Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : LAACat (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : TU Dresden — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have attracted considerable worldwide attention because of their high energy conversion efficiency and low environmental impact. Their commercialization, however, is inhibited by the high loadings of the costly catalyst materials used at their cathodes, which is in turn related to their insufficient oxygen reduction activity and inadequate long-term stability. A promising solution that simultaneously addresses all these issues is the design of pure metallic, unsupported catalysts with extended surfaces. A particularly promising class of unsupported catalyst that has recently emerged is that of metallic aerogels, which consists of extended metal backbone nano-networks. This exclusive class of materials combines the unique properties of metals (such as good electrical and thermal conductivity, catalytic activity, and ductility/malleability) with the unique properties of common aerogels (high surface area, ultralow density, and high porosity). The fabrication of pure metallic aerogels with metal backbones by the direct sol-gel method was recently achieved for the first time by our group. These pure metallic aerogels have excellent performance potential in electrocatalytic applications.Successful upscaling of the straightforward aerogel preparation procedure will allow for subsequent testing of the material in market-ready PEMFCs with a 30 cm2 electrode area. The aim of this proof of concept project is therefore to create a prototype PEMFC using bimetallic aerogel electrocatalysts from large-scale synthesis (from technology readiness level 3 to 5) and design the optimal route-to-market strategy that would ensure swift adoption of our technology in an industrial setting. This prototype and the business case will be introduced at commercial conferences and fairs in order to establish contacts to European-based companies and to pave the way for technology transfer and commercialization.

Mots-clés : polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells,metallic aerogels,electrocatalytic application,pt based catalysts
Projet ERC : PM-scanner (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : National Observatory of Athens — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NOA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Poor air quality in cities around the world is a major societal and economic issue, causing more than 5.5 million premature deaths and resulting in €4.3 trillion in welfare losses. Preserving and improving the public health requires effective monitoring of air pollutants from their sources to their transport within the city web, however existing air quality monitoring networks have either very low spatial resolution or low accuracy to serve this purpose. Building on the technology solutions developed within the D-TECT ERC CoG, our project aims to cover this gap by commercializing the "PM-scanner", a remote sensing instrument which will monitor particulate matter (PM) concentration over large areas with unprecedented accuracy and high spatial and temporal resolution. Briefly, the instrument will emit laser pulses and observe the intensity and polarization state of the backscatter light as it travels in the atmosphere; these data will be analysed using dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to provide PM2.5 and PM10 concentration at multiple locations above a city. We envision that the PM-scanner will be a powerful tool to regional governments, environmental protection agencies and polluting industries, allowing effective real-time monitoring of pollution agents and supporting data-driven air quality policies and actions. Within the proposed PoC project, we aim to verify the innovation potential of the PM-scanner idea by establishing a defensible IP position, building a realistic demonstrator of the PM data products based on the D-TECT Wall-E lidar prototype, and validating our approach by interacting with stakeholders in the envisaged value chain.

Mots-clés : air pollution,smart cities,remote sensing
Projet ERC : A.L.I.B.I. (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Yipyip bv — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Yipyip
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 95000.0 €

Poor social experiences with peers, such as peer rejection or peer victimization, and with teachers, such as receiving low support or having conflictual relations with teachers during elementary school impede children’s self- and stress-regulation. The affected self- and stress-regulation places these children at risk of developing similar troublesome relations with teachers and peers after the transition to high school. We propose to develop a serious game named A.L.I.B.I. to help children make a successful transition from elementary school to high school. In A.L.I.B.I. children play in a virtual high school environment. The objective of A.L.I.B.I. is to uncover an alien, who is disguised as a teacher or peer. By engaging in prosocial interactions with teachers and peers, by taking the perspective of others, by learning to overthink multiple response options before acting, and by valuing long term perspectives over short term goals, children will receive clues that will help them to uncover the alien. The advantage of A.L.I.B.I. is that through the use of a virtual school environment, it provides children a realistic yet safe environment to learn and rehearse prosocial behaviors, to prepare them for the new social environment. In addition, A.L.I.B.I. is intuitively attractive for children, through its use of game elements and presentation on a tablet computer. The proposed ERC PoC grant has the goal to (1) develop A.L.I.B.I. into a stand-alone serious game that will be ready for implementation, (2) to test the effectiveness of A.L.I.B.I., (3) to integrate A.L.I.B.I. in ongoing school transition trainings as provided by three school counseling organizations in three regions in The Netherlands, and (4) to develop a marketing strategy for broader Dutch and European implementation.

