Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : cDCFun (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Champalimaud Foundation — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1796125.0 €

Effective T cell responses are critical for the efficacy of vaccination and cancer immunotherapy; therefore, the manipulation of conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) offers great potential for improved therapies as these cells play a key role in the activation and regulation of T cell function. However, cDCs are a diverse group of cells whose function is incompletely understood. Previous attempts at targeting cDCs therapeutically have been underwhelming perhaps as a result of not targeting the right cell subset specifically. The goal of this proposal therefore is to reveal the functional properties of the different cDC lineages during type 1 and type 2 immunity and to understand how the ecology of cDC subsets is regulated to meet the functional demands of tissues undergoing different types of inflammation. I propose that studying the cDC subsets that enhance cytotoxic T cell responses against viruses in type 1 immunity and those that enhance parasite clearance and tissue repair in type 2 immunity against nematodes will help to identify those cDC subsets that need to be either triggered or inhibited to improve tumour control. Therefore, we will use well-defined models of type 1 and type 2 immunity to reveal the diversity of these cells during inflammation. Furthermore, we will generate new mouse models to target cDCs subsets specifically to study their functional properties and to reveal how these functional properties are instructed. In this regard, we will address how subset specification is regulated distally, by a novel inter-organ communication axis (lung-bone marrow) that could tune the host immune system to ever-evolving challenges. Finally, as a proof of concept, we will use transplantable and orthotopic cancer models to unravel beneficial and detrimental cDC subsets in the immune response against cancer. cDCFun will open new avenues for the design of better vaccines and immunotherapies that harness the functional properties of specific subsets of cDCs.

Mots-clés : conventional dendritic cells,ontogeny,type 1 immunity,type 2 immunity,
Projet ERC : Q-AMP (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Institut de micro-électronique et composants — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IMEC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1930736.0 €

Quantum computers face many bottlenecks towards upscaling the number of qubits and increasing their computational power. One of them is the radio frequency (RF) -bottleneck between the qubit processor inside the cryostat and the room temperature control and readout electronics. And like for their classical counterparts, hope lies in replacing the RF-links by optical fibers, resulting in a hybrid situation where RF-qubits will be used for computation and optical qubits will serve for remote communication. However, electro-optical (EO) devices that parametrically amplify RF-qubits directly to optical qubits and vice versa have thus far remained elusive. Q-Amp will demonstrate a new class of EO-amplifiers that realize the required unity efficiency to achieve this goal. This is impossible with current EO-architectures which suffer from a deleterious trade-off between EO interaction strength (g) and EO losses (Q-factors). This originates from their device design and enhancing g requires bringing the RF-superconducting circuit in close vicinity of the optical waveguide, which comes at the expanse of excess EO losses. To cope with this, we will pioneer a transparent EO device technology that enhances g without the need of bringing superconductors and optical waveguides in close vicinity of each other. We will do so by concentrating the RF- and the optical field in the same nanoscale interaction volume via dipolar screening in ferroelectrics and/or ballistic transport in graphene. Confining both fields within next generation EO-materials will enable an increase of g from 100s of Hz (prior art) to Megahertz-levels. Simultaneously, light is kept away from the lossy superconducting electrodes enabling moderate Q-values of 1E5..1E6. Q-amp’s EO-amplifiers will finally overcome the scaling limitations of current superconducting quantum computers and will provide classical superconducting supercomputers with high-speed EO gateways they desperately need.

Mots-clés : integrated electro optical transducers integrated electro optical parametric amplifiers single photon conversion
Projet ERC : RADIOGUT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University College Cork — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1750000.0 €

