Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : INTEGRATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1597198.75 €

Quality control processes maintain mitochondrial health, enabling cellular functions such as bioenergetics, metabolism, Ca2+ signaling, and cell death regulation. Mitochondrial proteases, unfolded protein response, asymmetric fission, vesicle shedding, and mitophagy all contribute to organelle quality. However, the specific triggers for these processes remain unclear. While unfolded protein accumulation appears to be a common trigger, the mechanism by which it initiates diverse responses remains uncertain. To investigate this question, we developed advanced tools for real-time imaging of protein aggregation in mitochondrial subcompartments. Aggregates in the matrix and intermembrane space induce mitochondrial fission and elicit distinct functional responses based on their location. Live imaging revealed that intermembrane space aggregates initially seed in the mitochondrial midzone and then sort through transient side-by-side fusion with neighboring mitochondria. In the matrix, aggregates seed at one pole and are selectively sorted to daughter mitochondria through asymmetric fission. Our preliminary experiments unveiled an early seeding and sorting process of protein aggregates according to their intramitochondrial location. In the INTEGRATE project, we aim to comprehensively understand the underlying principles and consequences of this process. By combining advanced imaging techniques, omics analysis, biochemistry, functional assays, and unbiased screenings, we will decipher the rules governing aggregate formation, seeding, sorting, cellular fate, and response in various mitochondrial subcompartments. INTEGRATE seeks to establish the occurrence and downstream responses of this newly discovered early phase of mitochondrial quality control. Clarifying this fundamental mechanism will provide insights into mitochondrial and cell biology, with significant implications for pathological conditions and aging, where mitochondrial quality control is compromised.

Mots-clés : mitochondria quality control fusion fission
Projet ERC : THoT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : INALCO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2418010.95 €

Tonal languages are no longer perceived as exotic. According to modern concepts, about 50-60% of the world's languages are tonal. However, the main shortcoming of the majority of research dedicated to tones consists in a narrow panorama of research. It is most often limited either to the description of the tonal system of a certain language or to a particular problem, like correlation of tone and accent, etc. The goal of the project is twofold: (a) to prove that any tonal system can be classified into one of the (presumably) four categories and b) typical trends of change of these systems in diachronic perspective are movements from one category to another according to rules that have to be identified. It will be done on the basis of rich language data. The project covers all major areas of localization of tonal languages. Within a five-year project, it is impossible to explore all the tonal languages of the world. Thus, a balanced sample of 150-200 languages will be carefully studied. This sample takes into account the language family, area of distribution and other relevant parameters including information on language structure, characteristics of the tonal system, functions of tone, tonal density index. This ambitious goal can be achieved through the participation of leading specialists in tonal languages, like Larry Hyman and other prominent tonologists. The present project is a break-through as it will make possible to discover substantiate in-depth correlations between suprasegmental characteristics of a language, correlations between suprasegmental system and other parameters, such as genetic affiliation, areal distribution or morphological structure. The adopting the terminological system that can be applied to any tonal system of any language, will lead the research team to an adequate comparison of tonal systems. Special attention will be paid to intermediate types. The study of languages will combine typological, genetic and areal approaches.

Mots-clés : linguistic tone,tonal density index,tonal systems,suprasegmental systems,toneme
Projet ERC : PREDEF (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2430483.0 €

