Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CRIMLIFE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Mahatma Gandhi University — Pays : Inde — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MGU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 96152.5 €

How do social contexts determine paths into crime? How do these trajectories vary across different societal circumstances? And how are they narrated? CRIMEGLO is the first-ever large-scale comparative life-course criminological study globally. No research hitherto has addressed criminal careers and storytelling in such detail and on the scale envisaged in this project. The approach will counterweight the current Northern bias in research and theory, a shift necessary to establish a truly global perspective within life-course criminology. Cultural and societal contexts play a large role in defining and responding to crime. Social conditions shape the life-courses of those getting caught up in the criminal justice system. Context is also intertwined with the ways people talk about their lives. CRIMEGLO will explore and compare crime from a life-course and life-story perspective spanning four continents and six countries: Norway, the Czech Republic, Türkiye, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Colombia. By combining criminological theory with institutional, cultural, and narrative studies, CRIMEGLO’s goal is to establish global comparative research on crime within a life-course perspective. The primary objective is to introduce and theoretically develop a contextually sensitive, comparative global life-course criminology. The secondary objective is to achieve a better empirical understanding of the particular social, economic, institutional, and gendered factors shaping criminal life-courses in different countries with highly divergent societal contexts. Principal Investigator Sveinung Sandberg is a sociologist and one of Europe’s leading qualitative criminologists. He has pioneered the prominent research traditions of Bourdieusian Criminology and Narrative Criminology. With CRIMEGLO, he expands globally his qualitative work on life-courses and life-stories started in Latin America and, for the first time, incorporates quantitative and comparative methods to his research.

Mots-clés : sociology,criminology,narrative criminology,life course analysis,life history analysis,crime
Projet ERC : BEACONSANDEGG (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : École polytechnique de Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : PoliMi
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498690.0 €

Invasive cancers are a leading cause of death worldwide, with almost ten million deaths per year caused by resistance to antitumor treatments. In breast cancer, aggressiveness correlates with fibrotic stiffening of the tumour. There is an urgent need to understand how the fibrotic microenvironment evolves, to design better targeted cancer therapies. Fibrotic stiffening is caused by fibroblasts secretion of a matrix with mechanical properties that stabilise the tumour vascular network. However, the hierarchy and stability of the tumour vascular network are not reproducible in vitro. To advance the field, I will develop a revolutionary platform able to recapitulate tumour fibrosis by exploiting the vascularisation of a living organism. To achieve my goal, I will use human breast cancer cells adhering to 3D polymeric micro scaffolds to create arrays of tumour micro environments. I will implant the arrays in vivo in the chorioallantoic membrane of an embryonated avian egg, to elicit a foreign-body fibrotic reaction. I will vary the micro scaffolds geometry to condition tumour infiltration by the host’s vessels and cells. I will exploit fluorescent spatial beacons incorporated in the micro scaffolds for multiphoton image correlation, to derive morphological and functional information of the regenerated fibrous matrix and vessels. I will predict mass transport of solutes and anticancer agents by computational modelling. To validate the platform, I will quantify in vivo the dose-dependent efficacy and cancer specificity of therapeutic agents whose success is known to depend on the fibrotic stage of tumours. This project combines mechanobiology to bioengineering, biomechanics, oncology, genetics, microtechnology, intravital imaging, biophysics and pharmacology to understand the progression mechanisms of the most incurable cancers. It will also provide an ethical and standardizable testing platform to boost the clinical translation of new therapeutic products in oncology.

Mots-clés : mechanobiology,bioengineering,model,breast cancer,fibrosis,matrix stiffening,mass transport,microfabrication
Projet ERC : ANIMATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : École polytechnique de Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : PoliMi
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498868.0 €

