Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : IGNITE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Institut de recherche en biomédecine — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IRB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995000.0 €

The gene-environment interaction paradigm has long provided a framework for understanding the contribution of environmental cues to cancer initiation. However, recent perspectives reveal that even amongst genetically identical cells, responses to environmental variation can be remarkably diverse. When and how pathogenic gene-environment interactions effectively ignite cancer remains ambiguous.  IGNITE aims to explain what drives cancer initiation beyond genetics by dissecting (mal)adaptive responses to environmental variation at the cell, tissue, and organismal level, taking inflammation-driven pancreatic cancer as a disease paradigm. I hypothesize that qualitatively distinct forms of local and systemic inflammation, which I refer to as “inflammatory contexts”, direct tumor evolution in ways that are largely predetermined by epigenetic fingerprints integrating cells’ lineage, mutational, and environmental exposure history. Hence, I will (1) identify epigenetic determinants underlying the differential potential of pre-malignant and malignant cell states to sense, communicate and evolve within distinct inflammatory contexts; (2) define tissue-level hallmarks of pathogenic vs homeostatic inflammatory contexts, and develop new approaches to engineer immune cell states distinguishing each; and (3) dissect poorly understood links between pancreatic cancer risk and distal inflammatory disorders to uncover organismal mechanisms. IGNITE’s multi-layered perspective of cancer susceptibility and evolution will integrate methodologies to map and functionally interrogate molecular, cellular, tissue, and systemic traits in human samples and physiological models to establish causal relations.  In sum, IGNITE will unmask yet-unknown contextual determinants of cancer beyond genetic susceptibility. The project’s results, new methods and concepts will make it possible to rationally harness inflammatory cues for steering tumor evolution towards clinically manageable states.

Mots-clés : cancer initiation,pancreatic cancer,pre malignancy,immune responses,allergy,psoriasis,single cell sequencing,mouse models
Projet ERC : SiGMA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Rome « Tor Vergata » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1069112.94 €

This project is driven by M-theory, String theory in theoretical physics and the Minimal Model Problem in algebraic geometry. We study singular Kähler spaces with a focus on their special structures (of a differential geometry nature) and their interaction with various areas of analysis. To be more specific, we search for special (singular) Kähler metrics with nice curvature properties, such as Kähler-Einstein (KE) or constant scalar curvature (cscK) metrics. The problem of the existence of these metrics can be reformulated in terms of a Monge-Ampère equation, which is a non-linear partial differential equation (PDE). The KE case has been settled by Aubin, Yau (solving the Calabi conjecture), and Chen-Donaldson-Sun (solving the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture); the cscK case has been very recently worked out by Chen-Cheng (solving a conjecture due to Tian). However, these results only hold on smooth Kähler manifolds, and one still needs to deal with singular varieties. This is where Pluripotential Theory comes into the play. Boucksom-Eyssidieux-Guedj-Zeriahi and the author, along with Darvas and Lu, have demonstrated that pluripotential methods are very flexible and can be adapted to work with (singular) Monge-Ampère equations. Finding a solution to this type of equations that is smooth outside of the singular locus is equivalent to the existence of singular KE or cscK metrics. At this point a crucial ingredient is missing: the regularity of these (weak) solutions. The main goal of SiGMA is to address this challenge by using new techniques and ideas, which might also aid in tackling problems in complex analysis and algebraic geometry. The PI will establish a research group at her host institution focused on regularity problems of non-linear PDE’s and geometric problems in singular contexts. The goal is to create a center of research excellence in this topic.

Mots-clés : k hler manifolds,monge amp re equations,pluripotential theory,envelopes
Projet ERC : STONE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Ljubljana — Pays : Slovénie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 122000.0 €

