Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MIMESIS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Universidade Nova de Lisboa — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NOVA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1795967.5 €

Fighting microbial infection of wounds, especially in immunocompromised patients, is a major challenge in the 21st century. The skin barrier is the primary defence against microbial (opportunistic) pathogens. When this barrier is breached even non-pathogenic fungi may cause devastating infections, most of which provoked by crossover fungi able to infect both plant and humans. Hence, diabetic patients (ca. 6.4% of the world population), who are prone to develop chronic non-healing wounds, constitute a major risk group. My research is driven by the vision of mimicking the functionality of plant polyesters to develop wound dressing biomaterials that combine antimicrobial and skin regeneration properties. Land plants have evolved through more than 400 million years, developing defence polyester barriers that limit pathogen adhesion and invasion. Biopolyesters are ubiquitous in plants and are the third most abundant plant polymer. The unique chemical composition of the plant polyester and its macromolecular assembly determines its physiological roles. This lipid-based polymer shows important similarities to the epidermal skin layer; hence it is an excellent candidate for a wound-dressing material. While evidences of their skin regeneration properties exist in cosmetics formulations and in traditional medicine, extracting polyesters from plants results in the loss of both native structure and inherent barrier properties hampering progress in this area. We have developed a biocompatible extraction method that preserves the plant polyester film forming abilities and their inherent biological properties. The ex-situ reconstituted polyester films display the native barrier properties, including potentially broad antimicrobial and anti-biofouling effect. This, combined with our established record in fungal biochemistry/genetics, places us in a unique position to push the development of plant polyester materials to be applied in wounds, in particular diabetic chronic wounds.

Mots-clés : plant polyester materials,filamentous fungi,antimicrobial and anti biofouling surfaces,molecular genetics and chemistry,wounds
Projet ERC : RevACLaw (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Neuchâtel — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1952689.98 €

Fighting transnational corporate corruption is today a global task, resulting in an increase in criminalisation. However, when it comes to law enforcement, prosecutors face major problems: fact-finding is hampered and gathering evidence from foreign jurisdictions by way of traditional mutual legal assistance is arduous, if not impossible. Despite these major difficulties, since 2000 the enforcement of anti-corruption norms has flourished, resulting in multi-jurisdictional criminal procedures. This change is due to the revamping of strategies in three major fields of law (substantive criminal law, procedural criminal law, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters), and the resulting cross-cutting dynamics. A hybrid model of corporate criminal justice has emerged, which was unthinkable in the past and still is in almost any other field of criminal justice. This heretofore insufficiently studied model has led to a new, opaque, and exclusive way of conducting criminal justice. RevACLAW’s ambitious objective is to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of revamping strategies, leading to a hybrid corporate criminal justice model, as well as the consequences resulting from such a mdoel. RevACLAW will focus on four jurisdictions (France, Switzerland, USA, and the UK), and its objectives are the following: (A) unveiling the revamping strategies and how they interact in the three fields of law mentioned, and conceptualising this new way of conducting justice as a social practice, (B) delivering both a theoretical and empirical analysis of the accessibility of the resulting settlements, and (C) analysing case-making and the occurring narratives of corporate corruption and anticorruption law enforcement. These objectives will be achieved by a novel interdisciplinary approach, including both legal and empirical research. This project will impact the fields of legal theory as well as the study of law and society with regard to a present-day phenomenon.

Mots-clés : criminal law   anticorruption   criminal procedure   law and society   mutual legal assistance in criminal matters   qualitative research   narrative   empirical research
Projet ERC : NANOMXM (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Finding efficient ways to store and deliver electrical energy is urgently needed for the large-scale development of renewable energy sources. The use of pseudocapacitive materials, such as 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides, so-called MXenes, is an extremely promising solution to achieve electrochemical energy storage with high power and energy densities, benefiting from fast redox reactions on transition metal oxides. Nevertheless, local electrochemical processes occurring at the solid-liquid interface of pseudocapacitors are currently largely unexplored. The goal of this project is to image for the first time electrochemical processes occurring during pseudocapacitive electrochemical storage on MXenes at the nanoscale with operando Scanning Transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM). Using synchrotron X-ray light, STXM will allow element-selective chemical mapping with <50 nm spatial resolution and bulk-sensitivity, so that transition metal atoms, surface termination and confined electrolyte in single MXene flakes can be probed independently. The objectives of NANOMXM are to image in operando electrochemical reactions occurring at the MXene-electrolyte interface inside single multi-layered flakes at high cycling rates (up to 10 V/s) and to probe dynamic processes such as charge transfer and ion diffusion with electrical pump-X-ray probe schemes at high repetition rates (>30 kHz). Redox and intercalation pseudocapacitive charging processes will be investigated directly in acidic or alkali cations-containing electrolytes, respectively. By offering unprecedented chemical sensitivity, spatial and temporal resolutions in liquid simultaneously, NANOMXM will provide a radically new method to probe pseudocapacitive electrochemical storage in MXene. Achieving operando imaging of fast electrochemical reactions at the nanoscale would be a major breakthrough that could open new perspectives to investigate further electrochemical processes on metal oxide-based materials.