Every day we generate, process and use a massive amount of data. Searching a keyword on the internet, choosing a movie for the weekend and booking our next holiday are just a few simple actions that rely on data-intensive algorithms in the cloud, such as data search, recommendation and page ranking. The energy cost of computation is high: it has been recently reported that training a relatively large neural network produces the same carbon dioxide of 5 cars in their whole lifetime. Data centres use an estimated 200 terawatt-hours each year, corresponding to 1% of the global demand. With the spectre of an energy-hungry future, it is essential to identify novel concepts, novel algorithms and novel hardware for streamlining the computing process. My preliminary research has shown that computing energy requirements can be reduced by closed-loop in-memory computing (CL-IMC) that can solve linear algebra problems in just one computational step. In CL-IMC, the time to solve a certain problem does not increase with the problem size, in contrast to other computing concepts, such as digital and quantum computers. Thanks to the size-independent computing time around 100 ns, CL-IMC requires 5,000 times less energy than top-class digital computers at the same bit precision. These preliminary results show that CL-IMC is a promising new computing concept to reduce the energy consumption of data processing. My project will develop the device technology, the circuit topologies, the system-level architectures and the application portfolio to fully validate the CL-IMC concept. A novel memory technology that is immune to wire resistance effects will be developed. CL-IMC integrated circuits will be designed with standard CMOS technology. System-level architecture and application exploration will further support the scalability and feasibility of the concept, to demonstrate CL-IMC as a primary contender among the computing technologies with improved energy efficiency.

Mots-clés : in memory computing,memristor,analogue computing
Projet ERC : RanGe (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2469703.0 €

I propose a project in mathematics on the theory of stochastic processes and their applications. I am particularly interested in the interactions between certain random dynamics and the geometry of the space on which they are defined. The focus will be on three parallel ambitious research directions: (i) Stochastic partial differential equations on fractals, with a focus on the stochastic heat equation and the parabolic Anderson model; (ii) Diffusion methods in sub-Riemannian geometry with a focus on novel notions of curvature bounds; (iii) Random matrices with a focus on its connections with the theory of flag manifolds.

Mots-clés : stochastic heat equation,fractals,sub riemannian geometry,curvature dimension theory,random matrices
Projet ERC : NuRS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université d'Aarhus — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499988.0 €

Mammalian genomes are hyperactively transcribed and, paradoxically, a major part of the produced RNA is turned over soon after its synthesis. But the situation is even more bizarre. This is because individual transcription units (TUs), that generate standard functional transcripts, also give rise to a flock of shorter labile isoforms. Overall, this presents an extraordinarily chaotic situation where the expression of functional RNA, both at the genomic- and at the single TU-level, is embedded within a sea of futile transcription products. Being predominantly transcribed by RNA polymerase II, labile RNAs share common features with their functional counterparts, which motivates the basic question of the NuRS proposal: Which molecular mechanisms dictate the sorting of nuclear RNAs into stable, functional ribonucleoprotein particles vs. those destined for degradation? The major challenge of mechanistically rationalizing RNA sorting has for long been without concrete and testable hypotheses. However, recent breakthroughs by us, and others, have found that the essential ARS2 protein holds binary functions in RNA maturation and degradation. Given its cap-proximal omnipresence on nascent RNA, we hypothesize that transcript fate is governed by the competitive interaction of ARS2 with productive and destructive factors. Through a delineation of the responsible protein complexes and domains, we will dissect the underlying molecular logic, both at steady state and in the dynamic context of stem cell differentiation. This includes exploring our provocative finding that the domain of ARS2, interacting with RNA processing and degradation factors, can also interact with transcription factors. How these transcriptional and post-transcriptional links impinge on RNA sorting will be uncovered, which will disclose the fundamental question of how cells cope with a massive genomic output without erroneously degrading functional RNA or leaving spurious transcripts ignored.

Mots-clés : rna quality control rna maturation rna degradation transcription initiation transcription elongation transcription termination nuclear rna sorting
Projet ERC : FITMOL (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université du Luxembourg — Pays : Luxembourg — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