Brain development is an intricately orchestrated process, that is sensitive to the influence of peripheral processes. One such peripheral factor known to have multiple roles in host physiology, is the gut microbiota: the ecosystem of symbiotic microorganisms that populate our gastrointestinal tract. Disruption of the gut microbiota has been associated with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the mechanisms through which the gut microbiota could influence brain development, and thus potentially lead to cognitive and behavioural deficits, remain to be elucidated. RADIOGUT aims to mechanistically understand the interactions between the gut microbiota, and brain neurodevelopment at molecular and cellular levels. To accomplish this, we will employ distinct models of early-life microbiota disruption in mice and assess the impact on neurodevelopment combining explant cultures with microbial metabolites, and an integrated multi-omics analysis. We will identify key microbial metabolites that modulate neurodevelopment, discern their signalling mechanisms and their potential to rescue neurodevelopmental deficits as well as later life aberrant behaviours. RADIOGUT will explore for the first time how the primary neural stem cells in the brain, the radial glia, can act as cellular sensors of microbial signals that modulate neurodevelopment. It will fill a large gap in the understanding of microbiota-gut-brain axis development and its communication code, as well as deliver tangible future translational value.

Mots-clés : radial glia,microbiome,blood cerebrospinal fluid barrier,microbiota gut brain axis,gut microbiota
Projet ERC : MemoSniff (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université de Rijeka — Pays : Croatie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIRI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993125.0 €

The nervous and immune systems are the body’s primary sensory interfaces, perceiving and responding to environmental stimuli. Both systems can recall past challenges, enabling them to mount responses that anticipate and adapt to ever-changing situation. Recent research indicates that the brain can recall past infections, forming a new axis between neurological memory and immune response. A notable example of such interaction is Pavlovian or classical conditioning, where organisms learn the timing and causal relationships between internal and external stimuli, enabling them to prepare responses before significant events even occur. Importantly, pioneering studies have shown that the immune system can also be conditioned. However, it is still unclear whether conditioning can be used to boost immune response upon pathogen reencounter or during revaccinations. Furthermore, the fundamental neuroimmune mechanisms that promote conditioning remain largely unexplored. Although Pavlov initially used a bell to condition dogs, other stimuli, e.g. smells, can be even more effective due to their strong connection to memory and emotion. For example, the scent of freshly baked cookies can evoke vivid childhood memories. So, could the application of smell during a viral infection or vaccination trigger a stronger secondary immune response? Therefore, we hypothesize that an olfactory stimulus received during a primary infection or vaccination enhances the immune response after subsequent encounters. Thus, we propose combining advanced immunological and neuroscience techniques to understand how multiorgan, neuro-immune circuits regulate the immune response after conditioning with odor. Furthermore, we will investigate whether activating these circuits can inhibit pathogen replication, considering the limitations of current antiviral drugs and raising antibiotic resistance, with the goal of revolutionizing infectious disease prevention and boosting the effectiveness of vaccinations.

Mots-clés : memory cd8 t cells,infections,neuro immune interaction,odors
Projet ERC : pTreg circuit (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2175000.0 €

Peripheral regulatory T cell (pTreg) responses are critical in inhibiting inflammation to external harmless antigens. Studying their regulation and function is crucial for developing treatments to conditions like allergies and inflammatory bowel disease. Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) play a pivotal role in governing tolerance: they induce pTreg, support their terminal differentiation and maintenance and are also modulated by pTreg cells in their antigen-specific tasks. However, unclear findings regarding which cells initiate the pTreg response, coupled with the perception that APC subsets may play a redundant role, have made it challenging to fully understand and explore these critical cellular interactions. Therefore, a major gap existed in our ability to decipher the information exchange within the antigen-specific circuit orchestrating tolerance. We and two other groups recently identified ROR(gamma)t+ APCs as the exclusive initiators of the pTreg response to gut microbes. This discovery, and our newly developed methodological approaches, now provide a unique opportunity to delve into the cellular interactions utilized by pTreg. Building on our previous findings and experimental strategies, we will adopt a reductionist approach to uncover which APCs, beyond RORγt+ cells, shape and maintain the pTreg response (Aim 1). We will combine the chimeric mice method with mouse genetics to devise a new approach that will allow us to conduct functional studies of the pTreg response without inducing inflammation and subsequent indirect effects. With this, we will explore the different instructions pTreg communicates to APC subsets (Aim 2). Lastly, drawing on my expertise in technology development, we will create a toolbox that allows, for the first time, detection and profiling of specific antigen presenters using single-cell sequencing (Aim 3).  By unraveling antigen-specific circuits, we strive for a novel understanding of tolerance mechanisms.

