Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PAMDORA (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1491909.0 €

The goal of this ERC proposal is to make significant progress in our understanding how planetary systems form in protoplanetary discs. In this ambitious research programme I will answer these three key questions: How does the dust size distribution affect the evolution of ice lines and initial formation location of planetesimals? How do growing planets migrate in protoplanetary discs? How does the disc evolution affect the formation and composition of planetary systems? I will tackle these questions using a combination of novel ideas and computer simulations in which I will model the three before mentioned connected key stages of planet formation. The disc evolution model will incorporate grain growth and drift with self-consistent temperature structure calculations. The planet migration simulations will map the migration rates from small planets all the way to giant gap opening planets in these discs. Finally, I will combine these topics and compute the assembly of whole planetary systems from multiple small bodies in gas discs to full grown solar systems. Additionally, I will track the chemical composition and evolution of the growing bodies. These self-consistent models of the formation process from planetary embryos all the way to full planetary systems will be the first of their kind and will shed light on the origin of the variety of planetary systems featuring terrestrial planets, super-Earths, ice and/or gas giants. By incorporating the chemical composition of planets during their formation into my model, I can not only compare the orbital elements to observations, but also their compositions, where observations of the atmospheres of hot Jupiters already exist and future observations of super-Earths will reveal their atmospheric and bulk composition (e.g. through the PLATO space mission), further constraining planet formation theories.
Projet ERC : G-EDIT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : University of Bern — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1953000.0 €

The goal of this project is to contribute to our understanding of RNA-mediated epigenetic mechanisms of genome regulation in eukaryotes. Ciliated protozoa offer a fantastic opportunity to investigate the complex process of trans-generational programming of chromosomal rearrangements, which is thought to serve as a form of immune defense against invasive DNA. Developmental processes in ciliates include extensive rearrangements of the germline DNA, including elimination of transposons and the precise excision of numerous single-copy elements derived from transposons. This process is considered to be maternally controlled because the maternal genome provides essential information in the form of RNA that determines the offspring's genome content and organization. This programmed DNA subtraction, the so-called ‘RNA scanning’ process, is mediated by trans-generational comparison between the germline and the maternal somatic genome. One of the most intriguing questions is how a complex population of small RNAs representing the entire germline genome can be compared to the entire rearranged maternal genome, resulting in the efficient selection of germline-specific RNAs, which are able to target DNA deletions in the developing genome. All this occurs in a very short time and involves a massively coordinated transport of all the components between three types of nuclei. This project focuses on characterizing the molecular machinery that can orchestrate the massive genome rearrangements in ciliates through nucleic acids and protein interactions. It also addresses the question how RNA targets DNA cleavage at the right place. In addition, this project aims to investigate the role of RNA in guiding chromosomal rearrangements in other eukaryotic systems, particularly in human cancer cells where genome editing often occurs on a large scale. This work may be the first step in providing novel insights into the process of programmed DNA rearrangements in higher eukaryotes.

Mots-clés : dna rearrangements,non mendelian inheritance,rna guided dna rearrangement,genome development
Projet ERC : AdaptoSCOPE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Cologne — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1683120.0 €

The goal of this project is to demonstrate that novel aspects of the molecular basis of Darwinian adaptation can be discovered if the polygenic basis of adaptation is taken into account. This project will use the genome-wide distribution of cis-regulatory variants to discover the molecular pathways that are optimized during adaptation via accumulation of small effect mutations. Current approaches include scans for outlier genes with strong population genetics signatures of selection, or large effect QTL associating with fitness. They can only reveal a small subset of the molecular changes recruited along adaptive paths. Here, instead, the distribution of small effect mutations will be used to make inferences on the targets of polygenic adaptation across divergent populations in each of the two closely related species, A. thaliana and A. lyrata. These species are both found at diverse latitudes and show sign of local adaptation to climatic differences. Mutations affecting cis-regulation will be identified in leaves of plants exposed to various temperature regimes triggering phenotypic responses of adaptive relevance. Their distribution in clusters of functionally connected genes will be quantified. The phylogeographic differences in the distribution of the mutations will be used to disentangle neutral from adaptive clusters of functionally connected genes in each of the two species. This project will identify the molecular pathways subjected collectively to natural selection and provide a completely novel view on adaptive landscapes. It will further examine whether local adaptation occurs by convergent evolution of molecular systems in plants. This approach has the potential to find broad applications in ecology and agriculture.

