Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PSYPOL (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Kent — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2472408.0 €

To understand how modern democracies function, we must understand how mass opinion on public policy is formed, develops, and changes over time (i.e., its causes), and how it affects the social structure (i.e., its consequences). Research on public policy in economics, political science and sociology has revealed a puzzling pattern– people’s political attitudes often do not reflect objective reality or rational self-interest. Psychology has a long tradition of examining the social pressures, cognitive biases, and competing motivations that prevent people’s attitudes from aligning with objectivity and rationality. PSYPOL will extend these insights to the political domain, by examining the social, cognitive, and motivational bases of policy preferences (Objectives 1, 2 & 3). It will also examine the consequences of these preferences for individuals’ political behavior (Objective 4) and for the social structure (Objective 5). The project will focus on three areas of public policy that share common conceptual roots and empirical gaps, as well as being highly salient in contemporary politics: inequality, immigration and international relations. PSYPOL will take a novel causal-developmental approach by testing processes of psychological change in massive samples of adolescents and adults, concurrently. Two largescale data collection initiatives– VOICE (adults) and SNAP (adolescents) –will enable five state-of-the art methods, each offering unique and complementary insights. These are: (1) longitudinal and (2) multilevel modeling of panel data (3) social-cognitive experiments (4) experience sampling and (5) network analysis. Thus, PSYPOL will apply theory and methods from social, developmental, cognitive and political psychology to answer empirical questions arising across the social sciences. This will generate an integrative framework for studying public attitudes towards policies that determine how symbolic and material resources are distributed in democratic societies.

Mots-clés : inequality,immigration,international relations,social psychology,political psychology,cognitive psychology,developmental psychology,public policy,social influence,heuristics and biases,motivated reasoning
Projet ERC : LiveSEN (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Ruhr University Bochum — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149218.75 €

Today it is common practice for farmers to provide crops with more fertilizers than the plants need. However, this practice has negative economic and environmental impacts. While accurate and timely knowledge of Nitrogen availability could enable adjustment of the inputs, the existing analytical tools for Nitrogen quantification are insufficiently used because of various limitations related to costs, laborious procedures or sensitivity to environmental factors. Our nitrate biosensor recently developed based on findings from the ERC starting Grant REDOX SHIELDS by-passes these limitations and has the potential to massively increase the frequency of nitrate sensing in agriculture. We designed single-use electrochemical biosensors which can be used by untrained users to get accurate nitrate readings directly in the field. With the ERC Proof-of-Concept project LiveSEN we now propose to explore commercialization possibilities of this nitrate biosensor. Our vision is to involve the farmers to perform independently the nitrate analysis while on the field, right before fertilization. The recommendation for nitrogen input will be provided immediately through a smartphone app connected to a cloud system. Our business model will rely on a low-cost or no-cost measurements coupled to a paid recommendation service. The service will be accessible to the farmers through a monthly fee or may be covered by larger companies such as fertilizer providers that have an interest in gaining customers binding through exclusivity. Furthermore, we would like to provide our customers with predictions for nitrate needs through a big data approach which integrates biosensor readings with satellite imagery and weather information. Our idea has the potential to increase yields in agriculture by 5 to 10% through optimized use of nitrogen fertilizers. This will save costs for farmers while reducing pollution of the environment, especially water resources.

Mots-clés : o2 interference,nitrate sensing,point of use sensing,big data,nitrogen fertilization
Projet ERC : Chiaroscuro (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
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 : 2221993.0 €

