Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : REalCYCLE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499926.0 €

Antibiotic resistance is quickly becoming one of the greatest healthcare challenges of our time. It is soon expected to claim more lives annually than the COVID-19 pandemic or cancer. Yet, the urgency of this problem is not reflected in our efforts to solve it.  Because blocking bacterial growth is key in treating disease, greater insight into the bacterial cell cycle is needed. Currently, the bacterial cell cycle is primarily studied under optimal lab conditions. This is equivalent to studying the behaviour of an animal kept prisoner in a zoo. Although valuable observations can be made, essential information will be missed.  To obtain a more accurate view of bacterial growth, I will investigate the cell cycle of the major human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae while applying clinically relevant stresses. Based on my first-hand experience with the S. pneumoniae cell cycle, I hypothesize that many cell cycle regulatory mechanisms have been overlooked thus far because of their relatively low importance in optimal growth conditions, which are rarely encountered in reality.  I will identify genes involved in such cell cycle regulatory mechanisms at a genome-wide scale using an innovative approach I developed for this purpose. In contrast to fitness-based nonspecific read-outs, I will perform FACS-seq (fluorescence-activated cell sorting-based sequencing) to select mutants in which specific cell cycle processes are altered based on appropriate fluorescent read-outs. After identifying the selected mutants, I will characterize the molecular mechanisms involved and investigate their level of conservation.  My research will substantially advance our understanding of how bacteria regulate their cell cycle when exposed to real-life stresses. My results can therefore provide a starting point for the development of new antimicrobial therapies that target mechanisms important for growth in vivo. Given the emerging antibiotic resistance crisis, such efforts are urgently needed.

Mots-clés : cell cycle regulation,stress response,bacteria,streptococcus pneumoniae
Projet ERC : VERTEXSO (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 735986.25 €

Mitigating global climatic changes due to human influences is of paramount importance in the coming decades. Historically, the global ocean has played a critical role in this process by taking up the majority of the excess heat and about 30% of the anthropogenic carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from the atmosphere. The largest share of this uptake process occurred through the subduction of waters in the Southern Ocean that sequester heat and carbon in deeper layers of the ocean. Yet, global climate models have their largest biases in this region and difficulties in representing its past climatic changes. Thus, their future projections bear large uncertainties in the potential of the Southern Ocean to continuously provide such a mitigation service. VERTEXSO addresses this challenge by studying vertical transport processes, improving their representation in models, and developing novel methods to continuously monitor the vertical exchange. In order to reach these goals, this project performs simulations with a regional ocean model that is able to directly resolve convective plumes and assesses their impact on vertical carbon exchange. We then scale the insights to a global level by improving parameterisations of vertical processes in an Earth System Model, and by investigating their impacts on global climatic changes. Facilitated by most recent advances in remotely observing the Southern Ocean high latitudes, we explore tracers of convective plumes in subsurface data and integrate these observations with satellite data to assess surface density stratification changes. The latter forms a new measure for vertical exchange that serves as a benchmark for model simulations and a tool to monitor the potential of the Southern Ocean to take up and release CO2 and heat. Through this combination of observational data with multi-scale model simulations, VERTEXSO advances the understanding of vertical exchange in the Southern Ocean and how its changes affect the global climate.

