Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : COMBAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GBF;HZI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998750.0 €

Every year chronic infections in patients due to biofilm formation of pathogenic bacteria are a multi-billion Euro burden to national healthcare systems. Despite improvements in technology and medical services, morbidity and mortality due to chronic infections have remained unchanged over the past decades. The emergence of a chronic infection disease burden calls for the development of modern diagnostics for biofilm resistance profiling and new therapeutic strategies to eradicate biofilm-associated infections. However, many unsuccessful attempts to address this need teach us that alternative perspectives are needed to meet the challenges. The project is committed to develop innovative diagnostics and to strive for therapeutic solutions in patients suffering from biofilm-associated infections. The objective is to apply data-driven science to unlock the potential of microbial genomics. This new approach uses tools of advanced microbiological genomics and machine learning in genome-wide association studies on an existing unprecedentedly large dataset. This dataset has been generated in my group within the last five years and comprises sequence variation and gene expression information of a plethora of clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. The wealth of patterns and characteristics of biofilm resistance are invisible at a smaller scale and will be interpreted within context and domain-specific knowledge. The unique combination of basic molecular biology research, technology-driven approaches and data-driven science allows pioneer research dedicated to advance strategies to combat biofilm-associated infections. My approach does not only provide a prediction of biofilm resistance based on the bacteria´s genotype but also holds promise to transform treatment paradigms for the management of chronic infections and by interference with bacterial stress responses will promote the effectiveness of antimicrobials in clinical use to eradicate biofilm infections.

Mots-clés : biofilms,chronic bacterial infections,bacterial genomics
Projet ERC : OPTNETSPACE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 887500.0 €

Every year, the world economy invests a large amount of resources to improve or develop transport infrastructure. How should these investments be allocated to maximize social welfare? In this proposal, I propose to develop and apply new methods to study optimal transport networks in general-equilibrium models of international trade, urban economics and economic geography. The methodology will build on recent work (Fajgelbaum and Schaal, 2017), in which my coauthor and I studied the network design problem in a general neoclassical trade framework. In the first project, I develop a new framework to analyze optimal infrastructure investment in an urban setting. The model features people commuting between residential areas and business districts as well as a choice over the mode of transportation. We plan to evaluate the framework to historical data about specific cities. In the second project, I propose and implement an new algorithm to compute optimal transport networks in the presence of increasing returns to transport, a likely prominent feature of real-world networks. The algorithm applies a branch-and-bound method in a series of geometric programming relaxations of the problem. In the third project, I study the dynamic evolution of actual transport networks using satellite data from the US, India and Mexico. In the spirit of Hsieh and Klenow (2007), I use the model to measure distortions in the placement of roads between rich and poor countries. In the fourth project, I study the inefficiencies and welfare losses associated with political economy frictions among governments and planning agencies. I use the model to identify inefficiencies and relate them to measures of institutions and political outcomes. In the final project, I propose a new explanation behind the Zipf’s law distribution of city sizes. I show that Zipf’s law may result from particular topological properties of optimal transport networks that allocate resources efficiently in space.

Mots-clés : network,transport,design,optimal,international trade,economic geography,urban
Projet ERC : WebMAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 70505.6 €

