Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PHYRIST (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997678.0 €

The ribotoxic stress response (RSR) surveys the structural and functional integrity of ribosomes and is triggered by diverse groups of ribotoxins (e.g. ricin), UV irradiation and some chemotherapeutics. When presented with impaired ribosomes, the proximal MAPKKK ZAK activates MAP kinases p38 and JNK to initiate a powerful inflammatory response. This signalling contributes to the detrimental reactions to ribotoxins and fatal side effects of cancer therapy. However, despite decades of research into the RSR, the physiological relevance of the underlying pathway in whole organisms is unknown. I hypothesize that the RSR constitutes a general translation quality control pathway and hence I aim to uncover the physiological and pathological implications of RSR impairment in mice and nematodes. In one line of investigation, I will elucidate the connections between UV radiation and RSR-mediated p38 activation. I hypothesize that this signalling pathway is critical for sunlight-induced skin inflammation and development of skin cancers of different cellular origins. Rewardingly, we found that cells from our ZAK knockout (KO) mice are refractory to UV-induced p38 activation, which is a significant contributor to skin cancer development. My team has also observed deregulation of protein translation in RSR-deficient human and mouse cells, and a reduced lifespan of ZAK KO nematodes. Thus encouraged, I will determine the impact of the RSR pathway on cancer development and aging processes in mice, and I will unravel the molecular connections between defective ribosomes, RSR activation and regulation of translation. Finally, I am in a unique position to evaluate the RSR as a putative drug target and I will investigate the potential of ZAK inhibition to treat or prevent skin cancer, and to remedy inflammation arising from infection with ribotoxin-producing bacteria. In sum, PHYRIST will yield the first detailed insight into the in vivo relevance of the ribotoxic stress response.

Mots-clés : cancer,aging,inflammation,skin,ribosomes,protein translation
Projet ERC : CONSPIRACY_FX (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced 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 : 2499185.0 €

The rise of conspiracy theories is often framed as a cause of various social ills such as declining public trust in democracy, the growing allure of populist and extremist politics, and the rejection of scientific consensus in favour of hearsay and fake news. However, the extent to which conspiracy theories contribute to these problems is not clear. Despite hundreds of academic articles on this topic in recent years, and significant interest in conspiracy theories in both academic and non-academic circles, there has never been a systematic investigation of their consequences. In fact, we know very little about when, how, and why conspiracy theories affect the decisions and wellbeing of individuals and societies. The current project will address this issue, pulling together a team of three postdoctoral researchers, two PhD students, one Masters student, and senior collaborators from a range of academic disciplines. To discover when and how conspiracy theories are influential, three sub-projects will each focus on one of the key contexts in which conspiracy theories have shown the most potential to shape people’s beliefs and behaviours: politics, vaccination, and climate change. To understand why conspiracy theories are influential, a fourth sub-project will focus on the consequences of conspiracy theories for the persons who spread them, concentrating in particular on the use of conspiracy theories by politicians and other elites. A project on this scale, and with this level of sophistication, has never been attempted before. It will adopt a mixed-methods approach using archival and social media analyses, interviews, cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, and experiments (including attitude, behavioural, cognitive/neuropsychological and physiological techniques). This project will move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art in the literature to identify when, how, and why conspiracy theories matter.

Mots-clés : conspiracy theories,social psychology,politics,vaccination,climate change,communication
Projet ERC : EPIDEMIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1348298.91 €

The risks and impact of disease are exacerbated in social organisms, which live in dense groups wherein pathogens can rapidly propagate. Theoretical epidemiology predicts that disease dynamics will depend in large part on a group's social interaction network, but empirical data are scarce. Experimental epidemiology is currently hampered by a lack of study systems that would enable a rigorous investigation of the causal link between network structure and disease transmission. I will tackle this question using a novel system, the clonal raider ant, a social insect whose unique biology affords unparalleled control over the main aspects of colony composition that are thought to modulate social network structure, and therefore, disease transmission. My approach will combine cutting-edge automated techniques for behavioral tracking with molecular tools, and develop new methods to monitor transmission in real time. In a first step, I will create empirical networks that are theoretically predicted to vary in transmission risk and map individual immune function onto these networks, to measure the prophylactic network properties that might reduce disease transmission. Second, I will test if experimental increases in immune activity induce changes in behavior that are relevant for disease transmission, to measure inducible network properties. Finally, I will inoculate colonies with nematodes and quantify infection propagation in real time. This will allow me to compare various types of social networks (healthy, immune-activated, infected), to probe the link between behavior and immunity, and to experimentally test predictions from theoretical epidemiology. This project takes an integrative approach—from individual immunity to collective behavior—to uncover the properties of social groups that protect them against disease. By linking theoretical epidemiology to real-world disease dynamics, it will push the limits of our ability to predict disease dynamics in social groups.
Projet ERC : BabyRhythm (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Padua — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIPD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 831034.64 €

The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved. The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants’ experience with speech and language. The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.

