Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : bAIes (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2932775.0 €

The life sciences community is living in exciting times. During the past year, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and in particular AlphaFold2, has contributed to advancing our understanding of protein behaviour by enabling structure prediction with accuracy comparable to many experimental techniques at a fraction of their time and costs. However, structures are only a piece of the puzzle. To understand the mechanisms underlying biological functions, we need to characterize the conformational landscape of proteins, the population of relevant states, and their pathways of interconversion. Furthermore, we need to determine the effect of the environment in modulating structures, populations, and pathways, as biological systems perform their functions in the complexity of cells rather than in the isolation of test tubes. None of these objectives can be achieved by AI structure-prediction methods alone. In this proposal we will leverage the PI’s expertise in the field of integrative computational-experimental techniques to develop, apply, and disseminate bAIes, a modelling approach that will enable attaining these goals. bAIes will make synergistic use of AI structural models, experimental data, and molecular simulations driven by accurate physico-chemical models to characterize protein structure and dynamics. We will demonstrate how bAIes can solve biological problems that exceed the capabilities of AI approaches, such as the characterization of protein disordered regions and the determination of structure and dynamics in situ, with a particular focus on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The outcome of this proposal will be a versatile, accurate and efficient method that will push the boundaries of what can be achieved with AI structure-prediction methods. bAIes will be implemented in the widely used PLUMED library, of which the PI is founder and core developer, thus enabling its application to a wide variety of systems and biological problems beyond those envisioned here.

Mots-clés : integrative modelling protein dynamics protein structure protein disordered states molecular dynamics simulations molecular mechanisms ai structure prediction alphafold
Projet ERC : FRAME (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Cardiff — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1793576.0 €

FRAME capitalises on advances in archaeological science and a critical mass of archaeological material to examine how the Roman Empire’s frontiers in Europe functioned as economic as well as militarised zones. The Empire’s expansion and longevity relied on the capability to maintain large armies and provincial garrisons for long periods. The army comprised c. 300,000 soldiers, mainly concentrated on frontiers and supply was a vast challenge, yet how it was achieved remains poorly understood. International in scale, this multi-disciplinary project will explain how the army was supplied with food and the impact this had on the landscapes and economies of frontier provinces and beyond. The Roman Empire’s frontiers are iconic, and their extensive remains have been a focus of research for centuries. Traditionally viewed as physical and cultural boundaries between civilised Romans and their ‘barbarian’ neighbours, Rome’s frontiers in Europe are ready for this ground-breaking project that will reappraise their functions and roles and make a major contribution to the study of Roman imperialism’s remarkable resilience and longevity.  FRAME focuses on the somewhat neglected (in Roman studies) resource of food remains (animals, plants and organic residues in ceramics) in five frontier regions. By combining cutting-edge multi-isotope and organic residue analysis with archaeological and historical evidence, the project will reconstruct the military diet across frontiers, address how food was produced, the networks that supplied it and the impact this had on frontier landscapes and economies. The ambitious analytical programme will reveal the regional strategies core to the functioning of the Roman Empire and how they were affected by cultural choices and environmental constraints. This multi-scalar methodology, using a suite of methods never before integrated in archaeological research, will provide a blueprint for studying past food supply in wide-ranging contexts globally.

Mots-clés : roman archaeology,biomolecular archaeology,material culture studies,ancient textual sources,roman economy,roman military,isotope archaeology,organic residue analysis
Projet ERC : DERIVATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Fribourg-en-Brisgau — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Why are contemporary readers so fascinated by retellings of the Iliad or Beowulf? And why have retellings of premodern – ancient and medieval – texts not been taken seriously as a literary practice to date? In DERIVATE, I investigate the striking surge of retellings in contemporary English literature by setting the contemporary texts in a productive dialogue with practices of writing in the Middle Ages. The medieval period offers a perfect point of departure for theorizing retellings as medieval literature was inherently derivative and medieval authors had developed a system for being inventive within a system of derivations. Taking issue with the privileging of that which is new in literary history, I propose a new paradigm for literary history: literary history as a history of derivations. Starting from the premise that retelling is a transhistorical concept, the project sheds new light on the processes of reception that find their expression in the current interest in and relevance of premodern material. The project triangulates (classical) reception studies, medieval literary studies as well as literary theory, especially postmodernist theory, and scrutinizes the practice of retelling premodern (ancient and medieval) texts in contemporary English literature. DERIVATE thus develops a theory of retelling based on the intense engagement and critical comparison with medieval practices of retelling in order to map the wider cultural, historical, and literary contexts and implications of the current trend in retellings of classical and medieval texts (audiences, canon, literary market) as a springboard for developing a literary history of derivations.

