Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : HiggsSelfCoupling (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2262897.0 €

The Standard Model of particle physics describes the elementary constituents of matter and their interactions. In 2012, its last ingredient, the Higgs boson, was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The exploration of the Higgs boson is now one of the most exciting avenues to explore for New Physics beyond the Standard Model and allows some of the most pressing problems in theoretical physics to be addressed, such as the origins of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. This important mechanism gives elementary particles their masses but the nature of this mechanism remains a mystery. A particularly crucial measurement is the production cross-section of Higgs boson pairs, which provides unique information on the Higgs self-coupling and on the underlying nature of the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism. Most feasibility studies of the Higgs self-coupling conclude that there will be insufficient data for this measurement in the coming decade. However, my recent feasibility studies indicate that by using the Higgs pair production process with four bottom quarks in the final state, the discovery of the di-Higgs process and its cross section measurement can be made much earlier. This project aims to develop and complete the first measurement of the di-Higgs cross section and most stringent bounds on the Higgs self-coupling before 2023. To achieve this goal I will develop new experimental techniques to improve the background reduction rates and enhance the signal. The objectives are the development of novel bottom quark energy reconstruction algorithms, new bottom quark and Higgs identification techniques, and neural network analysis tools. Analysis of ATLAS data will then enable searches for New Physics and ultimately the di-Higgs cross section measurement to constrain the Higgs self-coupling. This landmark measurement will lead to the confirmation of how particles acquire mass and open new avenues to understand what lies beyond the Standard Model.

Mots-clés : di higgs pair production,higgs self coupling,jet reconstruction and calibration,sub structure techniques,boosted and resolved topologies,b quark and higgs identification,mva techniques
Projet ERC : NuBSM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 580340.0 €

The Standard Model of particle physics is a hugely successful theory that has been tested in experiments at ever increasing energies, culminating in the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Nevertheless, some major riddles cannot be addressed by the Standard Model, such as neutrino oscillations, the existence of Dark Matter, the absence of antimatter in the Universe. New fundamental principles, interactions and unknown yet particles are required to address these questions. Much of the research done during the last three decades on physics ‘beyond the Standard Model’ (BSM) has been driven by attempts to find a ‘natural’ solution of the hierarchy problem: why the Planck and the electroweak scales are so different. The most popular approaches to this problem predict new particles with the masses right above the electroweak scale. This project explores an alternative idea that the absence of new particles with masses between the electroweak and Planck scales, supplemented by extra symmetries (such as scale invariance) may itself explain why the mass of the Higgs boson is much smaller than the Planck mass. This calls for a solution of the BSM problems by extremely feebly interacting particles with masses below the electroweak scale. Along the same lines we also explore the possibility that cosmological inflation does not require a new field, but is driven by the Higgs field of the Standard Model. The proposed model offers solutions for BSM puzzles and is among a few ones that can be tested with existing experimental technologies and are valid even if no evidence for new physics is found at the LHC. Constructing such a theory requires consolidated efforts in domains of high-energy theory, particle physics phenomenology, physics of the early Universe, cosmology and astrophysics as well as analyses of the available data from previous experiments and from cosmology. We will make predictions and establish the sensitivity goals for future high intensity experiments.

Mots-clés : physics of the early universe,higgs inflation,baryon asymmetry,sterile neutrino dark matter
Projet ERC : T-Neuron (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Universitätsmedizin Göttingen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2374863.0 €