Stećci are medieval tombstones dispersed throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. Still preserved in situ in tens of thousands in the landscapes, they are common grave markers of the Late Medieval and early Ottoman (12th C - 16th C) Western Balkans’ plural societies. Although erected in the geographical region known for the ‘medley of peoples,’ stećci are not attributed to any ethnic or religious group and have always been considered enigmatic, lacking a clear, explicit belonging. The sheer number and dispersed distribution have hampered stećci scholarship, confining our understanding of this heritage to visual information and historical overviews. This multi-scale, multi-proxy archaeological project will integrate innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to study medieval funerary archaeology. The principal goal is to understand the social life of the society that left us these remarkable monuments. Focusing on medieval Herzegovina, the cradle of the stećci phenomenon, the proposed research into the social lifeways of these monuments will redefine the scholarship of the medieval Western Balkans funerary culture and situate it within a European context, significantly raising its visibility within international scholarship and the public domain. In addition to increasing our understanding of stećci, STONE will establish a discipline of medieval epigraphy in the Western Balkans; introduce epiconography, a conceptually innovative approach to study inscriptions and decorations on stećci; use a prehistoric landscape approach to investigate medieval landscape and initiate a paradigmatic shift away from the current culture-historical approach to the study of past societies. The proposed research will serve as a propulsive force within Western Balkan medieval archaeology, enabling it to make a decades-long leap to align with current medieval European funerary and research trends.

Mots-clés : medieval archaeology,funerary archaeology,social archaeology,social memory,archaeological science,digital humanities
Projet ERC : RS³ (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Helmholtz Center for Information Security — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CISPA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 736374.09 €

In parallel with the ongoing digitization, computer security has become an increasingly important and urgent challenge. In particular, the sound and robust implementation of complex software systems is still not well understood in practice, as evidenced by the steady stream of successful attacks observed in the wild. The current state of the art in software security consists of solutions that are often technically sound, but do not provide operational security in practice. With the Resilient and Sustainable Software Security (RS³) project, we propose a compelling research agenda to fundamentally change this situation by developing novel countermeasures at different system levels that fundamentally improve security. On the one hand, the system must be "resilient" against entire classes of attack vectors. On the other hand, the system must be "sustainable", i.e., it must be able to maintain its security at least over its design lifetime and possibly even adapt over time. Our work plan addresses the problem from four different angles by (i) developing novel software testing strategies that enable accurate and efficient vulnerability discovery, (ii) designing secure compiler chains that embed security properties during the compilation phase that can be enforced at runtime, (iii) devising robust mechanisms that mitigate and patch advanced attacks, and (iv) investigating how hardware changes for open-source hardware (e.g., RISC-V processors) can improve the efficiency and accuracy of all of these goals. We expect to develop innovative methods and fundamental principles to build, test, and patch complex systems securely and efficiently. This holistic approach covers multiple layers of the computing stack, and each aspect has the potential to improve security significantly. The main success criterion will be our ability to perform a security analysis of a complex system an order of magnitude more effectively and efficiently than with current state-of-the-art methods.

Mots-clés : computer security software security software testing fuzzing attack mitigations
Projet ERC : IMPROVE_LIFE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research — Pays : Bangladesh — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ICDDR,B
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 837499.0 €

Globally, one in three women are estimated to experience physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence during their lifetime. Pregnancy is a life-changing time, when violence might subside, occur for the first time or intensify. Abuse and its consequences can be severe for both mother and children, and cascade into the next generation.  IMPROVE_LIFE’s aim is to understand the risk and protective factors for violence during pregnancy, its short and long-term effects and intergenerational impact.  This project proposes the first theorization and empirical assessment of violence during pregnancy, its intergenerational transmission, and health and social effects using clinically tested biomarkers. It will synthesize new and existing intergenerational cohort data from diverse settings: Bangladesh and the UK, use pooled multi-country survey datasets and qualitative evidence.  IMPROVE_LIFE will address five objectives: 1) investigate the short- and long-term social and health effects of violence during pregnancy on women and their children, 2) explore if violence during pregnancy is a marker for severe violence, 3) study maternal and paternal risk factors for the transmission of violence to their children, 4) elicit male and female experiences and views of the causes of violence during pregnancy, and 5) provide evidence on the global applicability of established pathways explaining violence during pregnancy.  The fundamental gains for the protection of women and prevention of violence emerging from this ambitious research programme are immense. The high risks arising from following a cohort after two decades, integrating clinically collected biomarkers and male voices are addressed by a dedicated and experienced PI and team and robust research approaches. The new empirically tested, ecological theoretical framework will be vital to inform policy, prevention and response programmes addressing violence during pregnancy, thereby improving lives.