Mots-clés : molecular adaptation,climate perturbations,plants,arabidopsis
Projet ERC : MetTraC (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : University of Basel — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149760.0 €

The goal of this project is to develop a general system for preparative enzyme-catalyzed methylation reactions. Selective methylation of complex molecules can be challenging for synthetic chemistry. Given the exquisite chemo-, regio- and stereoselectivities of enzyme catalysis we believe that biocatalysis presents a powerful alternative for commercial production of pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. In this project we demonstrate the applicability and commercial viability of a novel enzyme-based technology to preparative methylation reactions.

Mots-clés : biocatalysis,enzyme catalysis,sulfur,carbon bond formation
Projet ERC : NANOZ-ONIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
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 : 1434325.0 €

The goal of this project is to develop an innovative biosensor for the non-invasive, painless and real-time detection of volatile biomarkers in the exhaled breath of patients. Volatile biomarkers have been identified for several diseases including cancers, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and neurodegeneration. A miniaturized system for fast and simple breath-analysis would not only improve the early detection of these pathologies but also enable point-of-care monitoring of patients either in medical institutions or at home. Different electronic noses are in development (or even in use for diagnosing asthma), however their generalisation in reliable medical diagnosis devices is mainly hindered by their poor versatility. The main challenge is to quantitatively and simultaneously detect several volatile biomarkers with high specificity and selectivity. The ideal technology would be one which mimicked the natural olfactory systems that recognize odours by combinatorial analysis of receptor responses. Inspired by this biological example, this project aims at integrating natural olfactory receptors into two state-of-the-art technologies: Ion Channel-Coupled Receptors (ICCRs) and single-walled Carbon NanoTube-Field Effect Transistors (swCNT-FETs). ICCRs are original biosensors created by fusion of G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) with an ion channel. The recognition of a chemical compound by the GPCR is transduced into an electrical signal by the ion channel. Mammalian olfactory receptors are GPCRs, and the objective of this 5-year project is to engineer an original library of olfactory ICCRs for multiplex detection of volatile biomarkers. To detect the electrical signal with very high sensitivity and at the nanometric scale, ICCRs will be interfaced with swCNT-FET transistors by coating the carbon nanotubes with ICCR-containing nanovesicles. The recent detection of a biomarker with an ICCR-swCNT-FET device by project members demonstrates the feasibility of this approach.

Mots-clés : biosensors,diagnostic tools,olfactory receptors,g protein coupled receptors,ion channels,carbon nanotubes field effect transistors
Projet ERC : AlgTateGro (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université Paris-Saclay — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1222328.75 €

The goal of this project is to investigate two conjectures in arithmetic geometry pertaining to the geometry of projective varieties over finite and number fields. These two conjectures, formulated by Tate and Grothendieck in the 1960s, predict which cohomology classes are chern classes of line bundles. They both form an arithmetic counterpart of a theorem of Lefschetz, proved in the 1940s, which itself is the only known case of the Hodge conjecture. These two long-standing conjectures are one of the aspects of a more general web of questions regarding the topology of algebraic varieties which have been emphasized by Grothendieck and have since had a central role in modern arithmetic geometry. Special cases of these conjectures, appearing for instance in the work of Tate, Deligne, Faltings, Schneider-Lang, Masser-Wüstholz, have all had important consequences. My goal is to investigate different lines of attack towards these conjectures, building on recent work on myself and Jean-Benoît Bost on related problems. The two main directions of the proposal are as follows. Over finite fields, the Tate conjecture is related to finiteness results for certain cohomological objects. I want to understand how to relate these to hidden boundedness properties of algebraic varieties that have appeared in my recent geometric proof of the Tate conjecture for K3 surfaces. The existence and relevance of a theory of Donaldson invariants for moduli spaces of twisted sheaves over finite fields seems to be a promising and novel direction. Over number fields, I want to combine the geometric insight above with algebraization techniques developed by Bost. In a joint project, we want to investigate how these can be used to first understand geometrically major results in transcendence theory and then attack the Grothendieck period conjecture for divisors via a number-theoretic and complex-analytic understanding of universal vector extensions of abelian schemes over curves.