The TOPIC of this proposal is how a T-cell-driven autoimmune process can transform the brain into a chronically inflamed tissue afflicted by progressive neurodegeneration. The brain is considered to be an immune-privileged organ because immune cells have restricted access to its tissue and its resident cells can only exert limited immune functions. However, in the course of multiple sclerosis, a T-cell-induced chronic autoimmune disease of the brain, such aspects change dramatically and the brain tissue is transformed into an immunoactive milieu. These changes go hand in hand with a gradual degeneration of the neuronal tissue. What steers this transformative process in the brain is not yet understood. We have developed new experimental models and tools that enable us to follow and functionally test this transition from healthy into degenerating brain tissue in real time. We found that autoaggressive T cells within autoimmune lesions were frequently in direct contact with neurons or were partially or even completely inside the cytoplasm of neurons. Repeated T-cell-mediated autoimmune attacks of the CNS grey matter induce persistent inflammatory lesions with proceeding neurodegeneration. This leads us to the HYPOTHESIS that T cells not only trigger the initiation of autoimmune disease bouts but in addition directly contribute to the chronification of the disease by irreversibly shifting brain resident cells to an inflammatory program. The central AIM of this project is to uncover the mechanisms behind this T-cell-induced neuronal transformation process, particularly the functional consequences of the T-cell invasive behavior. Our VISION is to shed new light on this previously unknown function of autoaggressive T cells within the CNS tissue and thereby pave the way for new and targeted strategies to prevent autoimmunity-driven degeneration of the central nervous system.
Projet ERC : TRANSFORM (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Victoria University of Wellington — Pays : Nouvelle-Zélande — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 247334.0 €

The Trafficking Transformations Project will use an innovative, multidisciplinary, object-centred framework to investigate the physical and contextual changes that illicit criminogenic collectables undergo during the trafficking process in three transnational criminal markets: antiquities, rare wildlife, and fossils. It will explore the socio-economic effects of the trafficked objects on participants in international criminal networks. It will transform organised crime research by shifting the focus of trafficking research away from criminals and networks of criminals toward following the objects of desire. Prior approaches to trafficking research cast trafficking as an interface between organised crime (people moving the objects) and white-collar crime (affluent people receiving goods); objects were not considered social agents in these networks. Trafficking Transformations pushes the boundaries of mainstream criminology, proposing an innovative object-centred understanding of trafficking networks, and exploring the ultimate question: How do objects cause crimes? The project will use object biography, a multi-sited ethnography technique, to investigate the influences and transformations of trafficked criminogenic collectables in international illicit markets. Through data collection at multiple sites along trafficking pathways, the transformations of criminogenic collectables, the networks that they create, and the people they influence will form a narrative, a biography of trafficking. This will reveal the hidden lives of illicit commodities prior to their appearance as objects of conspicuous consumption in public markets, and holds the prospect of destabilising existing assumptions about the formulation, maintenance, and disruption of transnational criminal networks, transforming our understanding of organised crime.

Mots-clés : trafficking,transnational crime,organised crime,antiquities,wildlife,fossils,criminal networks
Projet ERC : MULTIPREV (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : National University of Distance Education — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNED
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499900.0 €

The UN has recently proclaimed 2020-2030 the Decade of Action and its top priority is fighting violent extremism. This call is grounded in the insufficient progress achieved despite the vast efforts from Governments and scholars to tackle this issue. The main shortcomings of previous approaches are (1) theoretical (poor consensus about the nature and causes), (2) empirical (infrequent access to populations of interest), and (3) methodological (research designs that do not allow to test for causality, no comparative studies, over-reliance on qualitative data). I am going to introduce and test empirically the first comprehensive multi-theoretical framework for the study of radicalization leading to violence and deradicalization by understanding its nature to develop intervention programs. In part one (WP1) I will develop a multi-theory model for the nature and mechanisms underlying radicalization leading to violence and deradicalization. In WP2 I will develop an innovative methodology to assess these processes by a platform for data collection including dynamic and interactive measures of radicalization and deradicalization in large samples in five continents. WP3 will examine the mechanisms underlying radicalization outside and inside prisons in 10 nations (Spain, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri-Lanka, Colombia, Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan) through interviews, combined with online cross-sectional and longitudinal experiments to allow the inference of causality. WP4 will focus on the development of evidence-based programs designed to prevent radicalization in prisons and to conduct de-radicalization with incarcerated violent extremist offenders. The contributions of this framework are twofold: a) advancing the scientific understanding of violent extremism by collecting unique empirical data from samples of violent extremist offenders collected worldwide, and b) providing novel evidence-based strategies and tools for predicting and preventing violent extremism.

