Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ACT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Mannheim — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1215004.25 €

The Big Two of agency (influence, resourcefulness, authority) and communion (benevolence, prosociality, honesty) are fundamental to human social cognition, the self-concept, and personality. The Big Two must have a tremendously important function for humans, otherwise they were not that fundamental to human psychology. Yet, what is this function? State-of-the-art answers explain the function of the Big Two either in social cognition or in the self-concept or in personality and those answers contradict each other in critical ways. Here, I propose the first all-encompassing answer to the functional question of the Big Two in social cognition and the self-concept and personality. My answer comes in the form of a novel theory: Agency-Communion Theory (ACT) of Social Learning and Cultural Activity. According to ACT, the Big Two are the chief enablers of high-fidelity social learning. Never before have the Big Two been considered relevant for high-fidelity social learning, but the latter is widely seen as the reason for humans’ capacity to build culture and thrive by cultural activity—humans’ most powerful evolutionary strategy. Thus, ACT considers the Big Two the essential building blocks of human cultural activity and, ultimately, of humans’ extraordinary evolutionary success. ACT’s novel portrayal of the Big Two entails a wide variety of previously unforeseen behavioural consequences, including a novel account of social influence. The state-of-the-art account presupposes the existence of an innate tendency to conform to majority norms. ACT questions the existence of such an innate tendency and offers an alternative with far-reaching implications for many theories across social sciences and urgent societal challenges in the sphere of social influence. My interdisciplinary team will empirically test ACT and its novel account of social influence. We will use new, tailor-made methodology in laboratory experiments, formal evolutionary models, Big Data, and panel studies.

Mots-clés : big two of agency and communion,fundamental content dimensions in psychology,evolutionary personality psychology,social learning strategies
Projet ERC : FERRERO (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The increasing needs of our society and the growing energy consumption call for inventing ultra-fast and power-saving electronic devices capable of integrating different functionalities in the same physical space. Ferroelectric materials, whose electric polarization can be switched reversibly, seem to be pivotal for the development of electronics, offering non-volatile, high-speed writing at low voltage and high endurance. However, they should also enable a non-destructive readout, for example, via a spin-orbit or a magnetic detection of state. Multiferroics with coupled ferroelectric and magnetic orders seem optimal for the electric writing and magnetic read-out but they are very scarce. With FERRERO, I will design sliding ferroelectrics and multiferroics that can be artificially created by stacking van der Waals (vdW) materials. While 2D materials offer unlimited possibilities of design, the mechanism of ferroelectric switching via interlayer sliding of two monolayers ensures very low switching barriers and room-temperature operability. In addition, vertical stacking of 2D magnets could give rise to magnetoelectric coupling allowing for the control of the magnetic state via electric polarization. The twisting of two layers with respect to each other induces a moiré superlattice with strongly correlated bands, providing an extra knob to control ferroelectricity, spin-orbit effects, and magnetism. I plan to (i) develop and implement several computational tools and combine them all together in the open-source publicly available code to enable fast and accurate calculations of moiré materials, (ii) simulate several non-twisted and twisted vdW bilayers to understand the mechanism of ferroelectric switching and unveil the strength of the magnetoelectric coupling, and (iii) explore sliding ferroelectric and multiferroics for electronic devices allowing for energy-efficient and ultra-fast data writing, and the construction of cascaded circuitry.

Mots-clés : 2d materials,ferroelectrics,multiferroics,magnetoelectric coupling,spintronics,twistronics,first principles calculations,moir materials
Projet ERC : COCOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1984840.0 €

The expansion and performance improvement of our engineered systems have traditionally been achieved by increasing the level of automation, driven by advances in control system design. However, due to the increasing complexity and ever-tighter performance requirements on systems such as smart manufacturing systems, autonomous vehicles, and smart energy systems, we are reaching the limits of what can be achieved by existing control techniques. Namely, existing techniques (i) do not naturally guarantee relevant requirements such as safety, resource-efficiency, or transient performance, and (ii) do not scale with the increasing size and heterogeneity resulting from integrating more and more components in our engineering systems.  I propose a new approach for control system design based on contracts, inspired by ideas from software design in computer science. A contract is a detailed quantitative specification on the dynamic behavior of a component and/or the overall system, capable of expressing relevant requirements. Crucially, contracts enable modularity as the design of a component only needs to guarantee satisfaction of its component contract, i.e., without requiring knowledge of other components in the system. For correctly designed contracts, this then guarantees desired system-level behavior. My initial results show the feasibility of using contracts for control system design.  I will develop a contract theory for control system design that includes techniques for the automatic design of component contracts aimed at optimizing system-level performance, and control design for contract satisfaction. Consequently, this project will present (control) system engineers with a scalable approach to guarantee the efficient, safe, and reliable operation of future engineering systems. The practical relevance of the theory will be tested by case studies in high-tech manufacturing systems and autonomous vehicles, and supported by efficient computational tools.

