Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ARCA (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : University of Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499875.0 €

The goal of the project is to automatically analyse human activities observed in videos. Any solution to this problem will allow the development of novel applications. It could be used to create short videos that summarize daily activities to support patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It could also be used for education, e.g., by providing a video analysis for a trainee in the hospital that shows if the tasks have been correctly executed. The analysis of complex activities in videos, however, is very challenging since activities vary in temporal duration between minutes and hours, involve interactions with several objects that change their appearance and shape, e.g., food during cooking, and are composed of many sub-activities, which can happen at the same time or in various orders. While the majority of recent works in action recognition focuses on developing better feature encoding techniques for classifying sub-activities in short video clips of a few seconds, this project moves forward and aims to develop a higher level representation of complex activities to overcome the limitations of current approaches. This includes the handling of large time variations and the ability to recognize and locate complex activities in videos. To this end, we aim to develop a unified model that provides detailed information about the activities and sub-activities in terms of time and spatial location, as well as involved pose motion, objects and their transformations. Another aspect of the project is to learn a representation from videos that is not tied to a specific source of videos or limited to a specific application. Instead we aim to learn a representation that is invariant to a perspective change, e.g., from a third-person perspective to an egocentric perspective, and can be applied to various modalities like videos or depth data without the need of collecting massive training data for all modalities. In other words, we aim to learn the essence of activities.

Mots-clés : action recognition
Projet ERC : QUBE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 142796.08 €

The goal of the “Quantum technology with carbon nanotUBEs”, QUBE, project is to provide a commercial solution enabling an easy manipulation of single wall carbon nanotubes, structurally characterized for quantum technologies. This solution will be fully adapted for being integrated into quantum devices. The project will aim to rationalize the production of high quality, “ready to use”, single wall carbon nanotubes and to create of a start-up company whithin the emerging quantum industry sector in Europe.

Mots-clés : carbon nanotubes,quantum technology,nanoassembly techniques
Projet ERC : PLANETESYS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Lund University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 486630.75 €

The goal of this ERC Consolidator Grant proposal is to make significant contributions to our understanding of the formation of planetary systems and the chemical composition of planets. I will achieve this by developing a planet formation model that integrates the most relevant physical processes and combines the newly discovered pebble accretion mechanism with gravitational interaction between a high number of growing embryos. Exploiting the results of the computer simulations will allow me to address three major, outstanding research questions in the study of planets and their formation: * What are the dominant physical processes that shape planetary systems? * How are solids flash-heated in protoplanetary discs? * What are the conditions for forming habitable planets? I will follow the chemical composition of solid bodies in a protoplanetary disc as they grow from dust grains to fully fledged planets. This will shed light on the formation pathways of all major planetary classes – from terrestrial planets, over super-Earths to ice giants and gas giants – in orbital configurations acquired under the combined effects of planetary growth, migration and gravitational interaction between the developing planets. I will examine the role of the CO iceline as a nursery for planetary embryos that grow and migrate to form cold gas giants akin to Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. I will also explore the formation of the mysterious chondrules – widespread in primitive meteorites – by lightning discharge during planetesimal formation and address the role of chondrules for planet formation. Finally, I will simulate the delivery of life-essential volatiles to terrestrial planets and super-Earths in the habitable zone, considering the simultaneous growth of rocky and icy planetary embryos and gravitational stirring by migrating giant planets, for a wide range of planetary system architectures.

Mots-clés : exoplanets,protoplanetary discs,cosmochemistry,planetary habitability
Projet ERC : CellPrintArray (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KIT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The goal of this ERC-PoC project is to develop a prototype system that will enable the addition of libraries of drugs and biochemical molecules, reagents and cells from a 96 source plate directly to individual compartments of the target Droplet Microarray (DMA). The system should have controlled atmosphere (CO2, humidity, temperature) and should allow for dispensing controlled volumes (3-500 nL per experiment) and cell numbers (1-100 per experiment) into individual droplets. We aim to create and evaluate this system for applications commonly performed in pharmaceutical companies and screening centers to enable them to perform miniaturized and more predictive high throughput screenings using physiologically relevant cells such as primary cells, stem cells, biopsy-derived cells and other scarce cell types. The system should allow high-throughput screenings with patient derived cells and therefore will open new possibilities in drug discovery and personalized medicine.

Mots-clés : cell screening,miniaturization,automation,superhydrophobicity,personalized medicine
Projet ERC : NANOZ-ONIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Seoul National University — Pays : Corée du Sud — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : SNU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 492545.0 €

