Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : INTRAPOL (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université de Turku — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1533887.0 €

The INTRAPOL project aims to understand the processes that determine who get elected into positions of political power and whether who is in power is important for citizens’ welfare. A well-performing system is able to select competent and honest leaders who are representative of the citizens’, and who have incentives or the will to make decisions to the benefit of the people. We study these fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies from an intra-party perspective. We consider the party and its various actors as separate entities. We aim to understand the role of insiders in representative democracy by carrying out a thorough analysis of how political parties operate, connect to voters, organize their internal structure, and recruit their political personnel, and to study the policy effects of these choices. The first work package travels far to the past to the origins of the modern party system in Victorian England. We build a remarkable data set of real-life voting choice that is possible due to studying pre-secret-ballot era. This allows us to apply quasi-experimental designs study whether voters identify with parties or candidates. Are voters motivated by changes in their economic interests? How does the entry and exit of candidates affect the fortunes of the parties and voter flows between the candidates? What was the political geography of Victorian England? The second work package studies the internal organization of parties by analyzing the objectives and role of party leaders and internal conflicts within parties by developing and estimate structurally an equilibrium model of party organizations. We test our model using both quasi-experimental and survey experimental designs and data from modern UK and Finland. Third work package uses The Finnish Defense Forces draft data on cognitive competence and personality traits to analyze their role in political selection and its policy effects using quasi-experimental research designs.

Mots-clés : political geography,political psychology,political selection,quantitative analysis
Projet ERC : LEEX (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : University of Wuppertal — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BUW
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993375.0 €

Large-scale simulations of lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) can provide crucial input for searches of new physics at the precision frontier, like in the calculation of the hadronic contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. To find evidence of new physics beyond the current knowledge provided by the Standard Model will require to reach per-mille precision. Attaining such accuracy in the hadronic contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in lattice QCD can only be achieved by controlling lattice systematics, such as logarithmic terms in the continuum extrapolation, finite volume effects and exponentially increasing noise at large time distances. Simulating gauge ensembles at lattice spacing a<0.04 fm is impossible with current algorithms due to topological freezing. Generative models based on gauge equivariant flows can unfreeze the charge but scale badly with the volume, limiting, up to now, their applicability to toy models. We propose a solution to overcome topological freezing and suppress exponential noise by developing scalable algorithms for lattice QCD simulations closer to the continuum limit and at physical quark masses based on domain decomposition. By combining machine-learned flow proposals with hierarchical accept/reject steps of the factorized fermion determinant, ensembles at very small lattice spacings can be generated using upcoming european exascale supercomputers. We will implement multi-level sampling techniques within a flexible framework to enable good performance of the here developed novel Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm on exascale systems. By the newly generated gauge ensembles lattice QCD will provide a leap in the precision frontier thereby critically contributing in the unraveling of new physics.

Mots-clés : lattice qcd
Projet ERC : DeCoDe (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université technique de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1975000.0 €

Any cell and each of its organelles needs to interact with its environment. Membrane proteins, which span the plasma membrane and the multiple endomembranes of a eukaryotic cell, mediate these interactions. They allow cells to move, thrive and defend - and multicellular organisms to exist. Humans dedicate almost one third of their genes to membrane proteins. Failures in membrane protein biogenesis or function cause numerous human diseases from cancer to neurological disorders.  By far most eukaryotic membrane proteins are produced at one organelle, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where a dedicated protein folding and quality control machinery supports and controls protein structure formation. In contrast to our comprehensive understanding for secreted proteins, our understanding how cells support and control the biogenesis of membrane proteins is still limited. To further advance our understanding in this key area in molecular cell biology is the major aim of this proposal. Using recent biochemical and cell biological techniques combined with newly developed tools, we will address the following major questions:  How do cellular quality control factors determine the folding state of a membrane protein? Which molecular signatures underlie the decision to chaperone or to degrade a membrane protein? How do chaperones collaborate in membrane protein biogenesis? Which further membrane protein chaperones and quality control factors exist in the mammalian ER?  Answers to these questions will be major steps forward in our understanding of the inner workings of cells but also of the mechanisms underlying membrane protein-associated diseases. Three objectives will serve this goal:  Objective 1: Define signatures of intramembrane quality control decisions Objective 2: Dissect chaperone synergies in membrane protein biogenesis Objective 3: Identify novel membrane protein chaperones by functionally validated interactome analyses

