Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : FireSpace (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de New York — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : NYU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 498020.24 €

The "FireSpace" research proposal aims to address the critical challenge of fire safety in space exploration, particularly in environments with increased oxygen concentrations, reduced pressure, and reduced gravity. The main objective is to generate fundamental knowledge on the fire behavior of materials used in spacecraft and habitats under these extreme conditions and to develop strategies for mitigating fire risks. This will be achieved through a combination of experimental investigations, the development of fire-retardant (FR) materials, and advanced numerical simulations. The key objectives of the project are to: 1. Passive fire mitigation: Understand the fire behavior of FR materials in reduced gravity and oxygen-rich environments. Develop new FR materials and advanced diagnostics for testing these materials in microgravity. 2. Active fire mitigation: Formulate strategies for controlling flame spread through environmental perturbations such as acoustic or electromagnetic waves. 3. Numerical simulations: Perform detailed simulations of fire spread from material to compartment scales, predicting the effectiveness of fire safety strategies in spacecraft and space habitats. 4. Risk management: Consider the interplay between fire safety and other critical habitation systems, ensuring a balanced approach to risk management in space missions. The research will be structured into seven work packages (WPs) involving the design of FR materials, development of experimental rigs for microgravity platforms, and integration of fire safety into spacecraft design. This holistic approach will generate groundbreaking knowledge to enhance the fire safety of future space missions.

Mots-clés : fire retardancy,flame retardant,flammability,fire safety,combustion,fire spread,cfd modeling,numerical simulation,reduced gravity,space exploration,spacecraft,diagnostics
Projet ERC : SHAPE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université norvégienne de sciences et de technologie — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2147985.0 €

We address a gap in research on the bi-directional effects of language on thought and thought on language, and the developmental pathways that transmit interactions between language and cognition from one generation to the next. The significant empirical advances we propose will result in a unified, cross-disciplinary theory which addresses language diversity through the dynamic interaction of language and cognitive systems across languages and cultures. To this end, we select shape as a core spatial property of entities in the physical world of things which determines bodily action on objects. The abstract properties of shape are codified in multiple ways in the world’s varied languages, including spoken and signed languages – in object and category labels and their organization into classes of categories, spatial prepositions, verbs, and quantifying expressions. Visual shape perception and shape representation in early perceptual and cognitive development are inherently intertwined and interdependent with early language acquisition. Children on atypical developmental trajectories show a cascade of disrupted development in both shape perception and language that can have substantial life-long consequences. Despite this compelling evidence of the pervasiveness of shape, no theoretical account has been offered to explain its nature as a system, neither has this topic been approached integrating evidence and methodologies across disciplines. The main goal of the current endeavor is to provide such an account from the point of view of systems theory and aligning methodologies across vision research, cognitive development, theory of language and language typology and sign language. Our premise is that shape holds a privileged status in human representational systems – in perceiving, using and reasoning about objects and in organizing the structures of the world’s languages and, as such, is key to understanding human intelligence and its developmental trajectories.

Mots-clés : shape perception and representation language development shape bias cross linguistic differences autism developmental language disorder
Projet ERC : Horsepower (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2817467.5 €

Horse Power will examine the complex interactions between the eastern steppe and China from the second millennium BCE to the formation of the Xiongnu empire in Mongolia and the Qin state in China after 300 BCE. From the second millennium BCE two great worlds formed, traded and fought across Eurasia. From Mongolia to the European steppe great horse and herding cultures coalesced across thousands of kilometres of grassland. To the south, a string of states existed from Egypt to the Chinese Central Plains, some already ancient and others newly created. Interaction between these worlds was constant and profoundly formative for all parties, a fact we are only starting to fully appreciate. To examine the connections between the steppe, Mongolia and China’s Central Plains we will combine the latest scientific techniques in genetics and metallurgical analysis with theory concerning politics and power within and between China and its northern neighbours. Three principal empirical elements underpin the project: ancient DNA from horses; the characterization of bronzes to throw light on their movement and recycling; the structure and contents of archaeological sites (mainly graves) in China, Mongolia and the steppe. We will develop theory on the nature of leadership and power, particularly in mobile societies. Science will meet social science in a mutually informative manner and we will work across linguistic boundaries (Chinese, Mongolian, Russian, English) in a spirit of the co-production of knowledge with important partners including The Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in China and Mongolian universities. We will reflect on our working practices, engaging a broader public in how a complex research project works. An innovative artistic programme will engage a range of local communities, horse enthusiasts and local artists in the work and results of the project. Working together we will create a picture of this complex region impossible if we had worked alone.