Mots-clés : speech perception,newborns,nirs,neural oscillations
Projet ERC : BabyRhythm (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 790215.36 €

The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved. The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants’ experience with speech and language. The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.

Mots-clés : speech perception,newborns,nirs,neural oscillations
Projet ERC : L.I.F.E. (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Politecnico di Milano — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : POLIMI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1549573.5 €

The scope of LIFE is to offer a complete set of archaeological and environmental data to be used to investigate Late Roman settlements along frontier desert areas and to reconstruct the underlying strategy to control the empire’s desert edges. The case study is the chain of Late Roman fortified settlements that punctuate the Kharga Oasis (Egypt’s Western Desert), that in the Fourth Century represented a portion of the southern boundary of the empire. All these sites, located in a remote and harsh environment, share the same architectural features and are endowed with similar agricultural installations, thus suggesting the existence of a highly motivated large-scale strategy of occupation of the region. A detailed study of Umm al-Dabadib, the best-preserved site, will produce a consistent set of criteria to be applied to the analysis of its less-preserved companions. In turn, a comprehensive study of these self-contained and self-sufficient settlements with a strong military flavour will allow a reconstruction of the Late Roman strategy of control over the desert routes that met in this oasis, and will offer an important contribution to the debate on the defence of the empire’s borders in the historical period from Diocletian to Constantine and beyond to the end of the Fourth Century. The sites will be studied using a combination of classic and innovative investigation techniques: 3D survey of the architectural remains, archaeological excavation of specific portions of both the built-up areas and the agricultural systems, archaeobotanical analyses, ceramic studies, analyses of satellite images, all carried out within the wider frame of an environmental study of the area and a historical analysis of the textual sources. The dissemination will take place both through the usual channels (publications on paper) and through an innovative information system accessible to scholars all over the world, which will fully exploit the potential of the latest survey technique.

Mots-clés : late roman period,late roman army,late roman forts,diocletian,constantine,egypt,kharga oasis,western desert,frontier,oases,caravan routes,agricultural systems,subterranean aqueducts
Projet ERC : DEMIURGE (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
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 : 2000000.0 €

The scope of this project is the automatic design of robot swarms. Swarm robotics is an appealing approach to the coordination of large groups of robots. Up to now, robot swarms have been designed via some labor-intensive process. My goal is to advance the state of the art in swarm robotics by developing the DEMIURGE: an intelligent system that is able to design and realize robot swarms in a totally integrated and automatic way The DEMIURGE is a novel concept. Starting from requirements expressed in a specification language that I will define, the DEMIURGE will design all aspects of a robot swarm - hardware and control software. The DEMIURGE will cast a design problem into an optimization problem and will tackle it in a computation-intensive way. In this project, I will study different control software structures, optimization algorithms, ways to specify requirements, validation protocols, on-line adaptation mechanisms and techniques for re-design at run time.

Mots-clés : swarm robotics,automatic design
Projet ERC : BIOMAMA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Vienna — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Univie
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

The search for biologically driven alterations on Mars and its potential as habitat for past or present life is a primary aim of the upcoming Mars exploration missions. While a range of environments that would have been well suited to support a potential chemolithotrophy on Mars have been proposed, our understanding of putative biosignatures to be targeted in Martian materials is still poor. A valuable source of information can be extracted from microbial fingerprints of chemolithotrophic life based on Martian materials (Martian meteorites, regolith simulants). Chemolithotrophic microorganisms employ an astonishing number of metabolic pathways to extract energy from diverse inorganic electron donors/acceptors, shaping global biogeochemical cycles. Using a holistic approach based on laboratory, field and space exposure experiments, we propose to investigate interactions of Earth’s various chemolithoautotrophs with Martian materials. The bottom-up exploration of mineral-microbial interactions for different chemolithotrophs cultivated on Martian materials as the sole energy sources, will decipher mineral and metabolic biosignatures associated with these cases. This project explores unique microbial interactions with extraterrestrial materials down to the nanoscale and atomic resolution utilizing a comprehensive toolbox of cutting-edge techniques. BioMaMa will identify preservable biomarkers/biosignatures of chemolithotrophic life on Martian materials after the exposure to simulated Martian conditions at low Earth orbit and ground-based facilities. A complex approach will be used to investigate meteorite-microbial interactions in Mars-analogue sites on Earth. The extensive knowledge gained from BioMaMa will help to understand and critically interpret the results of future Mars exploration missions (ExoMars 2020). These studies will lay the foundation for efficient nanoanalytical spectroscopy of returned Mars samples, to critically assess their potential biogenicity.

