Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ARAMAIZATION (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1482790.0 €

For more than two thousand years, the Sumerian and Akkadian languages and the cuneiform script dominated the written record of the Middle East (c.3000–500 BCE). Yet the hegemonic cultural position of these languages began to erode under the Assyrian Empire (935–612 BCE), when the region was subject to an imperial order closely aligned with the Sumero-Akkadian tradition. How did Aramaic writing, lacking a comparable pedigree or status, manage to establish itself alongside Sumero-Akkadian before displacing it altogether?  Answering this question has significance far beyond the first millennium BCE. The Aramaization of the Middle East is the story of the fall of the world’s oldest literate tradition and its replacement by an upstart language and script. Making sense of this transition will be instructive for our understanding of processes of language change in the long term. It will also contribute to our understanding of later sociolinguistic transformations in the Middle East and elsewhere, including in our own time of global linguistic and cultural flux.  The Aramaization of the Middle East has evaded adequate treatment because of the difficulty and dispersal of the data, enduring disciplinary divisions, and outdated interpretative paradigms. The publication in recent decades of much new evidence adds to the urgency of the problem. The ARAMAIZATION project will investigate the Aramaization of the Middle East across disciplinary boundaries, bringing together expertise in Assyriology, Aramaic studies, and historical sociolinguistics. We will approach Aramaization as a process rooted in the choices of the people and institutions who commissioned and produced writing. We will examine these choices by surveying all available evidence together as part of a single linguistic landscape. Our research will pioneer sociolinguistic research methods with broad applicability to the study of language choice and language change across the ancient world and beyond.

Mots-clés : historical sociolinguistics comparative history aramaic akkadian language change assyria babylonia mesopotamia
Projet ERC : PASSAGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1067794.72 €

Understanding the nature and pace of climate change in the future requires robust and accurate information on past Earth's climate changes. Much of what we know about past short-term climate variability stems from marine sediment sequences, whose sedimentary components provide an ever-expanding array of paleoclimatic proxies. The fundamental assumption underlying most paleoceanographic investigations is that the environmental signal encapsulated in marine sedimentary components reflects that of the overlying water column at the time of formation. However, evidence indicates asynchronous synthesis and transport from distal locations for co-deposited sediment constituents. Consequently, fundamental questions arise regarding the fidelity of paleoclimate records. Moreover, the magnitude of such temporal and spatial offsets likely varies in concert with hydrographic ? and associated hydrodynamic - changes. Here, I outline a research program to directly assess the impact of hydrodynamic processes on marine particles and explore implications for paleoceanographic studies. Specifically, this research will: (i) estimate the contribution of allochthonous/asynchronous material; (ii) constrain the extent and nature of the specific modes of particle transport; (iii) quantify their potential to bias derived climate signals; (iv) correct for aliased proxy records and reconstruct past hydrodynamic changes. This work would provide a crucial advance in our ability to reliably interpret sub-millennial scale climatic signals. We will develop cutting-edge methodologies for particle isolation and will apply state-of-the art analytical techniques for compound-specific radiocarbon (14C) determination. The timeliness of this project is fostered by the recent advances in 14C detection for measurement of ultra-small samples. Equipped with the required theoretical grounds and analytical expertise, I am ideally positioned to effectively execute this challenging project.

Mots-clés : radiocarbon
Projet ERC : LeviNeT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Entité participante : Centro internazionale di studi primo levi — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CENTRO STUDI PRIMO LEVI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 206250.0 €

Primo Levi (1919-1987), one of the most important witnesses of the Holocaust, has been studied increasingly over the last three decades. Levi is currently recognized as one of the few Italian thinkers of essential importance for the understanding of the 20th century as a whole. The LeviNeT project aims to provide the very first edition of a significant portion of Levi?s multilingual correspondence. The edition will be open source and hosted on an online platform. It will concentrate on Levi?s German correspondence: the epistolary exchanges that took place between Levi and his German-speaking readers, interlocutors, friends, survivors and former oppressors from 1959 to 1987. This correspondence constitutes a stunning epistolary network between him and many German-language correspondents, including the translator, Heinz Riedt, the philosopher, Jean Am?ry, the historian, Hermann Langbein, and the politician, Hety Schmitt-Maass. It consists of a rich and vibrant discussion on themes such as guilt, the possibility of overcoming the past, and the consequences of that past on the present. What is at the heart of this network is the rebuilding of a post-war European identity. In short, this project uncovers a new and decisive crossroad in European cultural history. Thanks to the authorization of Primo Levi?s heirs, it will be possible to access Levi?s private archive for the first time, and so to have a complete view of his German network. The planned open-source edition will include: a philological transcription and a semantic analysis of each letter, a graphic visualization of the German network, in-depth biographical information for each correspondent, a timeline and a map, and a series of thematic itineraries. This edition will provide a brand-new narrative in studies of Primo Levi and unique core material for literary scholars and historians. Moreover, it will be an innovative didactic tool for the international community of teachers, students and readers.