Mots-clés : cosmology,horse genetics
Projet ERC : DynaTrans (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Collège de France — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3366011.25 €

During mammalian embryogenesis, key events involving DNA and regulatory molecules over seconds and nanometers affect and are affected by, a major reorganization of the genetic material in the nucleus over hours and micrometers. How these scales are spanned and integrated into the course of development remains a major unresolved challenge. Progress in this quest is difficult, either because current model systems suffer from severe technical limitations or because existing analytical approaches probe individual spatial or temporal scales thus ignoring their evolving interactions. Traditional live imaging lacks the spatial resolution to accurately delineate chromosome organization at the scale of genes, while bulk molecular assays are ill-suited for studying development over time. Here, we propose a multi-disciplinary approach to the dynamics of developmental gene regulation to understand the details of the underlying mechanisms and their deployment over time. We combine and apply optical, molecular-genomic, and theoretical tools to recently available mammalian pseudo-embryos, allowing unprecedented precision in developmental staging, a large amount of material, and easy optical access. By focusing on select gene loci we track transcriptional activation and the interactions of distal DNA elements in real-time along with the associated chromatin dynamics using interaction profiles. Our datasets are iteratively distilled into mathematical models of increasing scope, converging towards an integrative dynamic polymer model that simultaneously captures long-timescale chromatin rearrangements as well as short-timescale motions of genetic regulatory elements and transcriptional activity. We then challenge these models via genome editing and temporally defined interventions by building light-controlled tools to affect the chromosome landscape. This project aims to reshape our view of how genes are regulated during mammalian development.

Mots-clés : gastruloids,pseudo embryos,live imaging,optogenetics,inference modeling,maximum entropy,nuclear architecture,loop extrusion,enhancers,regulatory landscapes,3rs principle
Projet ERC : TRANSDIFFUSE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université polytechnique de Catalogne — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2824750.0 €

The quest for carbon-neutral aviation propels us toward uncharted technological frontiers. In TRANSDIFFUSE, we present an ambitious program to develop an AI-driven model that may revolutionize propulsion technologies. As a synergistic consortium, we unite the numerical modelling prowess of Valero’s team, the high-fidelity computational capabilities of Lehmkuhl’s group, and Paniagua's experimental ingenuity. TRANSDIFFUSE aims to develop new tools related to clean propulsion, specifically an AI-driven model called FluidGPT. In doing so, we expect to enable major advancements to the aeronautical and power generation sectors, including, for example, hydrogen pressure gain combustion (PGC) engines, which are compact, lightweight, high-efficiency turbines. In initiating FluidGPT, we aim to overcome challenges like those facing PGC, by exploiting the thing that has made compact turbomachinery so difficult to design: the troublesome transonic flows propelled from the combustor. With our model we aim to control and manipulate those transonic flows. Our approach to FluidGPT is anchored in characterizing, predicting, and then manipulating the intricate, unsteady, inherently difficult transonic flows—thus unlocking the design and development of transonic diffusing passages, a notorious obstacle to designing turbomachinery passages in new, compact, efficient engines. FluidGPT will model the Navier-Stokes equations for such conditions, enabling the prediction and control of previously unmanageable flow behaviours. A complete model of the Navier-Stokes equations in transonic diffusing passages has never been achieved by the scientific community, and our model will be able to reproduce flow configurations never seen before. Embracing innovation and synergy, TRANSDIFFUSE will also unlock new design guidelines and flow control techniques to surmount limitations across the aeronautical and power generation sectors. This program may redefine fluid dynamics modelling and control.

