Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CAMP (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40625.0 €

CAMP investigates long-term pastoral dynamics in drylands, by developing an innovative and reliable methodology to study archaeological pastoral sites. Pastoralism has been recently endorsed by the FAO as a successful strategy to achieve food security by efficiently exploiting the inherent variability in natural resources. Modern pastoral systems represent the legacy of animal domestication processes that started before the beginning of the Holocene. However, our understanding of ancient pastoralism is hampered by the lack of a proper methodology that can overcome the ephemeral evidence that characterize pastoral sites. CAMP will pave the way, through methodological innovation, to a more thorough investigation of past adaptation to dryland environments. Highly controlled data on the anthropic markers for pastoral activities (chemical multi-element by portable X-Ray Fluorescence, phytoliths, organic residues and isotopes) will be collected in pastoral ethnographic settlements and analyzed to create models that will then be used to interpret the archaeological evidence. CAMP will advance research in: (a) methods and theory in the archaeology of pastoralism; (b) anthropic activity markers and the use of pXRF in archaeology; and (c) adaptive strategies in drylands. This project is a unique opportunity to strengthen the study of pastoralism by providing a widely applicable methodology that can augment our knowledge on past human adaptation to drylands and inform the design of sustainable and historically-grounded development strategies for pastoral futures. CAMP methodology will be potentially exportable to other archaeological sites, independently of their chronology, cultural or geographic context, representing an invaluable advance to archaeological methods at large.

Mots-clés : pastoralism geo ethnoarchaeology drylands anthropogenic deposits multi element analysis pxrf geostatistics
Projet ERC : ENDo-HERPES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université libre de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Endogenous viruses present in the human genome control physiological processes, modulate aging, and can cause diseases. Intriguingly, a herpesvirus has entered the human germ line by integrating its genome into telomeres of germ cells and is present in about 80 million people. The virus, human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), can reactivate from the integrated state, which is associated with a number of diseases. These include seizures, encephalitis, heart failure and graft rejection. We recently analysed the virus genomes present in hundreds of individuals with this inherited chromosomally-integrated HHV-6 (iciHHV-6). The data show that today’s endogenous virus sequences are quite diverse and derived from dozens of independent integration events that were passed on for generations. There are critical gaps in our knowledge on the functionality of iciHHV-6 genomes with respect to virus replication, gene expression and latency, its effects on the host cell, and the role of telomere shortening that occurs during aging on virus reactivation. ENDo-HERPES will make use of novel technology to close these gaps and provide the basis for elucidating whether diseases are associated with or caused by iciHHV-6. Specifically, we will 1) identify which iciHHV-6 genomes are still functional and could contribute to disease development; 2) determine iciHHV-6 integration sites within the highly repetitive telomere region and assess the integration and reactivation process on the DNA level; and 3) investigate the effects of the iciHHV-6 genome on host cells and if telomere shortening can induce reactivation. The proposal utilizes state-of-the-art technology and pioneers new approaches, particularly when investigating the integration sites of endogenous virus genomes and the mechanisms facilitating integration and reactivation. Altogether, we will shed light on the life cycle and effects on the host cells of this endogenous herpesvirus present in the genome of about 1% of the human population.

Mots-clés : endogenous herpesvirus human herpesvirus 6 roseola infantum,icihhv 6 integration telomeres latency cas9 targeted nanopore sequencing
Projet ERC : TRANSFORM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université libre de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2291855.0 €