The goal of this project is to develop an innovative biosensor for the non-invasive, painless and real-time detection of volatile biomarkers in the exhaled breath of patients. Volatile biomarkers have been identified for several diseases including cancers, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and neurodegeneration. A miniaturized system for fast and simple breath-analysis would not only improve the early detection of these pathologies but also enable point-of-care monitoring of patients either in medical institutions or at home. Different electronic noses are in development (or even in use for diagnosing asthma), however their generalisation in reliable medical diagnosis devices is mainly hindered by their poor versatility. The main challenge is to quantitatively and simultaneously detect several volatile biomarkers with high specificity and selectivity. The ideal technology would be one which mimicked the natural olfactory systems that recognize odours by combinatorial analysis of receptor responses. Inspired by this biological example, this project aims at integrating natural olfactory receptors into two state-of-the-art technologies: Ion Channel-Coupled Receptors (ICCRs) and single-walled Carbon NanoTube-Field Effect Transistors (swCNT-FETs). ICCRs are original biosensors created by fusion of G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) with an ion channel. The recognition of a chemical compound by the GPCR is transduced into an electrical signal by the ion channel. Mammalian olfactory receptors are GPCRs, and the objective of this 5-year project is to engineer an original library of olfactory ICCRs for multiplex detection of volatile biomarkers. To detect the electrical signal with very high sensitivity and at the nanometric scale, ICCRs will be interfaced with swCNT-FET transistors by coating the carbon nanotubes with ICCR-containing nanovesicles. The recent detection of a biomarker with an ICCR-swCNT-FET device by project members demonstrates the feasibility of this approach.

Mots-clés : biosensors,diagnostic tools,olfactory receptors,g protein coupled receptors,ion channels,carbon nanotubes field effect transistors
Projet ERC : MIRAGE 20-15 (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Tel Aviv University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1493250.0 €

The goal of this proposal is to allow observing and controlling ultrafast phenomena in a spatio-temporal window of 20fs-15nm at mid-IR by merging the extreme temporal resolution of the recently developed single-cycle mid-IR pulses with the spatial resolution of near field scattering optical microscope (aSNOM). The mid-infrared wavelength regime is of particular importance to materials science, chemistry, biology and condensed matter physics, as it covers the fundamental vibrational absorption bands of many gaseous molecules and bio-molecules. Adiabatic frequency conversion, a recent advance in nonlinear optics based on my PhD research and my current collaboration with MIT, generates ultrashort pulses in this important wavelength regime, which outperform the currently available mid-IR ultrashort sources, and unlike other techniques allows complete control of the temporal evolution by amplitude and phase manipulation of the NIR input. Combining these capabilities with aSNOM will allow one-of-a-kind route to perform active coherent control of quantum dynamics and allow single shot spatio-temporal observation of fast dynamical processes at nanoscale-resolution. Moreover, mid-IR ultrashort pulses delivered to the nanoscale can produce the high peak power needed to observe the nonlinear properties of the material under examination. Together with the richness of pulse shape manipulation it stands to enable, the currently impossible capability of intra-pulse multidimensional mid-IR spectroscopies at the nanoscale. This will open a gateway to all-optical, non-intrusive and label-free in situ studies of ultrafast processes in 2D materials and topological insulators, peptide evolution, photo-induced surface femtochemistry and protein folding. In particular, I plan to utilize these capabilities to explore nanoscale surface femtochemistry and to study energy pathways of hot carriers following the plasmonic decay in 2D materials and plasmonic nanostructures.

Mots-clés : femto chemistry,nonlinear optics,ultrafast physics,pulse shaping
Projet ERC : ICYBOB (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : University of Exeter — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1980385.0 €

The goal of this proposal is to establish a new era of stellar cluster evolution research by performing numerical simulations on different scales, and of different stages of a cluster’s life, from the formation of YMCs, the formation and evolution of OB associations, to the evolution of clusters and associations in galaxies. The PI is one of the pioneers of galactic simulations of GMC and star formation was one of the first numericists to perform galactic scale simulations of molecular cloud formation and evolution, and has produced some of the most realistic and sophisticated isolated simulations of galaxies in this field to date. The next challenge is to follow cluster evolution, something which has not yet been attempted numerically. And, with the GaiaAIA instrument set to transform stellar astronomy in our Galaxy, our work will provide a fundamental theoretical counterpart. Key questions we will address include i) how does gas disperse from new clusters and what happens to that gas, ii) how do YMCs form, iii) how do new clustersGiant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) evolve into OB associations, and ivii) how long can clusters survive for as they orbit a galaxy and what causes their destruction.
Projet ERC : SOLID (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 41882.0 €

The goal of this proposal is to search for an entirely new kind of matter. This type of matter called a sterile neutrino doesn’t interact with known particles and can only manifest itself through quantum mixing with the three neutrinos of the standard model, the prevailing theory of particle physics. The known neutrinos are by far the most abundant massive particles in the Universe. More than 70 years after the postulation of the existence of the neutrino, its nature and fundamental properties remain, paradoxically, poorly known. The discovery of the quantum mixing of neutrinos: neutrino oscillations, was a major surprise as it implied that neutrinos have mass which they do not have in the standard model. In this context the existence of a sterile neutrino is a natural extension but the discovery of this new state of matter would a profound challenge for the theory to explain. Several new anomalous experimental results have appeared which could be accounted for by the presence of a light sterile neutrino but each result taken separately is not statistically significant. New oscillation patterns in the neutrino energy spectrum would be a clear signature of the new state but are difficult to measure due to experimental and background limitations. We propose the most sensitive search to date for this oscillation signature using two key assets: The SCK•CEN BR2 reactor which offers a unique low background environment combined with a novel detector technology invented by the PI capable of discriminating signal and background with greater sensitivity that any previous technique. We present an experimental program that includes the construction of a detector module and its precise calibration, the programming of a new type of electronic trigger and implementation of state of the art reconstruction techniques and analysis. The results that this proposal will deliver are far reaching both in science and in the development of a new technology for detecting anti-neutrinos.