Mots-clés : navier stokes modelling,sensitivity analysis,flow control,measurement techniques,transonic turbomachinery
Projet ERC : SuperWave (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université rhénane Frédéric-Guillaume de Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2839121.25 €

The past decade has seen remarkable advances in the field of quantum non-linear optics, where individual photons are made to strongly interact which each other. Such strong photon-photon interactions are of both fundamental and technological interest: They are the prerequisite for implementing deterministic quantum logic gate operations for processing optical quantum information. Moreover, photons that strongly interact via a quantum nonlinear medium exhibit complex out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics that enable one to tailor and control the photon statistics of light. Quantum non-linear effects have been successfully demonstrated with few photons in a number of experimental platforms, which exploit resonant enhancement of emitter-photon coupling via high-finesse optical cavities, collective response of ensembles of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms, so-called superatoms, or efficient coupling of single quantum emitters to guided light in the realm of waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED). However, it remains a formidable challenge to reach the true many-body regime of quantum non-linear optics, where strong interactions and entanglement between many photons and many quantum emitters give rise to exotic quantum phases of light, such as photonic molecules or fermionic subradiant states. The objective of SuperWave is to realize this regime by synergizing superatoms and waveguide QED. By uniting the expertise and experimental methods of three teams that have previously driven these fields independently, we will develop near-ideal fiber-coupled nonlinear quantum devices. Their implementation will mark a major breakthrough in quantum optics and constitute a key resource in quantum sensing, quantum metrology, quantum communication, as well as quantum simulations. We will illustrate this great potential through a number of hallmark experiments such as the coherent fragmentation of a classical light pulse into its highly nonclassical photon number components.

Mots-clés : waveguide quantum electrodynamics,quantum non linear optics,rydberg atoms,dipole blockade,quantum nanophotonics,collective radiative effects
Projet ERC : Horsepower (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université rhénane Frédéric-Guillaume de Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 37500.0 €

Horse Power will examine the complex interactions between the eastern steppe and China from the second millennium BCE to the formation of the Xiongnu empire in Mongolia and the Qin state in China after 300 BCE. From the second millennium BCE two great worlds formed, traded and fought across Eurasia. From Mongolia to the European steppe great horse and herding cultures coalesced across thousands of kilometres of grassland. To the south, a string of states existed from Egypt to the Chinese Central Plains, some already ancient and others newly created. Interaction between these worlds was constant and profoundly formative for all parties, a fact we are only starting to fully appreciate. To examine the connections between the steppe, Mongolia and China’s Central Plains we will combine the latest scientific techniques in genetics and metallurgical analysis with theory concerning politics and power within and between China and its northern neighbours. Three principal empirical elements underpin the project: ancient DNA from horses; the characterization of bronzes to throw light on their movement and recycling; the structure and contents of archaeological sites (mainly graves) in China, Mongolia and the steppe. We will develop theory on the nature of leadership and power, particularly in mobile societies. Science will meet social science in a mutually informative manner and we will work across linguistic boundaries (Chinese, Mongolian, Russian, English) in a spirit of the co-production of knowledge with important partners including The Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in China and Mongolian universities. We will reflect on our working practices, engaging a broader public in how a complex research project works. An innovative artistic programme will engage a range of local communities, horse enthusiasts and local artists in the work and results of the project. Working together we will create a picture of this complex region impossible if we had worked alone.

Mots-clés : cosmology,horse genetics
Projet ERC : DRIMMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Institut Pasteur — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2284421.0 €

Successful defence against invaders is critical for survival of eukaryotic cells. Microbes have developed many strategies to subvert host organisms which, in turn, evolved several innate immune responses to counterattack. As major lipid storage organelles of eukaryotes, lipid droplets (LDs) are an attractive source of nutrients for invaders. Pathogens induce and physically interact with LDs and the current view is that they ‘hijack’ LDs to draw on substrates for host colonisation. We recently challenged this dogma by demonstrating that LDs are endowed with a regulated protein-mediated antibiotic activity. Our work intro-duced the new concept that dependence on host nutrients is a generic ‘Achilles’ heel’ of intracellular pathogens and LDs a chokepoint harnessed by innate immunity to organise a front-line defence.  Here, we have formed a multidisciplinary group combining complementary knowledge and transdiscipli-nary expertise to investigate the hypothesis that LDs are innate immunity hubs sensing infection and di-rectly confronting invaders. We will characterise, in cells and animals, how LDs efficiently coordinate and precisely execute a plethora of immune responses such as killing, signalling and inflammation. High-throughput proteomics and lipidomics will identify defensive players. 3D electron tomography and confo-cal microscopy will be combined with proximity labelling strategies and biochemical methods to get un-precedented understanding of host LD-pathogen dynamics. The successful pathogen Mycobacterium tuber-culosis will be used to test the medical significance of our findings and unravel bacterial mechanisms of resistance to LD-mediated defences.  Characterisation of these novel innate immune systems will be paradigm-shifting in immunology, physiol-ogy and cell biology. In the age of antimicrobial resistance and viral pandemics, unravelling how eukaryot-ic LDs fight and defeat dangerous microorganisms will inspire new anti-infective therapies.