Mots-clés : treg,tolerance,antigen presentation
Projet ERC : OmniVideo (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The field of computer vision has made unprecedented progress in applying Deep Learning (DL) to images. Nevertheless, expanding this progress to videos is dramatically lagging behind, due to two key challenges: (i) video data is highly complex and diverse, requiring order of magnitude more training data than images, and (ii) raw video data is extremely high dimensional. These challenges make the processing of entire video pixel-volumes at scale prohibitively expensive and ineffective. Thus, applying DL at scale to video is restricted to short clips or aggressively sub-sampled videos.  On the other side of the spectrum, video-specific models—a single or a few neural networks trained on a single video—exhibit several key properties: (i) facilitate effective video representations (e.g., layers) that make video analysis and editing significantly more tractable, (ii) enable long-range temporal analysis by encoding the video through the network, and (iii) are not restricted to the distribution of training data. Nevertheless, the capabilities, applicability and robustness of such models are hampered by having access to only low-level information in the video  We propose to combine the power of these two approaches by the new concept of Neural OmniVideo Models: DL-based frameworks that effectively represent the dynamics of a given video, coupled with the vast knowledge learned by an ensemble of external models. We are aimed at pioneering novel methodologies for developing such models for video analysis and synthesis tasks. Our approach will have several important outcomes: • Give rise to fundamentally novel effective video representations. • Go beyond state-of-the-art in classical video analysis tasks that involve long-range temporal analysis. • Enhance the perception of our dynamic world through new synthesis capabilities. • Gain profound understanding of the internal representation learned by state-of-the-art large-scale models, and unveil new priors about our dynamic.

Mots-clés : computer vision,video analysis,video editing,content creation,video synthesis,video decomposition,layered video representations,video re rendering
Projet ERC : ExTrA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

An immediate, critical challenge facing humanity is the impact of weather extremes under a changing climate across the globe. Accurate weather forecasts and reliable climate projections rely on understanding the complex interactions between the atmospheric circulation and the water cycle. Largely governed by deep clouds, tropical weather cannot be forecasted more than a day in advance, leaving almost half of humanity living in these regions even more vulnerable. Although extratropical (outside the tropics) flows can drastically affect tropical clouds and precipitation, this effect has not been systematically quantified or understood. The novelty of this proposal is in asking a new question: How do extratropical dynamics influence the (sub)tropics? We will build on our recent work and paradigm-challenging preliminary results to study how extratropical dry, cold air intrusions into the tropics dramatically modify its atmosphere and air-sea interaction. We will use a new global Lagrangian identification approach to study this extratropical-tropical interaction for the first time, and uniquely combine state-of-the-art data from multiple sources, diagnostic tools, and multi-scale modelling. We will quantify the global spatiotemporal occurrence, variability and trends of these events (WP1); understand their underlying dynamics and precursors in midlatitudes and their impact on the water cycle (WP2); and assess their suitability as predictors of high-impact tropical weather (WP3). A dedicated international observational flight campaign will allow us to synergistically study the extratropics’ impact on the tropics (WP4). Our findings will advance not only the meteorological community but also the oceanographic, cloud physics and climate dynamics scientific communities, by providing a unified, global view of the interacting large-scale atmospheric dynamics, clouds and precipitation through their common weather timescales, paving the way for timely, accurate weather warnings.

