Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SPRINT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Kent — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 246675.0 €

Intonation, the modulation of voice pitch, is essential for communication as it conveys information that helps listeners make inferences about the pragmatic intent of the speaker. Despite increased understanding of intonation’s importance, there is little agreement even about essential aspects of its structure and meaning. This is in large part because research has focused either on the form of intonation, often taking a reductive approach to meaning, or has concentrated on meaning but without full scrutiny of form. Crucially, most research has eschewed the study of intonational variability, seeing it as a problem, rather than a natural facet of speech production that needs to be understood and accounted for. Examining all three aspects in tandem is critical for understanding how intonation is structured and functions in communication: considering meaning in the study of intonational form (i.e. phonetics and phonology) can help delimit intonational categories and uncover the limits of within-category variability; in turn, a robust understanding of form will lead to insights into intonational pragmatics. The present proposal will take exactly this integrative approach, based on the PI’s recent research, to examine intonational phenomena attested in English and Greek that have vexed researchers for some time (uptalk, high accents, question tunes). Two varieties per language will be studied, Standard Southern British, Bristol English, Standard Athenian, and Corfiot Greek. Their systematic differences with respect to the phenomena under investigation will allow me to examine cross-linguistic differences, and dialectal variation and its role in communication. The investigation will involve phonetic and pragmatic analysis and modelling, followed by series of behavioural and neurophysiological experiments. Together, these methods will shed light onto the realization, structure and function of intonation, and lead to a robust model of intonational phonology and pragmatics.

Mots-clés : intonation,prosody,communication,english,greek
Projet ERC : SPRINT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Edinburgh — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 62096.0 €

Intonation, the modulation of voice pitch, is essential for communication as it conveys information that helps listeners make inferences about the pragmatic intent of the speaker. Despite increased understanding of intonation’s importance, there is little agreement even about essential aspects of its structure and meaning. This is in large part because research has focused either on the form of intonation, often taking a reductive approach to meaning, or has concentrated on meaning but without full scrutiny of form. Crucially, most research has eschewed the study of intonational variability, seeing it as a problem, rather than a natural facet of speech production that needs to be understood and accounted for. Examining all three aspects in tandem is critical for understanding how intonation is structured and functions in communication: considering meaning in the study of intonational form (i.e. phonetics and phonology) can help delimit intonational categories and uncover the limits of within-category variability; in turn, a robust understanding of form will lead to insights into intonational pragmatics. The present proposal will take exactly this integrative approach, based on the PI’s recent research, to examine intonational phenomena attested in English and Greek that have vexed researchers for some time (uptalk, high accents, question tunes). Two varieties per language will be studied, Standard Southern British, Bristol English, Standard Athenian, and Corfiot Greek. Their systematic differences with respect to the phenomena under investigation will allow me to examine cross-linguistic differences, and dialectal variation and its role in communication. The investigation will involve phonetic and pragmatic analysis and modelling, followed by series of behavioural and neurophysiological experiments. Together, these methods will shed light onto the realization, structure and function of intonation, and lead to a robust model of intonational phonology and pragmatics.

Mots-clés : intonation,prosody,communication,english,greek
Projet ERC : NeuroInCellNMR (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Forschungsverbund Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : FVB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 852678.63 €

Intracellular aggregation of the human amyloid protein alpha-synuclein is causally involved in Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder. The goal of this project is to combine low-resolution, fluorescence-imaging methods with high-resolution in-cell NMR and EPR spectroscopy techniques to derive macroscopic and microscopic insights into alpha-synuclein aggregate structures directly in neuronal cells. To achieve this goal, we will employ different sets of cultured neurons and investigate intracellular alpha-synuclein aggregation under defined conditions of mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular oxidative stress, two of the most common denominators of the disease. Importantly, we will also establish a human stem cell model for studying alpha-synuclein aggregation with high-resolution in-cell NMR and EPR methods, by using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived dopaminergic neurons from Parkinson’s disease patients and control individuals. Results from this study will provide novel insights into the native mechanisms of intracellular aggregate formation and ultimately enable novel pharmacological approaches for therapeutic intervention.