Mots-clés : contract theory,modular control system design,systems engineering,large scale engineering systems
Projet ERC : XX-Health (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Université de Linköping — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998891.0 €

Females have a higher risk for autoimmune disease and lower risk of mortality from infectious disease than males, reflecting a more robust immune response in females against both self-antigens (autoimmunity) and non-self-antigens (infections). Genes that escape the process of X-inactivation (XCI) are present in a higher dose in female cells and many play key roles in T-cell biology. XX-Health will reveal the role of escape genes in mediating sex-differences in T-cell response. Different cells in a tissue can inactivate the maternal (Xm) or paternal X-chromosome (Xp) (mosaicism). In addition, different ratios of Xm and Xp may become silenced in cells of a given tissue resulting in skewed X-inactivation (sXCI), rendering functional dissection of XCI very challenging. Rare females (~1:300) inactivate the same parental X-chromosome in all cells (cXCI), removing the confounding effect of mosaicism, and offering a powerful genetic system in which to dissect XCI in T-cell biology. We will develop a novel methodology, TriX-Seq, allowing high-resolution screening of sXCI and cXCI in a large (N~8,000) unselected cohort of females. Using T-cells isolated from identified cXCI females, we will (i) generate a unique multi-omic map of XCI during human T-cell differentiation at a resolution well beyond the state-of-the-art and (ii), directly test the function of alleles specifically expressed from the inactive X-chromosome (Xi) in T-cell biology. With sXCI data in hand, we will also reveal the associations, if any, of sXCI with disease risk and use the unique availability of parental and grand-parental DNA to assess the genetic origin of cXCI. Sex-bias in COVID-19 mortality has highlighted the importance of sex as a contributor to disease risk. The technical and conceptual advances delivered by XX-Health will make a seminal contribution to our understanding of this poorly understood component of human health.

Mots-clés : x inactivation,sex bias
Projet ERC : COCONUT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université d'Orléans — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 22773.75 €

The COCONUT project aims at developing predictive capabilities to understand how colloids (nanometals, fine particles, bacteria, viruses, asphaltenes..) control immiscible two-phase flow in complex geological formations. Colloids (including nanoparticles) have an incredible potential to remobilize non-aqueous phases trapped by capillary forces in soils and the subsurface, and then to remediate contaminated groundwater or to enhance oil recovery. Their use in daily engineering, however, is still underexploited because the lack of knowledge regarding their transport mechanisms is an obstacle to precise control of two-phase flow. Importantly, the presence of colloidal particles flowing in the subsurface challenges the standard modeling viewpoint of flow and transport based on Darcy's law. We posit that the precise control of colloids on the motion of two-phase flow can only be achieved by developing a deep knowledge of the coupled hydro-electro-chemical processes at the pore-scale. The COCONUT project uses a combined modelling-experimental strategy focusing on the pore-scale mechanisms and on the upscaling to the continuum-scale. The project is multi-disciplinary and uses computational and experimental sciences, fluid dynamics, electrochemistry, and mathematics. The project will require the development of hydro-electro-chemical computational models at different scales of interest (WP1). We will use high-resolution simulations to interrogate emergent physico-chemical processes and characterize the surface attractive and repulsive forces at the nanoscale (WP2). Then, we will decipher the mechanisms leading to the displacement of fluids trapped in an unsaturated porous medium in the presence of colloids using pore-scale modelling and microfluidic experiments (WP3). Finally, we will demonstrate and optimize the two-phase flow colloidal control in geological systems at the column-scale (WP4).