Mots-clés : holocaust studies primo levi european history european identity politics of memory public memory epistolary studies
Projet ERC : SyncyNucDiff (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Centre européen de recherche en biologie et en médecine — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CERBM
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 444375.0 €

Due to their cellular anatomy, syncytial cells face many unique challenges that mono-nucleated cells do not. One of them is how syncytial cells organize gene expression among many nuclei in a shared cytoplasm. How such property is linked to their biological functions remains poorly understood. Using the skeletal muscle as a paradigm and single-nucleus transcriptomics, I recently uncovered previously unrecognized diversity and dynamics of myonuclear transcriptional programs. This conceptualized the syncytial muscle cell itself as an analog of multi-cellular tissue where individual nuclei are counterparts of differentiated cell types. My findings raise two important and unanswered questions. 1) How are the diverse nuclear identities specified and maintained? And 2) What are the functional contributions of the diverse nuclear subtypes in health and disease? I will first focus on the nuclei at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) and myotendinous junction (MTJ), which are responsible for initiation of contraction and dissipation of contractile force, respectively. Despite their well-established functions, the mechanisms that specify or maintain them are sparsely understood. I will investigate how chromatin architecture and transcriptional regulators govern their identities. I will then characterize the upstream signalling pathways from motor neuron or tendon cells that activate the specific transcriptional programs. So far, genetic manipulation of myofibers have targeted entire muscle nuclei. To overcome this limit, I will develop tools that allow genetic manipulation in specific nuclear subtypes. Previous works had identified a new nuclear subtype associated with muscular dystrophy and a transient time window during postnatal development. I will characterize the function of these nuclei using a method that abolishes their transcriptional activities. The approaches to be developed here will pave the way to understanding the pathophysiology of syncytial cells in the future.

Mots-clés : skeletal muscle,differentiation,neuromuscular and myotendinous junction,muscular dystrophy
Projet ERC : ESTABLIS-UAS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DLR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1479205.0 €

Exchange and transport processes in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) are driven by turbulence on a wide range of scales. Their adequate parameterization in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models is essential for a high predictive skill of forecasts. In heterogenous and complex terrain, the common simplification of turbulence to statistical models does not necessarily hold. Coherent structures such as convective cells, secondary circulations, gusts, slope and valley flows can be summarized to sub-mesoscale structures which are not well represented in models. A reason for the lack of understanding of these flow features is the challenge to adequately sample their spatio-temporal structure and their contribution to the energy budget of the ABL. The project ESTABLIS-UAS will provide methods to expose spatio-temporal structures in the ABL with in-situ measurements by a fleet of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). For this purpose, small, rotary-wing UAS will be enabled to measure three-dimensional wind, temperature and humidity in organized, spatially distributed networks. The project will include a three-fold approach to validate single UAS measurements, fleet observations and methods to derive spatial averages and fluxes. Wind tunnel tests, field experiments and virtual measurements in numerical simulations will be performed.  The validated UAS fleet will be deployed in two campaigns in the framework of the TEAMx research programme, focusing on the mountain boundary layer (MoBL). The ESTABLIS-UAS measurements will fill observational gaps in the sub-mesoscale. The analysis of the UAS fleet data in synthesis with ground observations and remote sensing will provide unprecedented new insights into the complex MoBL flow and the components of its energy budget. The results will foster the development of new and better parameterization of the ABL in complex terrain.