Mots-clés : cellular structural biology
Projet ERC : PRYSM (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University Medical Center Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499108.0 €

Intracranial aneurysms usually go undetected until rupture occurs leading to aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (ASAH), a type of stroke with devastating effects. Early detection and preventive treatment of aneurysms fall short as we do not know who is it at risk and why, as we have insufficient insight in the contribution and interplay of genetic, environmental and intermediate phenotypic risk factors. Given the rarity of the disease, there is a paucity of large and rich cohorts to study risk factors separately with sufficient power. To add to the problem, my preliminary findings suggest disease heterogeneity with subgroup specific risk factors for aneurysms. The sex-related heterogeneity is most eminent in the disease with 2/3 of patients being women. I aim to advance disease understanding to allow early recognition of intracranial aneurysms to prevent ASAH. I have established a new conceptual approach that integrates genetic and environmental risk factors with imaging markers as intermediate phenotypes for genetic factors. With data reduction and machine-learning approaches I will for the first time address disease heterogeneity and aneurysm risk with adequate power. I will develop and validate a tool to automatically detect new imaging markers predicting aneurysm development applying feature-learning models. Next I will elucidate the genetic basis underlying differential imaging risk patterns (imaging genetic factors). I will apply a new hypothesis-free strategy to detect and validate yet unknown environmental risk factors predicting aneurysm presence. I will assess the contribution to disease of all factors detected according to sex. All risk factors will be combined in an aneurysm prediction risk model to understand relative contribution of different risk factors in different subgroups. It will advance disease understanding and individualized risk prediction of aneurysms leading to precision medicine in early aneurysm detection to reduce the burden of ASAH.

Mots-clés : intracranial aneurysm,aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage,genetic risk factor,environmental risk factor,imaging marker,imaging genetics,risk prediction
Projet ERC : SmartCardiacPatch (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Tel Aviv University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499500.0 €

Ischemic heart disease is a major cause of death in the Western world. There is no sustainable regenerative therapy available at the moment, with cardiac transplantation being the only therapy. However, tissue engineering is envisioned as a true regenerative therapeutic alternative. Despite the incremental improvements no technology is currently available that can provide on-line monitoring and reporting of the engineered tissue performance, and if needed, automatically activate regenerative processes. As one initial step in that direction, we have recently shown on a non-implantable chip-supported level that a sensory system can be integrated with engineered tissues, providing report on cardiac electrical activity. In this proposal, I plan to expand far beyond the state-of-the-art and develop a conceptually new approach to engineer the next generation of smart implantable cardiac patches. These patches will integrate complex electronics with engineered cardiac tissues to enable on-line monitoring and at the same time self-regulation of the tissue function. Since cardiac performance will be recorded over time, physicians could follow heart regeneration in real-time, providing new means for the disease management. To achieve this goal I will first develop new porous, stretchable and biocompatible microelectronics enabling electrical activity recording and stimulation. The electronics will interact with an efficient electroactive controlled release system enabling on-demand release of biomolecules. The system will be integrated with a 3D biomaterial scaffold and cardiac cells to compose the microelectronic cardiac patch (microECP). Development of feedback loop software will ensure efficient regulation of the patch’s function over time. Next, we will elucidate the interplay between the electronics, scaffold and cells, and provide a proof-of-principle for the microECP in vitro. Finally, we will investigate the regenerative potential of the system following infarction.