Everyone’s perception of the world is unique. Subjective attributions exert powerful influences on our cognition and behaviour, ranging from implicit biases to explicit decision-making. Psychology, public policy, and marketing have long histories of attempts to measure subjective judgements using questionnaires, in which single items are rated one scale at a time. However, ratings require individuals to translate the richness of their perceptual experience into discrete quantities for each item separately. This does not reflect the continuous and context-rich nature of experience. In our ERC Starting Grant, we have been developing a novel technique for capturing judgements of relationships among a large number of objects. In this technique, the participant arranges the objects on a computer screen by mouse drag-and-drop operations. This multi-arrangement (MA) method enables participants to communicate multiple continuous object-pair similarities by a single drag-and-drop placement and to adjust the judgements in the context of the entire set. The MA method also lends itself to efficient acquisition of multiple continuous property judgements performed in the context of the set. Our aim with the present Proof of Concept (PoC) project is to develop a web-based platform for the MA method that is compatible with modern technologies (e.g. tablets, touchscreen laptops and desktop PCs). We plan to use JavaScript, Python, and HTML in order to implement an easy to use web-based tool that makes the MA method available to a broad base of users. The web-based platform would provide important savings, reducing programming costs, research assistant work, and volunteer travel expenses. This would enable researchers in science, governments, and industry to quickly and easily acquire substantial amounts of subjective judgment data at lower costs. The PoC grant would enable us to build this web-based platform and explore its potential for broad application and commercialisation.
Projet ERC : TreeMort (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Wageningen University & Research — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : WUR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 21000.0 €

Everything that lives must die. Yet when it comes to the world's forests, we know much more about the processes governing their life than those governing their death. Global forests hold enormous amounts of carbon in their biomass, which has absorbed about 20% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions over recent decades. Whether the size of this sink will persist, intensify, decrease or even become a source is highly uncertain, yet knowing this is crucial to the calculation of carbon emission budgets consistent with limiting global temperature rise. One of the most compelling explanations for this uncertainty is a lack of knowledge of how tree mortality affects forest carbon storage on a global scale. Mortality rates and mechanisms are closely tied to forest structure and composition, and thus the storage of carbon in biomass, but mechanistic complexity and the difficulty of measurement have hindered understanding, resulting in a striking lack of consensus in existing assessments. TreeMort will remedy this, combining newly available sources of data with appropriate conceptualisation and innovative modelling, to provide quantifications of the rates and causes of tree death, and their relation to environmental drivers, that set new standards for robustness, comprehensiveness and consistency at the global scale. This breaking-out of the narrower foci of previous work will be a game-changer, finally enabling globally-comprehensive investigation of the extent to which whole forest structure and function are governed by and interact with mortality, and their likely evolution under environmental change. TreeMort will assess this using state-of-the-art ecosystem modelling, which will then be employed to make a fundamental reassessment of the current and future carbon storage capacity of global forests. TreeMort will thus bring us significantly closer to understanding fully how forests interact with the global carbon cycle, assisting efforts to mitigate climate change.

Mots-clés : terrestrial carbon cycle,terrestrial carbon sink,tree mortality,vegetation dynamics,forest structure,global,terrestrial biosphere modelling,carbon turnover
Projet ERC : EVICT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Groningen — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499018.0 €

Eviction – the involuntary loss of one’s home – has a devastating impact on people’s wellbeing and has severe consequences for society as a whole. During and after the financial crisis of 2007-2011, over 700,000 people in Europe either lost their homes or were at risk of losing them. National courts use national laws to rule on whether an eviction is just. However, the right to housing, as laid down in international and European law, often demands more protection of the power- and propertyless than national laws prescribe. As a result, national courts are at the centre of the complex interaction between national and international law. In times of growing national resistance towards international law, the questions whether, how, and why international law impacts on national law are among the most topical that legal scholars face. Evictions provide a timely opportunity to determine why international rights, such as the right to housing, may or may not have an impact on national law. The financial crisis has led to an enormous amount of case law (legal big data). The combination of the developed, but understudied, international right to housing and these vast amounts of national data offers a unique opportunity to examine the interaction between international law and national law. It is impossible to analyse all judgments manually. Therefore, I will use a data-driven approach that is unique in the legal discipline. Using citation network analysis, I conceptualise the right to housing as a network of international rights and conduct the first empirical analysis of the impact of this right in case law from national supreme courts and lower level courts. With the use of machine learning, I will identify predictors for courts’ decisions, and explain how these predictors may mirror the right to housing. This approach has long been called for but, so far, rarely been executed. If successful, it could be used in future research projects in other areas of the law.