Mots-clés : lipid droplets,bacteria,tuberculosis,lipids,mitochondria,cell biology,electron microscopy,proteomics
Projet ERC : UNFOLD (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Institut Pasteur — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2633655.0 €

Mammals with large brains and higher cognitive functions have a richly folded cerebral cortex. Folding abnormalities are linked to various cognitive disabilities. Despite its relevance in clinical diagnostics, the causes and consequences of cortex folding remain poorly understood. While cortex folding was long assumed to result from a limited skull volume, it is a developmental process intrinsic to the cortex. We hypothesize that cortex folding emerges from a dynamic interplay between mechanical and molecular processes, and that far from being an epiphenomenon, it has major consequences for brain architecture and function. UNFOLD will test this hypothesis by integrating genomics, cell biology, mechanics of brain development and computational modeling. Our interdisciplinary team will apply in vitro, in vivo and in silico approaches to brain tissue of strategically selected animal models. First, we will map molecular, cellular, and mechanical events accompanying cortex folding. Next, we will investigate the effects of genetic perturbations of cell biological processes on tissue mechanics, and vice versa, to identify key mechanisms leading to cortex folding and elucidate their dynamic interactions. Then, we will test the universality of these mechanisms by inducing folds in species with a smooth brain. Finally, we will decipher the consequences of cortex folding on neural circuit function and animal behavior. Our project integrates current, opposing concepts of cortex folding by adopting an interdisciplinary and multiscale perspective. Unraveling the dynamic interactions between molecular, cellular, and mechanical events during development will provide unprecedented insights into the determinants of cortical anatomy and brain organization. Our work, bridging physical and life sciences, will lead to new insights into normal and pathological brain development, paving the way to a new research area of integrated neurobiology with potential applications in modern medicine.

Mots-clés : cerebral cortex folding ferret mouse neurogenesis neuron migration viscoelasticity radial glia cell xenopus development mechanics afm tissue mechanics
Projet ERC : TubulinCode (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Institute of Biotechnology — Pays : Rép. Tchèque — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BTÚ AV ČR
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2954592.75 €

Microtubules (MT) are core components of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton with essential roles in cell division, cell shape, intracellular transport, and motility. Despite their functional divergence, MTs have highly conserved structures made from almost identical molecular building blocks – tubulin proteins. A variety of posttranslational modifications (PTMs) diversifies these building blocks, which is thought to control most of the properties and functions of the MT cytoskeleton, a concept referred to as the ‘tubulin code’. While they appear to have subtle effects at the molecular level, tubulin PTMs are essential for maintaining cellular functions of MTs over large spatial and temporal scales. Yet, a comprehensive knowledge of the principles of the tubulin code, connecting its functions across the molecular, cellular and organismal levels, is almost entirely lacking. Our project aims to obtain a novel molecular and mechanistic understanding of how tubulin PTMs control long-term cellular function and homeostasis. Our unique approach bridges all relevant scales of biology and relies on a synergy between our powerful experimental models and expertise in biochemistry, structural biology, single-molecule assays, systems-biophysics, cell biology, and physiology. Specifically, we will: (1) Determine how different tubulin PTMs affect biophysical and structural properties of MTs and their interactions with associated proteins; (2) Define the impact of tubulin PTMs on overall MT cytoskeleton behaviour and the resulting physiological implications in neurons; (3) Combine zebrafish and mouse models and develop a novel fish model for lifelong in-vivo imaging to determine how the tubulin PTMs control lifelong MT-based functions. Our work will define the importance of tubulin PTMs by revealing their critical molecular functions over the lifetime of an organism. The project has the potential to substantially change our perception of the cytoskeleton’s role in homeostasis and disease.

Mots-clés : microtubule cytoskeleton,tubulin code,tubulin posttranslational modifications,axonal transport,neuronal homeostasis,zebrafish,mouse,danionella,in vivo imaging,motor proteins,in vitro reconstitution,cell mechanics