Mots-clés : cardiac tissue engineering
Projet ERC : ISOPERIMETRY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Technion – Israel Institute of Technology — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1745000.0 €

Isoperimetric inequalities constitute some of the most beautiful and ancient results in geometry, and play a key role in numerous facets of differential geometry, analysis, calculus of variations, geometric measure theory, minimal surfaces, probability and more. Isoperimetric minimizers have classically been determined on Euclidean, spherical, hyperbolic and Gaussian spaces. The isoperimetric problem is well-understood on surfaces, but besides some minor variations on these examples and some three-dimensional cases, remains open on numerous fundamental spaces, like projective spaces, the flat torus or hypercube, and for symmetric sets in Gaussian space. When partitioning the space into multiple regions of prescribed volume so that the common surface-area is minimized, the Euclidean double-bubble conjecture was established by Hutchings-Morgan-Ritoré-Ros, and the Gaussian multi-bubble conjecture was recently established in our work with Neeman, but the Euclidean and spherical multi-bubble conjectures remain wide open. Isoperimetric comparison theorems like the Gromov-Lévy and Bakry-Ledoux theorems are well-understood under a Ricci curvature lower bound, but under an upper-bound K ≤ 0 on the sectional curvature, the Cartan-Hadamard conjecture remains open in dimension five and higher despite recent progress. In the sub-Riemannian setting, the isoperimetric problem remains open on the simplest example of the Heisenberg group. The above long-standing problems lie at the very forefront of the theory and present some of the biggest challenges on both conceptual and technical levels. Any progress made would be extremely important and would open the door for tackling even more general isoperimetric problems. To address these questions, we propose adding several concrete new tools, some of which have only recently become available, to the traditional ones typically used in the study of isoperimetric problems.

Mots-clés : isoperimetric minimizers,functional inequalities,constant mean curvature,localization
Projet ERC : IsoMet (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of East Anglia — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UEA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2494693.0 €

Isoprene is a very important climate-active biogenic volatile organic compound with both global warming and cooling effects. Globally, terrestrial plants emit huge amounts (~500-750 million tonnes) of isoprene per year. This is approximately the same quantity as methane released to the amosphere. Isoprene emissions are predicted to rise due to global warming and increased use of isoprene-emitting trees (oil palm, poplar) for biofuel production but almost nothing is known about its biogeochemical cycle. Microbes are a sink for isoprene and through their activity in soils and on the leaves of isoprene-emitting plants, they will be important in removal of isoprene in the biosphere before it gets released to the atmosphere. The aim of the project is to obtain a critical, fundamental understanding of the metabolism and ecological importance of biological isoprene degradation and to test the hypothesis that isoprene degrading bacteria play a crucial role in the biogeochemical isoprene cycle, thus helping to mitigate the effects of this important but neglected climate-active gas. Key objectives are to elucidate the biological mechanisms by which isoprene is metabolised, establish novel methods for the study of isoprene biodegradation and to understand at the mechanistic level how isoprene cycling by microbes is regulated in the environment. Bacteria that metabolise isoprene will be isolated from a range of terrestrial and marine environments and characterised using a multidisciplinary approach and a wide range of cutting edge techniques. We will elucidate the pathways of isoprene metabolism and their regulation by characterising genes/enzymes catalysing key steps in isoprene degradation, use innovative molecular ecology methods to determine distribution, diversity and activity of isoprene degraders and assess the contribution that microbes make in the removal of isoprene from the biosphere, thereby mitigating the effects of this climate-active compound.

Mots-clés : biogeochemistry,environmental microbiology,microbial metabolism
Projet ERC : M-POWER (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KUL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1575000.0 €

It has been long understood by economists that market power can negatively affect welfare by limiting output, stifling innovation, and introducing inefficiencies in the overall allocation of production. On the one hand, there is ample evidence from case-studies, that the presence of market power, in the form of explicit or implicit cartels and other practices of anti-competitive behavior, can lead to substantial damages to producers and consumers in a given market. On the other hand, very little is known about the broad cross- sectional and time-series patterns of market power across sectors, regions and countries. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, if market power is at all present, does it affect so-called aggregate outcomes in the product and factor markets? For example should the analysis of productivity growth and investment take into account the presence of market power, and does market power play a role in labor market outcomes, such as e.g. in the recently reported decline in the labor share across a variety of countries? This project aims to fill the gap in the literature by applying recently developed techniques to, first of all, systematically document markups, across firms in the entire economy, and secondly, to analyze the implications for producers and consumers in the economy at large, including both product and input markets. While the macroeconomic literature on misallocation has considered a variety of distortions that affect the allocation of inputs across plants, the project introduces an empirical framework to quantify the welfare loss from market power. Special attention is given to the impact on productive inefficiency. The overall aim is to better understand, and quantify, how market power affects the allocation of resources in the context of heterogeneous producers, and empirically quantify the trade-off of price and cost effects.