Mots-clés : childhood,elementary school,peer rejection,peer victimisation,teacher child relationship,prosocial behaviour,self regulation
Projet ERC : PCOMOD (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995253.0 €

Population growth and climate change mean that food security is an emerging global challenge. Crop loss due to flood, drought and other weather extremes is something that disproportionately affects the world's poor, but also has widespread international impact. There is an immediate and urgent need to develop tools and strategies to improve crop tolerance to such abiotic stress. One effective mechanism towards this goal is molecular engineering of crops to withstand prolonged abiotic stress. Group VII Ethylene Response transcription Factors (ERF-VIIs) have a key role in plant stress tolerance, in particular flooding but also salinity, high temperature, drought and oxidative stress. ERF-VIIs are readily degraded, but their stabilisation has led to improved flood tolerance in model plants and crops. Consequently, ERF-VIIs are focal points for engineering abiotic stress resistance in crops. ERF-VIIs are destabilised when their N-terminal cysteine (Nt-Cys) residues are oxidised, making them substrates for the N-end rule pathway of protein degradation. I discovered that Plant Cysteine Oxidase enzymes (PCOs) catalyse this oxidation, incorporating molecular oxygen into ERF-VII Nt-Cys residues to form Cys-sulfinic acid (CSA), and that PCO activity is sensitive to oxygen availability. These enzymes therefore control ERF-VII stability and mediate the response to flood-induced hypoxia. I propose generating tools and knowledge to manipulate PCO activity, modulate CSA formation and stabilise ERF-VIIs. This is an attractive and tractable strategy to enhance stress tolerance in plants. The project will require (i) the development of efficient tools and assays to detect and quantify CSA, (ii) an understanding of the breadth of PCO activity for non-ERF-VII substrates, and (iii) an understanding of the role of non-enzymatic CSA formation. This knowledge will enable the development of effective and targeted mechanisms to manipulate PCO activity and improve stress tolerance.

Mots-clés : enzymology,oxygen sensing,post translational modification
Projet ERC : GEOWAT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Utrecht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Population growth and economic development have dramatically increased the demand for food and water. The resulting expansion of agriculture into areas with limited precipitation and surface water has greatly increased the reliance on groundwater irrigation. Further, urban groundwater use has risen exponentially to meet the ever-increasing population growth of mega-cities. These trends have resulted in a dramatic rise in groundwater pumping and associated high rates of aquifer depletion around the globe. The depletion of our world’s aquifers is unsustainable and will eventually impact the food security of future generations. Also, groundwater depletion results in severe environmental impacts such as land subsidence, groundwater salinisation, and damage to groundwater-dependent ecosystems. Despite decades of research on groundwater overuse, knowledge on attainable groundwater reserves and the critical time horizons of their depletion is completely lacking. In GEOWAT, I propose to take the giant leap to extractable volumes and depletion horizons by answering the obvious question that has been avoided thus far: How much groundwater is there and how long will it last? To this end, my research team will build the first high-resolution global groundwater model supported with a 3D-mapping of the world’s aquifers. We will use these unique modelling tools, in combination with dedicated case studies, to assess, for the first time, the global volume of physically and economically extractable fresh groundwater, and determine the time to physical and economic depletion under future pumping. We will also provide the first global assessment of the effects of groundwater pumping on groundwater-dependent ecosystems and explore pathways to sustainable groundwater use. As such, GEOWAT will provide critically-needed new knowledge to address one of most pressing challenges that mankind will face: how to sustainably manage the freshwater resources needed to survive on this planet?