Mots-clés : right to housing,eviction,housing law,data science
Projet ERC : DISSECT (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Antwerp — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UAntwerp
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 62500.0 €

Evidence is at the heart of adjudication, and adjudication at the heart of the international protection of human rights. Yet evidence in international human rights (IHR) adjudication has never been comprehensively studied. Benefiting from the support of highest-level figures in the relevant institutions, DISSECT is a ground-breaking research programme which will capture the evidentiary regimes in place in the world’s three regional human rights courts and in UN human rights quasi-judicial bodies. First, DISSECT will examine from a purely legal perspective the formal and informal rules and practices (‘regime’) which govern the treatment of evidence in IHR adjudication - burden and standard of proof and evidence admissibility, collection, submission, assessment and scope. It will do so across institutions, types of complaints and time. Second, it will examine the political underpinnings and uses of the IHR evidentiary regime, including dismissals of politically sensitive complaints on the pretext that they are not sufficiently evidenced by the victim. Third, it will identify ‘best’ and ‘worst’ practices and generate specific recommendations for use in IHR adjudication. Fourth, it will develop new insights on evidence, truth and power and thus create a new strand in Critical Legal Studies. These ambitious aims will be achieved by harnessing not only legal doctrinal methods of research but also, and crucially, the PI’s rare double training as a lawyer and an anthropologist. This will allow the IHR evidentiary regime to be studied as a social phenomenon (rather than merely ‘in context’). DISSECT is urgently needed by victims of human rights abuse who seek international redress without knowing exactly what evidence is required of them, as well as by IHR adjudicatory bodies at risk of losing their legitimacy if they cannot demonstrate that they are acting logically, consistently and fairly. Current concerns over ‘truth decay’ make it particularly timely.

Mots-clés : evidence,international human rights law,critical legal studies,anthropological study
Projet ERC : QUANTA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Bergen — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2663928.75 €

Exact quantification, including the ability to count, depends on both conceptual breakthroughs and cognitive tools such as numeral systems. These tools appear in striking diversity across cultures and manifest in different modalities (verbal, body-based, written, or material). To address the tantalizing questions of when, why, and how they emerged and evolved, we test two previously untestable key hypotheses: that conceptual breakthroughs and tools co-evolved, with different modalities coactively scaffolding the breakthroughs; and that the tools diversified in response to changing cultural requirements. Reconstructing this evolution is the prime goal of QUANTA. Addressing its ambitious objectives requires an unprecedented synergetic combination of (i) archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic insights into numeral systems worldwide, including prehistoric artefacts and symbols, and on contemporary contexts in which quantification occurs and changes; (ii) a cognitive framework for deriving evolutionary hypotheses from system properties; (iii) powerful computational (phylogenetic) methods for testing these hypotheses and thereby reconstructing cultural evolution; and (iv) innovative means to substantially extend the temporal scope of these methods into the past, to include the first attested instances of quantification. To achieve this goal, QUANTA brings together four leading PIs with unique and complementary expertise in exactly these means. By integrating an evolutionary approach with a cognitive perspective on quantification, QUANTA will transform this research field. Its novel strategy will, for the first time ever, yield substantiated insights into the emergence and evolution of numeral systems, thus advancing our understanding of human cognition and its dependence on cultural tools. While the highly interdisciplinary, multi-method approach renders this a high-risk project, QUANTA has the potential to bridge the gap between previously incommensurable fields.