Today, Particle Physics is in an unusual situation with a theory, the Standard Model (SM), able to accurately describe a very large number of precise measurements but at the cost of ad hoc features in the fermionic sector. Furthermore, the SM is unable to answer key questions raised by cosmological observations. Consequently, the ball is now on experiment side to search for signs of non-SM physics (NP). The most straightforward way to hunt for NP particles is to seek for their signatures directly in the data, but none of them has been found today. Therefore, this project focuses on indirect searches which rely on the quantum nature of particles. Since b-hadrons study is an ideal field for this type of searches, I propose to explore the Flavour-Changing Neutral Currents b-> sll and b-> dll transitions to draw the identity card of the NP particles which may be at play. Due to experimental constraints, our current knowledge is limited: the published results are mostly related to the b-> s mumu transitions and the observations of b-> see are rare. With the Chiaroscuro project, I will be able to study for the first time the angular properties of the decay products of the b-> s ee transitions over the full kinematical domain for a variety of b-hadrons to investigate the NP couplings to the electron (e) and muon (mu) particles. Another important question is the coupling of NP with the quarks of the first and second families: are the b->sll and b->dll transitions impacted the same way by NP? In order to answer this interrogation, I will study Lb and Bc hadrons decays - uniquely accessible at the LHC - using cutting edge reconstruction techniques. The project will use the LHCb detector running at the LHC to benefit from the huge b-hadron production rate. In order to cope with the increasingly challenging data-taking conditions, the project will develop innovative techniques in the electron reconstruction and precise calibration of the LHCb electromagnetic calorimeter.

Mots-clés : flavour physics,lhcb,fcncs,electrons,b hadrons
Projet ERC : PERLIFE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HHU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1981251.0 €

Today, annual crops account for more than 85% of the worldwide calorie consumption. Annual crops are sown and harvested within one growing season and therefore require annual tillage, and application of herbicides and fertilizers that cause land and water degradation. In contrast, perennial crops grow over many seasons, require low agricultural input and thereby hold great potential for sustainable production systems and climate change adaptation. However, current efforts to breed perennial cereals are hindered by hybridization barriers between annual crops and wild perennial relatives and the trade-off between longevity and seed yield. PERLIFE pioneers the knowledge-based engineering of perennial traits in annual crops using the important annual crop barley as study system. This project will thus open entirely novel avenues for breeding perennial crops. PERLIFE capitalizes on 1) recent technical advances in high-throughput genome sequencing for the identification of genetic variants and 2) the novel genome-editing technology Crispr/CAS9 for the targeted transfer of genes between species. PERLIFE will isolate genetic variants promoting perennial growth using comparative genomics in annual and perennial wild relatives of barley. In interspecific crosses, we will dissect the interrelationship of longevity and seed yield and identify linked coding and regulatory variation. Based on this information, we will design and implement strategies for the targeted modification of longevity in barley using transgenic approaches and genome editing. The engineered genotypes will be trialled in environmental simulation chambers for longevity, stable seed yield and stress resistance to select the most successful engineering strategy. This ground-breaking work will provide a highly efficient approach for the generation of perennial cereals and will thus have a profound impact on sustainable food production in the face of climate change and a growing human population.

Mots-clés : perennial crops,barley,genomics,quantitative genetics,development,genome editing
Projet ERC : OPERA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Middle East Technical University — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : METU;ODTÜ
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Today, congenital or acquired hearing loss affects around 6% of the world population (over 460 M people, of 7% are children) and presents significant impact on people’s social, emotional, and economic wellbeing. Sensorineural impairment, which represents the majority of the profound deafness, is caused from irreversible damage to cochlear hair cells rendering them non-functional/missing. It can be restored using cochlear implants (CIs), which are used to bypass the damaged hair cells and directly stimulate the auditory nerve by means of a cochlear electrode to repair hearing in people with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. CIs are used for more than 40 years and today implanted in around 420.000 individuals worldwide. However, conventional CIs have major drawbacks. OPERA, with its potential to eliminate these drawbacks, will be the first fully implantable, low-power, energy harvesting (self-powered), next generation CI mimicking the natural hearing mechanism of the ear. Thus, it is expected to give the user a more natural and clear sound. Moreover, being fully implanted, it will not suffer from mechanical damage risks or contact with water, and raise no aesthetic concerns by users. The system does not use magnets, eliminating the MRI limitation in all conventional implants. One of the most important features of OPERA is its novel battery charging method by which the device harvests energy through the vibration generated by sound waves, fed by a simple earplug connected to a tone generator. In OPERA project, we aim to; validate technical performance and functionalities compared with state-of-the-art systems; perform stakeholder analysis and determine the main requirements for clinical practice; validate the design choices against the regulatory requirements; validate the economic and societal benefits; carry out a freedom to operate analysis and protect the IP; consolidate the business model, set up the product value chain and prepare the business plan.

