Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PREMSOT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2497268.0 €

The 2008 ERC Advanced Grant multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) yielded a novel modality for post-genomic small animal optical imaging, >110 peer-reviewed publications and several major awards including the 2014 Germany’s Innovation award. Since 2011 spin-off iThera Medical GmbH commercialized and placed MSOT systems in European, Asian and North American laboratories, making MSOT an international term. MSOT brought unprecedented optical imaging performance now enabling independent discovery and publications from researchers throughout the world. Compared to other imaging modalities, MSOT uniquely images tissue oxygenation and other vascular and pathophysiology parameters in label-free and portable mode, using safe non-ionizing energy. Therefore, MSOT can impact real-time interventional guidance and longitudinal vascular diagnostics and enable a next level of discovery based on quantitative observations in humans, within the novel requirements of precision and personalized medicine. PREMSOT considers the next steps in the MSOT development and will ❶ design and develop label-free portable hybrid MSOT and ultrasound imaging (US) for human use, ❷ research novel theory and hardware to address remaining MSOT limitations and improve the sensitivity and quantification accuracy, a necessary step for improving MSOT precision, ❸ i) validate quantitative MSOT imaging of tissue oxygenation and hypoxia, (micro)-vascular morphology and function, ii) research label-free imaging of inflammation and metabolism and iii) relate MSOT contrast to tissue and disease pathophysiology metrics and ❹ introduce label-free MSOT/US to discovery and clinical care. MSOT contrast features will be investigated as biomarkers in vascular medicine and surgery and in exploratory measurements within neurology, ambulatory/bedside care or sepsis, addressing unmet discovery and clinical needs.

Mots-clés : imaging,tissue oxygenation,hemoglobin,sepsis,intervention
Projet ERC : EVODIS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Vrije Universiteit Brussel — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1460687.5 €

The 21st century is expected to develop towards a society depending ever and ever more on (bio-)chemical measurements of fluids and matrices that are so complex they are well beyond the current analytical capabilities. Incremental improvements can no longer satisfy the current needs of e.g. the proteomics field, requiring the separation of tens of thousands of components. The pace of progress in these fields is therefore predominantly determined by that of analytical tools, whereby liquid chromatography is the most prominent technique to separate small molecules as well as macromolecules, based on differential interaction of each analyte with support structures giving it a unique migration velocity. To improve its performance, a faster transport between these structures needs to be generated. Unfortunately the commonly pursued strategy, relying on diffusion and reducing the structure size, has come to its limits due to practical limitations related to packing and fabrication of sub-micron support structures, pressure tolerance and viscous heating. A ground-breaking step to advance chromatographic performance to another level would be to accelerate mass transport in the lateral direction, beyond the rate of diffusion only. To meet this requirement, an array of microstructures and local electrodes can be defined to create lateral electroosmotic vortices in a pressure-driven column, aiming to accelerate the local mass transfer in an anisotropic fashion. The achievement of ordered arrays of vortices is intimately linked to this requirement, which is also of broader importance for mixing, anti-fouling of membrane and reactor surfaces, enhanced mass transfer in reactor channels, emulsification, etc. Understanding and implementing anisotropic vortex flows will therefore not only revolutionize analytical and preparative separation procedures, but will also be highly relevant in all flow systems that benefit from enhanced mass transfer.

Mots-clés : liquid chromatography,electrokinetics,microfluidics,lab on a chip,vortex,band broadening,electro osmotic flow,pillar array column,mixer
Projet ERC : ARTSOUNDSCAPES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Barcelona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2239375.0 €

The ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacred landscapes among past hunter-gatherers and early agricultural societies around the world. The potential of sound to stimulate powerful emotions makes it a common medium for conferring places with extraordinary agency. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources indicate that these sites are often endowed with a sacred significance and, in many cases, they also receive special treatment, including the production of rock paintings. Despite the aural experience being an integral component of the human condition and a key element in ritual, archaeology has largely been unable to study it systematically. Rock art landscapes are no exception and, although some studies have been made, they have largely been reproached for their lack of scientific rigour and subjectivity. ARTSOUNDSCAPES will fully address this weakness by investigating the perception of sound in rock art landscapes from an interdisciplinary approach. Borrowing methods developed in acoustic engineering, the project will assess, from an objective and quantitative perspective, the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes in selected areas around the world: the Western/Central Mediterranean in Europe, Siberia in Asia, and Baja California in North America. Human experiences associated with altered or mystical states invoked by the identified special sonic characteristics of these landscapes will be further tested by exploring the psychoacoustic effects these soundscapes have on people and their neural correlate to brain activity. The project will also thoroughly survey ethnographic attitudes to sacred soundscapes based on both current premodern societies and ethnohistorical sources. The groundbreaking combination of this array of interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate the ultimate aim of the project: to propose a phenomenological understanding of sacred soundscapes among late hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists around the world.

Mots-clés : archaeoacoustics,rock art,the sacred,acoustical engineering,psychoacoustics,neuropsychology
Projet ERC : ATTACK (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2537877.0 €

The ATTACK consortium will develop a new biotechnology based on harnessing a previously unknown natural cytotoxic mechanism of T cells to fight cancer. Cytotoxic T cells (CTL) protect us against intracellular pathogens and cancer by killing infected and cancerous cells. It has been believed that CTL operate on two different time scales of killing by releasing soluble cytotoxic proteins from dense core granules into the immunological synapse between the T cell and target cells (seconds/minutes) and by FasL-mediated apoptosis (hours/days). Members of the ATTACK consortium have independent observations that converge on a previously unknown weapon in the T cell tactical arsenal: stable supramolecular attack particles (SMAPs) that kill target cells (hours). This raises the possibility to engineer these particles to operate independent of T cells. Baldari has discovered that intraflagellar transport proteins sort cytotoxic proteins within the CTL. Rettig has revealed a new storage depot in CTL called a multicore granule that is distinct from the dense core granule. Dustin uncovered that CTL release SMAPs into the immunological synapse to kill targets. Valitutti has called attention to active resistance of tumour cells to synaptic attack, highlighting the strategic advantage of a non-synaptic attack. The consortium has expertise in mouse models, gene editing in primary T cells, super-resolution and live cell microscopy, and microfluidics. The goal of the ATTACK consortium will be to work closely together through 4 work-packages to determine 1) how SMAPs are made, 2) how they are released, 3) how they work and 4) how cancer cells respond. The consortium will integrate all it learns to develop the biotechnology of SMAP enhancement in engineered T cells, recombinant SMAPs, and synthetic SMAPs. We envision that SMAPs will be freeze-dried and shipped around the world, solving problems related to current immunotherapies, leading to global health impact.

Mots-clés : immunological synapse,cytotoxic t lymphocytes,cytotoxic granule biogenesis,trafficking and fusion
Projet ERC : AlchemEast (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997000.0 €

The AlchemEast project is devoted to the study of alchemical theory and practice as it appeared and developed in distinct, albeit contiguous (both chronologically and geographically) areas: Graeco-Roman Egypt, Byzantium, and the Near East, from Ancient Babylonian times to the early Islamic Period. This project combines innovative textual investigations with experimental replications of ancient alchemical procedures. It uses sets of historically and philologically informed laboratory replications in order to reconstruct the actual practice of ancient alchemists, and it studies the texts and literary forms in which this practice was conceptualized and transmitted. It proposes new models for textual criticism in order to capture the fluidity of the transmission of ancient alchemical writings. AlchemEast is designed to carry out a comparative investigation of cuneiform tablets as well as a vast corpus of Greek, Syriac and Arabic writings. It will overcome the old, pejorative paradigm that dismissed ancient alchemy as a "pseudo-science", by proposing a new theoretical framework for comprehending the entirety of ancient alchemical practices and theories. Alongside established forms of scholarly output, such as critical editions of key texts, AlchemEast will provide an integrative, longue durée perspective on the many different phases of ancient alchemy. It will thus offer a radically new vision of this discipline as a dynamic and diversified art that developed across different technical and scholastic traditions. This new representation will allow us to connect ancient alchemy with medieval and early modern alchemy and thus fully reintegrate ancient alchemy in the history of pre-modern alchemy as well as in the history of ancient science more broadly.