Mots-clés : numbers,language,and mind,evolutionary anthropology,cultural evolution,phylogenetics,numerical cognition and culture,numeral systems,diversification of languages,distributed cognition,cognitive evolution,prehistory,quantification,counting devices,experimental archaeology,history of writing,notational systems
Projet ERC : QUANTA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40676.25 €

Exact quantification, including the ability to count, depends on both conceptual breakthroughs and cognitive tools such as numeral systems. These tools appear in striking diversity across cultures and manifest in different modalities (verbal, body-based, written, or material). To address the tantalizing questions of when, why, and how they emerged and evolved, we test two previously untestable key hypotheses: that conceptual breakthroughs and tools co-evolved, with different modalities coactively scaffolding the breakthroughs; and that the tools diversified in response to changing cultural requirements. Reconstructing this evolution is the prime goal of QUANTA. Addressing its ambitious objectives requires an unprecedented synergetic combination of (i) archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic insights into numeral systems worldwide, including prehistoric artefacts and symbols, and on contemporary contexts in which quantification occurs and changes; (ii) a cognitive framework for deriving evolutionary hypotheses from system properties; (iii) powerful computational (phylogenetic) methods for testing these hypotheses and thereby reconstructing cultural evolution; and (iv) innovative means to substantially extend the temporal scope of these methods into the past, to include the first attested instances of quantification. To achieve this goal, QUANTA brings together four leading PIs with unique and complementary expertise in exactly these means. By integrating an evolutionary approach with a cognitive perspective on quantification, QUANTA will transform this research field. Its novel strategy will, for the first time ever, yield substantiated insights into the emergence and evolution of numeral systems, thus advancing our understanding of human cognition and its dependence on cultural tools. While the highly interdisciplinary, multi-method approach renders this a high-risk project, QUANTA has the potential to bridge the gap between previously incommensurable fields.

Mots-clés : numbers,language,and mind,evolutionary anthropology,cultural evolution,phylogenetics,numerical cognition and culture,numeral systems,diversification of languages,distributed cognition,cognitive evolution,prehistory,quantification,counting devices,experimental archaeology,history of writing,notational systems
Projet ERC : PASTRES (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : European University Institute — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : EUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 353386.0 €

Existing institutions, legal frameworks and governance systems are not equipped to respond to growing global uncertainties and the challenges of building resilience. Radical new thinking is needed. Important lessons potentially can come from surprising quarters. Drawing insights from pastoral areas across three continents, we will ask: What lessons can we learn from pastoral systems responding to rapid change that help us understand how to live with uncertainty and build resilience? Learning from the margins – through a reversal in conventional policy learning and debate - this project will draw out principles from deeply-embedded, culturally-rich responses to rapid change and uncertainty in pastoral areas in Africa (Borana, Ethiopia), Asia (Qinghai-Tibet, China) and Europe (Sardinia, Italy). Working in a world-class team - including the PI (Prof. Ian Scoones), an experienced post-doctoral researcher (Dr Michele Nori) and three PhD students, together with local partners - we will explore how to respond to uncertainty and build resilience across three themes: i) environment and resources, ii) commodification and markets and iii) institutions and governance, while building the interdisciplinary research capacities of the team. Through a process of theory-building, emerging from detailed empirical research in our three sites, we will engage in dialogue with wider debates across five areas – environmental and climate change, finance and commodity markets, infrastructure design, migration policy and conflict and security - about how to respond to risk and uncertainty and build resilience, offering both new theory and practical responses. The research will significantly extend past work through a path-breaking, cross-disciplinary reconceptualization of uncertainty and resilience, linking the experiences of marginal pastoralists to wider, global resilience challenges.

Mots-clés : uncertainty,resilience,pastoralism,development
Projet ERC : ExoData (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 139454.0 €

ExoData will use results from the very successfull ExoMol Advanced Award which created comprehensive spectroscopic line lists to help understand and model the atmospheres of exoplanets. ExoData will help build and fund a satellite aimed at characterising exoplanet atmospheres using a cheap, agile, low earth orbit satellite mission with a launch date this decade. This mission will be part funded by the sale of telescope data to interested international clients. This is a new business model for astonomical satellites. ExoData will (a) fund business development in partnership with a small company created to sell telescope and other data from this mission and (b) use the results of the ExoMol project to model results from this mission and to create software and models that have potential re-sale value. The deliverable will be funded space mission and a novel business model.

Mots-clés : space