Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ZoomDeep (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
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 : 1407784.0 €

The core-mantle boundary (CMB) is the interface between the liquid iron core and the silicate solid mantle, and is the most significant internal boundary of the Earth. The core and the mantle interact across the boundary through transfer of heat and material, and various coupling mechanisms. While the nature and variability of these interactions remains uncertain, they strongly affect the convection in the mantle, responsible for plate tectonics and intra-plate volcanism, as well as the much more vigorous convection in the core, responsible for the geodynamo. Constraining the interactions at the CMB is crucial to understanding physical processes in the deep Earth and the thermal, compositional, and dynamical evolution of the Earth. The CMB interactions are strongly controlled by heterogeneous structures on or near the boundary. On the mantle side, seismological imaging has observed slow velocity layering and patches, but their physical significance remains uncertain, and it is unclear whether they represent global or local features. Turning to the core, suggestions of a stable light-element-enriched layer have been made. The estimated thickness of such a layer varies from 40 to 450 km, and the origin of the inferred light elements is heavily debated. In ZoomDeep, I propose innovative seismic techniques to image the structure near the CMB with unprecedented resolution. One technique, dubbed 'the Frequency Fan', will be newly developed, while another technique has recently been successfully applied at the Earth's surface and will be adapted to the CMB. ZoomDeep will lead to the first high-resolution maps of the structures near the CMB and will specifically focus on the roots of mantle upwellings beneath volcanic hotspots. The implications of these maps on fundamental questions impacting core and mantle dynamics will be assessed in multi-disciplinary approaches. The results of this work will transform our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of the Earth.

Mots-clés : core mantle boundary physics,high resolution deep earth imaging
Projet ERC : ImagiDem (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Tampere University — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 122586.25 €

The current political and institutional crises render the future of European democracy uncertain. To gain deeper insights into what the current discontent may lead to, and how to address it for the good of an equal and inclusive democracy, we have to study future political actors, today’s young citizens, and examine what are the means of political action prevalent to them. The public sphere of today’s youth is increasingly dominated by visual content, and therefore the visual dimension of political participation is to be a key concern in research thereof. The current youth’s understanding of political action – building arguments, mobilizing, and participating – is likely to become firmly anchored in repertoires of visual participation. ImagiDem will explore, analyze, and conceptualize visual participation of young European citizens in order to formulate a model of democratic practices in the 2020s. ImagiDem addresses visual political participation and democratic practices among young citizens in the European context using a radical triple-strategy: it combines visual ethnography with computational big data minining and analysis, and deploys this combination to a comparative research setting. The project design includes four countries of comparison – Finland, France, Germany, and Portugal – with both an ethnographic and a computational subproject realized in each of them. Both methodological approaches – comparative online ethnography, and computational, machine learning based analysis of large sets of social media image data – are risky and hitherto scarcely explored. The theoretical challenge ImagiDem takes is to develop pragmatist theorizing of visual justification and engagements on the one hand, and visual cultural toolkits and frames, on the other. With this methodologico-theoretical toolkit, ImagiDem provides overarching analysis of the future of European democracy.

Mots-clés : participation,ethnography,big data,visual sociology,pragmatism
Projet ERC : SpdTuM (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499475.0 €

The decrease of weight and the increase of efficiency of magnetic components are essential for the reduction of CO2-emission and an improvement of their performance. Nanostructuring can dramatically improve the magnetic properties of soft and hard magnetic materials, hence opening up entirely new possibilities for the development of novel magnets. Nanocomposite magnets, for example, have been the focus of research since two decades. One of the remaining key challenges is to synthesize bulk nanostructured magnets of a reasonable size. In this project, this challenge is explicitly addressed and the potential to fabricate bulk nanostructured magnets by severe plastic deformation (SPD) as an innovative processing route is evaluated. The aim of the project is not only to synthesize different nanostructured magnets by SPD, but also to tailor their microstructure to attain the desired magnetic properties. It has been shown by the applicant that the magnetic properties of SPD processed nanocrystalline materials can be modified in wide range by decomposition of metastable solid solutions. By using different immiscible systems, decomposition mechanisms and annealing treatments, unique nanostructures can be obtained and the magnetic properties can be optimized. Through the choice of different magnetic starting materials, such as soft, hard and antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic powders, different types of hard magnetic nanocomposites will also be obtained. Fine tuning of the microstructure and resulting magnetic properties through adjustments in the composition, SPD processing parameters and annealing treatments is planned. The project systematically addresses the entire process from the synthesis to the in-depth microstructural characterization by electron microscopy and atom probe tomography. In combination with simultaneous measurements of magnetic properties, the newly developed knowledge will be used to improve the performance of SPD processed nanostructured magnets.

