Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : BI-RESPONS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université d'Anvers — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1495160.0 €

In light of growing debates on the idea of basic income (BI), the BI-RESPONS project investigates under which conditions policymakers respond to public opinion about BI. I argue that BI is a scientifically challenging case because it poses a theoretical puzzle that has hitherto not been addressed empirically. On the one hand, BI is a likely case for responsiveness to occur because its introduction would directly impact the lives of many citizens. On the other hand, BI is an unlikely case compared to most other social policies because it is characterized by a lower salience and higher radicalness. The project will solve this puzzle by uncovering (a) which types of policymakers are (un)responsive and to whose opinions they are (un)responsive; (b) in which spatial and temporal contexts they are (un)responsive; (c) through which mechanisms they are (un)responsive, and (d) how their (un)responsiveness to public opinion varies across different BI proposals and compares to that of the well-established social policy of child benefits. These analyses are informed by the newly developed Multi-Level Framework of Contingent Policy Responsiveness, which argues that two of the main contingency factors identified in prior research –salience and radicalness– do not only vary between policy cases but also (a) within these cases, (b) across context and (c) between policymakers. This new theoretical framework is scrutinized empirically within an innovative mixed-methods design that links qualitative in-depth interviews with different types of policymakers to a quantitative public opinion survey in eight European countries that differ with regard to the salience and radicalness of BI. In doing so, the BI-RESPONS project forces a major breakthrough in the research on the politics of BI, and more broadly, expands our knowledge of (social) policy responsiveness and welfare state politics.

Mots-clés : basic income,child benefits,public opinion,policy responsiveness,welfare state politics
Projet ERC : fertiliMMUNE (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université de Lund — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499861.0 €

Infertility affects 1 in 6 adults worldwide. Current infertility therapies overlook its underlying causes, resulting in pregnancy success rates as low as 30%. Together with the emotional, financial, and societal toll of infertility, this low efficacy underscores the urgent need for more precise interventions. fertiliMMUNE aims to uncover mechanisms of human immune-reproductive crosstalk and define novel targets for fertility treatment.  Reproduction and immunity are deeply intertwined, highlighting the immune system as a promising target for fertility treatment. A successful pregnancy requires coordinated immunological adaptations that already start at conception. Yet major gaps still exist in understanding i) the mechanisms of interactions between the immune and the reproductive systems, and ii) the impact of these on pregnancy outcomes. Systems immunology combines multi-omics methods and innovative computational approaches to understand the complexity of the immune system and its components. My expertise in systems immunology (Consiglio et al, 2020 Cell) and reproductive sex hormone modulation of human immunity (Lakshmikanth*, Consiglio* et al, 2024 Nature) provides a unique perspective to dissect immune-reproductive networks that are critical for human immune function and reproductive success.  fertiliMMUNE will elucidate the immune-reproductive crosstalk at unprecedented detail in humans. Work package 1 (WP1) will employ systems-level longitudinal immune profiling during in vitro fertilization (IVF) to dissect how sex hormones regulate the immune system in vivo. WP2 will identify immune signatures at baseline and in response to IVF treatment that predict IVF success. WP3 will comprehensively characterize the direct regulatory mechanisms of sex hormones in immune cells of healthy women and men in vitro.  fertiliMMUNE will provide key insights into immune-reproductive co-regulation and pave the way for personalized fertility treatments that improve IVF outcomes.

Mots-clés : sex differences in immunity,reproductive immunology,immune reproductive crosstalk,systems immunology,human immunology
Projet ERC : DECENT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de Lund — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1486698.0 €

There is a strong theoretical imperative for why centralized grid-/network-based societal infrastructures is the gold standard worldwide. Yet, there is a growing realization that this ideal fails to deliver on social, economic and ecological promises. This project starts from the observation that decentralized societal infrastructures are gaining momentum in high- and middle-income cities. Examples include micro-grids (energy), small-scale wastewater treatment (sanitation), multi-modal mobility (urban transport) and short food value chains (agri-food). However, existing theoretical approaches to infrastructure innovation and sector transformation offer no convincing explanation for how cities overcome the strong imperative (e.g. path dependencies and lack of economies of scale) against context-sensitive small-scale solutions. Moreover, there is no systematic empirical evidence on the drivers, mechanisms and spatial patterns of infrastructure decentralization in different sectors and geographical contexts.  I develop a framework based on insights from socio-technical transition studies, modularity theory and economic geography. The core claim is that decentralization is connected to modularization at different levels of structuration. The project also addresses what place-specific factors and multi-scalar reconfiguration processes mediate the success of decentralization. Methodologically, I further develop the ‘Path Tracing’ approach by combining it with ‘Socio-Technical Configuration Analysis’ (STCA) and pioneer its application in comparative analyses of three societal infrastructure sectors (urban water management, urban mobility and agri-food) in high- and middle-income contexts (cities in Europe and India). Based on the findings I will formulate a new theory of infrastructure decentralization that opens new horizons for research, revising the role of decentralized infrastructure vis-à-vis the centralized paradigm that has prevailed since the early 20th century.