The quantum-mechanical theory of molecular interactions is firmly established, however its applicability to large molecular complexes is hindered by the rather high computational cost of quantum calculations required to achieve high accuracy. We propose a paradigm shift in the modeling and conceptual understanding of electrostatic and electrodynamic molecular interactions in many-particle systems from the perspective of (quantum) field theory. This development is critical to accurately and efficiently model increasingly intricate and functional molecular ensembles with millions of atoms subject to external excitations (static, thermal, and optical fields; variation in the number of particles; and/or arbitrary macroscopic boundary conditions). This molecular size covers a wide range of functional biological systems, including solvated protein/protein and enzyme/DNA complexes. The theoretical developments in this project will concentrate on two main fronts: (WP1) fundamental quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory of molecular interactions based on many-body oscillator Hamiltonians, (WP2) second-quantized field theory (FIT) approach to molecular Hamiltonians for modeling large-scale systems with 10^4-10^6 atoms. The applicability of these challenging developments to realistic molecules will be ensured by: (WP3) implementation of non-local machine learning force fields based on second-quantized matrix Hamiltonians for efficient molecular dynamics simulations of molecular ensembles, (WP4) implementation of QED/FIT methods in an open-source package FITMOL for increasing the accuracy, improving the efficiency, and enhancing the insight that one obtains from quantum-mechanical calculations of large molecules. It is my vision that revealing fundamental mechanisms of functional (bio)molecules with millions of atoms requires a radically new field-theory approach to molecular interactions. Achieving this goal will be the main breakthrough of the FITMOL project.

Mots-clés : quantum fluctuations,complex molecules,quantum field theory,machine learning
Projet ERC : BIOSHIFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Université d'Alicante — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499351.0 €

Global change and desertification drivers, such as climate change and increased fire frequency, make drylands more prone to abrupt shifts that can lead to the emergence of degraded states unable to provide key ecosystem services and to sustain life. However, we still lack an in-depth understanding of the prevalence and triggers of these shifts, and of the identity of those ecosystem attributes and services that are most affected, across global drylands. These uncertainties arise largely from the absence of global monitoring efforts and experiments investigating temporal changes in biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Furthermore, the lack of a systematic evaluation of the ecological impacts of restoration actions, such as tree planting, hampers our capacity to assess their usefulness to prevent abrupt ecosystem shifts and to combat climate change and desertification. BIOSHIFT will combine global-scale experimentation and temporal field surveys with state-of-the-art Earth observation, mathematical modelling, -omics approaches, and statistical analyses to tackle these key knowledge gaps. Specifically, I will: i) determine the prevalence, drivers and consequences of abrupt ecosystem shifts in drylands, ii) assess whether in situ temporal changes in dryland biodiversity and ecosystem services exhibit threshold-like responses along global aridity gradients, and iii) conduct the first systematic field assessment of the ecological impacts of tree plantations and their capacity to prevent abrupt ecosystem shifts in drylands worldwide. By doing so, BIOSHIFT will make a major leap forward in our understanding of abrupt ecosystem shifts and provide unprecedent insights on how to monitor and manage them. This project will also provide the ecological underpinning to high profile international initiatives aimed at tackling biodiversity losses, mitigating global change and desertification impacts, and restoring degraded ecosystems across global drylands.

Mots-clés : drylands,global environmental change,tree plantations,biodiversity,abrupt ecosystem shifts,ecological restoration,regime shifts,ecosystem services,spatio temporal dynamics
Projet ERC : EXPOSOIL (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498535.0 €

Ensuring the quality of our soils is essential for a sustainable world. Testing the soil quality traditionally occurs by soil sampling, sieving and extraction, thereby disturbing the soil’s hierarchical pore size structure. Soil sieving and extraction disrupts the macro-aggregates and overestimates the accessible reactive surfaces of soil. Plant roots are exposed to only a fraction of these soil reactive surfaces, hence traditional soil tests for bioavailability underscore the physical non-equilibrium of nutrients and contaminants in soil. EXPOSOIL aims to identify the reactive pore space to which roots are exposed in undisturbed soil. The research objectives are to quantify the effects of soil structure and mobile colloids on bioavailability of nutrients and contaminants and to develop methods to understand and diagnose these effects. We speculate that these effects create local heterogeneities that are most important in soils with stronger aggregate structure, for contaminants or nutrients that are relatively immobile and less aged in soil and for elements strongly associated to mobile colloids. Experimental studies will be set up to test these hypotheses in soils with surface amended trace metal contaminants, fertilisers or lime, using isotopes to trace local provenances and using novel visualisation tools. Novel reactive membranes acting as zero sinks for solutes and colloids will be developed to mimic plant roots and to make 2D images of the locally available elements. That development is of high risk but high gain because no other method has yet assayed diffusive fluxes of solutes, let alone of colloids, in unsaturated and undisturbed soils. The new method will disclose the enigmatic roles of soil physical factors and colloids on bioavailability. This knowledge will advance the practical use of soil chemistry in environmental applications, e.g. to improve existing soil testing assays and to facilitate the development of novel, more efficient fertilisers.