Mots-clés : sterile neutrino,antineutrinos,scintillator detector
Projet ERC : CAPA (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : University of Barcelona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1483073.0 €

The goal of this proposal is twofold: on the one hand to pursue methods and ideas developed in recent work in the search for either singularities or global existence in incompressible fluids with finite energy and on the other transfer the techniques to solve long-standing open problems in spectral geometry. A key ingredient in its success is to have accurate numerics together with a deep understanding of the regularity theory. Therefore, the interdisciplinary nature of this project, which involves numerical computations, computer-assisted proofs, modern PDE methods and harmonic analysis, is an essential ingredient for the successful outcome. This proposal is divided in three blocks, the first two involving global existence and/or singularities for: the incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations; the surface quasi-geostrophic (SQG), the generalized-SQG equations and related models; and a third one on applications to spectral geometry. There is a strong analogy between the SQG and the 3D Euler equations, and many results that hold for the former also hold for the latter. A major theme is the interplay between rigorous computer calculations and traditional mathematics. Interval arithmetics are used as part of a proof whenever they are needed. As an evidence of its capabilities, I have pioneered techniques to show singularities in PDE related to fluid mechanics – even in low regularity settings –, developed a way to treat singular integrals, and solved eigenvalue problems using computer-assisted proofs. This is a completely novel approach that can be blended with more classical ones, resulting in very powerful theorems solving problems that can not be treated currently with pen and paper methods.

Mots-clés : computer assisted proof,surface quasi geostrophic,spectral geometry,free boundary,incompressible,euler,navier stokes,patches
Projet ERC : SALAMANDRA (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2993585.0 €

The goals of this project are to decipher how the interplay between central and peripheral mechanisms controls locomotion in four legged animals (tetrapods) and to the delineate the reorganization of motor circuits linked to functional regeneration after spinal cord lesion. We will take advantage of the evolutionarily conserved traits of neural structures in vertebrates to address these two fundamental questions by using salamanders as model organisms. Salamanders are best suited to these aims for two main reasons: First, because they have an anatomically simplified nervous system, which yet possesses the main features of all tetrapods; second, because they have unique regeneration abilities among vertebrates and can functionally repair their spinal cord after full transection. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will investigate the dynamic interactions between the nervous system, the body, and its environment before and after spinal cord lesion. We will combine numerical models of locomotor neural circuits, robotics, and advanced functional analyses in genetically modified salamanders in a way that will allow us to test biological data in neuromechanical models (simulations and robots) and, conversely, to validate model-based predictions in animals. Through the concerted and tightly collaborative activities in our laboratories, implementing state of the art assays ranging from the molecular to the organism level, we expect to create a blueprint of tetrapod locomotion control: how appropriate movements are generated in response to various environmental or intrinsic stimuli, and how such function can be recovered after injury. The synergy between our groups of complementary expertise will boost scientific research at multiple levels, not only in the field of neuroscience but also in regeneration research, robotics, and numerical modeling.

Mots-clés : salamander,locomotion,regeneration,spinal cord,descending pathways,transgenic newts,musculoskeletal system,biorobotics
Projet ERC : RespeCT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
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 : 2357212.5 €

The grand goal of this proposal is to translate a recently explored and fundamentally different x-ray contrast mechanism, namely x-ray dark-field imaging, from present in-vivo small-animal proof-of-principle studies to a first clinical dark-field computed tomography (CT) prototype for future human diagnostics. Complementing this main technological development goal, we will explore the potential future clinical diagnostic application range of this technology by systematically screening multiple small-animal disease models. As one of the potentially most beneficial applications, we will particularly focus on one rapidly growing challenge in the healthcare sector, namely the early detection and screening of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). For Europe, COPD has been estimated to affect 5-10% of adults over 40 years of age. This translates to 12-25 million individuals affected by COPD in the European Union. If dark-field CT imaging can substantially improve early diagnosis and thus prompt appropriate therapeutic treatment in these patients, this project has the potential to prolong and improve the lives of millions of Europeans. Further, the cost of COPD to society in Europe could be decreased by billions each year, if COPD – with emphysema as one of its main components – could be accurately detected, effectively treated, and stabilized at early stages of the disease. Besides COPD, we will explore the potential clinical benefit of dark-field CT for better diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, asthma, pneumothorax, acute lung injury, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, inflammation, and radiation-induced lung injury as a consequence of radiation therapy after lung cancer. The ambition to deliver more than just an academic proof-of-principle development, but a clinically usable new imaging device for a broad medical community is underlined by a firm commitment of an industrial partner (Philips) to support this project, should the proposal receive funding.

Mots-clés : chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,lung fibrosis,lung emphysema,lung screening,computed tomography,biomedical imaging,x ray imaging,x ray phase contrast,dark field contrast