Mots-clés : decentralization,modularization,societal infrastructure,multi scalarity
Projet ERC : LiNQs (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Paderborn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499381.0 €

Quantum technologies are expected to have a transformative impact by exploiting fundamental quantum mechanical effects for technological applications such as quantum computation, quantum simulation, quantum communication, and quantum sensing. Photons are the only reliable qubit for quantum information transmission, making them an essential resource for quantum technologies. However, quantum photonics will only meet its expectation as a ground breaking technology when integrated in a scalable fashion. The solution lies in quantum photonic integrated circuits where photons are used to encode and process quantum information on-chip, offering scalable quantum information processing units. Currently, different integration platforms are investigated with a selection of building blocks available. However, no platform has shown a comprehensive toolbox combining all functionalities on a single chip. In this project I will demonstrate that the thin film lithium niobate on insulator platform can simultaneously link all quantum photonics building blocks on a single platform, resulting in fully integrated quantum photonic integrated circuits. I will develop integrated Lithium Niobate Quantum systems (LiNQs) showcasing the generation, manipulation, and analysis of photonic qubits. This will result in the first compatible integration platform hosting semiconductor quantum emitters, quantum memories based on rare-earth ions, cryogenic electronics, and superconducting single-photon detectors together with the outstanding properties of CMOS-compatible lithium niobate on insulator: low-loss circuits and fast modulators. By developing all required building blocks and linking them to scalable systems, I will provide the quantum technology community a single integration platform for all quantum photonics applications. LiNQs will lay the foundation for Europe’s forefront position in a future photonics-driven quantum technology industry.

Mots-clés : quantum photonic integrated circuits,quantum technology,lithium niobate on insulator
Projet ERC : TIME (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université d'Osnabrück — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499455.0 €

The visual world around us is a source of rich semantic information that guides our higher-level cognitive processes and actions. To tap into this resource, the brain?s visual system engages in complex, intertwined computations to actively sample, extract, and integrate information across space and time. Surprisingly however, the integrative nature of vision hardly plays a role in the way we approach it in experimentation and computational modelling. Instead, higher-level vision is commonly treated as a largely bottom-up categorization process.  TIME proposes a new approach. It will allow us to study vision in a more natural setting and as a process that is (a) geared towards semantic understanding instead of label-based categorisation, (b) naturally intertwined with active information sampling and (c) expanding across multiple timeframes, including network dynamics that unfold within and across eye fixations. This will be accomplished by an ambitious, three-step work program that combines cutting-edge non-invasive human brain imaging performed while participants visually explore tens of thousands of rich human-annotated natural scenes, the development of novel multivariate analysis techniques, and large-scale computational modelling using a new bio-inspired deep learning framework for active vision that closes the sensory-motor loop. Using this interdisciplinary approach, TIME will establish, for the first time, when, where, and how visual semantic understanding emerges in the brain as it actively samples and integrates information from the world in a continuously updating and dynamic decision process. These ground-breaking developments both in experimentation and deep neural network modelling build towards a fundamental paradigm shift in how we study, model, and understand vision, yielding new insights into its complex neural processes operating in more natural, ecologically valid conditions, as well as a closer alignment between biological and synthetic vision.

Mots-clés : human vision,visual system,eye movements,recurrence,dynamics,semantics,computational modelling,deep learning,deep reinforcement learning,machine learning,neuroscience
Projet ERC : CongUbangi (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Central Africa’s Congo-Ubangi watershed spans multiple ecozones in the northern margins of the rainforest. It is a major hotbed of linguistic, cultural and human genetic diversity with deep occupation history. This linguistic accretion zone is home to a complex mosaic of genealogically and typologically diverse languages spoken by small-size communities with different societal organizations, material cultures, and subsistence specializations. Despite the myriad of new insights it could generate about language evolution and deep human past, it is poorly known due to difficulty of access and an astonishingly intricate configuration. The aim of CongUbangi is to understand the present-day interconnections between language, material cultures and genes in the Congo-Ubangi watershed and project them as far back into the past as possible through a holistic, localized and locally-enforced interdisciplinary approach. The project team’s core scientific expertise covers linguistics, ethnoarchaeology, and archaeology. Genetic and paleoenvironmental expertise is added through inter-university collaboration. CongUbangi will realize a breakthrough in our understanding of how linguistic diversity correlates with cultural and genetic diversity and why it originated and persisted in this specific ecoregion for millennia. New bodies of evidence from mutually-feeding disciplines will be integrated to determine whether (i) language shift is an adaptive strategy in response to environmental stress and (ii) past environmental changes impacted the synchronic distribution of linguistic enclaves. By untangling one of the most historically intricate areas of the continent, it will contribute to scores of theoretical and methodological issues in a large array of disciplines and blaze research trails in previously unimaginable directions. Beyond research, it will foster the preservation of small-scale autochthonous languages and cultures facing increasing extinction threats.