Mots-clés : membrane proteins,chaperones
Projet ERC : RISE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1655000.0 €

Solutions of geometric variational problems describe equilibrium configurations of physical systems or provide preferred representatives in homology and homotopy classes. Their singularities can be linked to concentration of energy or to topological obstructions, and their study is then of fundamental importance in their applications to Geometry and Physics. This project intends to leverage on a series of novel techniques introduced by the PI in recent years to significantly improve our knowledge of geometric variational problems. The project will address a series of fundamental questions concerning the regularity and the structure of singularities of solutions to geometric variational problems whose answer will enhance our understanding of their behavior. This will be done according to three deeply interrelated lines of research: Regularity of minimizers and critical points in geometric measure theory, Singular structure of PDE constrained measures, Structure of free boundaries and of solutions to spectral optimization problems.

Mots-clés : geometric measure theory,calculus of variations,partial differential equations,free boundaries,regularity
Projet ERC : ZygoCiliaAct (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

A hallmark of meiosis is chromosomal pairing, which for decades has been a major focus in the field. However, the nuclear events of meiosis occur in the cellular context of a differentiating gamete, and pairing depends on cytoplasmic counterparts, by mechanisms that are conserved from yeast to mammals. These are essential for fertility, but how cytoplasmic counterparts of chromosomal pairing are regulated has remained enigmatic. We uncovered a previously unrecognized cilium in meiosis – the zygotene cilium, in both males and females and in zebrafish and the mouse, which completes the mechanical cytoplasmic pairing machinery, and extracellularly extend between oocytes within a conserved cellular hub, called the germline cyst. We established the ground-breaking observations that the cilium is essential for chromosomal pairing, prophase progression and cyst morphogenesis, ovary development and fertility. These uncover the novel concept of a cilium as a critical player in meiosis, propose a cellular paradigm that cilia can control chromosomal dynamics, and shed new light on reproduction phenotypes in human ciliopathies. The zygotene cilium now allows us to zoom-out from the nuclear events of prophase to the complete cellular and developmental program of meiosis. Utilizing our holistic morphological approach in-vivo, ZygoCiliaAct will ambitiously achieve this goal in three related but independent aims. We will uncover zygotene cilium functional mechanical and regulatory components (Aim 1), decipher the ciliary developmental signals that govern meiotic prophase progression and cyst morphogenesis (Aim 2), and expand our findings to investigation in testes, as well as use zebrafish as a new model to decipher mechanisms of human ciliopathic proteins (Aim 3). With ZygoCiliaAct we are finally poised to break new grounds in unraveling long-sought-after fundamental questions cell, developmental, cilia, and reproductive biology, and advance reproduction and ciliopathy medicine.

Mots-clés : meiosis,cilium,oogenesis,chromosomal pairing,morphogenesis,ovary,centrosome mtoc,zebrafish,germ cell development,spermatogenesis,ciliopathy,reproduction and fertility,live imaging
Projet ERC : Local Law under Rome (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999019.0 €