Mots-clés : arithmetic geometry,algebraic cycles,periods of algebraic varieties
Projet ERC : UTOPEST (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993320.0 €

The goal of this project is to make progress toward a unified theory of efficient optimization and estimation. In many computing applications, especially machine learning, optimization and estimation problems play an increasingly important role. For that reason, a large research effort is devoted to developing and understanding the limitations of efficient algorithms for these problems. For many of these problems, achieving the best known provable guarantees required the use of algorithms that are tailored to problem specifics. In recent years, the PI’s research with collaborators has shown that for many optimization problems, the conceptually simple sum-of-squares meta-algorithm, despite not being tailored to problem specifics, can match and often significantly outperform previous efficient algorithms in terms of provable guarantees. This project aims to better understand the capabilities and limitations of this meta-algorithm, especially for estimation problems, which have only recently begun to be studied in this light. In this way, the project will establish new algorithmic guarantees for basic optimization and estimation problems even in the face of non-convexity and adversarial outliers. In the same way, the project will shed light on the limitations of efficient algorithms for basic average-case problems like planted clique and stochastic block models. The project also aims to transfer the obtained theoretical insights into practical algorithms building on recent works by the PI and collaborators. Toward this goal the project will develop new algorithms with close to linear running times that match the guarantees of the best known polynomial-time algorithms. In order to assess their practicality, the project will perform systematic empirical evaluations of these algorithms.

Mots-clés : computational complexity,optimization,linear programming,semidefinite programming
Projet ERC : SOLID (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 217323.05 €

The goal of this proposal is to search for an entirely new kind of matter. This type of matter called a sterile neutrino doesn’t interact with known particles and can only manifest itself through quantum mixing with the three neutrinos of the standard model, the prevailing theory of particle physics. The known neutrinos are by far the most abundant massive particles in the Universe. More than 70 years after the postulation of the existence of the neutrino, its nature and fundamental properties remain, paradoxically, poorly known. The discovery of the quantum mixing of neutrinos: neutrino oscillations, was a major surprise as it implied that neutrinos have mass which they do not have in the standard model. In this context the existence of a sterile neutrino is a natural extension but the discovery of this new state of matter would a profound challenge for the theory to explain. Several new anomalous experimental results have appeared which could be accounted for by the presence of a light sterile neutrino but each result taken separately is not statistically significant. New oscillation patterns in the neutrino energy spectrum would be a clear signature of the new state but are difficult to measure due to experimental and background limitations. We propose the most sensitive search to date for this oscillation signature using two key assets: The SCK•CEN BR2 reactor which offers a unique low background environment combined with a novel detector technology invented by the PI capable of discriminating signal and background with greater sensitivity that any previous technique. We present an experimental program that includes the construction of a detector module and its precise calibration, the programming of a new type of electronic trigger and implementation of state of the art reconstruction techniques and analysis. The results that this proposal will deliver are far reaching both in science and in the development of a new technology for detecting anti-neutrinos.