Mots-clés : terrorism,radicalization,deradicalization
Projet ERC : CONSERVATION (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : University of Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1571553.75 €

The UN’s approach to climate policy is to focus on national emission caps for greenhouse gases. Most of the economic theory on environmental agreements is also studying such a demand-side approach, even though it is well known that such an approach has several flaws, including carbon leakage and the incentive to free ride. Recent theory has suggested that a better approach may be to focus on the supply-side of the equation, rather than the demand-side. While this recent theory is promising, it is only indicative and has several shortcomings that must be analysed. The goal of this project is to investigate in depth how to best use conservation as an environmental policy tool. The project aims at integrating the theory of emissions and pollution with a model of extraction and thus the supply of exhaustible resources in a coherent and dynamic game-theoretic framework. I will apply this framework to analyse negotiations, agreements, and contracts on extraction levels, and how such policies can interact, complement or substitute for agreements focusing on consumption/emissions. It will also be important to develop and apply the tools of political economics to investigate which (second-best) agreement one may expect to be feasible as equilibria of the game. For highly asymmetric settings, where the possessors of the resource are few (such as for tropical forests), side transfers are necessary and contract theory will be the natural analytical tool when searching for the best agreement. However, also standard contract theory needs to be developed further once one recognizes that the “agent” in the principal-agent relationship is an organization or a government, rather than an individual.

Mots-clés : environmental economics,resource economics
Projet ERC : QUANTUMGRAIN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Autonomous University of Barcelona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UAB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1890731.25 €

The Universe is molecularly rich, comprising from the simplest molecule (H2), to complex organic molecules (e.g., NH2CHO) and biomolecules (e.g., amino acids). The physical phases involved in a Solar-type planetary system formation go hand-in-hand with an increase in molecular complexity, which is ultimately connected with the origin of life. Interstellar (IS) grains play a key role in this chemical evolution as they provide surfaces where key chemical reactions occur. The IS grain chemistry is not fully understood yet. Spectroscopic astronomical observations combined with astrochemical modelling and laboratory experiments have dedicated great efforts to this end but they are still severally limited at reproducing, characterizing and, ultimately, understanding truly existing IS surface reactions. The QUANTUMGRAIN project aims to overcome such limitations by adopting a fourth approach: new state-of-the-art quantum chemistry simulations. These simulations will provide unique, unprecedented information at a molecular level (structures, energetics and dynamics) of the physico-chemical processes occurring in IS surface reactions, with the final objective to fully unveil the actual chemistry on IS grains. To achieve this objective QUANTUMGRAIN is based on three pillars: i) construction of realistic atom-based structural models for IS grains to characterize their structural, energetic and spectroscopic features, ii) molecular simulation of crucial “on-grain” reactions (formation of simple molecules, complex organic molecules and biomolecules) to disentangle the most favourable mechanisms, and iii) assessment of the actual role of IS grains in each reaction (catalyst? concentrator? third body?) to know why their presence is fundamental. My ambition is to have a complete, accurate molecular description of the different elementary physico-chemical steps involved in IS surface reactions, with the ultimate goal to definitely unveil in a comprehensive way the IS grain chemistry.

Mots-clés : astrochemistry,grain interactions,grain surface reactions,chemical evolution in solar like planetary system formation,surface modelling,dft calculations,ab initio molecular dynamics
Projet ERC : CAVE (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : University of Milano-Bicocca — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIMIB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 980634.0 €

The Virtual Element Method (VEM) is a novel technology for the discretization of partial differential equations (PDEs), that shares the same variational background as the Finite Element Method. First but not only, the VEM responds to the strongly increasing interest in using general polyhedral and polygonal meshes in the approximation of PDEs without the limit of using tetrahedral or hexahedral grids. By avoiding the explicit integration of the shape functions that span the discrete space and introducing an innovative construction of the stiffness matrixes, the VEM acquires very interesting properties and advantages with respect to more standard Galerkin methods, yet still keeping the same coding complexity. For instance, the VEM easily allows for polygonal/polyhedral meshes (even non-conforming) with non-convex elements and possibly with curved faces; it allows for discrete spaces of arbitrary C^k regularity on unstructured meshes. The main scope of the project is to address the recent theoretical challenges posed by VEM and to assess whether this promising technology can achieve a breakthrough in applications. First, the theoretical and computational foundations of VEM will be made stronger. A deeper theoretical insight, supported by a wider numerical experience on benchmark problems, will be developed to gain a better understanding of the method's potentials and set the foundations for more applicative purposes. Second, we will focus our attention on two tough and up-to-date problems of practical interest: large deformation elasticity (where VEM can yield a dramatically more efficient handling of material inclusions, meshing of the domain and grid adaptivity, plus a much stronger robustness with respect to large grid distortions) and the cardiac bidomain model (where VEM can lead to a more accurate domain approximation through MRI data, a flexible refinement/de-refinement procedure along the propagation front, to an exact satisfaction of conservation laws).