Mots-clés : violence against women and girls,intimate partner violence
Projet ERC : AGILE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Chemnitz — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999820.0 €

Molecular chemistry impacts on a wide range of transformational activities that the society relies on and thus plays a key role in addressing the societal challenges facing the European Union in the 21st century. Current synthetic methods commonly depend on rare and costly precious metals or face obstacles stemming from mismatching molecular orbitals, which necessitates atom-inefficient synthetic pathways. Hence, research on the utilisation of abundant and environmentally benign elements in synthesis and catalysis and the exploration of alternative activation and functionalisation strategies is urgently required. AGILE addresses these challenges by establishing new methods for breaking and making chemical bonds and for redox-catalysis with a single system, i.e. homo- and heterobimetallic bis(carbene) analogues of aluminium and gallium, which will be utilised as the next generation of selective reagents, high performing catalysts, and valuable ligands. AGILE will develop novel, reactive compounds that combine the benefits of derivatives in highly reactive oxidation states with the cooperativity of dinuclear Al and Ga complexes that are cheap, environmentally benign, and non-toxic. Equipped with unique frontier molecular orbitals, they will provide the reversible reactivity crucially required to unlock a wide range of elemental steps. By merging two one-electron processes, AGILE will overcome the limitations of monometallic two-electron reactions, thereby enabling redox-catalysis by main-group bimetallics. Finally, AGILE will use prototypical Lewis-acids as very strong electron donors to promote redox-catalysis with abundant first-row transition metals. In-depth kinetic, spectroscopic, and computational insight will help us achieve these challenging objectives. By providing new catalysts and expanding the scope of challenging chemical transformations, AGILE will significantly contribute to the development of main-group chemistry and more sustainable synthetic methods.

Mots-clés : cooperative effects bimetallic complexes main group chemistry
Projet ERC : WO-NAM (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université Ca' Foscari de Venise — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1985458.0 €

WO-NAM will provide crucial insights into the history of women’s participation in the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War era, studying the roles of female leaders, women’s movements and women’s organizations. It will redefine existing interpretations of Cold War history and historiography by conducting groundbreaking research on the significance of Non-Aligned networks in shaping transnational debates on women’s rights within international institutions. Bringing together women’s and gender history, global history, and intellectual history, the project will answer the following research questions: what was the role of female activists and leaders within the Non-Aligned Movement? How did women’s organizations contribute to nation-building, modernization, and development in their respective Non-Aligned countries? What was the significance of the Non-Aligned Movement in transnational Cold War debates on women’s rights before and during the UN Decade for Women (1975–1985)? How did women’s internationalism within the Non-Aligned Movement contribute to an intersectional vision of women’s rights, which viewed women’s oppression as inseparable from wider global inequalities? WO-NAM will draw on rich and diverse archival collections on women’s activism in its focus on the case studies of Yugoslavia, Egypt, Tunisia, India, and Cuba. It will have four research strands: female leaders and activists’ biographies, grassroots and state-sponsored women’s organizations, international conferences at UN and NAM level, and transnational knowledge production. In taking Non-Aligned women’s networks as its vantage point, WO-NAM will be the first project to address how female leaders and activists from the Global East and the Global South intervened in a variety of international institutions that were part of, or affiliated to, the United Nations, in order to shape ongoing debates on women’s rights, family planning, and development.
Projet ERC : SmartRust (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université Friedrich-Alexander d'Erlangen-Nuremberg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999250.0 €

So far, materials are seen as passive items. This project aims at providing a solution that can turn objects into matter that can perceive and communicate trigger events. If materials are turned capable of reporting their encountered history, this will significantly contribute to i) ensuring product safety and reliability, ii) making predictive maintenance possible, iii) making complex recycling fates of materials transparent, and iv) enabling autonomous, robot-controlled, resilient manufacturing (Industry 4.0). The key to realize this vision is to make use of smart magnetic particles, largely based on iron oxide (SmartRust). To achieve SmartRust, micron-sized (1-10 µm) supraparticles are composed of magnetic nano building blocks, the “signal transducers”, which are combined with other non-magnetic moieties, the “sensitizers”. A toolbox-like approach using spray-drying allows for nanoparticle assembly of a transducer and a sensitizer type of choice to specifically target a desired type of stimulus. The SmartRust particles are then integrated in materials` matrices. It is hypothesized – and yet an open research question! - that there is an interplay of two magnetic interaction principles: on a hierarchical level I, a trigger event will alter the intra-supraparticle magnetic interactions of the nanoparticles within individual supraparticles. On a hierarchical level II, a trigger event will alter the inter-supraparticle magnetic interactions among the supraparticles when the matrix of the materials, where the supraparticles are embedded in, is altered. The scientific idea is that this magnetic interaction information can be read out fast, easily, in a non-destructive way and from within a material, enabled by the technique magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS). If this endeavour is successful in obtaining a meaningful signal-structure-trigger correlation, ultimately, design rules could be deduced how to create conscious matter using SmartRust.

