Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PASSAGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GIMM
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2467196.25 €

A world free of malaria is certainly a desirable goal. However, in spite of the significant incidence reduction achieved globally between 2000-2015, malaria still kills a child every minute. The limited understanding of Plasmodium’s biology hampers the development of novel intervention strategies. Upon transmission by Anopheles mosquitos, Plasmodium parasites must reach the liver and infect hepatocytes. Inside a hepatocyte, each parasite replicates into thousands of new erythrocyte-infectious forms, which lead to disease. The parasite biomass generated during the liver stage (LS) of infection is directly associated with malaria severity, but how the parasite achieves such a high replication rate, and the consequences of that, remain utterly unexplored. Notably, Plasmodium replication is unusual. The parasite divides by schizogony, with divisions occurring without cytokinesis and it cannot salvage pyrimidines from the environment, relying solely on nucleotides synthesized de novo. Using a Plasmodium transgenic line specifically designed to study DNA replication throughout parasite development, I unveiled for the first time the temporal dynamics of DNA replication throughout parasite LS and show that Plasmodium’s LS high replication rate is accompanied by DNA damage. Thus, I hypothesize that DNA damage accumulation during LS schizogony is a generator of genetic variability prior to intra-erythrocytic infection. By using a combination of molecular, cell biology and genetic approaches, I now propose to characterize the mechanisms, define the molecular players, and reveal the causes and consequences of such a high replication rate in the outcome of infection and progression of disease, by exposing the consequences for parasite genetic diversity and virulence. Connecting LS schizogony with parasite genetic diversity and virulence for the first time will be conceptually transformative, and will certainly provide valuable targets and tools for the combat against malaria.

Mots-clés : plasmodium replication schizogony parasite genetic diversity
Projet ERC : SOSA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de Paderborn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Software systems pervade our personal and professional lives, yet their insecurity threaten our society. To assure that software systems are dependable and secure, one must reason about their code. Static program analysis enables such reasoning. It can be applied to individual software components, and it can show not only the presence but also prove the absence of bugs and vulnerabilities. Yet, to be useful to software developers, static analyses must be adapted to the context in which they are used. Studies show that poorly adapted analyses slow down rather than assist development. They report large sets of false warnings that distract developers from actual bugs, which the analyses often miss. They often run so long that results are reported when they are already outdated. SOSA’s main research hypothesis is that one can generate precise and efficient static analyses of software systems by making static analysis self-aware and self-optimizing. With SOSA, a static analysis conducts analyses and optimizations not just of programs but of itself. This is a groundbreaking paradigm shift: no previous research has regarded complex program analyses themselves as the primary object of automated analysis and optimization. SOSA will introduce, for the first time, static analyses whose execution is not pre-defined by their creators but is inherently self-adaptive. In result, analyses automatically adapt themselves to yield a performance/precision tradeoff that is optimal with respect to how the analysis is deployed and which program it analyzes. With SOSA, static analyses will report true and relevant warnings at minimal analysis time without requiring manual optimizations by end users. SOSA will boost progress in the field of program-analysis research, mapping the landscape of static-analysis optimizations and how and where they are best applied. By enabling software developers to optimally deploy static analyses with ease, SOSA will help secure millions of software systems.

Mots-clés : static program analysis,vulnerability detection,virtual machines
Projet ERC : TIDA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université Eberhard Karl de Tübingen — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2447385.0 €

Text and Idea of Aristotle’s Science of Living Things (TIDA) pursues two objectives, one philosophical, the other philological, both of which can only be achieved in tandem: subjecting Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, the De Anima (DA), and related treatises, to a new and comprehensive philosophical interpretation, while making available the original Greek texts in a way that complies with the standards of contemporary textual criticism. Philosophically, the aim is to replace the interpretive approach that governed philosophical discussions around the DA for the past 5 decades with a more coherent and philosophically more informative interpretation. According to the received approach, the argument of the DA falls into the domain of ‘philosophy of mind’. This assumption, fruitful though it was for our understanding of many of the DA's arguments, obfuscates the main aim and purpose of the treatise. TIDA shows how the DA is not concerned with the philosophy of mind as such, but with defining the first principle of the science of living things; we show how the DA divides explanatory labour with the other treatises pertaining to that science, and – most importantly – what the resulting scientific theory of living things has to say about the issues of the philosophy of mind. Philologically, the goal is to produce reliable critical editions of the relevant texts, print and digital, which we – astounding as it might seem – still do not possess. As the constitution of the texts will depend on the philosophical evaluation of alternative manuscript readings, only the closest collaboration between textual critics and philosophers will yield progress. There is reason to expect improved original texts and a genuinely new and more informative perspective on Aristotle on the mind. In effect, TIDA consists in a five-year interdisciplinary research team, designed to give future philosophical and philological work on Aristotle’s science of living things a new and lasting foundation.