Mots-clés : boundary layer,turbulence,unmanned aerial systems
Projet ERC : ASTROCODE (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1492962.0 €

A major challenge in neuroscience is uncovering the mechanisms that give rise to the brain's cognitive abilities. Cognitive functions create internal representations (meaningful signals about their external environment or internal state) and perform computations on them to drive behaviours and physiological changes. Research on cognitive functions has primarily focused on neurons. Astrocytes, once seen as passive support cells, now are known to respond to and influence neuronal activity and behaviour. They have been shown to regulate circuits responsible for cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear whether they are integral elements of, or external modulators to, cognitive circuits responsible for information storage and processing. I will leverage my multidisciplinary training and recent advances to unravel the role of astrocytes in cognitive functions and determine whether astrocytes generate distinct representations carrying specific information used in circuit computations to guide behaviour. In AstroCode, I will image astrocytic activity using state-of-the-art two-photon mini-microscopes in freely moving mice performing a behavioural task involving stimuli of opposite valence to determine the specificity of the information encoded in astrocyte activity. Then, I will explore the functional specificity of astrocytic control over neuronal activity, studying the astrocytic involvement in the generation of distinct neuronal representations and in the selection of different adaptive behaviours. Moreover, I will use an innovative strategy to determine the functional role of naturally occurring astrocyte calcium signals in cognitive functions: a closed-loop stimulus-state strategy, in which sensory stimuli are delivered based on the presence of specific patterns of astrocytic activity AstroCode aims to clearly determine the astrocyte role in information processing, providing a unique strategy to advance our understanding of the brain’s cognitive mechanisms.

Mots-clés : astrocytes,cognitive circuits,neuronal codes,neuronal representations,systems neuroscience
Projet ERC : IGG4-START (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Leiden University Medical Center — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LUMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1493090.0 €

The predominant autoantibody (sub)class is an important determinant in the pathophysiology of autoimmune diseases (AID). Autoantibodies can be pro-inflammatory, such as IgG1, causing disease by complement-mediated or immune cell-mediated tissue damage. In 2015 I was the first to describe a second group of AID where IgG4 autoantibodies, which are largely unable to activate the immune system, cause disease. Till date at least 29 different diseases classify as IgG4-predominated AID (IgG4-AID). Why certain AID are predominated by IgG4 autoantibodies is not known, but this is confirmed to be critical for precipitation, mechanism and treatment of the disease. In fact selective permissive determinants for class switching to IgG4 in general are not known. Recently, I realized that in contrast to IgG1 autoantigens, IgG4 autoantigens are single pass transmembrane proteins which are continuously shed from the cell. I therefore hypothesize that a key element of the aetiology of IgG4-AID is IgG4-AID antigen shedding resulting in chronic, systemic antigen stimulation in the absence of ‘danger’ signals like bacterial antigens, viral antigens or cellular damage. The goal of this project is therefore to unravel the antigenic and environmental cues that initiate and drive IgG4 (autoreactive) responses following this innovative paradigm, and to find strategies to specifically reduce pathogenic IgG4 responses. I will study this hypothesis using the archetypical IgG4-AID MuSK myasthenia gravis as a model. The combination of state-of-the-art antibody technologies including human lymphoid organoids and AI-based antigen-antibody modelling, with my IgG4 autoimmunity expertise and our set of patient-derived monoclonal antibodies, puts me in an unique position to address the goal of this project. I furthermore aim to provide a first proof of concept for specifically targeting IgG4+ B cells in vitro to pave the way for new therapeutic strategies for IgG4-AID and other IgG4-associated diseases

Mots-clés : autoimmune disease,igg4,antibodies,myasthenia gravis,class switching
Projet ERC : ElucidAge (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Leiden University Medical Center — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LUMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 121875.0 €