Mots-clés : medieval literature,literary history,postmodernist theory,retellings,contemporary literature,literary theory
Projet ERC : PHASE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université de Fribourg-en-Brisgau — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2676875.0 €

The transition towards a society based on 100% renewable energy requires massive deployment of photovoltaics of 30-70 TW until 2050. This requires huge amounts of resources, while their limited availability is already becoming apparent. A major lever to reduce resource consumption is to increase the solar cell efficiency. As best single junction solar cells approach their fundamental limits, higher efficiency can only be reached with so-called tandem solar cells, made of two or more subcells. All tandem technologies so far are based on relatively thick absorber layers, reducing resource demand compared to single junction devices by efficiency increase. There, light trapping strategies are used to maximize absorptance close to the band gap of the materials and improve efficiency by few percent relative. However, by applying advanced light trapping techniques such as nanophotonic metasurfac-es, ultrathin single junction devices with a 5-10-fold decrease in semiconductor material were realized. To reduce resource demand further, the concept of ultrathin solar cells must be extended to tandem devices. This introduces severe challenges, as not only absorption needs to be maximized within the active part, but a spectrally dependent light guiding strategy is required. Metasurfaces have shown the ability to manipulate light e.g. spectrally dependent; however, they have never been implemented into tandem solar cells. Thus, the overarching goal of PHASE is to generate a deep physical understanding of metasurfaces for ultrathin tandem solar cells and to develop process flows to implement nanopho-tonic structures into such devices with efficiencies above 30%. This will proof that the chosen tech-nology pathway can support the urgently needed energy transition. More specific, the goal of PHASE is to realize tandem solar cells, where the resource demanding semiconductor part is 10 times thinner (and thus needs 10 times less semiconductor material) than similar existing devices.

Mots-clés : tandem photovoltaics,ultrathin solar cells,wave optical modeling
Projet ERC : SLOWTONICS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université technologique de Dresde — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Dresden
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999264.0 €

Modern technology should not only provide improved efficiency but follow sustainable and minimalistic design principles for an optimised ecological footprint. Photonic applications, e.g., used for information processing in logistics or sensor systems, currently require more and more complex technological solutions to speed up data storage and processing while creating nonrecyclable waste. SLOWTONICS aims at providing a paradigm shift based on biocompatible organic optoelectronic and photonic components.  The design principle of digital luminescence developed in my research group combines easily processable excitonic states at long lifetimes (> 1 µs) with a programmable oxygen-based switch of the luminescence to create a unique programmable photonic framework. By using organic semiconductors, such systems offer a low ecological footprint, small material consumption, and a high degree of material tuneability for tailor-made technological solutions. First prototypes of programmable luminescent tags have demonstrated the potential of this technology yet missing the requirements for industrial application. Based on the existing expertise of my research group in the fields of organic optoelectronics and spectroscopy of soft luminescence materials, SLOWTONICS will overcome current limitations, to realize industry-relevant systems for optical data storage and exchange, and extend the application of digital luminescence towards luminescent security label and multi-component sensor systems. Once having developed novel communication components, we attempt to realize these designs made only from materials found in nature. This is an essential ultimate step because a world with an ever-growing demand for information requires systems that provide functionality and allow for responsible use. Our approach aims at systems that have material footprints of < 0.1 mg/system, making them truly minimalistic and sustainable.