Law and order were Rome’s vehicles for displaying its imperial authority and supremacy over non-Roman subjects. However, Rome did not fill a legal vacuum; rather, it competed with established legal practices among communities in the Greek East. These communities took pride in their legal traditions, as they were being absorbed into the Roman legal order. Consequently, the sphere of law served provincials as a major arena for negotiating Roman power and demarcating their own local identities: what customs to maintain and what trends to resist? Despite scholarly interest in the plurality of laws under Rome, this project proposes an innovative cross-disciplinary study of these local legal cultures as an expression of provincial agency and self-determination. While previous studies were limited to the scattered remains of legal activities in the Greek East on papyri or on inscriptions, it is the premise of this project that only by integrating the hitherto neglected body of Jewish jurisprudence we may gain access into provincial perceptions of their legal cultures. Early rabbinic literature (1st-3rd centuries CE), which has been marginalized as an isolated phenomenon, is in fact the only comprehensive source of local law-making under Rome and is therefore the most appropriate framework for studying provincial legalisms in all of their forms. By applying a multi-dimensional comparative analysis of key legal fields, Local Law under Rome provides a structured method including the following stages for proceeding towards a new understanding of subordinate legal discourse: First, the project contextualizes each system of local law separately against the background of Roman legal administration and local traditions. Next, it discerns patterns of integration across different legal traditions, and finally it characterizes the distinct nature of provincial legalism, as means for cultural and political distinction in circumstances of law without power.

Mots-clés : ancient judaism,jewish law,roman law,indigenous law,roman imperialism,papyrology,anthropology of law
Projet ERC : FTRC (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1597685.0 €

Cryptography has repeatedly revolutionized modern technology via its "easy-or-infeasible" design paradigm, classifying computations as either "easy" or "infeasible". Nowadays, however, this foundational paradigm is insufficient for a host of rapidly evolving applications, and a fine-grained accounting of sequential timing guarantees is urgently needed. This has recently led to substantial interest in the classic yet insufficiently-explored vision of timed-release cryptography, enabling cryptographic systems to rely on such guarantees realistically. Despite the significant attention, the vision of timed-release cryptography is still alarmingly far, and the landscape of our current knowledge must rapidly change to facilitate its deployment: Timed-release cryptography suffers from an extreme lack of candidate schemes, and the security of its main candidates is provided directly by assumption (with essentially no supporting evidence other than the lack of successful "speed-up" attacks).  This proposal aims to establish robust foundations for timed-release cryptography by obtaining an in-depth understanding of the computational landscape, building blocks, and schemes required for realizing its premise. Specifically, I plan to direct our effort towards addressing the following three fundamental objectives, which span a broad and interdisciplinary flavor of research directions: (1) Explore sources of computational hardness that enable to base timed-release cryptography on the hardness of well-studied problems, (2) identify the extents to which timed-release primitive building blocks require cryptographic structure and can be utilized in designing more complex schemes, and (3) construct concrete such schemes offering a wide range of security and functionality guarantees. I strongly believe that substantial progress towards our objectives will enable us to realize the premise of timed-release cryptography, and will have a long-lasting impact on cryptography.

Mots-clés : cryptography foundations
Projet ERC : PHOSCYCLE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université suédoise des sciences agricoles — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : SLU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1930839.0 €

Phosphorus (P) is a macronutrient whose availability strongly affects many processes in terrestrial ecosystems. P is recycled through organic P (OP) decomposition, resulting in the generation of inorganic P available for plant uptake. Despite the importance of this process for P cycling and other related biogeochemical cycles, our understanding of OP decomposition is to date very poor, largely due to the lack of methods to determine the decomposition and turnover of OP in soils. In PHOSCYCLE, I will develop a novel approach to study the decomposition and turnover of OP in soils. I will lead my team to develop compound-specific isotope methods to analyze the isotope signature of carbon (C) in OP compounds, enabling us to determine for the first time the isotope signature of all important phosphomono- and diesters present in soils. We will utilize these new methods that make use of different C isotopes to quantify the decomposition rate and turnover time of OP compounds in comparison to the soil total organic C pool and non-phosphorylated organic compounds in soils on three continents under various forms of land use. In addition, we will establish how OP quality and soil minerals affect the sorption and persistence of OP in soils. Finally, we will model the turnover of the soil total OP pool as well as the cycling of P between soil and plants in a large range of ecosystems, revealing how soil OP turnover affects P cycling in these ecosystems. Besides leading to a step-change in the way we study and understand the P cycle in terrestrial ecosystems, PHOSCYCLE will also provide a new starting point for our understanding of soil organic matter dynamics and interactions between element cycles in terrestrial ecosystems.