Mots-clés : bioavailability,colloids,trace metals,fluxes,environmental radioactivity
Projet ERC : CaZeo (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499718.0 €

CaZeo uses zeolites to overcome thermodynamic barriers in cascade processes, instrumentalizing the zeolite micropores to compartmentalize the reaction space. As a pilot case, the endergonic hydrogenation of CO2 to CO inside a small-pore zeolite is coupled to an exergonic homogeneously catalyzed carbonylation of an alkene outside the zeolite, yielding in one step an ester product with a CO2-derived functional group. Critically, undesired alkene hydrogenation is impeded by the narrow zeolite channels. CaZeo’s overall chemical targets include: (i) to re-integrate CO2 into oxygenated compounds, like esters, aldehydes, glycolaldehyde, isoprenol etc., in which at least one oxygenated function is sourced from CO2, via a Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction to CO, or via selective CO2 hydrogenation to HCHO; (ii) to use zeolites as generators of small, reactive (or even toxic) molecules like isocyanates or isocyanides, starting from safe precursors like N,N-dialkylureas or N-alkylformamides; (iii) to upgrade polyamide-6,6 by ammonolysis and an ensuing zeolite-catalyzed reaction that convergently transforms the N-functionalized molecular mixture to valuable 1,6-hexanediamine. In CaZeo’s conceptual framework, reactions are spatially partitioned and orthogonalized to each other, overcoming the incompatibility conundrum of catalytic cascades and the equilibrium limitations of isolated reactions. In a more advanced development, pore systems with different diameters within one zeolite crystal are used as compartments. Advanced X-ray absorption spectroscopy monitors the monometallic or cooperative bimetallic active sites in the zeolites. The spatial organization is visualized with high-resolution electron and fluorescence micro(spectro)scopies, giving shape to the envisioned compartments. CaZeo provides catalytic technology that is safe and sustainable, recycles nitrogen-containing (waste) polymers to high quality building blocks, and re-integrates CO2 in chemicals.

Mots-clés : zeolite catalysis cascade reactions,carbon circularity
Projet ERC : TRANSFORM (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498985.0 €

TRANSFORM investigates the development of hylomorphism – the philosophical theory that every physical object is composed of structurable matter and structuring form (“hyle” and “morphe” in Greek) – in the period 1400-1600. For most of its 2500-year history, from its Aristotelian beginnings to modern-day metaphysics, hylomorphism has been a fundamental philosophical notion. From around 1200, when the works of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators were translated into Latin, hylomorphism became central to scholastic thought, underpinning theories in, for example, cosmology, psychology, medicine, and theology. TRANSFORM focuses on the largely unstudied hylomorphic theory in the era of the first European-wide university network, of new cultural impulses like humanism and Reformation, and of philosophical, scientific, and medical ferment. TRANSFORM’s research hypothesis is that in order to properly understand major aspects of late-medieval and Early-Modern thought, we must first understand the transformation of hylomorphic thought in the period 1400-1600. To show this, the project proceeds in three steps: First, cataloguing the period’s hylomorphic texts (in manuscripts and in early prints). Second, through close analysis of selected thinkers and debates, studying the evolution of the period’s hylomorphism and bringing the important and new positions, arguments, and methods to light. Third, producing a synthetic view of late-scholastic hylomorphic thought including contextual issues, such as: what role did the period’s universities and other educational institutions play in the spread of hylomorphic ideas? How did the new intellectual and religious impulses affect the hylomorphic discussion? Conducting groundbreaking research, TRANSFORM will illuminate for the first time this pivotal chapter in hylomorphism’s history as the medieval world turned to the modern, offering new insights to change our view of medieval and Early Modern intellectual history more broadly.

Mots-clés : aristotelianism,history of metaphysics,history of natural philosophy,history of philosophical psychology,history of universities,knowledge transmission,manuscripts,early printed texts,renaissance,reformation