Mots-clés : porous media pore scale modeling microfluidics colloids hydro electro chemical coupling
Projet ERC : KLEPTOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Biology Centre — Pays : Rép. Tchèque — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BC AV ČR;BC CAS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998698.0 €

Plastids, the photosynthetic organelles of eukaryotes, arose via endosymbiosis of cyanobacteria by a eukaryotic host and were subsequently spread across eukaryotic diversity by additional endosymbioses. These events greatly impacted the evolution of eukaryotes, introducing a novel lifestyle and shaping their diversity, yet we still know very little about the steps taking place during plastid endosymbiosis. The traditional view considers this a straightforward uptake and retention of the symbiont that later becomes the plastid, followed by genetic integration. Recently, profoundly different models proposing several, transient interactions with a variety of endosymbionts that transfer genes to the host before fixation of the final endosymbiont have gained traction. Kleptoplastidic species, lineages that transiently retain and use plastids from their prey, are at the centre of this paradigm shift, providing the first insights into the order of steps during plastid endosymbiosis. Kleptoplasty is rare, primarily found in a group of microbial eukaryotes, and the few kleptoplastidic taxa known have not been studied in the context of endosymbiosis. I propose here to resolve the process of plastid endosymbiosis using kleptoplasty as a unique model by addressing these questions: 1) What is the hidden diversity of kleptoplastidic taxa? 2) What is the level of genetic integration in these taxa? 3) What is the composition of the plastid proteome in a kleptoplastidic lineage? 4) How does the kleptoplast and control of the kleptoplast change during integration? To answer these questions, I will combine a novel imaging-based screen for kleptoplastidic lineages with high-throughput transcriptomics and phylogenetics and provide the first plastid proteome of a kleptoplastidic lineage. This project will not only advance our shifting understanding of endosymbiosis, but the methods developed will provide a foundation for future studies on the evolution of microbial eukaryotes.

Mots-clés : plastid endosymbiosis,kleptoplasty,microbial eukaryotes
Projet ERC : CONSCIOUSBRAIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université Paris Cité — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UP Cité
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1918515.0 €

When we are awake, part of the information processed by our brain becomes conscious, so that we can acknowledge and report it. Despite important advances, there is no consensus on what brain mechanisms underlie this phenomenon. According to some models, we become conscious of a stimulus when information gets integrated across different sensory areas; for other, conscious processing only arises when sensory representations are made available to the executive system. With this project I explore a third possibility: that the core mechanisms of conscious processing can actually be distinguished both from sensory and executive processes. Such experimental dissection is made possible by two new approaches developed by my team. The first approach allows detecting brain dynamics that are characteristic of conscious processing, independently of whether a task is required on the stimulus or not, thus dissociating conscious processing from executive functions. The second builds upon the “retro-perception” phenomenon, in which we trigger conscious access at an arbitrary latency after the disappearance of a stimulus, thus desynchronizing conscious access from sensory processing. I will jointly leverage these two approaches, through a wide range of complementary techniques: experimental psychology, functional MRI, electro and magneto encephalography, and human intracranial recordings. Experimentation will go hand in hand with the development of a major update to current neuro-computational models of conscious processing, to explore the computational properties of such core system for conscious processing. Finally this research should reveal much longed-for neural signatures of conscious processing. I will aim at operationalizing these signatures for the diagnosis of conscious access in non-communicating patients, and for starting the exploration of how a conscious stream emerges from these moment-to-moment conscious access events.

Mots-clés : consciousness,perception,vision,audition,functional mri,electroencephalography,magnetoencephalography,human intracranial recordings,computational models,neural network models,disorders of consciousness,coma,sleep,anaesthesia
Projet ERC : GASONIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : DESY — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Over the past decades, modern photonics has evolved from a niche activity to a field of utmost scientific and economic importance. Strikingly, photonic devices ranging from lenses and fibres to complex machines such as lasers and microscopes rely almost exclusively on tailored interactions of light with solid matter. This fundamental principle imposes constraints, limiting e.g. the wavelength range of photonic devices due to absorption and the optical power due to damage. In a ground-breaking effort, we recently opened up an entirely new route to transfer photonic methods from solids to the gas phase: using intense ultrasound (sono) waves, gases can be tailored to enable light control. Building on this pioneering work, I will consolidate a new research field: Gas-Phase Sono-Photonics. Within GASONIC, I will develop solid-state free light guiding concepts ranging from simple light deflection in density-modulated gases to all-gas-phase damage-immune sono-photonic waveguides shaped by intense acoustic waves. Gas-phase light deflectors will enable innovative ultrafast optical switches to modulate, sample and stack laser pulses approaching the terawatt regime. Sono-photonic fibres will enable a whole new field for guided optical wave control, complementing established wave-guiding concepts. Moreover, by providing a direct link between advanced optics and electronics mediated by gas phase acoustics, sono-photonic methods will open up new degrees of freedom for light control including adaptive control schemes leveraged by intelligent optimisation routines. The proposed efforts will thus extend photonic methods into entirely new regimes, opening the door to adaptive light control at unprecedented power levels and in unexplored spectral regions. GASONIC thereby addresses key limitations in several fields including high-field physics, imaging, attosecond and accelerator sciences while prospectively opening new opportunities for fibre lasers and power-over-fibre methods.

