Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MajorNet (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 228906.99 €

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is successfully operating at a record-breaking energy and is expected to deliver an enormous dataset of 300/fb of proton-proton collisions in the next 6 years. I propose to take advantage of both the unprecedented collision energy and the large number of events to be recorded in order to search for signs of new particles which could uncover the nature of dark matter, provide an explanation for the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe or answer questions about the origin of neutrino masses. To achieve this, I will build on my expertise devising and organizing new physics searches with leptons and will establish and lead a new multi-signature research programme at the CMS experiment. This programme will exploit both the intensity and energy frontiers opening up at the LHC and can be further expanded at the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). Since the masses and couplings of the new particles are unconstrained, my proposed search strategy will be such that a wide mass range will be covered also encompassing many orders of magnitude in the coupling strength.

Mots-clés : majorana neutrino,dark matter
Projet ERC : MajorNet (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1271093.01 €

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is successfully operating at a record-breaking energy and is expected to deliver an enormous dataset of 300/fb of proton-proton collisions in the next 6 years. I propose to take advantage of both the unprecedented collision energy and the large number of events to be recorded in order to search for signs of new particles which could uncover the nature of dark matter, provide an explanation for the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe or answer questions about the origin of neutrino masses. To achieve this, I will build on my expertise devising and organizing new physics searches with leptons and will establish and lead a new multi-signature research programme at the CMS experiment. This programme will exploit both the intensity and energy frontiers opening up at the LHC and can be further expanded at the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). Since the masses and couplings of the new particles are unconstrained, my proposed search strategy will be such that a wide mass range will be covered also encompassing many orders of magnitude in the coupling strength.

Mots-clés : majorana neutrino,dark matter
Projet ERC : MECHANO-FLUO (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499172.16 €

The MECHANO-FLUO project aims at preparing mechanofluorochromic molecules and materials, understand and tune their photophysical and mechanofluorochromic properties, and implement these new materials as quantitative mechanical force sensors. Mechanofluorochromism relates to fluorescent compounds in the solid state for which emission spectrum changes upon application of a mechanical stimulus. The interest for this phenomenon has enormously increased for the last 4 years but studies aiming at understanding the structure-mechanofluorochromic properties relationships are still in their infancy and many examples remain purely qualitative. In the MECHANO-FLUO project, I will synthesize a library of mechanofluorochromic molecules responsive to different mechanical stimuli (pressure, shearing), with various sensitivities. I aim at relating the molecular structure to the sensitivity to different mechanical stimuli. Two aspects seldom explored in the literature so far will be particularly studied. The first one is the study at the micro- to nanoscale, so as to obtain an amplification of the mechanofluorochromic response and develop ultra-sensitive mechanofluorochromic probes. The second one is the quantification of the mechanofluorochromic response, from the nano- to the macroscopic scales. Two applications will be investigated. The first one is stress metrology: fluorescent materials with a quantitative mechanofluorochromic response could give access to the stress level in various materials and thus constitute an entirely new method for in situ control of the damaging of materials classically used in the nuclear industry or the aeronautics. The second one is mechanobiology: I hope to provide a tool for direct force measurement at the cellular scale, which would have tremendous implications for the comprehension of biological phenomena where mechanotransduction is implied, especially embryogenesis and tumor proliferation.

Mots-clés : nanomaterials,fluorescence,mechanofluorochromism,photophysics
Projet ERC : INTERCLOUDS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1985017.0 €