Mots-clés : a new historiography of ancient alchemy  theory and practice,akkadian,greek,syriac and arabic traditions of alchemical writings,recreations of ancient alchemical procedures in modern laboratories
Projet ERC : BantuFirst (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1960000.0 €

The Bantu Expansion is not only the main linguistic, cultural and demographic process in Late Holocene Africa. It is also one of the most controversial issues in African History that still has political repercussions today. It has sparked debate across the disciplines and far beyond Africanist circles in an attempt to understand how the young Bantu language family (ca. 5000 years) could spread over large parts of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. This massive dispersal is commonly seen as the result of a single migratory macro-event driven by agriculture, but many questions about the movement and subsistence of ancestral Bantu speakers are still open. They can only be answered through real interdisciplinary collaboration. This project will unite researchers with outstanding expertise in African archaeology, archaeobotany and historical linguistics to form a unique cross-disciplinary team that will shed new light on the first Bantu-speaking village communities south of the rainforest. Fieldwork is planned in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and Angola that are terra incognita for archaeologists to determine the timing, location and archaeological signature of the earliest villagers and to establish how they interacted with autochthonous hunter-gatherers. Special attention will be paid to archaeobotanical and palaeoenvironmental data to get an idea of their subsistence, diet and habitat. Historical linguistics will be pushed beyond the boundaries of vocabulary-based phylogenetics and open new pathways in lexical reconstruction, especially regarding subsistence and land use of early Bantu speakers. Through interuniversity collaboration archaeozoological, palaeoenvironmental and genetic data and phylogenetic modelling will be brought into the cross-disciplinary approach to acquire a new holistic view on the interconnections between human migration, language spread, climate change and early farming in Late Holocene Central Africa.

Mots-clés : central africa,bantu expansion,african history,archaeology,historical linguistics,archaeobotany,evolutionary genetics,palaeoenvironmental studies,interdisciplinarity
Projet ERC : BantuFirst (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Royal Museum for Central Africa — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : RMCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 37500.0 €

The Bantu Expansion is not only the main linguistic, cultural and demographic process in Late Holocene Africa. It is also one of the most controversial issues in African History that still has political repercussions today. It has sparked debate across the disciplines and far beyond Africanist circles in an attempt to understand how the young Bantu language family (ca. 5000 years) could spread over large parts of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. This massive dispersal is commonly seen as the result of a single migratory macro-event driven by agriculture, but many questions about the movement and subsistence of ancestral Bantu speakers are still open. They can only be answered through real interdisciplinary collaboration. This project will unite researchers with outstanding expertise in African archaeology, archaeobotany and historical linguistics to form a unique cross-disciplinary team that will shed new light on the first Bantu-speaking village communities south of the rainforest. Fieldwork is planned in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and Angola that are terra incognita for archaeologists to determine the timing, location and archaeological signature of the earliest villagers and to establish how they interacted with autochthonous hunter-gatherers. Special attention will be paid to archaeobotanical and palaeoenvironmental data to get an idea of their subsistence, diet and habitat. Historical linguistics will be pushed beyond the boundaries of vocabulary-based phylogenetics and open new pathways in lexical reconstruction, especially regarding subsistence and land use of early Bantu speakers. Through interuniversity collaboration archaeozoological, palaeoenvironmental and genetic data and phylogenetic modelling will be brought into the cross-disciplinary approach to acquire a new holistic view on the interconnections between human migration, language spread, climate change and early farming in Late Holocene Central Africa.

Mots-clés : central africa,bantu expansion,african history,archaeology,historical linguistics,archaeobotany,evolutionary genetics,palaeoenvironmental studies,interdisciplinarity
Projet ERC : READCELL (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : CIC biomaGUNE — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149940.0 €