Mots-clés : acousto optics,ultrasound technology
Projet ERC : Liquid3D (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Coimbra — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 210900.0 €

Liquid3D proposes bioinspired electronics and machines that are soft, resilient, self-healing, shape-morphing, and fully recyclable. Functional sensing/acting/processing/energy cells will be 3D printed using a series of game changer Liquid Metal based composites. As a result, we will print futuristic soft electronics that sense and interact with humans or the environment. This provides an excellent design freedom to scientists for manufacturing complex “living” electronics, while guaranteeing that any possible product coming from these inventions will be Resilient, Repairable, and Recyclable. I expect that over 80% of microchips, and metals in the printed circuits, can be recovered. Liquid3D redefines the electronics, by rethinking the materials, fabrications, and design architectures. These objectives are feasible, thanks to the recent breakthroughs that I made to the field: First; discovery of the biphasic (liquid-solid) composite based on Gallium-Indium Liquid Metal (LM), that allowed the first ever method for room temperature printing of stretchable circuits; and second, a method for inclusion of microelectronics into ultra-stretchable circuits through self-soldering, self-healing, and self-encapsulating of LM-Polymer composites. With Liquid3D I will develop fundamental understanding, and mathematical modelling of biphasic systems, and develops novel room temperature printable composites with sensing/acting/energy storage properties, and methods for recycling them. I will investigate novel forms of implementing truly 3D electronics, with distributed functional cells. Liquid3D intends to fundamentally rethink, the concept of electronics, as we know today. From rigid and brittle to soft, resilient and repairable; From polluting to recyclable; from battery dependent to self-powered; from 2D to truly 3D; It proposes a radically new way of making “greener” electronics. With Liquid3D I aim to establish the world leading centre on recyclable, and green electronics.

Mots-clés : additive manufacturing,recyclable electronics,bioinspiration,liquid metal,stretchable electronics,robotics,graphene,printed electronics
Projet ERC : MaturingKidsCancer (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Princess Máxima Center — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Introduction Cancer cell plasticity, the ability of cancer cells to change their identity, enables tumors to adapt to hostile environments, aiding metastasis and resistance to treatments. Hence, plasticity is a major unsolved problem frustrating effective treatment. Unraveling the mechanisms underlying cancer cell plasticity is crucial to establish new avenues for cancer therapy. In contrast to adult cancers, many pediatric tumors are driven by a single genetic alteration that fuels their aggressive nature through remarkable plasticity. Despite their differences, pediatric cancers offer a unique platform to investigate cancer cell plasticity due to their genetically clear characteristics. I hypothesize that plasticity can be reversed to differentiate tumor cells and “mature cancer”. Goal Building upon previous ERC-StG funding, we have successfully utilized organoid technology, single-cell genomics, and lineage tracing approaches to uncover the origins of various pediatric cancers. Our findings revealed that these cancers exhibit robust yet pharmacologically reversible plasticity at the level of the epigenome. The goal of this proposal is to reverse cell state changes during tumorigenesis to “mature cancer”. Approach We will I) apply advanced (spatial) single-cell transcriptomics and epigenomics approaches to a unique cohort of pediatric tumors and metastases to map out cell state changes during disease progression, II) utilize our unique pediatric cancer organoids to interrogate and target hierarchical trajectories with the aim to mature cancer, and III) screen the enhancer-ome to identify non-genetic determinants of cancer cell plasticity. Innovation Integrating these cutting-edge technologies on patient-derived tissues and organoids will uncover fundamental principles governing cancer cell plasticity. The research will pioneer innovative methodologies and reveal strategies for identifying cancer maturation targets, advancing cancer therapy research

Mots-clés : cancer cell plasticity maturation therapy pediatric cancer tumor initiation and progression