Mots-clés : market power,markups,aggregate outcomes,misallocation
Projet ERC : ECM_INK (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Minho — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998938.92 €

It has been recognized that growing cells within 3D structures reduces the gap between 2D in vitro cell cultures and native tissue physiology. This has been paving the way for the development of reliable 3D in vitro cell-based platforms with major impact in the reduction/elimination of animal experimentation, diseases modelling and drug development. So far, the many strategies that have been followed to bioengineer in vitro 3D human tissue models mostly rely on the random culture of cells within a 3D structure without reflecting the compositional and structural complexity of the native tissues. Recently proposed bioprinting technologies that allow accurate and high speed deposition of various cells and matrices at high resolution, have therefore great potential in the development of physiologically reliable 3D in vitro tissue models by recreating the different microenvironments/microfunctionalities found in each tissue. Nonetheless, among the components required for bioprinting, bioinks in particular have demanding requirements and much has still to be done regarding their intrinsic formulation to lead cell behaviour and support specific functionalities. ECM_INK intends to tackle this issue by developing cells-self extracellular matrices-based bioinks to create accurate and pathophysiological relevant 3D in vitro diseased skin tissue models. The development of cell phenotype-driven bioinks will generate complex microenvironments comprising varied cell types within matrices that were specifically designed to attain a particular response from each one of those cell types. The use of cells from patients suffering from chronic, genetic and neoplastic skin diseases represents a major advantage that will be reflected in the accuracy and functionality of the respective 3D in vitro models. The ultimate confirmation of their potential will be complete after validation using animal-free approaches reinforcing the intrinsic relationship of ECM_INK with the 3Rs policy.

Mots-clés : bioprinting,bioinks,bio instructive materials,extracellualr matrix,hydrogels,vascularization,3d skin like model,skin diseases
Projet ERC : CorPain (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
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 : 1928125.0 €

It is a fundamental but still elusive question how nociceptive processing is performed in neuronal networks in the cortex for the conscious experience of pain. The objective of this project is to identify and characterize the cortical microcircuits in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that are involved in pain processing with cellular resolution. The ACC is essential for evaluating the emotional/affective component of pain. Our research will investigate the elusive question if a dedicated pain circuit exists in the ACC. We will dissect the detailed structure and connectivity of this pain circuit and investigate how it generates affective behavioural responses related to pain. At the core of this project, we will characterize the neuronal networks in the ACC that are engaged in the processing of noxious stimuli. It will be highly interesting to determine the neuronal dynamics in the ACC during nociception and in chronic pain conditions on the cellular and network level. Furthermore, we will elucidate the downstream targets that are influenced by the pain circuits in the ACC to generate the appropriate behavioural responses. These aims will be achieved by a combination of electrophysiology, 2-photon Ca2+ imaging and pharmaco- and opto-genetic approaches both in vivo and in vitro and behavioural testing of pain affect in mice. This project will give a comprehensive picture of how a cortical microcircuit processes afferent noxious stimuli to generate an affective behavioural response. This study will give important insight into the fundamental question of cortical information processing and it is highly relevant to understand pain processing and the changes in the network dynamics that manifest the transition to chronic pain. Eventually this might contribute to the development of novel treatment strategies for this pathological condition.

Mots-clés : neuronal network,neuromodulation,chronic pain,dendrite,neuronal plasticity,inhibition,disinhibition