Democracy is in a crisis of global scale. This crisis has variously been attributed to a loss of belief in political representation, the rising of technocratic ‘post-democracy’, or an authoritarian and populist turn. However, a narrow focus on the political system is inadequate. PREDEF starts from the assumption that the crisis of democracy is also a crisis of political imagination. As the infamous TINA-principle (‘There is no Alternative’) illustrates, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine genuine democratic alternatives to the status quo. PREDEF sets out to explore potentials for deepening and pluralizing democracy beyond the sphere of politics narrowly defined as the body of existing political institutions. The project will turn to the fields of culture, art and intellectual history, for these fields hold hitherto untapped potentials for extending our democratic imaginary and disclosing political alternatives. Located at the intersection between cultural research and democratic theory, PREDEF meets this challenge empirically and theoretically. Empirically, artistic and cultural counter-practices are investigated that champion democratization in the time-based arts (through theatrical occupations), international relations (through counter-summits) and law (through ‘mock’ tribunals). Theoretically, the project seeks to widen our democratic imaginary by searching the history of ideas for ‘forgotten’ institutions that hold untapped democratic potentials, and by elaborating a democratic theory of counter-institutions. The main objectives are: i. regaining a ‘sense of possibility’ in a time of vanishing democratic alternatives, ii. exploring the democratizing potential of cultural and artistic practices and institutions; iii. learning from alternative configurations of the past and beyond the Western context, specifically regarding institutional designs; iv. connecting theoretical and empirical research with the aim of genuine cross-fertilization.

Mots-clés : democratic theory prefiguration radical democracy
Projet ERC : Disperse (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2944654.0 €

The diaspora of modern humans from Africa into Eurasia and beyond is one of the seminal chapters in the history of our species. Modern humans emerged in Africa by 250-300,000 years ago. Their several subsequent dispersals outwards must have followed one of two routes, the most likely being across the Sinai Peninsula and Levantine corridor. Here, they would have encountered resident Neanderthals and beyond, into Eurasia, the Denisovans. A major dispersal of modern humans by ~50,000 years ago, hypothesised to be linked with the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, is paralleled by further development of aspects of behavioural modernity; the increased presence of symbolic objects, art, new types of technology and the ability to adapt and survive in novel and challenging environments. The Lebanese site of Ksar Akil is the ‘type site’ for the Palaeolithic in the key Levant region. First excavated in the 1930s/40s, and again in the 1970s, it contains a deep ~23m sequence. Sadly, despite its importance, its potential has never been realised, but is clear that it can contribute greatly to our understanding of human presence, climate and environmental changes over the last ~90,000 years. This project plans to reveal this by applying the latest sediment DNA approaches to determine the presence of different hominins through the archaeological sequence, dating the site reliably for the first time, analysing its stone tool remains and generating a paleoenvironmental and climatic history. In parallel we will collate new and unpublished data from a range of similar Palaeolithic sites from across Eurasia, to test hypotheses concerning the movement of early human groups into and out of the region. The project will contribute a strong legacy value, for local Lebanese archaeology and students, as well as internationally in building a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the late period of human evolution.

Mots-clés : chronology,ancient dna,palaeolithic,neanderthals,hominins,archaeological science
Projet ERC : elegansBrainBodyEnvi (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3500000.0 €

Recent large-scaRecent large-scale neuronal activity recordings in awake, behaving animals revealed a new, unexpected neuroscientific principle: widespread neuronal activity patterns across the brain encode parameters of movement. Surprisingly, these brain-wide behavior representations even extend to areas that are implicated in the processing of sensory information (e.g., the visual cortex in mice). Thus, a large fraction of the brain’s activity seems to be dedicated to representing the animals current, ongoing behavior. These observations have been made across the animal kingdom including worms, flies and mammals, suggesting a universal principle; however, the underlying mechanisms and functions remain unknown. In this proposal, we take advantage of the tractable model organism C. elegans to tackle this problem, combining brain-wide single cell resolution Ca2+-imaging in freely behaving animals with genetic circuit manipulation tools. It was previously recognized that the brain operates in a closed loop, actively sensing its body and its environment and making predictions of movement outcomes to optimally control behavior. Here, we propose to reconcile these long-standing concepts with the new observations of brain-wide behavior representations. Our core hypothesis is that sensory to motor transformation is a distributed process incorporating multiple functions like gain-control, re-afference prediction and predictive processing. Our team is at the forefront of scientific innovation and discoveries in this field, and we thereby are making substantial contributions to this currently ongoing paradigm shift in our understanding of how the brain operates. Studying these phenomena in worms offers a unique and timely opportunity to rapidly uncover the universal functions of brain wide behavioral representations. We therefore aim to make fundamental predictions and to formulate new working hypotheses for similar studies in larger model organisms with more complex brains.