Mots-clés : sterile neutrino,antineutrinos,scintillator detector
Projet ERC : GLOBALFIRMS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

The growing fragmentation of production across firms and countries has revolutionized international trade in recent decades. Firms today choose which production stages to conduct themselves and which to outsource to other parties, which to complete at home and which to offshore abroad. Known as global value chains (GVCs), this phenomenon creates new challenges and opportunities for individual firms and aggregate economies. Of primary policy interest are the implications of GVCs for growth, the transmission of shocks across firms and borders, and the design of economic policies. Yet academic research has faced two major challenges: poor measurement and poorly understood mechanisms. I propose an ambitious research program that will use exceptional new data and novel GVC measures for path-breaking GVC analysis. First, I will exploit unique panel data on firm production, management practices, export and import transactions for the world’s two largest export economies, China and the US; and unique panel data on firm production, export and import transactions, and the network of domestic firm-to-firm transactions for one of the most open economies, Belgium. Second, I will develop measures that comprehensively characterize three dimensions of firms’ GVC activity: value added (total/domestic/foreign), production line position (upstreamness), and network position (centrality). Third, I will empirically and theoretically examine the impact of GVCs on firm growth, shock transmission, and export-finance policy through six synergistic projects. Each project will make a distinct contribution by investigating new economic mechanisms, establishing new empirical facts, and combining theory and data for informative welfare calculations. The novelty of the data and the complex mechanisms driving GVCs make this research program highly ambitious. At the same time, the importance of understanding GVCs for economic policy and academic research make this agenda extraordinarily high-return.

Mots-clés : firms,global value chains,production networks
Projet ERC : Prolifimeter (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The growth rate of both bacterial and human cells has a central role in the clinical management of infectious diseases and malignancies. Virulent and aggressive bacterial strains have higher growth rates, which will decrease in response to successful treatment. Proliferation rates are also instrumental in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of various cancer types, as the proliferation rate of human cells is one of the hallmarks of malignancy, evident by the widespread use of various proliferation indices such as mitotic figure counting, PCNA and Ki-67 antibodies. An integral part of cell growth is DNA replication; in mid-replication, each replicating cell will have a second, partial, currently synthesized genome. This creates variations in DNA copy-number along the genome across a population of cells from which growth-rate is inferable. Based on our novel ERC-funded method, which accurately measures bacterial growth rates from metagenomic samples, we will further the development of our methods towards obtaining an entirely new facet of information about pathogens in infectious diseases, or an accurate estimation of tumor proliferation rates. Our approach is expected to be superior to the current state-of-the-art as sample preparation is simple and requires no immunological staining or examination by an experienced pathologist, increasing validity and reproducibility.

Mots-clés : bioinformatics,human microbiome
Projet ERC : MOLDISK (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2282440.0 €

The heavy elements (C, O, N) in exoplanetary atmospheres result from accretion of gas and impacts of icy pebbles and planetesimals in disks around young stars. The gas and dust, in turn, originate from the collapsing cloud that formed the star plus disk, with icy grains growing, settling and drifting in radially to the planet-forming zones. The inner disk (0.1-10 au) is a key region in planet formation, yet its physical and chemical structure is still poorly constrained observationally. The next years offer huge observational improvements at infrared wavelengths, which is the primary regime to study inner disks. Most notably, JWST offers unique diagnostics of gas and ice at unprecedented sensitivity and sharpness. The applicant has been heavily involved in planning and building of JWST-MIRI for the past 25 years, and co-leads GTO programs on protostars and protoplanetary disks. This proposal requests funding for 2 postdocs and 3 PhD students to carry out an interdisciplinary program that analyses MIRI data as soon as they arrive by mid-2022, and makes crucial connections with ALMA and VLT(I) data, state-of-the-art disk models developed by the applicant’s team, and laboratory experiments on ices. The specific goals are to (i) determine the chemical inventory of gas in inner disks, and measure C/O/N/H ratios in exoplanet birth environments; (ii) relate differences in chemical composition between disks to locations of dust traps, icy pebble sublimation at snowlines, and presence of cavities; (iii) compare the chemical properties of young embedded disks with mature disks, and establish the role of accretion shocks may have on their composition; (iv) determine the abundances of ice species, including the presence of more complex icy molecules, as well as their chemistry from envelopes to disks; and (v) find indirect evidence for the presence of young unseen (massive) planets. MOLDISK will train a next generation of mid-IR scientists, important for ELT and SPICA.

Mots-clés : astrochemistry