Mots-clés : groundwater resources,sustainability,modelling,hydrogeology,hydroeconomics,ecohydrology
Projet ERC : CAPE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University Medical Center Groningen — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UMCG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 361551.25 €

Positive peer experiences are crucial for young people’s health and wellbeing. Accordingly, multiple studies (including my own) have described long-term negative psychological and behavioral consequences when adolescents’ peer relationships are dysfunctional. Paradoxically, knowledge on adult social consequences of adolescent peer experiences –relationships with others a decade later - is much less extensive. Informed by social learning and attachment theory, I tackle this gap and investigate whether and how peer experiences are transmitted to other social contexts, and intergenerationally, i.e., passed on to the next generation. My aim is to shed light on how the “ghosts from peer past” affect young adults’ relationships and their children. To this end, I examine longitudinal links between adolescent peer and young adult close relationships and test whether parents’ peer experiences affect offspring’s peer experiences. Psychological functioning, parenting, temperament, genetic, and epigenetic transmission mechanisms are examined separately and in interplay, which 1) goes far beyond the current state-of-the-art in social development research, and 2) significantly broadens my biosocially oriented work on genetic effects in the peer context. My plans utilize data from the TRAILS (Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives’ Survey) cohort that has been followed from age 11 to 26. To study intergenerational transmission, the TRAILS NEXT sample of participants with children is substantially extended. This project uniquely studies adult social consequences of peer experiences and, at the same time, follows children’s first steps into the peer world. The intergenerational approach and provision for environmental, genetic, and epigenetic mediation put this project at the forefront of developmental research and equip it with the potential to generate the knowledge needed to chase away the ghosts from the peer past.

Mots-clés : peers,adolescence,intergenerational,developmental
Projet ERC : PlasmoEpiRNA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Institut Pasteur — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499553.0 €

Post-transcriptional regulation in malaria parasites is key to the progression through different developmental stages of the complex life cycle within the human and mosquito host. This includes the asexual proliferation within human red blood cells that is responsible for all clinical symptoms of the disease and the preparation for the environmental changes accompanying transmission from host to vector and vice versa. Although the process that controls the destiny of mRNA are of critical importance to parasite survival and transmission, the molecular mechanisms orchestrating post-transcriptional regulation on a transcriptome-wide level remain largely unknown. We recently identified extensive methylation of adenosines (m6A) at internal mRNA positions as a new layer of post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression in Plasmodium falciparum. With m6A, the parasite dynamically modulates its transcriptome through selective mRNA degradation and/or translational repression of modified transcripts during blood-stage development. This new epitranscriptomic layer provides a previously missing link between the transcriptional program and the observed post-transcriptional events throughout P. falciparum development. The proposed project aims to elucidate how m6A mediates different outcomes of mRNA at key developmental stages of the parasite life cycle. We will 1) characterize m6A-binding proteins and elucidate how different m6A ‘readers’ translate this mRNA modification into distinct biological pathways (i.e. degradation, repression) during blood-stage development and 2) investigate how m6A and its specific reader proteins designate mRNAs to facilitate transient quiescence in transmission stages (i.e. gametocytes and sporozoites) to ‘prime’ the transcriptome for new host/vector environments. Overall, exploring the epitranscriptome of this parasite will reveal novel principles and molecular determinants of post-transcriptional control that can be targeted to combat malaria.