Mots-clés : organic semiconductors,organic electronics and photonics,phosphorescence,persistent luminescence,triplet excitons
Projet ERC : T-Higgs (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université technologique de Dresde — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Dresden
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2292750.0 €

T-Higgs develops “Higgs Spectroscopy” as novel tool to probe the order parameter in superconductors. It will allow unprecedented insights into the structure and dynamics of the condensate and shine new light onto the physics of unconventional superconductors. In particular high temperature superconductivity calls for new probes to reveal its pairing mechanism. T-Higgs can also be applied to intriguing phenomena like light- induced superconductivity, superconductivity in “twisttronics” or under extreme conditions matching the ongoing importance of superconductivity in quantum materials. T-Higgs is a high-field phase-resolved non-linear THz spectroscopy on order parameter excitations of the superconducting ground state itself, the Higgs oscillations. Probing the internal structure of the condensed Cooper pairs this reveals not only the symmetry of the order parameter but also couplings of the condensate to external modes and their interplay with superconductivity.

Mots-clés : higgs,thz,superconductivity,ultrafast,time resolved
Projet ERC : GIULIa (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2993750.0 €

In magnetic hyperthermia (MHT), magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) convert magneto-energy into heat under a time-varying magnetic field. MHT with MNPs is used in catalysis to promote reactions in solution and in cancer therapy, to ‘burn’ primary tumors in clinic, e.g. Glioblastoma, upon deposition of nanoparticles at the tumor site. The power of MHT, being an externally triggered approach to produce heat, goes beyond these actual uses. In GIULIa project I will apply MHT in tasks not yet explored to target the unmet needs of treatment of metastasized tumors and address MHT-mediated locomotion. MHT treatment of cancer metastases is now not doable because of scarce MNP dose accumulation at the spreading tumor sites. In GIULIa, MNPs designed for MHT, will be loaded in/on natural killer (NK) immune cells, which, intravenously injected, will deliver as Trojan horses the right dose of magnetic materials needed for MHT to the metastases. I will aim at raising the capability of NK and CAR-NK immune cells to infiltrate and recognize the tumor. This will merge synergic toxic effects of NK cells immunotherapy with MHT-heat damage of MNPs. Next, magnetic microdevices and their remote locomotion based on MHT-heat gradient, represent a new technological solution for delivery purposes with no tissue-depth attenuation for their actuation. Under MHT, I will explore the localization of heat spots on metallic magnetic-based heterostructures as a means to generate bubbles in a liquid and drag an ad hoc designed magnetic-microdevices to which the heterostructures are anchored. For the scale-up synthesis of metallic-magnetic heterostructures needed for the microdevices, I will merge an in-flow approach to an MHT-route synthesis. The heat at the MNP surface will be used as an in situ energy source to promote the growth of the metallic domain on the MNP. Advanced NK cells and microdevice technology of GIULIa will impact the medical fields of MNP/drug delivery, immunotherapy and smart robotics.