Mots-clés : element cycling,soil organic matter,phosphorus cycle
Projet ERC : GRAFT-ABLE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université suédoise des sciences agricoles — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : SLU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999880.0 €

Modern agriculture depends on developing new crops and techniques to enhance yields, disease resistance and tolerance to drought and extreme temperatures. One such innovation has been the development of plant grafting whereby two plants are cut and joined together to combine their best properties. At the graft junction, cells from the different plants expand, divide and in some instances exchange genetic material including DNA. This exchange of DNA forms hybrid cells between the two plants. Our ability to graft distantly related plants is growing and thus, hybridisation at the graft junction is a promising means to allow plants to hybridise that normally could not. However, how tissues fuse and cells hybridise remains largely unknown, and our ability to exploit this hybridisation technology remains limited  In GRAFT-ABLE, I will consolidate my expertise in plant grafting and build a dedicated team to identify the processes and molecular players that contribute to tissue fusion and DNA exchange at the graft junction in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Using a combination of advanced microscopy techniques, single cell sequencing and genetic screens, I will identify how cells hybridise and determine which genes and cells contribute to hybrid cell formation. Using this information, I will deploy chemicals and novel grafting techniques to enhance hybridisation rates and to develop transgene free methods for hybrid formation. Graft hybrids will be generated from Arabidopsis thaliana to its relatives and also from various agriculturally relevant species.  By unravelling the molecular and developmental processes that occur at the graft junction, GRAFT-ABLE will provide fundamental information to better understand how different plants fuse tissues, how hybrids form and develop novel methodologies to isolate and grow hybrids. Such hybrids could overcome breeding barriers and combine genomes from two species to form superior plants for agriculture and forestry.

Mots-clés : plant hybridisation,plant grafting,plasmodesmata,arabidopsis,conifers,cell walls,tomato,graft hybrids
Projet ERC : AIRstructure (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université hébraïque de Jérusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

B- and T- cell adaptive immune receptor (AIR) repertoires are highly diverse, enabling response to a wide range of pathogens. While sequencing of an individual's immune repertoires is becoming common, our ability to convert these datasets into comprehensive antigen exposure information to inform clinical decisions is limited. The major challenges are to identify the antigens recognized by B-cell and T-cell immune receptors (BCRs/antibodies and TCRs), model their structures and determine their epitopes. Experimental approaches for epitope mapping are costly and low-throughput. While deep learning-based models have revolutionized structural biology by predicting highly accurate structures of proteins and protein complexes, they rely on multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) that are not available for the AIR-antigen interactions. Recently, my group has designed geometric deep learning models for AIR structure modeling and for epitope prediction without MSA. In this project, I will build on my expertise in modeling protein-protein interactions, including AIR-antigen, and in geometric deep learning to develop accurate and high-throughput models that address the specific challenges of AIR-antigen systems. My main goals are to develop deep learning-based models for: (i) accurate and high-throughput end-to-end structure modeling of AIR-antigen interactions; (ii) design of epitope-specific AIRs for targeting broadly neutralizing epitopes and optimized antigenicity profiles; and (iii) structure-based specificity prediction for mining large AIR repertoires. These approaches will advance the analysis of immune repertoires, improve our understanding of immune response, and enable designing vaccines and therapeutics with broad specificity and resistance to antigenic mutations. Moreover, the methods will empower the cancer epitope discovery and the detection of autoimmune receptors.

Mots-clés : geometric deep learning protein complex modeling adaptive immune receptors