Mots-clés : linguistic diversity,language shift,language contact,niger congo,ubangi,central sudanic,ethnoarchaeology,archaeology,genetics,central african prehistory
Projet ERC : CoRe Defense (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 113011.88 €

Currently, we rely on antibiotics to combat potentially life-threatening gastrointestinal (GI) bacterial infections. However, the susceptibility to infection and the severity of symptoms can vary significantly among individuals exposed to the same pathogen.1–3 If we could unravel the factors responsible for differences in infection susceptibility, we could formulate strategies to reduce the incidence of symptomatic infections, ultimately saving lives and reducing the need for antibiotics. Traditionally, researchers have approached this puzzle from two main perspectives: a human-centered view, delving into the intricacies of the host immune system, or a pathogen-centered view, scrutinizing variations in bacterial strains. With CoRe defense, I advocate for a paradigm shift by adopting a microbiota-centered perspective. This approach is grounded in the concept of colonization resistance, the mechanism whereby the intestinal microbiota protects itself against incursion by new microorganisms. Despite their tremendous potential to prevent and treat bacterial infections, microbial alternatives to antibiotics are still spread thin as we currently lack adequate methods to select potential candidates. My aim is to develop a method for the selection of personalized bacterial consortia capable of preventing Campylobacteriosis. I will do so by investigating its ecological niche and competitors through metabolic modelling, screen for growth reducing bacterial strains or consortia using a newly developed in vitro co-culturing platform, and test colonization resistance predictions of a simple model based on these in silico and in vitro results in human-microbiome associated mice. By investigating the protective function of the microbiota, I will generate ground-breaking findings that will transform our understanding on factors governing bacterial infection susceptibility. It will usher in an era where we view bacteria not only as the problem but also as part of the solution.

Mots-clés : genome scale metabolic reconstruction of human microorganisms,community scale metabolic modelling,campylobacter,synthetic gut bacterial consortia,microbiota mediated colonization resistance
Projet ERC : HAIR (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Studies of Cultures and Arts
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1600822.0 €

This project analyses how Muslim women’s hair shapes everyday intimate lifeworlds, processes of social transformation, and new religious identities in contemporary Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. In so doing, it will turn the global contemporary headscarf debate on its head. By shifting the paradigm from the veil as a marker of inter alia religiosity, HAIR examines how the attitudes and practices of Muslim women towards their hair condition religious norms and social expectations.  Hair itself remains a neglected theme, despite being central to issues of identity, beauty and processes of individualisation. Even so, there is much contention concerning how Muslim women wear their hair, think about it, and feel about it. Indeed, hair is at the very root of the headscarf debate. Hair is both a mundane issue and a disputed one for many women. As such, it is a contentious field that spans the negotiation of gender dynamics, beauty ideals, political orientation, and religious norms. What, then, do we learn when we study women’s (in-)abilities to show or (not) show hair? What does the (in-)ability to conceal one’s hair mean in different contexts? HAIR will address these questions by examining the intricate entanglement of the body, emotions and the gendered self within changing social landscapes by combining research approaches rooted in Islamic studies, social anthropology and anthropology of emotions. It will do so through a blended methodology of field research, digital ethnography and literary analyses carried out in Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE. Through this approach, HAIR will produce two doctoral dissertations, two monographs, and three journal articles, culminating in a new synthesis that explains the importance of Muslim women’s head hair. HAIR offers a path-breaking approach to gendered body politics that will open new frontiers in the study of women in Muslim majority and minority societies.

Mots-clés : islam,social transformations,women,hair,identity,beauty,emotions,processes of individualisation,embodied practices,digital spaces,non religiosities,gender,power relations
Projet ERC : SuperCorr (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université de Stuttgart — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1212684.94 €

Exploring the plethora of possibilities provided by solid-state systems to realize exotic many-body phases is not only motivated by fundamental questions but also by potential quantum technological applications. In both cases, it is important to have control over the properties of the system in order to engineer the phase of interest, to have a clear theoretical understanding of the microscopic physics, and to be able to probe it. In this regard, superlattice systems have recently brought many exciting results: e.g., the moire lattice that emerges when two layers of graphene are twisted induces correlated phenomena, akin to high-temperature superconductors. Furthermore, artificially arranged atoms on surfaces have become popular tools to design electronic bands. SuperCorr will explore the vast set of possibilities provided by these tunable systems to engineer novel correlated many-body physics, propose ways to probe it, and advance our understanding of the complex phase diagrams of quantum matter. More specifically, we will address key questions related to several different graphene moire systems, such as the origin and form of superconductivity, its relation to the correlated insulator, the interplay of topological obstructions and correlations, and the microscopics of their nematic phases. We will work on the impact of spin-orbit coupling and on a theoretical description of twist-angle disorder, viewing inhomogeneities as a blessing in disguise that can also be used to probe and realize interesting physics. Finally, we will develop a theoretical framework for the design of atom arrangements on the surface of complex host materials, in order to create or simulate a quantum many-body system on demand. To this end, we will employ and further extend a variety of analytical and numerical methods of many-body physics and field theory, and combine it, in some projects, with machine-learning techniques, while keeping a close connection to experiment.

Mots-clés : moire systems,graphene,2d systems,machine learning in physics