Mots-clés : southern ocean,stratification,convection,carbon,heat,ocean circulation,remote sensing,observations,modelling
Projet ERC : OMEGA (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a debilitating and incurable disease. Scaring of the lung leads to respiratory failure and 50% of patients die 3-5 years after diagnosis. Our understanding of the pathophysiology of PF is unfortunately limited to established and advanced stages when the extensive lung scaring is irreversible. OMEGA is designed to explore new mechanisms underlying PF progression, from early to advanced disease and propose therapies that timely target the disease, prior to becoming permanent. Two lines of evidence are at the core of OMEGA. First, I was among the first to show that circulating monocytes are strongly linked to PF pathology. Which subtypes are important and what roles they play in PF etiology, however, is still unknown. Second, interstitial lung abnormalities or ILA are the only detectable features characterizing earlier stages of PF and can be identified in people without clinical suspicion of disease. Studying ILA provides the unique opportunity to identify early targets that would prevent progression to PF. OMEGA will first provide a detailed phenotype definition of human monocyte subtypes from early to advanced PF. Second, it will probe mechanistically how and where the monocytes acquire a pathogenic phenotype as they journey from the bone marrow to the blood and differentiate in the fibrotic lung. I will use human and mouse material and state-of-the-art methodology to answer these questions. My current standing ensures direct and ample access to patient samples, clinical data, multi-disciplinary interactions, and a team of consultants/collaborators that will make possible identifying how monocytes and their progenitors are involved in the progression of PF, and what pathways we can target, as early as disease starts, and as early as monocytes egress the bone marrow, to end the progression of this deadly disease.

Mots-clés : pulmonary fibrosis monocytes lung
Projet ERC : MEKanics (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
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 : 0.0 €

Homeostatic platelet counts are crucial for vascular integrity and vital to life. Megakaryocytes (MEKs) are giant hematopoietic cells forming large protrusions that fragment to constantly replenish the circulating platelet pool. Nevertheless, severe blood loss, sepsis and aggressive cancer therapies, often cause critically low platelet levels - a major public health problem in Europe's aging population. Despite the unmet clinical need to control platelet production, there is a major lack of knowledge about the mechanistic cell biology of MEKs, hampering the development of innovative therapies. MEKanics will go beyond the state of the art and proposes a combined cell biological and biophysical approach to study MEKs in physiological tissue environments to uncover the mechanical principles that drive platelet formation. I will use quantitative microscopy to characterize cytoskeletal dynamics of MEKs confined in 3D environments of controlled adhesiveness, geometry and stiffness to reveal the mechanisms of force generation and transmission critical for MEK protrusion formation. Further, I will explore how protrusion mechanics affect cytoplasmic transport and partitioning of organelles required for functional platelets. Using super-resolution intravital imaging, I will investigate these processes in their physiological bone marrow niche. By integrating scRNAseq and live-cell microscopy, I will map morpho-dynamics with transcriptomics to identify the gene signature initiating protrusion formation of MEKs in response to mechanical stimuli. A novel MEK cell-system with optimized access to genetic manipulations will allow high-throughput screening of candidate genes. Together, the unique combination of genetics, engineering, quantitative microscopy and intravital tools will provide a holistic cell mechanical model of MEKs in 3D tissues paving the way for new therapeutic approaches to control platelet formation and to advance devices for large-scale platelet production.

Mots-clés : cell motility,force transmission,actin dynamics,platelets,thrombopoiesis,megakaryopoiesis,cellular confinement
Projet ERC : ARPIE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The purpose of this project is to apply and develop robust mathematical methods for solving asymptotic problems on repulsive point processes and partial differential equations. The point processes considered will mostly be taken from the theory of random matrices, such as the eigenvalues of random normal matrices, but we will also consider discrete point processes with a more combinatorial structure, such as lozenge tilings of a hexagon. These models are used in neural networks, multivariate statistics, nuclear physics and number theory, and therefore have been widely discussed in the physics and mathematics literature. We will investigate asymptotic properties of such processes as the number of points (or eigenvalues, or lozenges) gets large. All the point processes considered have in common an interesting feature: they are repulsive, in the sense that neighbouring points repel each other. However, in other aspects these processes are very different from one another, and some of them require completely novel techniques. For example, the tiling models are related to non-Hermitian matrix-valued orthogonal polynomials and two-dimensional point processes are out of reach of standard methods when the rotation-invariance is broken. An important part of the project is to develop novel techniques to analyse these point processes. The last part of the project focuses on integrable partial differential equations. The objective is to develop a new approach for solving long-standing problems with time-periodic boundary conditions. One of the main tools we will use is the Deift-Zhou steepest descent method for Riemann-Hilbert (RH) problems. By solving new problems using this approach, this project will contribute to the development of the method itself. Since the range of applicability of RH methods is very broad, these new techniques are likely to have an impact on a wide spectrum of scientific questions.