In the blink of an eye our brain rapIn the blink of an eye our brain rapidly transforms the photons hitting our retina into a rich and detailed percept of the world as consisting of objects. By knowing what the objects are, and in what configuration these objects appear to us, we understand the meaning of the visual world around us. Yet, despite intense research how neural transformations enable rich object perception remains unclear. The overall goal of the research program TRANSFORM is to provide an explanatory theory of the neural transformations mediating rich object perception, and a predictive quantitative model embodying this theory.  Towards this goal TRANSFORM will provide three strong and novel constraints for theory and model building. First, TRANSFORM will reveal the neural transformations underlying visual object perception in the mature brain, providing the neural constraint. Second, it will unravel the link between the neural transformation and object-related behaviour, providing the behavioural constraint. Third, it will clarify the developmental trajectory of neural transformations underlying visual object perception from infancy into adulthood, providing the developmental constraint. For maximal efficiency and power in unified theory formation and model building, TRANSFORM will employ an integrated, interdisciplinary research strategy that combines i) large-scale non-invasive brain imaging to capture neural transformations in space and time with unprecedented depth, ii) advanced mathematical analysis to reveal the geometry of the transformations, and iii) computational modelling using deep neural networks to build a predictive, quantitative model of those transformations.  Through this orchestrated effort TRANSFORM will provide the empirical pieces of evidence for a new theory and model of the neural transformations mediating our rich everyday experience of object vision and change the way we think about and investigate human vision and cognition.

Mots-clés : object perception,fmri,eeg
Projet ERC : EXPAT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1181333.75 €

Our behaviours and conscious experiences are profoundly shaped by what we see. Therefore, it is not surprising that unravelling the neural mechanisms of vision ranks among the top priorities of neuroscience. This poses the challenge of unravelling how our brain creates seamless and comprehensible visual experiences from the dizzying onslaught of visual information bombarding our retinae. Previous research suggests that expectation and attention play a central role in coordinating this information extraction process. However, at present, deep insights into how these two top-down processes shape information processing in the human visual system remain elusive. EXPAT will address this outstanding knowledge gap by revealing how expectation and attention change natural image information encoding in the human brain across visual features, across brain areas and across time. To this end, EXPAT sets itself the following three objectives: 1) revealing how expectation and attention change the specificity and efficiency of information encoding in the human visual cortex, 2) measuring the impact of expectation and attention on image information encoding across cortical brain areas and between-area information transfer and 3) obtaining insights into how expectation and attention change the chronology of visual information processing. Moreover, EXPAT will address the open question of whether or not attention and expectation effects in the visual cortex are mediated by the same or by different feedback mechanisms. These objectives will be realised by using several advanced methods, including various multivariate analyses of fMRI and EEG data, a deep convolutional network-based approach for creating ‘feature-reduced’ natural images, a multivariate brain connectivity measure and a psychophysical technique for measuring the informativeness of image features.
Projet ERC : BrainScape (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 472475.0 €

BrainScape constitutes a timely approach to study a widely unexplored aspect in the neurosciences, namely whether and how the physical environment that surrounds us day in, day out impacts our brain, well-being and mental health. BrainScape aims to spearhead the emerging field of Environmental Neuroscience and will make an impact by building a knowledge base for evidence-based urban planning to promote healthy living environments with significant practical implications. Given that our environment is undergoing rapid changes (urbanization, climate change), understanding how these changes may impact humanity is a crucial challenge of our time. First evidence suggests that long-term as well as day-to-day variations in exposure to solitary environmental factors (e.g. air pollution) may be relevant. The goal of BrainScape is twofold: (1) to identify the “active ingredients” of the environment by introducing a more holistic understanding of the environment, as a multi-layered complex phenomenon and (2) to gain insight into the pathways and mechanisms by which the environment affects the brain and mental health. To accomplish this, BrainScape will utilize existing large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal neuroimaging data sets (UK Biobank, NAKO, HCHS, IMAGEN) to identify the most important features of the physical environment. These features will be at the core of prospective controlled studies, including a discordant monozygotic twin study. Here we will combine the assessment of objectively experienced (e.g., wearable sensors) and subjectively perceived environment with brain plasticity measured using 7 T MRI. The identification of the most influential environmental salutogenic features will inform a targeted intervention study and experiments in highly controlled lab environments using innovative VR technology combined with fMRI and fNIRS. The results will unravel the “active ingredients” of nature and the neural mechanisms by which they affect human beings.