Mots-clés : scanning transmission x ray microscopy,x ray absorption spectroscopy,electrochemical energy storage,pseudocapacitance,2d materials
Projet ERC : NONCODRIVERS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Institute for Research in Biomedicine — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IRB;IRB-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995828.75 €

Finding the mutations, genes and pathways directly involved in cancer is of paramount importance to understand the mechanisms of tumour development and devise therapeutic strategies to overcome the disease. Due to their role in cancer development and maintenance, the proteins encoded by cancer genes are candidate therapeutic targets. Indeed, in recent years we have witnessed the development of successful cancer-targeting therapies to counteract the effect of driver mutations. Although the coding part of the human genome has now largely been explored in the search for cancer driver mutations in most frequent cancer types, the extent of involvement of noncoding mutations in cancer development remains a mystery. The main challenges faced are: 1) the functional role of most noncoding regions is unknown, and 2) tumours often have thousands of somatic mutations, so that distinguishing cancer driver mutations from bystanders is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. To overcome these two challenges I propose to analyse the pattern of somatic mutations across thousands of tumours in noncoding regions to identify signals of positive selection. These signals are an indication that mutations in the region have been positively selected during tumour evolution and are thus directly involved in the tumour phenotype. The large scale analysis proposed here will allow us to create a catalogue of noncoding elements involved in different types of cancer upon mutations. We will study in detail a selected set of driver elements to uncover their specific function and role in the tumourigenic process. Furthermore, we will explore possibilities of counteracting their driver effect with targeted drugs. The results of this project may boost our understanding of the biological role of noncoding regions, help to unravel novel molecular causes of cancer and provide novel targeted therapeutic opportunities for cancer patients.

Mots-clés : cancer genes,non coding mutations,driver mutations,tumor somatic mutations,targeted drugs
Projet ERC : FlexNanoOLED (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Strasbourg — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UNISTRA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 70000.0 €

FlexNanoOLED aims at expanding the groundbreaking research developed within the ERC project SUPRAFUNCTION into a radically new and unprecedented technology to enable the fabrication of flexible ITO-free multi-coloured nanoscale engineered organic LEDs. In a recent breakthrough, we have developed a novel device architecture for optoelectronics which relies on a nanomesh scaffold and demonstrated its full potential by realising supramolecular nanowire photovoltaic devices with performances surpassing those of standard organic photodetectors. The nanomesh technology can be exploited to other devices in strategic S&T areas. In particular, it offers an effective solution to satisfy the demand for large-area flexible lighting and full-colour active-matrix display for printed e-wallpapers, rollable screens and luminous advertisement boards. In this PoC, we will use our nanomesh scaffold to fabricate polychromatic high-performing OLEDs supported on plastic substrates. Ink-jet printing will permit the selective integration of different colours into pre-designed patterns to realise >300 cm2 sized customised images with a pixel resolution of 50 μm. OLED represented a $4.9 billion industry in 2012; it now requires novel solutions for being implemented on flexible supports. Towards the FlexNanoOLED technology commercialisation, we will define the exact exploitation strategy, including IPR positioning, market survey, business model and fundraising once the device key performance indicators will be optimised. This will also include partnering with key enablers (business-related and/or technological) for commercial success. Within FlexNanoOLED, we will gain technical and commercial proof of concept, to develop the prototype and ultimately bringing this unprecedented OLED technology closer to the market, with the overall goal of increasing the share of Europe in the field of OLEDs, a technological realm that Europe has pioneered yet has lost the dominance of since a decade.

Mots-clés : oleds,large area flexible optoelectronics,recyclability,ink jet printing,full colour active matrix display,nanomesh scaffold,ito replacement
Projet ERC : FlowMem (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Technical University of Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499905.0 €

Fluid flows through tubular networks are crucial for life as they are the dominant means of substance and signal transport. In living networks – across organisms as disparate as animals and fungi, alterations of flows drive dynamic adaptation of tube diameters which in turn alters transport performance. In effect, local transient stimuli that affect flows are memorized as long-lived alterations to tube diameters across the network. I aim to identify the physical principles behind fluid flows driving dynamic memory storage in network morphology. I will thereby uncover how to control network morphology and performance by applied flow-altering stimuli, which promises significant advances in important challenges of the future: treatment of vascular diseases and tumour development, encoding complex behaviour in soft robotics and self-optimizing porous media. The dynamic nature of flows and networks’ complex morphologies requires a combined experimental and theoretical approach to address: What are the physical mechanisms of how flows in living tubular networks can encode and store information about stimuli? How do memories impact network performance? As experimental model system I choose the slime mould Physarum polycephalum. It is ideally suited as a starting point, as it reduces the problem in its complexity to just a tubular network. This model allows me to follow with unprecedented level of detail how stimuli transiently perturb network-wide flows – flows that subsequently drive long-term changes in network morphology. Theoretical models will verify mechanisms and allow investigation of impact on network function. Identified principles of dynamic memory formation will be applied to study consequences of mini-stroke stimuli and possible treatment in brain microvasculature and to design self-optimizing porous media. I will develop general principles advancing physics and biology with far-reaching implications in medicine and engineering.