Mots-clés : midlatitude weather systems,rossby waves,air sea interaction,tropical extratropical interaction,high impact weather
Projet ERC : InsulaBodyLoop (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The brain and body are in a continuous dialog. Our brains constantly receive sensory information from within our body, as well as from the external environment, and then use it to regulate bodily function. Brain-body communication is essential for our physical and mental health, yet little is known about how it is achieved at the neurobiological level. A large corpus of work implicates the insular cortex as a central node in the brain's interoceptive network. Current models suggest that insular cortex integrates internal and external sensory information to regulate bodily physiology. Yet direct experimental evidence has been scarce. I propose a research program that focuses on the insular cortex as part of a dynamic loop with the gastrointestinal system, which regulates peripheral metabolic function and feeding behaviour. Two fundamental questions form the core of this proposal: (1) How do the sight, smell, and taste of a savoury dish, or a sweet dessert, enable our brains to predict the post-ingestive nutrients they will supply? (2) How are these predictions relayed to our body to pre-emptively prepare it for consumption, e.g., by inducing salivation and insulin release? To answer these questions we need to understand both cortical predictive computations, as well as peripheral physiology. I therefore propose to build on my expertise and use an inter-disciplinary approach, combining cutting-edge neuroscience and computational methods with recordings and optogenetic control of peripheral physiology. This will reveal: (1) how insular cortex represents internal sensations, (2) how insular cortex forms associations between internal and external sensory information, and (3) how these associations are relayed to the body to maintain homeostasis. This study will provide a conceptual and methodological foundation for future elucidation of how different internal sensory modalities act together within the brain-body loop to maintain our physical and emotional health.

Mots-clés : insular cortex interoception interoceptive predictions gustatory insular cortex post ingestive food reward gut induced reward
Projet ERC : DYNAMICTRIO (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Fciencias.id - associacao para a investigacao e desenvolvimento de ciencias — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FC.ID
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2083871.0 €

Predicting ecosystems response to ongoing environmental shifts is a major challenge in ecology and evolution, which is tightly linked with the eco-evolutionary feedback loop. However, we lack studies that thoroughly examine the whole loop of ecology to evolution and back. Moreover, there is a dire need for comprehensive studies on the mechanisms involved in this feedback that integrate different biological levels. With DYNAMICTRIO, we will perform an in-depth and multilevel analysis of the eco-evolutionary process, by combining experimental evolution and theoretical modelling of a tri-trophic system composed of plants (Arabidopsis thaliana), herbivores (Tetranychus urticae), and predators (Amblyseius swirskii). First, we will quantify the impact of ecosystem productivity and environmental stress on ecological dynamics (aim 1). Second, we will address how the interplay between ecosystem stability and population dynamics determine (trait and genomic) evolution (aim 2). Third, we will examine how the evolution of direct and indirect interactions affect species evolution and ecosystem resilience (aim 3). Finally, using the huge body of experimental data produced, we will examine how population dynamics, system stability, and interspecific interactions shape the genotype to phenotype to fitness map of each population. This will allow us to incorporate the ecology-evolution feedback loop into fitness landscape models (aim 4). By building on the combination of powerful empirical and theoretical approaches, which I have been developing throughout my career, DYNAMICTRIO provides an extensive, multidisciplinary understanding of the mechanisms underlying eco-evolutionary dynamics. The long-term goal of DYNAMICTRIO is the development of statistical and theoretical tools that properly integrate the different components of the eco-evolutionary loop and generate the much-needed predictions on how a broad range of ecosystems persist in a fast-changing world.

Mots-clés : experimental evolution,fitness landscapes
Projet ERC : HOFGA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Fciencias.id - associacao para a investigacao e desenvolvimento de ciencias — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FC.ID
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 458854.82 €

This is a project in Computational Complexity. The project aims to answer the following question: How hard is it to find a good algorithm for a given computational problem?  This question can be asked in several different settings, depending on what one means by "algorithm" (what is the computational model?), "computational problem" (is it a decision problem? a search problem? a communication problem?), and by "good" (do we want an algorithm that uses little time? little memory? few logical gates?).  This question has a deep connection with the problem of proving lower-bounds, and in almost every setting where the question has been answered, either the answer was discovered while attempting to prove lower-bounds, or obtaining the answer required the development of new lower-bound methods. It is also known that several variants of the above question are equivalent to fundamental open questions in cryptography, pseudorandomness, and learning theory.  The goal of this project is to answer this question in various settings where the answer is unknown: in circuit complexity, communication complexity, data structures, and algebraic models of computation. For each of these settings, we will either provide explicit methods for finding efficient algorithms, or show that the problem of finding such efficient algorithms is NP-hard.