Mots-clés : brain plasticity,environmental psychology,environmental neuroscience
Projet ERC : CHINACADEMY (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université libre de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1955208.0 €

Art academies played an essential role in shaping modern art in China. They were the sites where European methods of art education were introduced; where the social role of the modern artist was defined; where the importance of traditional art forms and training methods was negotiated; where art history as a modern field was established; and where political and ideological changes in artistic practices were first implemented. Today, art academies incorporate laboratories of innovation as well as academic curricula inherited from the socialist period. Thus, they are emblematic of the dynamics within the Chinese cultural sphere and society at large, and of the tensions between a rapid globalization on the one hand and the preservation of cultural heritage and national identity discourses on the other. By studying art academies, their global histories and institutional practices, as the most significant actors in modern Chinese art, CHINACADEMY offers new understandings of the aesthetic, social, and political conditions of artistic creation in modern and contemporary China. Tracing the transnational connections to Japan, France, the Soviet Union, and other regions, it shows how institutional structures and artistic practices were adapted to the requirements of Chinese society in acts of cultural translation. It questions existing narratives of modernization, conservation, and political influence in art by highlighting personal affiliations, the agency of institutions, issues of conflict, and gendered experiences. These will be excavated through oral histories as well as archival records. By stressing the importance of academic and traditionalist practices, CHINACADEMY also decentres the paradigm of modernism that is still prevalent in global histories of modern art. It thereby proposes a new perspective for a global art history that pushes beyond Eurocentric as well as Sinocentric narratives.
Projet ERC : Starship (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999996.0 €

Current theory asserts that eukaryotic evolution is almost exclusively mediated through vertical transmission, from parent to offspring, and relegates horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the movement of genes between individuals, to an extraordinarily rare event. In recent years, mounting evidence from high-quality genome sequencing has forced the field to consider that HGT is likely a persistent occurrence in eukaryotic evolution. However, as no active mechanism for HGT is known in eukaryotes, the evolutionary origin of these genes remains almost entirely a mystery. A potential vector of HGT in eukaryotes are transposable elements (TEs), parasitic genetic sequences that can replicate independently of their host genome. Recently, I discovered a novel group of TEs that are common in filamentous fungi, which I named Starships. These elements are massive, reaching sizes over 500 kb, and carry an extreme diversity of genetic “cargo”, some with adaptive functions such as plant pathogenicity. Furthermore, evidence suggests that many Starships have undergone HGT among a diverse set of lineages. Thus, I propose that the Starships represent the first known mechanism of active HGT among eukaryotes. I will examine this role by developing a tractable model system in which to observe HGT under laboratory conditions. This will be done by investigating the basic biology of Starship transposition in a model fungus with the use of transposon assays that we have recently developed and used to prove that the Staships are mobile. We will use this knowledge to design and create “donor” strains which we can pair with any recipient strain of fungus to monitor for HGT. Lastly, we will determine if fungi utilize the movement of the Starships to adapt to their environment by assaying the impact of a Starship on the fitness of a plant pathogenic fungus. This work will demonstrate that HGT is an active and ongoing process in eukaryotic evolution, dramatically reshaping our current views.

Mots-clés : horizontal gene transfer,molecular biology
Projet ERC : LimbEvolution (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1856316.0 €

Tetrapods, i.e. four-limbed animals, are the only backboned animals to have truly conquered the land, and have achieved worldwide distribution in a wide range of environments. Several fish groups have attempted to colonise terrestrial habitats (e.g. mudskippers among ray-finned fish; lungfish among lobe-finned fish) but only tetrapods were able to initiate a large-scale radiation. What is the key to this success? Our limb skeletons have obviously played a crucial part, by allowing us to walk and support our weight outside of the water, but that is not their only function. For example, at some point during the early evolution of tetrapods, the haematopoietic (blood cell-producing) tissue transferred to the bone marrow; it has been suggested that this protected the production of blood cells from UV radiation and made it more efficient. This extraordinary multifunctionality evolved through successive microanatomical innovations, beginning 400 million years ago. The underlying reasons and processes are still unclear, partly because traditional palaeontological techniques have not been able to uncover the crucial changes in 3D microarchitecture from fin to limb. I will overcome these limitations using a novel cross-disciplinary approach based on state-of-the-art, three-dimensional, tomographic imaging techniques at high resolution. I will combine 3D modelling with virtual simulations of biomechanical stress, evidence of biomarkers and functional genomics to provide the first comprehensive picture of three major steps in the limb evolution: 1) the shaping of our limb into three segments, 2) the origin of blood-cell production in limb bones, and 3) the role of ossified mineralised ends in the exceptional locomotor radiations of tetrapods. This project will illuminate the process by which our limb skeletons became, not just structural props and locomotory levers, but essential powerhouses of cell manufacture without which we cannot survive.
Projet ERC : PHOENIX (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2832500.0 €