Mots-clés : flow networks,self organization,living matter,complex systems
Projet ERC : PERTURB (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999830.0 €

Fluid turbulence is of key importance in engineering: it controls the drag on aircraft, is a major contributor to unwanted energy dissipation in pipelines, yet mixing of chemicals relies on it. Despite its importance, our understanding of turbulence is incomplete. Controlling turbulent flows, which would lead to significant efficiencies for industrial applications, remains a challenge. The recent identification of unstable non-chaotic solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations suggests a promising framework to study the phenomenon. Here turbulence is viewed as a chaotic walk through a forest of exact solutions in the infinite-dimensional state space of the flow equations. While this dynamical systems approach helps rationalizing features of the transition to turbulence, it has so far failed to deliver on the promise it carried since the identification of deterministic chaos in the mid 20th century: To provide a predictive description of turbulence in terms of exact solutions and to act as a rational basis for controlling flows. The major road block to fulfilling the promise is that we are missing tools to identify enough dynamically relevant exact solutions. These are time-periodic non-chaotic solutions that allow us to express statistical properties of turbulence as a weighted average over periodic orbits. Owing to the exponential error amplification in a chaotic system, periodic obits for 3D flows have been almost inaccessible. Instead, research has focused on isolated steady solutions that resemble features of the flow but are dynamically less informative. We will remove the road block and construct extensive libraries of periodic orbits for two canonical 3D flows, turbulent convection and channel flow. By combining variational methods with machine learning tools we will automatically compute periodic orbits of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations. Using periodic orbit theory, we will describe and control flow properties including heat transport and turbulent drag.

Mots-clés : turbulence,nonlinear dynamics methods,novel numerical methods
Projet ERC : BEFINE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1982925.0 €

Fluids play an important role in fault zone and in earthquakes generation. Fluid pressure reduces the normal effective stress, lowering the frictional strength of the fault, potentially triggering earthquake ruptures. Fluid injection induced earthquakes (FIE) are direct evidence of the effect of fluid pressure on the fault strength. In addition, natural earthquake sequences are often associated with high fluid pressures at seismogenic depths. Although simple in theory, the mechanisms that govern the nucleation, propagation and recurrence of FIEs are poorly constrained, and our ability to assess the seismic hazard that is associated with natural and induced events remains limited. This project aims to enhance our knowledge of FIE mechanisms over entire seismic cycles through multidisciplinary approaches, including the following: - Set-up and installation of a new and unique rock friction apparatus that is dedicated to the study of FIEs. - Low strain rate friction experiments (coupled with electrical conductivity measurements) to investigate the influence of fluids on fault creep and earthquake recurrence. - Intermediate strain rate friction experiments to investigate the effect of fluids on fault stability during earthquake nucleation. - High strain rate friction experiments to investigate the effect of fluids on fault weakening during earthquake propagation. - Post-mortem experimental fault analyses with state-of-art microstructural techniques. - The theoretical friction law will be calibrated with friction experiments and faulted rock microstructural observations. These steps will produce fundamental discoveries regarding natural earthquakes and tectonic processes and help scientists understand and eventually manage the occurrence of induced seismicity, an increasingly hot topic in geo-engineering. The sustainable exploitation of geo-resources is a key research and technology challenge at the European scale, with a substantial economical and societal impact.

Mots-clés : rock mechanics,rock physics
Projet ERC : SmartMic (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Fluorescence microscopy is a key technology in our quest to understand fundamental developmental processes of life. High-resolution images recorded in intact, living organisms deliver insights into the complex interplay of molecules, cells and tissues in real time. Even though the resolution of microscopes has been pushed beyond the diffraction limit, providing important insights into the inner workings of single cells, we still lack an understanding of plasticity in development: How does one embryo differ from another and how can we describe the "average", stereotypic embryo? To address this long-standing multi-disciplinary challenge, we propose to develop an entirely novel microscopy hard- and software platform to systematically image and analyze embryos in real time. We will design and assemble a fast and flexible multimodal light-sheet microscope (SPIM) with adaptive illumination and detection from multiple sides. A fundamentally new concept of this proposal is the ability to adaptively change the recording's spatial and temporal resolution during the experiment: The microscope learns to acquire only the data of interest. Using a high-throughput sample feeder, many samples can be automatically pumped through the microscope and imaged within seconds for large-scale comparative developmental studies. Real-time processing will dramatically reduce the size of the data stream and thus, provide for the first time a platform to collect data from hundreds of samples. At the same time, by establishing a model for the observed embryo, we will integrate information from multiple samples to draw statistically relevant conclusions. Our ground-breaking concept of smart microscopy speeds up the acquisition, reduces the amount of data and limits photo-toxicity. It enables us to address fundamental questions in embryonic development that are out of reach by traditional methods. Smart microscopy will open up a new field of research: systematic real-time developmental biology.

Mots-clés : microscopy,light sheet microscopy,image analysis,high throughput imaging,screening,zebrafish,development,fluorescence,systems biology,cardiovascular system,real time developmental biology