Mots-clés : mars,meteorites,space missions,extremophiles,chemolithotrophs,biominerals,biosignatures
Projet ERC : SEACHANGE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Exeter — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3992969.3 €

The seas are changing. Marine conservation seeks to protect valuable habitats but the pristine state of marine ecosystem functioning and biodiversity – that is, the system as it operated before there was any large scale human impact – is conjectural. Conservation management strategies are often based on highly altered ecosystems where the degree of human-induced change is unknown. In SEACHANGE, we propose a structured and systematic approach to the reconstruction of marine ecosystem baselines to quantify the impact of anthropogenic cultural transitions on marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. SEACHANGE will address two key questions: 1) What was the nature of long-term changes in prehistoric marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning over a 3000-year period in NW Europe and the degree of human impact associated with major socioeconomic changes across the Mesolithic-Neolithic boundary? 2) What has been the scale and rate of marine biodiversity loss and changes to ecosystem functioning as a result of fishing intensity and marine habitat loss during the last 2000 years (including the Industrial Transition) in the North Sea and around Iceland, eastern Australia and the west Antarctic Peninsula? To address these questions we will analyse: 1) absolutely-dated annually-resolved bivalve shell series (“sclerochronologies”); 2) marine sediment cores; 3) archaeological midden (waste) materials including shells and bones. We will date these samples precisely and undertake zooarchaeological and palaeoecological, stable isotope geochemical and environmental DNA/DNA metabarcoding analyses. We will compare the data with historical and archival sources, and we will generate numerical ecosystem simulations. We will identify how depleted the current marine environment is compared with that before large scale human impact and what measures are needed, and how long will it take, for marine biodiversity to recover.

Mots-clés : marine palaeoevironments,holocene,marine ecosystems,marine biodiversity,environmental change,cultural transition,sclerochronology,marine environmental archaeology,midden
Projet ERC : VIA LACTEA (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Barcelona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498750.0 €

The second data release of the Gaia satellite has revealed much complexity in the structure and kinematics of stars in the Milky Way than previously appreciated. In the disc, Gaia has shown that our Galaxy is still enduring the effects of a collision that set millions of stars moving like ripples on a pond. In the stellar halo, the data uncovered a large single debris structure pointing to a massive accretion event 10 billion years ago, at a time when the disc was in its infancy. Our basic assumptions of dynamical equilibrium and axisymmetry at the basis of nearly all mathematical models of the Galaxy are now falling short to make further progress on our inference on the Galaxy’s formation or the distribution of dark matter. Understanding the detailed time-dependent non-axisymmetric phase-space structure of the Galaxy would open new pathways to understand its detailed accretion history, potentially dating its most major perturbations. This proposal aims to explore the deep coupling between the stellar halo and the Milky Way disc and bulge, to gain new insights on the formation history of the Milky Way through its most major accretion events through a number of state-of-the-art computing techniques. Study 1 will look into studying the formation of the inner-halo through a combination of cosmological genetically modified (constrained) simulations and idealised simulations to constrain the mass and accretion time of the Gaia-Sausage progenitor galaxy (and its potential satellite population which came with it) as well as its impact on the formation of the ``thick disc'' and growth of the Galaxy past z~3-2. Study 2 will look into the impact of known satellites on the dynamical and chemical and age populations’ evolution of the Milky Way using both cosmological/isolated hydrodynamical simulations and idealised numerical N-body simulations, particularly focusing on the role of the Sagittarius dwarf in seeding the perturbations in the disc we see today.

Mots-clés : cosmological hydrodynamical simulations,n body simulations,gaia,galactic archeology,galactic dynamics,chemo dynamics,sagittarius,large magellanic clouds,the disc,the bulge,stellar halo