Advancing age is the major risk factor for many serious illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and dementia. The rising number of older individuals is thus causing a major burden of ill health. However, individuals that reach an exceptional old age often seem to escape or delay age-related diseases, and part of this trait seems to be encoded in their genome. Hence, by studying the genome of long-lived individuals, we may be able to identify mechanisms that could be targeted for healthy ageing in the general population. My previous work suggests that large genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of long-lived individuals can be used to identify genetic variants involved in longevity. However, the common genetic variants thus far identified using GWAS only explain a minor part of the genetic component of longevity. This trait, therefore, may well be mainly determined by rare genetic variants, which can be detected using whole-genome or exome sequencing of long-lived families or exceptionally long-lived individuals. The aim of the proposed project is to establish the effect of genetic variants identified in genetic studies of long-lived individuals on general health and lifespan using cellular models and, subsequently, model organisms. To this end, I will use CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to generate transgenic cell lines and mice that harbour genetic variants in candidate genes and pathways identified through GWAS and sequencing studies of long-lived families and individuals. I will subsequently use this information to create a high-throughput screening assay to identify compounds that can pharmacologically recapitulate the observed in vitro effects. As a proof-of-principle, I will start with functional characterisation of rare variants in genes involved in insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IIS) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling, given the well-known role of these networks in ageing in pre-clinical model organisms.

Mots-clés : functional characterisation genetic variants crispr cas9 longevity lifespan healthspan model organisms high throughput screening drug discovery
Projet ERC : FOUNT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Académie autrichienne des sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ÖAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Between the 11th and 14th centuries, Buddhist communities on the Tibetan Plateau crafted a national charter myth that was to have immense cultural staying power. The narrative literature that successfully promoted this myth would inflect the cultural, religious, and political landscape of Tibet even into the 21st century, and greatly impact Mongolia, the Himalayas, and other Asian Buddhist communities as well. Yet the genesis and even original content of this literature has now turned out, thanks to the PI’s efforts, to be poorly understood, which greatly hinders progress in a number of fields. Using newly identified and until now unstudied manuscripts, we will:  1) establish a sound text-historical basis for using these hugely influential sources; 2) illuminate the rise of major elements of Tibetan Buddhist culture, including a national culture hero and the mythology of the land’s patron deity; 3) produce case studies on a variety of topics central to Tibetan cultural, religious, and political history.  Because this Buddhist literature promoted the existence of an intimate relationship between the country’s patron deity (the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), a divine king (the 7th-century Emperor Songtsen), and the Tibetans themselves, it throws important light on premodern relations between religion, politics, and collective identity. As such, it has world-historical implications. Yet the lack of text-historical groundwork ensures that scholars who wish to consult these materials, which were subject to centuries-long copying, adaptation, and mutual borrowing, immediately find themselves on unfirm ground. We will set the entire field on sounder footing by mapping the history of these early compositions and plotting their evolution. Using this new foundation, we will then study the genesis of Tibet’s far-reaching cultural complex.

Mots-clés : national mythology,kingship,religion,buddhist historiography
Projet ERC : DailySAM (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Stichting spaarne gasthuis — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 99516.0 €

Pneumonia is the number one infectious cause of death in children worldwide. Many of the viruses and bacteria that cause pneumonia regularly infect, or colonize, the upper respiratory tract (URT) without causing disease. This drives community transmission but is also an important source of immunity. The processes and key host immune and microbiota factors that determine the infection kinetics, transmission and development of immunity during such infections need elucidation. I have recently optimized minimally-invasive nasal sampling analysis methods using Synthetic Absorptive Matrix (SAM) strips that now allow me to address these knowledge gaps. Through the daily collection of such well-tolerated nasal samples in children, I will study non-pathological, naturally-acquired URT infections, but also controlled infections in an ethical and safe manner using the live attenuated influenza vaccine. In addition, I will perform high frequency nasal sampling in groups of schoolchildren to precisely measure transmission events over time and even infer exposure. Incoming bacteria, viruses and the resident URT microbiome as well as mucosal host innate and adaptive immune responses will be quantified in parallel throughout infections using existing and new high-throughput assays, including an antigen array and microfluidic qPCR for 32 pathogens. Multi-omics integrative time-series analyses and mathematical modelling will be used to identify parameters that are central and predictive for pathogen acquisition, replication and clearance; as well as for transmission and immune boosting. Key novel markers and concepts will be validated using state-of-the-art in vitro mucosal models.  The comprehensive and detailed understanding of URT infections obtained in this project can lead to better diagnostics, mucosal targeted therapies and vaccines, and provide a basis for the improved predictions of pathogen spread and public health effects of interventions at the population level.

Mots-clés : upper respiratory tract infection minimally invasive nasal sampling multi omics integration paediatrics mucosal immune responses individual infection kinetics host pathogen interaction live attenuated influenza vaccine