Mots-clés : microsystems,mems,fully implantable,cochlear implants
Projet ERC : VIDEO HOLOGRAPHY (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : IMEC — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499074.0 €

Today, despite many efforts by researchers world-wide, there are no holographic projectors that allow video-rate electronically controlled projection of complex holograms. Optically re-write-able holograms exist, but they are too slow; Acoustically-formed holograms can be switched fast but the image complexity is very limited. We identify the essential roadblock as one that we intend to clear by a breakthrough innovation coming from a combination of electronics, optics and material science. We propose a radically novel way to make and control holograms, that will be based on the direct, analog, nanometer-resolution and nanosecond-speed control over the local refractive index of a slab waveguide core over several square centimetres. Holograms will be formed by leaky waves evanescent from the waveguide, and controlled by the refractive-index modulation profile in the core. That profile will be controlled and modulated by electrical fields applied with nano-precision through one of the cladding layers of the waveguide. To that end, a novel metamaterial is proposed for this cladding. Also novel driving schemes will be needed to control the new holographic projecting method. With this combined radical innovation in architecture, materials and driving schemes, it is the goal of this project to fully prove the concept of video-rate electrically-controlled holographic projection. This will be the basis for many future innovations and applications, in domains such as augmented reality, automotive, optical metrology (LIDAR, microscopy, ...), mobile communication, education, safety, etc..., and result in a high economic and social impact.

Mots-clés : holography,conductive oxides,cmos integration,ab initio calculation
Projet ERC : NOTICE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : IMEC — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2332691.0 €

Today’s quantum computers are suffering from a very high error rate due to decoherence (i.e. loss of quantum information) in their qubits fabricated with superconductors junctions or semiconductors quantum dots. The goal of this proposal is to research radically new materials and architectures to build a “fault-tolerant” qubit device on Silicon substrate (i.e. scalable), that will be immune to decoherence problems. In NOTICE, we will design and synthetize novel crystalline perovskite materials, monolithically integrated on a Silicon substrate, with topological insulating properties to enable the generation of Majorana fermions at the heterointerface with a superconductor. The generated Majorana fermions will hold the quantum information in such “Majorana qubit” which will be resistant to noises and fluctuations due to the topology effect if stable and robust materials presenting the desired properties can be obtained. Bismuth-based perovskites were down-selected as topological insulator (BaBi(O,F)3) and superconductor ((Ba,K)BiO3) oxides due to the very strong Spin Orbit Coupling present in Bi which will favorize the efficient generation of Majorana fermions at the perfect (pristine) BaBi(O,F)3/(Ba,K)BiO3 heterointerface. With Molecular Beam Epitaxy growth approach together with advanced characterization techniques such as Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy measurements and ab-initio simulations on the topological insulating properties of the perovskites, we aim to generate a stable topological interface leading to the efficient generation of Majorana fermions. This breakthrough will enable us to fabricate chiral Majorana devices on a Silicon technology platform, providing both reliability and manufacturing scalability. NOTICE results will pave the way to “fault-tolerant” qubit, bringing a paradigm shift in quantum computing by reducing drastically the gap between logical and physical qubits and the need for quantum error correction algorithms.

Mots-clés : chiral majorana devices,topological insulators perovskites,molecular beam epitaxy crystalline oxides and interface engineering
Projet ERC : TopoGenomics (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2792500.0 €

Topological interactions between distant DNA segments play fundamental roles in the function of eukaryotic genomes. While tremendous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms shaping intramolecular chromosome loop structures, limitations in our ability to distinguish specific chromosome conformations between paired molecules has hindered research into the role of interactions across separate chromosomal DNA molecules. Our recent development of an approach allowing analysis of contacts between sister chromatids now provides an opportunity for research into topological interactions to enter a new phase. Initial analyses with sister chromatid-sensitive Hi-C (scsHi-C) have indicated enormous potential to elucidate the mechanisms by which sister-chromatid conformation controls processes as varied as DNA repair, gene regulation and the segregation of mitotic chromosomes. To fulfil this potential, we will now develop next-generation scsHi-C technology to generate high-resolution genome-wide conformation maps of sister chromatids, along with the establishment of a machine learning-based computational framework to systematically detect topological structures in sister chromatids. This will be complemented with an imaging-based super-resolution approach to trace sister-chromatid fibers in thousands of individual cells. These core advances will allow us to map distinct sister-chromatid contact domains and identify associated molecular signatures, understand how loop-extruding and cohesive cohesin interact to shape replicated chromosomes, and determine how epigenetic modifications control pairing between sister chromatids. Together, these developments will allow us to make key advances in understanding a fundamental yet largely neglected aspect of chromosome biology—how replicated sister chromatids topologically interact to support maintenance, expression, and segregation of eukaryotic genomes.