Mots-clés : supraparticles nanoparticle assemblies magnetic nanomaterials perceptual matter magnetic interaction recorders signal transducers sustainable use of materials smart materials interactive materials 3d printing environmental influences
Projet ERC : Great.Power.Finance (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Leibniz-Gemeinschaft — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WLG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997244.0 €

The world is entering a new era of great power rivalry, with the rise of China and the Russia-Ukraine war being only the most visible signs. This proposal asks: What are the implications of these developments for global finance? Will China’s rise accelerate financial globalization or rather reverse it? What do the growing tensions between great powers imply for financial markets around the world? And what motivates China to invest trillions of dollars of state funds into its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? It is difficult to answer these questions, because major shifts in the international order occur only every few generations. We therefore need to look back, but existing research in international finance mostly relies on evidence since the 1970s – from an era dominated by the US and in which states had limited influence on capital flows. As a result, our knowledge on the role of state power in global finance is limited. More generally, the literature on geopolitics and international economics is still in its infancy. With this proposal, I want to fill these gaps. I use theory, rigorous empirical methods, and comprehensive new data to study how the rise and fall of great powers (or geopolitics) shaped global investments over the past 200 years. In part one, I embark on a major data gathering effort on North-South capital flows and investor returns at a micro-level, covering tens of thousands of individual bonds, stocks, and infrastructure projects since 1800. In part two, I use this comprehensive new data to analyse: (1) how changes in the international balance of power influence the global allocation of capital; (2) how geopolitical shocks such as wars affect investor returns in the short and long run; and (3) whether and how rising powers use infrastructure investments as a strategic tool to extend influence abroad, in particular to advance their energy security, access to scarce raw materials, and for military control.

Mots-clés : international capital flows,cross border investments,geopolitics,international political economy
Projet ERC : SymbiOCEAN (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
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 : 2203975.0 €

Single-celled marine plankton, that sustain oceanic food webs and strongly impact the global carbon cycle, can establish various kinds of symbioses to gain energy. Plastid symbiosis, whereby host cells temporarily integrate microalgal cells (photosymbiosis) or just their photosynthetic plastids (kleptoplastidy) as intracellular solar-powered carbon factories, is a key interaction in worldwide surface oceans. Plastid symbiosis was at the origin of a major evolutionary innovation that spread photosynthesis across eukaryotes, transforming the biosphere. Despite this ecological and evolutionary importance, very little is known about how a photosynthetic machinery is structurally and metabolically integrated into a host cell and what mechanisms allow cells to transport sugars, the main photosynthetic product and energetic currency. The central concept of SymbiOcean is that plastid symbiosis forms a metabolic unit where the source (engulfed microalgae/plastid) is metabolically engineered by the sink (host) to produce and transfer carbon energy. Working with original non-model symbiotic systems, I will develop novel imaging and genetic tools to mechanistically dissect this key metabolic interaction at different scales. Combining multimodal subcellular imaging and photophysiology, I will first unveil how the photosynthetic machinery is morphologically and metabolically remodeled in symbiosis to provide benefits to the host. I will then investigate the identity, localization and role of sugar transporters underlying the source-sink carbon flux in plastid symbiosis, providing the basis to evaluate the evolutionary and environmental forces that shape the metabolic connection. Crossing boundaries between structural biology, eco-physiology and evolution, this ambitious project will resolve fundamental mechanisms in widespread planktonic symbioses, advancing our understanding of the functioning and carbon flux of marine ecosystems.

Mots-clés : oceanic symbiosis,microalgae,photosynthetic plastids,subcellular imaging,eukaryotes,phytoplankton,transporters