Mots-clés : 65nxx,partial differential equations,boundary value problems
Projet ERC : Modu-Spectro (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Spec-imaging ab — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 118750.0 €

The ability to analyse compounds within turbid/scattering liquids is very important in fields related to Environmental monitoring, Medical analysis, Pharmaceutical testing and Food processing. However, for turbid liquids that include dirty water, blood, milk as well as unfiltered beer, wine, oils etc, unwanted multiple scattering effects occur, preventing any measurement or introducing large errors. Thus, current commercially available spectrophotometers are not capable of measuring within such liquids and time-consuming dilution procedures are required (when possible), ultimately modifying the properties of the probed liquid. In this proposal, we will explore the possibility of commercializing a new spectrophotometer where unwanted effects from multiple light scattering are efficiently suppressed. The instrument prototype used here is called Modu and is based on a new technology developed by the PI and his teams during the “Spray-Imaging” ERC-Starting Grant project. This technology is based on the use of a spatially modulated polychromatic light sheet (PCT pending) imaged from the side. This approach differs significantly from the transmission measurement commonly used in spectrophotometry. From some initial testing, it is found that the suggested technique provides fast, yet more accurate and reliable, characterization of turbid liquids, without the need for dilution. The proposed technology offers, then, a new solution to a variety of industrial problems including concentration measurements in turbid water and pharmaceuticals without any calibration; as well as assessing the colour and haze of unfiltered beverages such as beer, while keeping the sample intact. Thus, the technology and optical instrument proposed here is opening doors for a vast variety new measurement possibilities, including inline monitoring of turbid liquids.

Mots-clés : absorption spectroscopy,scattering,turbid media,concentration measurements in liquids
Projet ERC : HapticCell (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Yantric inc for profit corporation — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Yantric inc for profit corporation
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 21966.0 €

The ability to handle and operate on cells is an emerging technology that will accelerate the development of novel cell-based therapies. By being able to modify donor cells in-vitro to fight disease more effectively and in volume will have paradigm shifting advances in a wide range of fields such as biotechnology, pharmacology, agriculture, oncology, genetics and embryology. As highlighted by the Innovate UK Cell Therapy Catapult, by 2017 the cell-based therapy manufacturing industry will be worth more than €4.5billion. To realise this opportunity, it is vital clinicians and manufacturers have access to efficient tools that are also repeatable. Several methods exist that enable the manual manipulation of cells, amongst which microinjection tasks is the most common. However, current techniques are labour intensive, vary in quality, and lack the measurement of force between the tools used and the cell needed to reduce damage during contact. Moreover, as these processes are not automated and can only be performed one cell at a time, it is prohibitively expensive to produce new cell-based therapies at the volumes needed for clinical trials. To address these unmet needs, we present ‘HapticCell’, a robotic micromanipulation platform for low cost autonomous microinjection tasks. In this ERC-PoC project, we will extend our ERC research in telehaptic micromanipulation to support schemes for automation and establish its technical feasibility in performing repeatable microinjection tasks in volume appropriate for clinical needs. Further, in collaboration with spin out company Yantric, UCL Business and identified first customers, we will conduct the necessary commercial activities to translate HapticCell into the real world. To start, we envisage HapticCell to be an indispensable tool for achieving higher throughput in the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) market, which will then act as a stepping stone into the broader single cell manipulation domain and cell-therapy production.

Mots-clés : single cell manipulation