Mots-clés : severe plastic deformation,nanocrystalline materials,magnetic properties,nanocomposites,mechanical properties,microstructure
Projet ERC : SOLSPACE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Glasgow — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496392.0 €

The delivery of global clean energy services is arguably the preeminent engineering grand challenge for the 21st century. Indeed, it is clear that the unprecedented scale and pace of this challenge will require daring and disruptive new thinking. This project will devise, develop and demonstrate an adventurous strategy to enhance the delivery of global clean energy services using ultra-lightweight orbiting solar reflectors. The strategy will utilise a constellation of reflectors to illuminate large terrestrial solar power plants, particularly at dawn and dusk, when their output is low but electricity demand and spot prices are high. First, we will devise new families of orbits for constellations of reflectors by leveraging solar radiation pressure perturbations. Then, we will develop novel pointing and attitude control strategies by integrating actuators into the structure and membrane of the reflectors themselves. As a key breakthrough, we will devise and demonstrate in the laboratory new processes to enable the automated in-orbit fabrication of large gossamer reflectors. This will overcome the launch vehicle vibration loads imposed on deployable reflectors and payload faring volume constraints. In parallel, impacts on the global energy economy will be assessed and optimised, as will issues such as the suppression of stray light, policy and regulation. The overarching goal of the project is to demonstrate, in simulation and hardware, the immense opportunities of utilising orbiting solar reflectors to accelerate the delivery of global clean energy services into the 21st century. Such technology represents a step-change for the space sector, from the delivery of information-based data services to the delivery of physical resources. Importantly, it represents an opportunity to demonstrate bold and imaginative new ways of meeting the energy grand challenges of the future.
Projet ERC : APES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Charles University — Pays : Rép. Tchèque — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 924375.0 €

The description of high pressure phases or polymorphism of molecular solids represents a significant scientific challenge both for experiment and theory. Theoretical methods that are currently used struggle to describe the tiny energy differences between different phases. It is the aim of this project to develop a scheme that would allow accurate and reliable predictions of the binding energies of molecular solids and of the energy differences between different phases. To reach the required accuracy, we will combine the coupled cluster approach, widely used for reference quality calculations for molecules, with the random phase approximation (RPA) within periodic boundary conditions. As I have recently shown, RPA-based approaches are already some of the most accurate and practically usable methods for the description of extended systems. However, reliability is not only a question of accuracy. Reliable data need to be precise, that is, converged with the numerical parameters so that they are reproducible by other researchers. Reproducibility is already a growing concern in the field. It is likely to become a considerable issue for highly accurate methods as the calculated energies have a stronger dependence on the simulation parameters such as the basis set size. Two main approaches will be explored to assure precision. First, we will develop the so-called asymptotic correction scheme to speed-up the convergence of the correlation energies with the basis set size. Second, we will directly compare the lattice energies from periodic and finite cluster based calculations. Both should yield identical answers, but if and how the agreement can be reached for general system is currently far from being understood for methods such as coupled cluster. Reliable data will allow us to answer some of the open questions regarding the stability of polymorphs and high pressure phases, such as the possibility of existence of high pressure ionic phases of water and ammonia.