The aim of PHOENIX is to use my expertise in microsystems engineering to close critical technology gaps in organoid generation. Cerebral organoids are 3D self-assembled structures derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, replicating both structure and function of the human foetal brain. Organoids have the potential to replace existing 2D cell cultures and animal models, but this has not yet been realised due to rudimentary preparation methods.  In PHOENIX, three important technology gaps will be addressed: reproducibility, controlled maturation and vascularisation. I aim to build on my pioneering research on droplet acoustofluidics and the scientific output of my ERC Starting Grant to develop three microfluidic modules that at the end of the project shall be integrated into a seamless organoid engineering pipeline. The technology in focus is acoustophoresis, a method to manipulate particles and cells by ultrasound. This will be used to achieve ordered encapsulation of stem cells in hydrogel droplets and develop a microfluidic platform where the cells can be differentiated under fully controlled conditions. Finally, two-photon writing will be used to integrate a vascular network with the organoid constructs to form an important delivery architecture for nutrients and blood components. PHOENIX will be focused on both technology development and thorough biological characterisation of the resulting organoids to demonstrate both expected, and unexpected, benefits of transferring organoid generation on-chip. Collaborations have been established with Prof. Christine Mummery and Dr. Valeria Orlova, both at LUMC, NL as well as Dr. Anna Falk at KI, SE to provide expertise in complementary fields of this highly interdisciplinary project. The expected output of PHOENIX is a microfluidic technology that enables high-throughput generation of cerebral organoid with a multi-regional structure and vascularisation in a direct process.

Mots-clés : microfluidics,droplet microfluidics,acoustophoresis,organs on chip,organoids
Projet ERC : ROBOREACTOR (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Muscle damage impairs vital functions e.g., movement, respiration. Recovery depends on the long-term interaction between neuromuscular and immune systems. If exposed to regimens of electro-mechanical stimuli, damaged muscles can remodel new structural properties over days. Inflammation at the damage site is initially needed to clear debris but if prolonged, as in many neuromuscular disorders, it may hamper structural remodeling.  Rehabilitation robots such as exoskeletons and neurostimulators can deliver tunable stimuli to muscles. However, although they can compensate for lack of e.g., muscle strength (within seconds), they cannot control for how muscles remodel across days. ROBOREACTOR shifts the paradigm, to control muscle key inflammation and remodeling factors over large time scales, where the knowledge gap is.  1) I will develop robots that deliver electro-mechanical stimuli to fibres and innervating spinal neurons in humans across weeks. By combining biosignal processing and modeling, I will predict how robot-stimuli influence key inflammation and remodeling processes in vivo, with cell-scale resolution. 2) I will engineer human tissues in vitro and develop robots that can expose tissues to the same stimuli experienced by muscles during robotic training in vivo. This will enable modeling subcellular inflammation and remodeling factors, with detail not attained in humans. 3) I will fit subcellular models in vitro and embed them in multi-scale models built in vivo. This will create new model-based controllers to demonstrate how robots optimize for inflammation to enhance, otherwise hampered remodeling. With a focus on neural and muscular dependences in post-stroke subjects, I propose muscle remodeling as a proxy for neuromuscular repair, a new concept in neurorobotics.  This opens to chronic robotic bioreactors, for maintenance of skeletal, cardiac, tubular organs; revisiting fundamental principles of human-robot interaction with broad impact on health.

Mots-clés : biorobotics emg driven musculoskeletal modelling exoskeletons movement neuromechanics muscle actuated simulation neurorehabilitation technologies rehabilitation robotics tissue engineering