Mots-clés : magnetic hyperthermia,cancer therapy,engineering nk cells,microdevice,hybrid materials,magnetic nanoparticles,nanostructures,in flow synthesis
Projet ERC : EdibleLasers (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Institut Jožef Stefan — Pays : Slovénie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IJS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The goal of EdibleLasers is to make microlasers entirely out of edible materials and explore their potential for barcoding and sensing in food, pharmaceuticals and beyond. In the ongoing ERC Starting Grant Cell-Lasers we have developed several lasers made out of biocompatible and biological materials and implanted them in cells and tissues. If the microlasers are made from biological materials they can also be edible. Building on this work, we have specifically developed several microlaser types that are completely made of edible materials and can be embedded in edible products. Their well-defined spectral fingerprints have the potential to enable much-improved food quality control, safety and traceability, including unclonable security tags and novel barcodes. Because of their small size, edible lasers can be embedded in any food without changing its characteristics such as taste and appearance. The microlasers could detect the freshness of food, as well as measure other food properties such as pH and sugar concentration. Further, the unique emission spectra of each microlaser can encode information directly inside food, such as expiration date and manufacturer data. Here I propose to optimize the edible microlaser sensors and barcodes to be viable as commercial products, to patent this technology and to explore the path toward commercialization. Taken together, developing advanced edible lasers will lead to a great diversity of applications of benefit to the wider society.
Projet ERC : MUC-BITE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death in women and men. CRC can be broadly subdivided into adenocarcinoma-type and mucinous-type CRC, characterised by an overproduction of mucin proteins which is the primary component of mucus. These mucins form a 'physical barrier' that impedes the accessibility of current CRC therapies to their target receptors, limiting what would otherwise be promising cancer drugs. Dr. Karin Strijbis' group has discovered a compelling mucinase enzyme that can effectively degrade the mucin barrier. Preliminary research performed by Dr. Strijbis' group revealed this mucinase's therapeutic potential to enhance the effectivity of approved anti-CRC drugs (i.e., anti-EGFR antibodies and small molecule inhibitors) by demonstrating the removal of obstructive mucin proteins and a decrease in CRC cell proliferation. In MUC-BITE, we present Nano-MUCase, a novel biological based on the conjugation of this mucinase with a nanobody to selectively target CRC tumours for optimal delivery and removal of the mucin barrier. During this PoC project, we will determine the technical and commercial feasibility Nano-MUCase through the following activities: 1. Validate the capabilities of the Nano-MUCase to target CRC tumours and reduce mucin interference of anti-CRC drugs in organoid samples and in vivo. 2. Define an IP strategy by performing a thorough IP landscape and patentability analysis. 3. Conduct market research to discover potential customers/industrial partners, analyse competitors and identify a feasible roadmap to commercialisation. 4. Formulate a detailed business case to guide the commercialisation of the Nano-MUCase to penetrate the market and deliver a new therapeutic strategy to benefit CRC patients.
Projet ERC : EpiPrecise (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Innsbruck — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Cancer has overtaken cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of mortality in high income countries, cancer incidence is increasing across the globe. Morbidity and mortality from women’s cancers, particularly breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers, follow or exceed these general trends in cancer incidence. Tackling this growing cancer burden requires a multifactorial approach including understanding the fundamental drivers of cancer development; improving methods for detecting earlier those forms of cancer with the worst prognosis; predicting a person’s risk of developing cancer; and identifying appropriate targets for preventing cancer. Indeed, one of the biggest obstacles in identifying tailored cancer prevention strategies is a lack of surrogate readout markers reflecting and integrating an individual’s response to the cancer-initiating and cancer-promoting factors that they are exposed to during their lifetime. Our research delivers novel epigenetic tests relating to each of these key areas with an emphasis on women’s cancers and those who are at an increase risk for cancer due to their underlying genetics, such as women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and women with Lynch Syndrome. Central to the discovery and development of the epigenetic tests is a cellular deconvolution algorithm that is used to calculate the proportions of cell types within complex, mixed samples such as cervical swabs. In order to broaden the clinical utility of the tests and explore new applications, refinement and expansion of this cellular deconvolution algorithm is now required. The expansion will include cell types in menstrual blood, which is an important and understudied clinical sample type. The EpiPrecise project will deliver this refined and expanded algorithm and apply it to a test case in an area of high unmet clinical need. The refined algorithm will then be applied across the research portfolio and shared.
Projet ERC : NanoPUF (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The problem: 119 billion EUR worth of counterfeit and pirated goods were sold in the EU in 2022 (Europol/EUIPO). Counterfeiting of goods remains a challenge for our society, increasingly so in a globalised world with long supply chains. Concurrently, the market for sensitive goods, such as medicine has also increased, further exemplifying the need for anti-counterfeit measures. The WHO estimates ~ 100,000 children under five die annually from taking counterfeit pneumonia medication. Current anti-counterfeit measures include tamper-proof seals, security numbers, RFID tags, colour-shifting inks as well as holograms etc.. However, current strategies to prevent counterfeiting of authentic goods are proving inadequate. The lack of a simple and robust way of verifying the authenticity of a product is causing economic and human harm. Simply put, the features in current physical authentication tags are clonable.  The solution: We propose first steps towards the commercialization of nanotechnology-based unclonable physical tags which can be attached to product packaging and authenticated via a 3D-printed portable microscope. This will result in cheap, reliable and fool-proof encryption AND cheap, reliable and fool-proof decryption. Our work, having advanced in the past years from a visionary idea to a prototype, offers an anti-counterfeit packaging solution and can become a part of the supply chain logistics in industries from pharmaceuticals to luxury goods and even for currency.