Mots-clés : random matrix theory structured determinants riemann hilbert problems boundary value problems tiling models
Projet ERC : PINPOINT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
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 : 1462501.75 €

What are the political sources and consequences of economic globalization, and how do political institutions shape globalization? Current frameworks for understanding the politics over economic globalization emphasize a fragmentation of politics: political conflict breaks down to individual firms and citizens, because the gains from trade are concentrated on large, globally engaged, and politically active firms. Departing from this view, PINPOINT develops an innovative framework built on the linkages between firms created by domestic production networks. Production ties imply a much broader impact of economic globalization, because many domestic firms interact with international markets indirectly as suppliers and as customers of globally engaged firms. Moreover, these linkages vary in quantity and quality. To date, we know surprisingly little about the role of production networks in politics, which creates a mismatch between the structure of modern economies and current theoretical frameworks. Ignoring such ties risks misattributing the impact of economic globalization, overlooking economic roots of political coalitions, and misunderstanding the sources and consequences of economic globalization. PINPOINT places economic exchange between firms front and center in an account of the behavior of governments, firms, and citizens in the context of international markets, and of the role of institutions in such an account. PINPOINT will provide theoretical and empirical innovations that lead to a revised understanding of the political underpinnings of economic globalization and of the mechanisms through which institutions shape economic globalization.

Mots-clés : production networks,trade policy,political institutions,firms,firm heterogeneity,international trade,electoral systems,trade liberalization,political economy,political coalitions,globalization
Projet ERC : AmpEFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

I propose a research program that may forever change the way we build and apply effective field theory to connect with formal theories and experiments. This will be achieved through the lenses of scattering amplitudes, which are the central observables in quantum field theory. By manifesting fundamental principles using scattering amplitudes in effective field theory, we can uncover surprising simplicity and new structures. My research has already led to the discovery and developments of this kind.  This proposal selects two important systems to demonstrate the full power and wide applicability of this new renaissance: the classical two-body problem in general relativity and the quantum effective field theory for new particles beyond the Standard Model. Both systems are of interest to current and future experimental developments. Specifically, this research consists of three concrete goals: to solve the gravitational two-body problem in a new regime with radiation; to solve the gravitational two-body problem beyond the weak-gravity regime; and to identify new organizing principles and classification in the effective field theory for new particles.  The three research objectives, despite a large disparity in scales, share common skills and are highly complementary to each other. The unique combination of tools and topics also depart from mainstream approaches. Progress toward any one of the above aims would have important conceptual implications and valuable practical applications to classical gravity and particle phenomenology.  I will pursue a data-driven strategy for this project by generating and exploring theoretical data. My suitability and expertise are amply demonstrated by my research and tracked records: not only have I played a central role in applying amplitudes to obtain important results in effective field theory, but my record-breaking results have led to important implications from classical to quantum.

Mots-clés : scattering amplitudes,effective field theory,post minkowskian expansion,standard model effective field theory
Projet ERC : HYPERION (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1577695.0 €

Deciphering the code of life has sparked one of the biggest scientific endeavours in human history. Today, 18 years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, databases around the globe host over a million genomes. Surprisingly, one of the most important results that has emerged from this abundance of genetic information is how diverse and complex the processes are that control the constant regeneration, preservation, and adaptation of life. Understanding the relationships between cellular genotype and phenotype is therefore of fundamental importance in developmental biology as well as in the biomedical sciences. Many molecular mechanisms that shape our body during our life are still largely un-known due to the limitations of current sequencing technologies which can only glimpse a single moment in time. In stark contrast, biological cells constantly monitor their function and can, if needed, quickly adjust to changes in their environment by the transfer of information between the nucleus and the cellular protein machinery in form of RNA. Yet despite their essential function no technique can record these highly dynamic profiles of intracellular RNA. Gathering transcriptomic profiles from intact cells and within living organisms therefore represents a major challenge for any existing sequencing and sensing technology.  Here, HYPERION introduces an entirely new concept of optical sequencing to detect transcriptomic information in real time and inside living biological cells. It is based on ultra-sensitive plasmonic nanolasers that combine recent advancements in extreme optics with a new concept to spatially confine RNA molecules. These lasers could be adapted to sense other biomolecules and mark the beginning of a new era in intracellular biosensing. Like the titan god of light, supposed to bring mankind the gift of sight, HYPERION will exploit the unrivalled precision of laser light to uncover the processes that shape life on the molecular level.