The Magellanic Clouds are the nearest gas-rich dwarf satellites of the Milky Way and illustrate a typical example of an early phase of a minor merger event, the collision of galaxies that differ in mass by at least a factor of ten. In spite of their important role in supplementing material to the Milky Way halo and the numerous investigations made in the last decade, there remain several uncertainties. Their origin is still a matter of debate, their satellite status is unclear, their mass is uncertain, their gravitational centres are undefined, their structure depends strongly on stellar populations and is severely shaped by interactions, their orbital history is only vaguely associated to star forming events, and their chemical history rests upon limited data. This proposal aims to remedy this lack of knowledge by providing a comprehensive analysis of the stellar content of the Magellanic Clouds and dissect the substructures that are related to their accretion history and the interaction with the Milky Way. Their internal kinematics and orbital history, establishing their bound/unbound status, will be resolved thanks to the analysis of state-of-the art proper motions from the VMC survey and the Gaia mission, and the development of sophisticated theoretical models. Multi-wavelength photometric observations from ongoing large-scale projects will be analysed together to characterise the stellar population of the Magellanic Clouds as has never been previously attempted, including the effects of separate structural components. New large-scale spectroscopic survey projects in preparation will resolve metallicity dependencies and complete the full six-phase space information (distance, position, and motion). This proposal will have a tremendous impact on our understanding of the consequences of minor mergers, and will offer a firm perspective of the Magellanic Clouds.
Projet ERC : Optimal-Immunity (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Lund University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498732.0 €

The Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes are intensively studied genes in association with disease resistance. MHC proteins are essential for initiating every adaptive immune response and MHC is probably the most extreme example of how selection from a wide range of pathogens maintains high diversity in host immunity genes. However, the functions of the MHC proteins are only known in humans and model organisms, species that cannot be studied under natural conditions. There is therefore a need to study function of MHC proteins in species that can be thoroughly monitored in their natural habitat under varying pathogen regimes and over several generations. These parameters can be assessed in wild songbirds making them excellent study systems. Songbirds have large numbers of MHC gene copies, although little is known about how these affect their immune responses. Does high MHC copy number indicate that songbirds can recognize and combat more pathogens than other animals? They do fight infections satisfactory at their breeding, stopover and overwintering sites. In this proposal my overarching aim is a more mechanistic understanding for survival and fitness linked to MHC in animals from wild populations and to take this field of research beyond the simple correlative associations that hitherto have been the rule. To reach this goal I must first characterize songbird MHC, now possible with ‘single molecule real time sequencing’. Therefore a rather substantial part of this proposal is technology. I will use two different songbird study systems; long-distance migratory great reed warblers and sedentary house sparrows and malaria-like pathogens infecting both these species. I am an experienced researcher on MHC and together with my team I will (1) characterize the MHC genomic region, (2) measure expression of MHC genes, (3) build MHC proteins and (4) measure functional MHC diversity in relation to fitness in wild birds, both in nature and in experimental set-ups.

Mots-clés : immuno ecology,major histocompatibility complex,avian malaria
Projet ERC : Asterochronometry (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
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 : 1065785.59 €

The Milky Way is a complex system, with dynamical and chemical substructures, where several competing processes such as mergers, internal secular evolution, gas accretion and gas flows take place. To study in detail how such a giant spiral galaxy was formed and evolved, we need to reconstruct the sequence of its main formation events with high (~10%) temporal resolution. Asterochronometry will determine accurate, precise ages for tens of thousands of stars in the Galaxy. We will take an approach distinguished by a number of key aspects including, developing novel star-dating methods that fully utilise the potential of individual pulsation modes, coupled with a careful appraisal of systematic uncertainties on age deriving from our limited understanding of stellar physics. We will then capitalise on opportunities provided by the timely availability of astrometric, spectroscopic, and asteroseismic data to build and data-mine chrono-chemo-dynamical maps of regions of the Milky Way probed by the space missions CoRoT, Kepler, K2, and TESS. We will quantify, by comparison with predictions of chemodynamical models, the relative importance of various processes which play a role in shaping the Galaxy, for example mergers and dynamical processes. We will use chrono-chemical tagging to look for evidence of aggregates, and precise and accurate ages to reconstruct the early star formation history of the Milky Way’s main constituents. The Asterochronometry project will also provide stringent observational tests of stellar structure and answer some of the long-standing open questions in stellar modelling (e.g. efficiency of transport processes, mass loss on the giant branch, the occurrence of products of coalescence / mass exchange). These tests will improve our ability to determine stellar ages and chemical yields, with wide impact e.g. on the characterisation and ensemble studies of exoplanets, on evolutionary population synthesis, integrated colours and thus ages of galaxies.