Mots-clés : calcium imaging,neuronal network dynamics,motor control
Projet ERC : CHROMSEG (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université d'Édimbourg — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 518647.25 €

Accurate chromosome segregation during cell division requires bipolar attachment of sister-chromatids to microtubules emanating from opposite spindle poles and maintenance of sister-chromatid cohesion until all chromosomes achieve bi-orientation. Two chromosomal sites regulate these processes: centromeres, the microtubule attachment sites defined by the enrichment of CENP-A nucleosomes, and the inner centromere, a region between the sister-chromatids that recruits enzymatic activities (kinases, phosphatases and motor proteins). The inner centromere associated enzymes selectively stabilise chromosome-microtubule attachments suitable for chromosome bi-orientation, control sister chromatid cohesion and achieve timely chromosome segregation. Errors in these processes can lead to aneuploidy, a numerical chromosomal aberration implicated in miscarriages, birth defects and cancers. Using an integrative structure-function approach (X-ray crystallography, cryo electron microscopy, Crosslinking/Mass Spectrometry, biochemical/biophysical methods with human cell-line based functional assays), we will obtain detailed mechanistic understanding of: (1) how the inner centromere is assembled, (2) how the inner centromere associated interaction network recruits regulators to achieve chromosome bi-orientation and accurate segregation, and (3) how centromere identity is maintained through multiple generations. This work builds on our recently obtained exciting structural/molecular knowledge that have led to unexpected insights and new questions and will exploit our recently generated battery of molecular reagents. Outcome of our work will provide unprecedented details of centromere-mediated control of chromosome segregation and allow us to build a comprehensive mechanistic model for error-free chromosome segregation, a process that has been fascinating researchers for more than a century.

Mots-clés : chromosome segregation,cell division,centromere,kinetochore,nucleosomes,cenp a,kinases,phosphatase,histone phosphorylation,cryoem,x ray crystallography,biochemistry,structural biology,epigenetic
Projet ERC : DiLaDi (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université Ca' Foscari de Venise — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1080000.0 €

DiLaDi is an interdisciplinary project that aims to perform a novel comprehensive study on the variation of the Latin Language over the 1st millennium A.D. considering the geographical and chronological perspectives as well as the transition from Latin to Romance by processing and analysing textual errors (deviations from the norm) of ancient and early medieval primary documents with the help of the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age (LLDB) that employs a revolutionary method of data analysis. DiLaDi aims to give a breakthrough impetus to relevant research by involving a group of sources that have so far not been adequately considered in research: original parchment charters of private law from mostly the 7th-8th centuries, that are available in large numbers and are very rich in data reflecting linguistic changes, the involvement of which could open up further perspectives for the research of history and dialectology of late Latin based on working with a Database which has so far relied mainly on inscriptions. The project plan will be implemented by a 10-person research group with the help of a large data collection team in international collaboration. Within the project framework, at least 50,000 new data forms will be added to the unique LLDB Database, while results will be disseminated through the organisation of 5 international workshops, the delivery of at least 50 lectures, and the publication of 50 studies and 1 monograph; at the same time, potential future collaborators will be educated in at least 5 university courses, while the scientific advancement of the participating researchers will be ensured by the submission of 3 PhD theses and 1 habilitation thesis. As a result, this research will allow for a better understanding of the processes that led to the development of Romance languages and determined the linguistic, ethnic, and even cultural features of medieval and modern Europe.