Mots-clés : optical sequencing,rna sequencing,live cell sequencing,nanolaser,laser spectroscopy
Projet ERC : ASPIRE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 339427.5 €

The new frontier for weather prediction is the so-called subseasonal time scale of two weeks to two months ahead. To take preventive measures at an early stage, reliable forecasts on this time scale are becoming increasingly important for multiple socio-economic sectors. Subseasonal predictability can be gained from recurring patterns in the Earth system. ASPIRE will focus on one of these, namely modes of tropical convective variability. Long-standing systematic errors due to the parametrization of processes in numerical weather prediction models prevent the predictability of these modes from being exploited. Simply running models at a resolution high enough to resolve tropical convection is not feasible due to high computational costs. Taking advantage of three recent developments, ASPIRE will explore new ways to better exploit the intrinsic predictability of tropical convective modes without exhausting the currently available computing resources. The uniqueness of ASPIRE is its cross-disciplinary approach that builds on my experience in atmospheric dynamics and predictability, numerical modeling, and machine learning (ML). First, ASPIRE will identify the source regions and pathways of tropical forecast errors that prevent the intrinsic predictability from being exploited using a new set of subseasonal ensemble hindcasts. Second, ASPIRE will quantify for the first time the added value of locally confined kilometer-scale resolution in the source regions identified before, and generate probabilistic predictions from deterministic forecasts through ML-based post-processing. Third, to enable simulations at kilometer-scale resolution in operations, ASPIRE will develop ML approaches that emulate the integrated effect of the resolved convection in the tropics at substantially reduced costs. If successful, this approach would be a breakthrough towards improved operational weather forecasts at substantially lower computational costs, for a global socio-economic benefit.

Mots-clés : subseasonal predictability numerical modelling tropical extratropical teleconnections
Projet ERC : OPPORTUNITY (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université de Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1268750.0 €

School track decisions, university or major choice, and initial job finding are all decisive for seizing life opportunities. When individuals from different socio-economic groups make different high-stakes decisions at these critical junctions, this can reinforce existing inequalities and lead to lock-in effects that are difficult to undo later in life. Understanding decision-making at these stages is thus fundamental to analyse and tackle inequality of opportunity.  Individuals and evaluators make critical educational or occupational decisions under imperfect information due to uncertainties about true ability and future productivity. To resolve uncertainty, ability signals and their interpretation – both received and sent – are crucial components of decision-making, sorting and selection. OPPORTUNITY analyses the role of ability signals (such as grades, standardized tests, certificates, degrees, or CV information) for inequalities in high-stakes decision-making under uncertainty and inequality-reinforcing statistical and stereotypical discrimination by socio-economic background. To this end, it will draw on i) experimental methods in lab and field to study the role of social environment and ability signals for unequal educational and occupational choices; ii) administrative records to obtain information about absolute and relative ability signals (grades and degrees) awarded at various institutions over time; iii) econometric techniques that help exploit exogenous variation to make causal inference about the role of SES and different ability signals for efficient sorting and selection. OPPORTUNITY will promote an innovative research agenda providing novel answers on how to mitigate the unfair and inefficient allocation of talent. It will inform about policies that provide resources or changing ability signals to enhance equality of opportunity, one of the most urgent topics in Europe’s diverse, aging, and increasingly segregated societies.

Mots-clés : equality of opportunity,educational choice,uncertainty,socio economic inequalities