Mots-clés : joint philosophical philological undertaking,aristotle,theory of living things
Projet ERC : SPOTLESS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2077355.94 €

Exoplanet research has experienced enormous growth and is now pushing instrumental limits to find temperate terrestrial planets and precisely characterise their atmospheres. Extreme-precision radial velocity (RV) instruments (e.g. ESPRESSO), offering 10 cm/s stability, and space telescopes (e.g. JWST, Ariel), attaining relative flux uncertainties of 10 ppm are becoming a reality. But there is a shadow of concern hovering over such fantastic performances. The intrinsic variability of the stellar hosts can overwhelm the instrument error to become the dominant uncertainty. Recent results with ESPRESSO and JWST data provide vivid illustrations of the daunting effects of such limiting factor. An ambitious, ground-breaking, and comprehensive effort to model and correct out stellar activity effects shall therefore be undertaken. Our pioneering results show that the unique combination of a physical model and contemporaneous multi-technique monitoring can disentangle the effects of stellar activity from RV time-series and transit spectroscopy. The SPOTLESS project will implement this methodology by building a realistic stellar activity simulator and develop correction strategies using, e.g., machine learning algorithms and direct inversion. This is more reliable than purely data-driven methods, which often suffer from overfitting due to the lack of a physical context. Four main objectives will be pursued: 1) A physical model of the active solar surface to explain Sun-as-a-star observables, 2) Generalise to other spectral types & parameters, 3) Physically-motivated RV activity corrections at 10 cm/s, and 4) Physically-motivated transit activity corrections at 10 ppm. From available and future observations, SPOTLESS will deliver new challenging exoplanet RV discoveries and unbiased transmission spectra, taking exoplanet research to the next level by enabling the detection and characterisation of exoearths, and the eventual search for signs of biological activity.
Projet ERC : ANTHROFUTURE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université du Maryland — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UMD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 230463.0 €

The future has been neglected as an object of anthropological study, even though our complex social, ecological and now, with COVID-19, biopolitical crises demand novel imaginations of the ‘yet-to-come’. Moreover, anthropologists have urged the decolonisation of existing studies of the future that are often based in the global north’s concerns. ANTHROFUTURE shifts the focus of the anthropology of the future to the pandemic-induced acceleration of the future into the present. The project identifies the art world – historically featuring a high degree of experimentalism, a strong future-orientation, and, particularly in emerging markets in the global south, an openness to risk and speculation – as a crucial site for ground-breaking anthropological knowledge on the future. The pandemic forced the art world to quickly develop innovative digital solutions to replace physical events; the result is a new, fully integrated physical and digital system. While pre-pandemic scholarship on the art world largely focuses on institutions, professionals and activities as physical phenomena, there is no scholarship on this new digital-physical infrastructure. ANTHROFUTURE further acknowledges the global south as the most vital site for modeling the future by situating its research in India and Pakistan as active and mutually entangled art world locations. ANTHROFUTURE introduces three novel modes of inquiry: 1) systematic research on the digital-physical art world as an ethnographic site for the study of the future; 2) innovative multimodal methodologies for studying the future that combine in-person, digital and visual ethnography, large-scale social media data harvesting, and artist subprojects; 3) analytical and theoretical advancements on the future as a time zone in comparative terms and across the regional contexts. Embedded in anthropology, the project pursues these objectives driven by the PI’s extensive research on the past and present of the art world and the global south.