Mots-clés : molecular solids,random phase approximation,coupled cluster,density functional theory,polymorphism,high pressure phases
Projet ERC : SYNTECH (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Tel Aviv University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1477000.0 €

The design and development of open reactive systems, which compute by reacting to ongoing stimuli from their environment, and include, for example, mobile applications running on smart phone devices, web-based applications, industrial robotic systems, embedded software running on chips inside cars and aircraft, etc., is a complex and challenging task. Despite advancement from low-level assembly languages to higher-level languages with powerful abstraction mechanisms, and the use of automated testing and formal verification, reactive systems software development is still a mostly manual and error-prone iterative activity of coding and debugging. A fundamentally different alternative approach to reactive systems development is synthesis, the automatic creation of correct-by-construction software from its specification. Synthesis has the potential to transform the way open reactive systems software is developed, making the process more effective and productive, and making its results more reliable and usable. However, while important advancements have been recently made on the algorithmic aspects of synthesis, no work has yet taken advantage of these achievements to change software engineering practices from “program centric” to “specification centric”. No effective end-to-end means to use synthesis are available to engineers, and the potential revolutionary impact of synthesis on the engineering of reactive systems software is far from being fully explored. The proposal targets four objectives: a new, rich specification language, tailored for synthesis and for use by software engineers; a set of new methods for specification centric development; tool implementations in ‘killer app’ application domains; and systematic evaluation with engineers. The research aims to unleash and evaluate the potential of synthesis to revolutionize reactive systems software development and to open the way for new directions in software engineering research and practice.
Projet ERC : ANFIBIO (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Polytechnic University of Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2725510.0 €

The detection of circulating disease biomarkers in bodily fluids, also known as liquid biopsy, has taken important strides toward the implementation of personalized medicine. However, it still suffers from low sensitivity and high costs, which render its clinical implementation not practical or affordable. In particular, the identification and quantification of oligonucleotide biomarkers is hampered by the need to employ long- and short-read sequencing tools that are expensive, require highly trained personnel, and are prone to error. Nonetheless, the recent clinical breakthroughs demonstrating the importance of detecting cancerous or viral biomarker to susceptibility, onset, and aggressiveness of the disease, motivate the need for further research that could render their detection simpler, cheaper, and thus more widely available. By leveraging the intrinsic amplification capability of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), in ANFIBIO I will address the issues of low sensitivity and high costs by combining plasmonic nanoparticles synthesized ad hoc to maximize SERS signal amplification with direct SERS sensing and machine learning tools for the rapid analysis of the complex spectral responses obtained by screening bodily fluids for specific target biomarkers. I will focus in particular on prostate cancer (PCa) DNA and influenza A viral (IAV) RNA in blood, urine, and saliva, to quantify and correlate their amounts to those detected in tissues and cells. At completion, the proposed work will deliver a breakthrough sensing technology capable of detecting and quantifying cancerous and viral biomarkers in bodily fluids, with minimal sample pretreatment, no target amplification, and that uses SERS as novel and reliable transduction mechanism with distinct advantages over those currently employed. Furthermore, the fundamental insight garnered will likely assess the feasibility of using direct SERS sensing to develop beyond-third generation sequencing technologies.

Mots-clés : surface enhanced raman scattering,gold nanoparticles,biomarkers,prostate cancer,influenza a virus,liquid biopsy,data driven science
Projet ERC : FireBar-Concept (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Université de Lille — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2222937.5 €

The development of science and technology provides the availability of sophisticated products but concurrently, increases the use of combustible materials, in particular organic materials. Those materials are easily flammable and must be flame retarded to make them safer. In case of fire, people must be protected by materials confining and stopping fire. It is one of the goals of the FireBar-Concept project to design materials and assembly of materials exhibiting low flammability, protecting substrates and limiting fire spread. The objective of FireBar-Concept is to make a fire barrier formed at the right time, at the right location and reacting accordingly against thermal constraint (fire scenario). This fire barrier can be developed in several ways according to the chemical nature of the material and/or of its formulation: - Heat barrier formed by inherently flame retarded materials (e.g. mineral fibers, ceramic …) and exhibiting low thermal conductivity (note the assembly of those materials can also provide low thermal conductivity controlling porosity and its distribution) - Evolution of reactive radicals poisoning the flame and forming a protective ‘umbrella’ avoiding the combustion of the material - Additives promoting charring of the materials and forming an expanding carbonaceous protective coating or barrier (intumescence) - Additives forming a physical barrier limiting mass transfer of the degradation products to the flame The FireBar-Concept project is multidisciplinary and it requires expertise in material science, chemical engineering, chemistry, thermal science and physics. The approach is to make 5 actions linked together by transverse developments (3) according to this scheme: (i) fundamentals of fire barrier, (ii) multi-material and combination of concepts, (iii) modeling and numerical simulation, (iv) design and development of experimental protocols and (v) optimization of the systems.

