, and whether they are causally relevant for human episodic memory. The aim of MemoryIndex is to answer these questions via testing computationally motivated hypotheses in a multimodal project using a unique combination of human single neuron recordings, ultra-high field fMRI and invasive electrical stimulation. The results of this project will critically advance our understanding of the fundamental coding mechanisms that the human hippocampus uses for storing episodic memories. These findings could potentially pave the way for developing a neural prosthesis to restore memory function in patients.

Mots-clés : episodic memory,hippocampus,human single neurons
Projet ERC : Gravitas (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Ist-id associacao do instituto superior tecnico para a investigacao e o desenvolvimento — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IST ID
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1944825.0 €

Gravity's unique geometric structure is manifest in strong field regions, especially around black holes. The new-born era of gravitational-wave astronomy and of very long baseline interferometry is now providing data from such regions, carrying information about the gravitational interaction in highly dynamical setups. The access to this new and uncharted territory may hold the key to outstanding puzzles, such as the nature of dark matter, or the fate of singularities or horizons within a quantum field theory context. The breakthroughs at the observational and experimental level make strong gravity physics one of this century's most active and exciting fields of research. I propose to explore the discovery potential of black holes, a foundational project which will transform the field into data-driven with solid theoretical foundations. This coordinated program will study and test the strong-field regime of gravity and the matter content of our universe. The project will explore comprehensively the potential of black holes and compact binaries to perform spectroscopy and to strengthen the black hole paradigm. I will ascertain the evidence for black holes, providing new and robust tools to quantify their existence with electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations. Finally, I will undertake a systematic study of environmental effects, including the ability for new observations to study the host galaxy, and will constrain the existence of new fundamental ultralight fields in our universe to unprecedented levels. The project aims to implement pipelines for its realization in planned and ongoing missions.  The proposed program will significantly advance our knowledge of Einstein's field equations and their role in foundational questions, as well as the interplay with high energy, astro and particle physics. This is a multidisciplinary program with an impact on our understanding of gravity at all scales.

Mots-clés : black hole physics,numerical relativity,perturbation theory,dark matter
Projet ERC : PerefromBelow21 (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Leibniz-Gemeinschaft — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WLG
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2402183.75 €

The project ‘Perestroika from Below’ intends to research and write a new history of a well-known, yet under-researched, moment in Soviet history, countering the dominant perception of perestroika as primarily reforms from above. It wants to redirect the scholarly gaze towards the large number of Soviet citizens who participated in and sponsored the ambitious attempt to redefine Soviet life, history and future in the 1980s and 90s. This will include not only so-called liberal and democratic forces (labels are one of the many aspects of perestroika that needs revisiting), but also the numerous nationalist, religious and subcultural elements, who were products and producers of the process of restructuring, at times in alignment with, and at times contra, official policy. With the help of oral history interviews and other ego-documents as well as archival and published sources, the project aims to reconstruct individuals’ path into the perestroika experience and follow their trajectories into the 1990s, hence putting the era of reforms into a larger historical and biographical context. The project seeks to re-centre the Soviet provinces and their experiences of perestroika, especially events in the non-European periphery. It wants to foreground women and other marginalised participants and explore the impact of the many formal and informal international encounters that were suddenly possible in those years. In the process the project will address not only important questions about what made people ‘do’ Perestroika but also question the chronology of the era with its sudden beginning in 1987 and radical end in 1991. It aims to overcome the dominance of the ‘neoliberal’ trope dominating current analyses of this time of transformation. Rather, the project will analyse people’s motivations, thoughts and actions less in terms of political orientation, but more by identifying them as members of emotional and affective communities, who rallied around specific emotives.

Mots-clés : perestroika,reforms,dissidence,protest movements,subcultures,periphery,marginalised communities,transformation,identities
Projet ERC : ANSOC (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Muséum national d'histoire naturelle — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MNHN
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 249270.0 €

This project will create a new vision of Bronze Age ontologies by exploring the role of animals as active participants in Bronze Age social worlds. The impact of contemporary Capitalist ideology on archaeological understanding of the European Bronze Age has been profound. Dominant narratives describe a world in which economic intensification, the accumulation of wealth and the emergence of chiefly hierarchies were predicated on the objectification of the ‘other’. This project will critically re-evaluate models that view animals as objects of exploitation. Drawing on work in animal studies that highlights how living with animals involves intimate interaction and interdependency, it will investigate the intertwining of human and animal identities, and will consider how the social and cultural significance of animals affected how they were farmed, managed and consumed. The appearance of field-systems and houses incorporating byres for cattle indicates major changes in animal management in the Bronze Age. Yet, animal iconography and the presence of animal remains in graves and votive deposits suggest that animals had cultural significance. The project will bring together contextual, zooarchaeological, isotope, organic residue and aDNA analysis to investigate human-animal sociality, examining herd management; patterns of human-animal interaction; animal mobility and exchange; the role of animals in feasting and ritual; and their location in cultural taxonomies. By examining the ontological position of animals not as passive objects but as active subjects, this project will radically reframe the theoretical basis on which wider interpretations of the Bronze Age are based, including how political authority, gender relations and economic activities were structured. By illuminating alternate modalities of power and agency, and different ways of living with non-human others, it will also contribute to current debates around issues such as sustainability in the present.

Mots-clés : bronze age,animals,depositional practice,settlement,landscape,zooarchaeology,adna,isotope analysis