Mots-clés : art world,future,digital worlds
Projet ERC : POLIMPACT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de Constance — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 92592.5 €

What are key climate-driven social risks, and how might societal development moderate these risks? The SSP-RCP scenario framework has been developed by the IPCC community to study long-term interactions between climate and society and constitutes the cornerstone of current assessments of climate change impacts. The RCPs represent alternative warming scenarios (hazards) whereas the SSPs describe alternative development scenarios that define exposure and vulnerability to these hazards. Despite their widespread use, the quantitative SSP scenarios suffer from two major shortcomings: (i) they ignore political dimensions of vulnerability, implicitly assuming that governance does not matter for climate-driven risk; (ii) they use economic models that ignore growth disruption risks, resulting in future growth projections for low-income countries that vastly exceed past growth even in the most pessimistic scenarios. The joint result of these shortcomings is a quantified scenario framework that severely underestimates future vulnerability to climate change.  POLIMPACT aspires to remedy this problem. Using cutting-edge methods, including dynamic statistical simulations, machine learning, and expert elicitation, the project will develop a new portfolio of empirically grounded and rigorously validated governance, conflict, and economic development scenario projections, consistent with the SSPs, that for the first time enables accounting for political sources of vulnerability in climate change impact assessments. The scientific merit of the novel scenario products will be demonstrated by comparing impact estimates for poverty and hunger relying on the existing SSP framework with updated results using the extended, politically sensitive projections. If successful, POLIMPACT will initiate a step-change in climate change impact modeling, radically improving the quality and real-world relevance of climate change impact assessments for key social risks over the 21st century.

Mots-clés : climate change,governance,conflict,economic development,scenario analysis,statistical simulation,forecasting,shared socioeconomic pathways,impact assessment
Projet ERC : ThermoPropHy (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université de la Ruhr à Bochum — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2457146.0 €

Hydrogen plays a prominent role in all concepts for CO2 mitigation; technologies for generation and for liquefaction of hydrogen need to be scaled up by orders of magnitude. This scale up has to rely on simulations of innovative processes, which are necessarily based on thermodynamic property models. An analysis of the available models indicates that properties of hydrogen are described with one order of magnitude larger uncertainty than properties of well-known fluids. Experience with process-simulation based scale-up shows that these uncertainties will likely result in large additional costs and delays. To improve the description of properties of hydrogen and to enable the application of advanced lique-faction concepts, fundamental breakthroughs are required with regard to the metrology of fluids at cryogenic temperatures and with regard to accurate modelling of these complex systems – ThermoPro-pHy addresses this pioneering scientific work. Experimental equipment will be developed that allows for highly accurate measurements of density and speed of sound at temperatures down to the triple point of hydrogen (14 K), far below current temperature limits. Property models will be developed that yield a highly accurate and consistent description of arbitrary mixtures of ortho- and parahydrogen for the first time, including the effects of the temperature dependent ortho/para-equilibrium. Solid phases of impurities affecting large-scale liquefaction processes will be described by models that are con-sistent to accurate fluid-phase models. Measurements and modelling of mixtures of helium, neon, and argon will establish an accurate basis for the application of mixed fluid cascade (MFC) processes for hydrogen liquefaction. ThermoPropHy will result not only in scientific breakthroughs with regard to the metrology of fluids and to accurate modelling of thermodynamic properties, but also in increased accuracy and credibility of process simulations for hydrogen technologies.

Mots-clés : hydrogen,hydrogen transport,hydrogen storage,hydrogen processing,thermodynamic properties,cryogenic mixtures
Projet ERC : FIRSTLIGHT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Ljubljana — Pays : Slovénie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2086250.0 €