Mots-clés : genome topology,chromosome conformation capture,hi c,machine learning,dna repair,gene regulation,chromosome segregation,cell division,cohesin
Projet ERC : TopoCold (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Université Libre de Bruxelles — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ULB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1038039.0 €

Topological states of matter constitute one of the hottest disciplines in quantum physics, demonstrating a remarkable fusion between elegant mathematical theories and technological applications. However, solid-state experiments only provide a limited set of physical systems and probes that can reveal non-trivial topological order. It is thus appealing to seek for alternative setups exhibiting topological properties. Cold atoms in optical lattices constitute an instructive and complementary toolbox, being extremely versatile, clean and controllable. In fact, cold-atom theorists and experimentalists have recently developed new tools providing the building blocks for the exploitation of topological atomic gases. TopoCold will propose realistic optical-lattice setups hosting novel topologically-ordered phases, based on those technologies that are currently developed in cold-atom experiments. The central goal of the project consists in identifying unambiguous manifestations of topological properties that are specific to the cold-atom framework. We will establish concrete methods to experimentally visualize these signatures, elaborating efficient schemes to detect the unique features of topological phases using available manipulation and imaging techniques. This central part of the TopoCold project will deepen our understanding of topological phenomena and guide ongoing experiments. We also plan to elaborate simple protocols to exploit topological excitations, based on the great controllability of atom-light coupling methods. Moreover, by tailoring the geometry and laser-coupling of optical-lattice setups, we will explore topological systems that are not accessible in solid-state devices. Finally, we will study the properties of topological phases that arise in the strongly-correlated regime of atomic gases. TopoCold will build a bridge between several communities, deepening our knowledge of topological phases from an original and interdisciplinary perspective.

Mots-clés : quantum simulation,optical lattices,topological states of matter
Projet ERC : TotipotentZygotChrom (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1555255.0 €

Totipotency, the developmental potential of a cell to give rise to all cell types, is naturally achieved when differentiated egg and sperm fuse to form the one-cell zygote. How chromatin is epigenetically reprogrammed to totipotency within hours after fertilisation remains a central question in biology. We aim to address this by investigating the mechanisms of reprogramming and the spatial reorganisation of chromatin in mammalian zygotes. Our interdisciplinary approach combines mechanistic cell biology with genetics and genomics to understand how chromatin reorganisation promotes totipotency and to identify key regulators of this process in zygotes. Molecular insights into reprogramming to totipotency are crucial to understand the essential zygotic stage of sexually reproducing species. A better understanding of how cells naturally reprogram chromatin to totipotency, a state upstream of pluripotency, has the potential to improve induced reprogramming technology and revolutionize regenerative medicine. Our aim is to understand how chromatin is reprogrammed to totipotency. To reach this ambitious goal: 1) We will discover new general concepts of genome organization, as well as reprogramming-specific aspects, by capitalising on our recently developed single-nucleus Hi-C method to dissect spatial reorganisation of chromatin in zygotes. We will investigate the relationship between chromatin reorganisation and transcription. 2) We will uncover mechanisms of zygotic reprogramming by elucidating the loci and factors that support active DNA demethylation during reprogramming of the paternal genome. 3) We will illuminate the origins and contributions of the oocyte since the factors responsible for reprogramming likely reside as proteins or RNA in the unfertilized egg. Overall, these studies will provide novel insights into how chromatin is reprogrammed and spatially reorganised towards a totipotent state that facilitates zygotic genome activation.

Mots-clés : chromatin organization,totipotency,epigenetic reprogramming