Mots-clés : asteroseismology,galactic archeology,stellar structure and evolution
Projet ERC : ERC-OAPEN-2019 (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Low value grant)
Entité participante : Stichting oapen*open access publishing in european networks — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Oapen
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 60000.0 €

The OAPEN deposit service for OA monographs was set up to support funders' OA policies. It was launched in 2014 and has been implemented for the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Wellcome Trust, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), and the ERC. Through the deposit service, new publications - funded by these funders - are disseminated through the OAPEN Library. ERC-OAPEN-2019 is a continuation of the existing cooperation with the ERC. The aim of ERC-OAPEN-2019 is to support the maintenance and further improvement of the existing OAPEN services and infrastructure and to support its sustainability, as well as to help OAPEN strengthen its engagement with publishers and with researchers in support of the ERC's Open access strategy. OAPEN will engage with publishers to improve awareness of open access requirements, to Improve support for ERC researchers, and to grow self-archiving policies for books and chapters. OAPEN will engage with ERC researchers through e-mail campaigns and supporting communication material, to increase awareness of open access requirements among researchers, to increase adoption of good practises, and to grow the number of deposits. OAPEN will engage with funders to develop an alternative funding model to sustain OAPEN services.

Mots-clés : open access,monographs,chapters,books,oa requirements,deposit
Projet ERC : UniversalMap (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
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 : 1826250.0 €

The PI proposes to study a variety of open problems involving random planar maps and trees. This is a booming field at the intersection of probability, geometry, statistical physics, combinatorics and complex analysis. It has grown tremendously in the last two decades, in depth and breadth, and has seen breakthroughs on long-standing classical problems. The PI's first goal is to study the universality of embedded random planar maps and prove their convergence to what is known as Liouville quantum gravity, a class of random surfaces predicted by physicists to be the universal limit to such discrete random surfaces. Various map embedding mechanisms will be studied such as harmonic embedding, square-tiling, circle packing and others. The second goal is to solve problems concerning stochastic processes (such as random walks, percolation and the Ising model) on embedded random planar maps. This will shed light on the behavior of the same stochastic processes on regular lattices (such as the square or triangular grids) due to the non-rigorous Knizhnik-Polyakov-Zamolodchikov correspondence, a conjectural formula from the physics literature relating the behavior of critical statistical physics models on random lattices to their behavior on regular lattices. We will gain progress on these inspiring yet non-rigorous predictions by developing various probabilistic, geometric and complex analytic tools aimed to show that instabilities in the embeddings cancel out due to the randomness of the planar maps. This project has the potential to lead to the solution of the most central problems in two-dimensional statistical physics, such as estimating the typical displacement of the self-avoiding walk, proving conformal invariance for critical percolation on the square lattice and many others.

Mots-clés : random planar maps,uniform spanning trees and forests,random walk,discrete complex analysis
Projet ERC : InvGroGra (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Hungarian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MTA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1386250.0 €

The PI proposes to study the asymptotic behavior of various invariants of discrete groups and their actions, of sparse graphs and of locally symmetric spaces. The game is to connect the asymptotic behavior of an invariant on a sequence of finite models to an analytic invariant on a suitable limit object of the sequence and then use the connection to get new results in both the finite and infinite worlds. The recently emerging notion of invariant random subgroups, initiated by the PI, serves as a unifying language for convergence. These invariants include the minimal number of generators, deficiency, Betti numbers over arbitrary fields, various spectral and representation theoretic invariants, graph polynomials and entropy. The limit objects arising are invariant processes on groups, profinite actions, graphings, invariant random subgroups and measured complexes. The analytic invariants include L2 Betti numbers, spectral and Plancherel measures, cost and its higher order versions, matching and chromatic measures and entropy per site. Energy typically flows both ways between the finite and infinite world and also between the different invariants. We list five recent applications from the PI that emerged from such connections. 1) Any large volume locally symmetric semisimple space has large injectivity radius at most of its points; 2) The rank gradient of a chain equals the cost-1 of the profinite action of the chain; 3) Countable-to-one cellular automata over a sofic group preserve the Lebesque measure; 4) Ramanujan graphs have essentially large girth; 5) The matching measure is continuous for graph convergence, giving new estimates on monomer-dimer free energies. Besides asymptotic group theory and graph theory, the tools of the proposed research come from probability theory, ergodic theory and statistical mechanics. The proposed research will lead to further applications in 3-manifold theory, geometry and ergodic theory.