The cosmic dark ages - when the Universe was filled with neutral hydrogen that was opaque to ultraviolet light - are thought to have ended around one billion years after the Big Bang, when first light sources produced enough energetic photons to ionize the neutral hydrogen. This phase is referred to as the epoch of reionization and is also the era of the first galaxies' formation. However, this is also one of the least understood epochs in the Universe's evolution. When did it start/end? Was it patchy or smooth? How did galaxies reionize the Universe (if they did)? What are the properties of the earliest galaxies? To answer these questions, this proposal will use deep observations of the largest sample of the most powerful cosmic telescopes that will be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) right after its launch. Compared to all previous facilities, JWST’s capabilities are dazzling. Its instruments will provide data beyond those yet seen by any astronomer. However, with high power comes great responsibility. Given its limited lifetime, excellent leadership needs to be established. As a key member of the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) team with guaranteed time and a member of the Early Release Science program, I am in a unique position to guarantee success of this project. I am proposing to relocate to Europe. JWST's NIRISS instrument is not represented in Europe, and this program will bring immediate and proprietary access to the data. This proposal will (1) determine the timeline of reionization, (2) identify the exact role first galaxies played in this process by studying their ionized bubbles, and (3) determine stellar properties of the earliest galaxies. With an unprecedented facility, the program will undoubtedly bring many exciting discoveries and allow the first look at the details of the Cosmic Dawn.

Mots-clés : epoch of reionization,gravitational lensing
Projet ERC : CellularPQCD (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université de Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Maintaining the quality of all proteins in an organism is fundamental to life since it ensures tissue function, organismal health, and longevity. Protein quality control (PQC) is achieved by selective degradation of damaged proteins, limiting the formation of protein aggregates and neurodegeneration characteristic of Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disorders. Important regulators of cellular proteolysis are E3 ubiquitin ligases that target damaged proteins for degradation. However, therapeutically relevant E3 ligases specialized for PQC degradation (PQCD) are largely unknown. PQCD of damaged proteins is a dynamic process that must be coordinated with physiological and environmental challenges to overcome stress-induced proteotoxicity. Despite progress in characterizing regulatory signals for protein degradation, the major challenge in this field is to understand the dynamic rewiring of PQCD pathways under acute and chronic stress conditions. Thus, the overall goal of the proposed research program is to unravel the molecular basis of stress-induced PQCD, which is critical for physiological integrity and health. The mechanistic role of PQC-E3 ubiquitin ligases will be investigated using mammalian cell cultures and the genetic model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, which reflects many conserved human ubiquitin-dependent PQCD pathways and allows for well-defined lifespan studies. This innovative and interdisciplinary research program will combine state-of-the-art proteome analyses with tissue-specific manipulation of stress signals and large-scale genetic studies for identification and characterization of (1) stress-induced PQCD, (2) aggregating damaged proteins, and (3) E3 ligases specialized for PQCD. Importantly, in addition to providing new molecular insights into stress-induced adaptive mechanisms, this research program will lay the foundation for exploring the pathophysiology of aggregation-related neurodegeneration triggered by chronic protein damage.

Mots-clés : proteostasis,ubiquitin,ups,stress response,protein aggregation
Projet ERC : HyAngle (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Interference is one of the most fundamental phenomena in optics, allowing us to confine, filter, manipulate and steer light with exquisite precision. It is at the core of thin-film optics and nanophotonics, two areas of science that catalyse major scientific and industrial advances. One fundamental property of optical interference, however, constitutes a major limitation – the characteristics of any interference-based structure depend on the angle between the light wave and the structure itself (e.g. the transmission wavelength of optical interference filters shifts strongly when the angle of incidence changes). So far, this ‘angular dispersion’ effect remains a largely unchallenged fundamental limit in optics. HyAngle now proposes a novel strategy based on hybridizing light and matter states to break the angular dispersion limit. By tuning the coupling strength and offset between a photonic resonance formed by optical interference and the electronic resonance causing optical absorption in a material, I expect to be able to realize interference-based optical devices with spectrally sharp and angle-independent transmission, reflection and emission. We will explore the physics, potential and limitations of this approach by developing and studying dispersion-free optical filters, colour converters and LEDs with narrowband spectra. We will then pursue two specific applications, namely hyperspectral cameras and bio-implantable lensless fluorescence microscopes, where our devices will enable major advances in capability and unprecedented performance in deep tissue applications. Our devices use organic materials that can be readily processed by high-throughput vacuum deposition and even from solution. The amorphous nature of these materials renders them intrinsically compatible with the dielectric and metallic films widely used in the optics and display industry. The strategy of HyAngle thus bears great potential for rapid development and broad application.

Mots-clés : thin film optics,organic electronics,strong light matter coupling,optoelectronics,optical filters,biophotonics,bioimplants,biomedical optics