Mots-clés : m6a mrna methylation,plasmodium falciparum,host vector transmission,post transcriptional regulation,rna protein interaction
Projet ERC : Nedd8Activate (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2193871.0 €

Post-translational modification by ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins (UBLs) is a major eukaryotic regulatory mechanism. Nonetheless, we have little understanding of the detailed mechanisms by which most E3 ligases mark specific targets with monoubiquitin, multiple ubiquitins or specific polyubiquitin chains, or of how UBL modifications transform the functions of their targets. This proposal addresses both problems. First, we will discover the structural mechanisms by which the UBL NEDD8 (58% identical to ubiquitin) activates numerous distinct functions of its targets, which are cullin subunits of cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases (CRLs). Second, we will take a tour-de-force structural, biochemical, and molecular cell biological approach to determine how NEDD8-activated E3 ligases regulate their substrates. Because CRLs form nearly half of all E3 ligases, and as we recently discovered, neddylated CRLs act in part by activating monoubiquitylation by another family of E3 ligases (Ariadne-family RBR E3s), the proposed studies will establish paradigms for a major fraction of ubiquitylating enzymes. To achieve these goals, we will devise novel chemical biology tools to capture fleeting assemblies that typically only occur during chemical reactions, and visualize structures of neddylated CRLs “in action” by cryo EM. We will generate a resource of novel reagents that detect, label, and affinity purify activated forms of E3 ligases to temporally track their interactions during pathways they regulate in cells. And we will define the mechanisms and structures of a class of atypical, disease-associated giant E3 ligases whose domains and interacting partners are so peculiar that their activities remain elusive. Overall, we will comprehensively define how a UBL directly regulates its targets, and how two major E3 ligase families mediate regulation.

Mots-clés : ubiquitin,nedd8,e3 ligase,cullin ring
Projet ERC : ConHuB (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 7917.31 €

Poverty is frequently perceived to be the root cause of illegal natural resource use – the hunting or extraction of wildlife not sanctioned by the state. When unsustainable, such activities threaten conservation of ecosystems and endangered species. However, understanding what motivates individuals involved is a major challenge; understandably few are willing to discuss their motives for fear of punishment [1]. Furthermore, severe, multifaceted poverty overlaps with regions prioritised for their globally important biodiversity [2]. This association exacerbates the problem that illegal activities pose for policy-makers responsible for managing and policing the use of nature. The dominant approach to conserving biodiversity is to establish protected areas [3] which typically restrict resource use and manage infractions through law enforcement [4]. However, the designation of such areas does not guarantee compliance, as demonstrated by ongoing infractions [5] and its conspicuous profile on global policy agendas. This includes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which calls for urgent action to halt biodiversity loss and hunting of protected species [6]. Solving this problematic cocktail of poverty, exclusion from resources and drivers of illegal resource use requires a new approach to understanding why people break rules and to what extent poverty underpins behaviour. Recent advances in cutting-edge techniques for asking sensitive questions are paving the way towards a more accurate understanding of the prevalence and drivers of illegal acts [7]. Combining conservation social science with development studies, criminology and social psychology, this project will examine, for the 1st time, the relative importance of multidimensional poverty and socio-psychological characteristics in dictating people’s involvement in illegal resource use which will be contextualised by histories of national park establishment and how the idea of illegality shifts through time.

Mots-clés : biodiversity conservation,poaching,sustainable use,natural resource management,behavior,decision making,social norms,protected areas,hunting
Projet ERC : NANOCOMP (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Santiago de Compostela — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : USC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1637179.0 €

Practical aspects and understanding of frontier-computing concepts such as memcomputing (a brain-inspired computational paradigm), quantum computing and spintronics are hindered because of the lack of suitable nanostructured materials. The NANOCOMP project aims to develop a technology for the integration of nano-switches within the confined space of high-aspect ratio hollow carbon nanostructures, yielding a totally new class of hybrid metal-carbon nanomaterials with different dimensionality as model systems enabling the realisation of these computing schemes. This research will also pave the way for developing new energy-storage concepts. The main objectives are: 1) To develop protocols for successful transport and encapsulation of intact nano-switches within tubular carbon nanostructures (TCN); 2) To understand and control the effects of the confined nano-switches on the carbon nanocontainer (and vice versa); 3) To unravel and develop new methodologies for exploiting the functional properties of the confined nano-switches; 4) To fabricate nanodevices, novel 2D ordered arrays and highly-porous 3D networks for a variety of applications ranging from quantum processors to flexible spintronic devices and supercapacitors.