The Biopharmaceuticals market is currently valued at about 150,000 million euros with an annual growth rate of 6 %. Biopharmaceutical products are mainly obtained from cells cultured in contained systems. Adherent cells represent an important share of the cell types used in production processes and are the major source of cell therapy products. Productivity of current processes for adherent cells culture lags behind those based on suspension cells and the reasons for this imbalance are to be found mainly on the low volumetric productivity and automation of current processes for adherent cells culture. Recovery of cells from the surface they are attached to, the so-called cell harvest is commonly performed by disrupting the interaction of the cells with the support by manually introducing hydrolyzing enzymes into the culture device. These enzymes attack the cell at the adhesion point driving them into suspension for further recovery. Due to the manual nature of the cell harvest step, the exposure of cells to the external environment during the enzymatic treatment and the harsh biochemical conditions, this is one of the least efficient steps in the production process and poses an important risk of damaging and contaminating the culture. The idea proposed in this project for Proof of Concept will turn the cell harvest step into an automated, non-invasive and efficient step in the cell culture process. To achieve this goal we will introduce nanostructured modifications in the cell culture support by immobilising gold nanoparticles of defined size and shape, in certain geometrical patterns. The resulting cell culture support interacts with low energy electromagnetic radiation coming from an external and non-invasive source, creating localised hyperthermal effects at the locations of the immobilized nanoparticles and leading to the release of growing cells. Results of successful preliminary experiments are the basis of a recently submitted patent application.

Mots-clés : biopharmaceuticals,cell harvest,plasmonic substrates,cell culture,bioindustry
Projet ERC : CHILDPHOTOARCHIVE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Exeter — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2806.0 €

The Children’s Photography Archive (CPA beta) is the first archive in the world of its kind, featuring the photographs of child photographers. Our proposal is to test the scaling up of the CPA for the creation of evidence-based and openly accessible methodologies and learning resources for a child-authored, multimodal citizenship curriculum in primary schools. The social innovation grows out of our ERC-funded research (the 'CONNECTORS STUDY') on the relationship between childhood and public life with six- to eight-year olds that demonstrated how children connect to and produce rich multimodal stories (using text, image, sound) about their experiences of public life. Our proposal is to create and make sustainable the first-ever Children’s Photography Archive 2.0 (CPA 2.0) for citizenship education that provides educators and pupils methodologies and tools for a child-authored, multimodal citizenship education. The project seeks to (1) address the challenges faced by teachers in delivering citizenship education; (2) develop adult/educator capabilities for understanding children's visual communication in relation to citizenship; (3) provide an infrastructure to support and recognise children's visual communication. The CPA 2.0 will innovate on citizenship education by offering multimodal content and methodology created by and designed with children and teachers, and will test the scaling up of the CPA for child-authored, multimodal citizenship education in real-world settings, at the same time as providing a platform for children photographers to display their work and increase public understanding of children’s photographic forms of expression. There is an urgency to this project as we enter a critical time for Europe’s future. As such, geographically located at the edges of Europe (Greece, United Kingdom), this project will yield complex and emerging multimodal stories of what it means to grown up ‘European’ which will serve educational and cultural purposes.

Mots-clés : children,citizenship education,photography,live archives,multimodal photo stories,teacher education and training,europe
Projet ERC : CochSyn (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The CochSyn-test aims to diagnose the first signs of permanent hearing damage with a 10-15 min clinical hearing- screening test. The test quantifies cochlear synaptopathy, i.e. damage to the cochlear auditory-nerve fiber synapses due to ageing, noise-exposure or ototoxicity, with a non-invasive auditory test. Because synaptopathy is associated with reduced speech intelligibility and occurs before the audiogram shows signs of hearing damage, our test is more sensitive than the audiogram (present clinical standard) and can quantify a widespread form of sensorineural hearing loss. The CochSyn test makes early-diagnosis and early-intervention possible, which the WHO determined as cost- effective in reducing the financial burden associated with untreated hearing loss. In this PoC project, we plan to fine-tune the CochSyn-test and build a normative dataset of test outcomes for a diverse population of people at risk for synaptopathy. This dataset is necessary to (i) determine the application area of the test and enable a precise diagnostic interpretation, (ii) convince ENT doctors about adopting the test and companies to invest in it, and (iii), convince health agencies and policy makers that synaptopathy is an important health risk, given its impact on degrading speech intelligibility in noisy listening environments.

Mots-clés : auditory brainstem responses,auditory eeg,sensorineural hearing loss,hearing diagnostics,hearing loss