Mots-clés : measured group theory,rank gradient,invariant random subgroups,homology growth,graph polynomials,local limit theorems,sofic entropy,graph convergence,cellular automata,locally symmetric space
Projet ERC : POPSTAR (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999300.0 €

The POPSTAR project aims at building a new class of silicon optoelectronic devices based on nonlinear optical effects for the development of high speed multiple wavelength photonic circuits in the near-IR wavelength range for data communication applications including optical interconnects and high performance computing systems. Three major cornerstones will be developed: (i) a 40Gbit/s optical modulators based on Pockels effect with energy consumption and swing voltage lower than 1fJ/bit and 1V, respectively, (ii) a high responsivity, low dark-current, low bias voltage and high bandwidth (40Gbit/s) Si photodetector based on two-photon-absorption and (iii) a low threshold (<10dBm) tunable optical parametric oscillator source based on frequency comb generation. The ground-breaking concept of the project is to generate 3D strains in sub-wavelength silicon photonic nano-structures leading to significant breakthroughs in second-order nonlinearities efficiency (Pockels effect) and in the band-gap energy changes in order to increase or decrease two photon absorption process in silicon. The new approach developed here is to combine (i) strain engineering generated by functional oxide materials including YSZ, SrTiO3, SrHfO3 which exhibit more appropriate strain-induced characteristics in silicon than the use of silicon nitride and (ii) refractive index engineering using sub-wavelength silicon nanostructures. Generation of tunable strains in silicon with an active control using piezoelectric materials including PZT will be also develop to control the light dispersion. Each of the three optoelectronic silicon building blocks would be world’s first demonstration according to the target performances and the used effects. Indeed, the performance targets cannot be achieved with the current state of scientific and technological backgrounds. Finally, the project will open new horizons in the field of strained sub-wavelength silicon photonics in the near-IR wavelength range.

Mots-clés : silicon photonics,optical interconnects,strained silicon,high speed devices
Projet ERC : Persia and Babylonia (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999733.0 €

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) represented a new political order in world history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya. It was three times as large and twice as long-lived as the previously most successful polity (Assyria), and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. What explains Persia’s success? This question eludes scholarship due to a lack of evidence and a lack of engagement. Since this Empire unified for the first time in history millions of people under its rule – a condition that became a recurring experience of humanity – understanding Persia’s success transcends its intrinsic relevance to the period in question. The principal reason why an effective engagement with this question is presently impossible is the lack of data. The PERSIA AND BABYLONIA project presents a substantial new data set that allows us, for the first time, to contextualize the emergence of the Persian Empire as a complex social process, shifting away from understandings of the Empire as a one-dimensional, state-initiated construct. This data derives from cuneiform textual sources that were produced in Persia’s most important periphery – Babylonia. A key analytical device in our work will be to compare Persian responses to those of the Assyrians, who were unable to establish control of Babylonia a century earlier. By combining a long-term with a deeply contextualized perspective, we will be able to draw out the distinctive efficiency of Persian rule, within the long history of this particular region. In addition to making a significant step towards understanding the emergence of Ancient Persia, we will develop a much-needed research tool for historians of empire and society in the ancient world.

Mots-clés : ancient near eastern history,assyriology