Mots-clés : reaction to fire,resistance to fire,flame retardancy
Projet ERC : UNBICAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Autonomous University of Madrid — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UAM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1987750.0 €

The development of sustainable chemical processes is one of the most important features in modern chemistry. It has become a key research area worldwide providing solutions to important societal demands by optimizing the use of natural resources and minimizing waste and environmental impact. Among the relevant methods for achieving this goal, catalysis represents a key and central approach. Both Organocatalysis and Metal Catalysis have emerged as solutions to the problems in this context. In this field, the progress of a novel bifunctional organocatalyst that could increase the number of different activations, and therefore the synthesis of valuable enantio-enriched molecules, would be highly desirable. Especially important, but still unknown, are the bifunctional-catalysts based on a Neutral Coordinate Organocatalyst and Photo-Organocatalysts. This proposal aims to develop two new unconventional approaches for the synthesis of bifunctional organocatalysts. The first one is based on the development of new Bifunctional Neutral Coordinate Organocatalyst and their application to the synthesis of biologically relevant compounds. I propose to use these bifunctional catalysts to promote the dual activation of silyl reagents and suitable electrophiles. This approach constitutes an unconventional way to synthesize asymmetric molecules and has no precedent in the literature. The second section of this proposal explores the photo-activation-bifunctional organocatalyst. I propose the design and application of new metal-free Bifunctional Photo-Organocatalysts which are able to chemically and photo-activate the substrate simultaneously in an asymmetric manner. This project has the potential to change the general view of asymmetric Neutral Coordinate Organocatalyst and Photo-catalysis as we know it today. These unconventional bifunctional would be incorporated into the privileged catalyst library for its applications in new asymmetric transformations.
Projet ERC : FRACTAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Utrecht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2718750.0 €

The development of two-dimensional materials has enabled the discovery of new physical phenomena and led to the development of devices that are of crucial importance to our society. For example, we now base the definition of electrical resistance on the quantum Hall effect, a phenomenon exclusive to two dimensions. Similarly, the transistor that underpins every electronic device in use today relies on the manipulation of a two-dimensional electron gas. The realization that a material can have very different properties in two-dimensions compared to three-dimensions was a huge conceptual leap. Here, I propose a similar leap: from integer (0,1,2,3) to non-integer, or fractional, dimensions. Specifically, I will study the properties of electrons in geometric fractals with dimension between 2 and 1. Fractals are objects that are self-similar on different length scales with two unique properties (i) a non-integer dimension and (ii) expansion symmetry but no periodicity. Studying fractals will not only allow me to verify the existence of predicted exotic properties but also to address urgent questions related to the interplay of dimensionality and symmetry on the one hand and the existence of exotic states of matter (e.g. long-range entangled states, topological phases) on the other. Building on a recently published proof-of-concept, I will assemble geometric fractals atom-by-atom in a scanning tunnelling microscope. A unique advantage of this approach is that it provides control over all relevant parameters: type of fractal, its size and symmetry, the coupling strength, whether or not spin-orbit coupling and electron correlation are included, defects. My extensive experience with creating and characterising such systems makes me uniquely suited to develop the nascent field of electronic fractals. My results will provide engineering rules for truly novel electronic materials that are based on fractal geometries (e.g. fabricated by lithographic patterning of semiconductors)

Mots-clés : quantum simulation,fractal,artificial lattice,scanning tunneling microscopy,scanning tunneling spectroscopy