Mots-clés : latin linguistics,vulgar latin,latin parchments,papyri and inscriptions,dialectology,historical linguistics,digital database
Projet ERC : LONERS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499987.0 €

LONERS addresses the growing public health and security concern of loneliness, which often leads to feelings of isolation, anxiety and despair. As loneliness becomes more prevalent in modern society, its social and political implications expand. However, loneliness can also evoke positive emotions such as calm, self-reliance and empathy, highlighting the complexity of this emotional landscape. Understanding this spectrum of emotions is crucial for addressing loneliness effectively in both individual and societal contexts.  LONERS examines the interplay between loneliness, privacy and emotion, with the goal of reconceptualizing how institutions recognize and meet the emotional needs of citizens. The project goes beyond traditional approaches to privacy in data protection and surveillance, identifying key moments where institutions can intervene to support individuals while respecting their privacy. By systematically exploring how personal emotional experiences of loneliness intersect with societal values, norms and expertise, LONERS aims to provide a conceptual framework to better follow the balance between regulating citizens’ well-being and respecting their privacy.  Through an innovative, multi-method analysis—including life-story interviews, a discourse analysis of personal blogs and text-as-data-supported reviews of expert debates and policy discussions—LONERS will bring unique empirical insights about the diverse emotions associated with loneliness. By reframing the scholarly discourse, LONERS will conceptualise the critical role of emotions in shaping institutions. This work will contribute to broader debates about how public institutions navigate the balance between understanding and acting upon intimate information. This research will significantly advance our understanding of loneliness and privacy, while paving the way for future explorations into social cohesion and welfare, opening new avenues for research.

Mots-clés : context,discourse,emotions,loneliness,public policy
Projet ERC : ClusterQ (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2792416.0 €

Measurement-based quantum computation is a highly promising approach to quantum computing as it simply performs quantum processing directly through the measurements of a multi-partite entangled cluster state and thereby circumvents the complex unitary dynamics of conventional gate-based quantum computers. However, despite significant progress over the last decade in devising new strategies for measurement-based quantum computing, significant conceptual and technical challenges still remain for realizing up-scaled versions that reach the quantum advantage regime where it outperforms classical computation. In ClusterQ we aim to overcome these challenges using continuous variable three-dimensional entangled cluster states. Based on our recent work on generating and exploiting extremely large two-dimensional clusters states we aim to make conceptual breakthroughs along three different directions. First, we deterministically generate highly scalable three-dimensional cluster states of different topological structures, and explore their many-body behaviour and usefulness for quantum computing. Next, we use the three-dimensional cluster states combined with hybrid detection technologies to demonstrate new quantum boson sampling algorithms – a near-term quantum computing algorithm allowing for a demonstration of quantum computational supremacy – and finally, we explore, theoretically and experimentally, a novel strategy for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation using surface-codes in 3D cluster states. ClusterQ aims to position the continuous variable measurement-based approach to quantum information processing in the field of front-running candidates for NISQ (noisy, intermediate-scale quantum) computing and, in the longer term, fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Mots-clés : continuous variable optical quantum information cluster states and multi partite entangled states measurement based quantum computing
Projet ERC : MultiJets (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498750.0 €

The birth of multimessenger Astronomy is unfolding in front of our eyes, largely thanks to incredible observational developments. The new observations challenge theory on numerous frontiers and my goal is to address some of those and to open others. Relativistic jets are the classical multimessenger sources, typically dominating the observed signature of the objects that launch them. Relativistic jets even have their own gravitational waves signature, Jet-GW, that arises from the jet acceleration. This signal, largely ignored so far, is a memory type wave that enable us to “see” directly the jet launching process, and is probably the only way to do so. Detection of Jet-GWs is extremely challenging and they may be easily missed if they are not looked for. In this program, I aim to achieve the understanding of these signals essential for their detection. In addition I propose to explore observational implications of relativistic jets as they are manifested in binary neutron star mergers (BNS), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and a subpopulation of supernovae (SNe) that harbor hidden jets, and tidal disruption events (TDEs). I will study the basic physics involved, carry out large scale simulations and probe new observational results. I will focus on new physics, for example photodissociation of heavy nuclei during jet propagation within BNS ejecta, that hasn’t been considered so far. Powerful jets appears in some TDEs, but not in others. This makes TDEs natural laboratories to pursue the major open question: under which conditions are powerful jets launched? Although BNS, GRBs, SNe and TDEs appear to be very different, their jets have a lot in common. Understanding them requires analysis of the same basic physics and application of similar numerical tools. This joint study that breaks artificial conceptual barriers will be highly beneficial and fruitful.