Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MELTDYN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Dissolving, eroding, and melting processes are ubiquitous in everyday life, nature, science, and technology. The challenge is to accurately predict the melting or dissolution rate e.g. of an iceberg or glacier---relevant for climate change---or of solid reactants in chemical reactors, important to accurately control reaction rates and temperatures. Current predictions for the melting of glaciers are often off by a factor of 100, and different melting models show inconsistencies. No general consensus of the cryospheric modeling has been reached yet. The difficulties in describing melting and dissolution stem from the multiscale nature of these processes (micrometers to kilometers) and the interaction between thermal, solutal, and viscous boundary layers and their complex interplay with the continuously reshaping boundary. A common belief is that melting always smooths the shape. However, from examples in nature and from theoretical analysis, it is clear that flows around melting or dissolving objects can create a rough (dimpled) surface, dramatically increasing the difficulty of accurate predictions. The objective of the project is to solve the gap in understanding and develop a quantitative understanding of the heat and mass transfer and the resulting melting and dissolution dynamics of fixed surfaces and freely-moving objects in turbulent flows from a fundamental fluid dynamics perspective. To do so, we will perform highly controlled lab experiments and numerical simulations, which allow for a combined experimental, numerical, and theoretical approach to reveal the underlying mechanisms of the melting and dissolution dynamics. Unique experimental flow facilities, the latest 3D optical measurements techniques, and advanced high-performance numerical schemes will allow for a one-to-one comparison between experiments and simulations. Given the societal relevance of climate change and the burning technol

Mots-clés : turbulence,phase change,fluid dynamics
Projet ERC : Interfaces at Work (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Charge-transfer reactions are key not only to the way that nature fuels life in photosynthesis but also in synthesizing sustainable fuels like hydrogen. Charge transfer occurs at interfaces with an applied potential, yet almost all our understanding of electrocatalytic activity trends comes from the bulk material properties in the as-prepared state. We still lack interface-sensitive spectroscopy tools that can probe the composition and electronic structure under reaction conditions. Only with such interface-sensitive operando information can we fully understand the underlying reaction mechanisms and devise strategies for efficient energy conversion and storage. In Interfaces at Work, I will overcome these limitations by developing novel interface-sensitive operando X-ray spectroscopies combined with model electrochemical surfaces with atomic-layer compositional control, merging the fields of surface science and liquid electrochemistry. My aim is to fully visualize the physico-chemical properties of the solid/liquid interface under operating conditions. Specifically, I will develop a new laboratory-based, multicolour operando “meniscus XPS” (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and transform the recently invented “membrane XPS” by making it accessible to the relevant electrochemical materials using these materials themselves as new membranes. I will apply these novel techniques to electrocatalyst and pseudocapacitor model systems based on epitaxial oxide thin films and 2D carbides. Ultimately, the proposed approach will allow me to track the surface and subsurface properties under applied potential to shed light on the electrochemical mechanisms. The operando insights will result in design rules for efficient energy conversion and storage on the chemical and electronic properties of a true electrochemically active surface under operating conditions rather than the as-prepared bulk. This will help our transition towards sustainability.

Mots-clés : operando spectroscopy,photoelectron spectroscopy,water electrolysis,electrocatalysis,pseudocapacitor,oxide epitaxy,mxene
Projet ERC : ISOCOSMOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Conseil supérieur de la recherche scientifique — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1419141.0 €

The advent of modern space instruments and ground based radio telescopes for ice and gas-phase molecular detections has brought astrochemistry into a golden age. In just the last five years, more than 30% of all known interstellar molecules have been detected—a staggering figure for a field with a history of several decades. Along with the numbers, the chemical complexity has also grown to complex organics and aromatic molecules. However, this rapid expansion presents critical challenges for understanding interstellar chemical complexity. The most pressing of these is the increasing number of detected isomers, molecules that share the same molecular formula but differ in their structure. Predicting their abundance in the interstellar medium, a highly non-equilibrium environment, is particularly important for the interpretation of molecular inventories derived from radio astronomy.  The project ISOCOSMOS aims to tackle interstellar isomerism from a theoretical approach closely connected with observations. Building on my previous experience in machine learning, ab-initio calculations, and kinetic models, I aim to predict, explain, and leverage isomeric ratios in astrophysical environments. In particular ISOCOSMOS will explore the largest laboratory in the Universe, the Taurus Molecular Cloud. ISOCOSMOS will lift current limitations in the interpretation of astrochemical observations and pave the way for a new era, guiding future discoveries and establishing better constraints on the molecular inventory of the interstellar medium, and will contribute to understand the role of isomerism in the emergence of complex, possibly prebiotic, interstellar molecules. With its interdisciplinary approach, the tools and databases developed by ISOCOSMOS will support advancements in other fields, such as atmospheric and environmental chemistry, underscoring the broad applicability of my theoretical research.

Mots-clés : astrochemistry,reaction mechanisms,molecular abundances,astrochemical models
Projet ERC : CHINBUDDHPHIL (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Académie autrichienne des sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ÖAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499558.0 €

Is it ethical to believe? CHINBUDDHPHIL will explore this basic yet troubling question by reconstructing what is a hitherto largely unstudied yet highly original philosophical conception of how belief relates to ethical action. Substantively, this project will constitute a major contribution to the historical and systematic study of Chinese Buddhist philosophy. It will accomplish this end through specialist research on the unduly neglected Sanlun school: A foundationally important movement active during a seminal period in the epochally transformative history of Buddhism in China. This will be the first comprehensive elaboration of Sanlun philosophy in any Western language. By placing Sanlun into debate with its Indian antecedents, later elaborations within Chinese Buddhism, and analogues in Western philosophy, this project will also forge multiple disciplinary innovations. Thus, within philosophy it will transform our understanding of philosophically valuable traditions by demonstrating that Chinese Buddhist philosophers merit consideration not only as historical artifacts but as genuinely interesting and insightful contributors to live philosophical problems. It will likewise redress the preponderant exclusion of Chinese perspectives from philosophically-oriented scholarship in Buddhist studies, and do so in a manner that bridges it with philologically-oriented Buddhology. And by investigating both the transmission of Indian Buddhist thought into China and its transformation once established there, it will revise the standard chronology of Chinese Buddhist philosophy, theorize India-China as a globalized sphere of dynamic intellectual interaction within trans-cultural Asian studies, and inform scholarship on cultural appropriation and assimilation, enculturation, and acculturation – all from a distinctly non-Eurocentric perspective. Methodologically, CHINBUDDHPHIL will use synchronic hermeneutic-philosophical as well as diachronic text-historical methods.

Mots-clés : buddhism buddhist studies buddhology chinese buddhist philosophy philosophy history of philosophy global philosophy philosophy of religion religion religious studies history of religion trans cultural asian studies sanlun madhyamaka ethics belief
Projet ERC : QS-Gauge (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Académie autrichienne des sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ÖAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 749176.0 €

Gauge theories are ubiquitous in physics with applications ranging from fundamental high-energy physics(HEP) over emergent condensed matter phenomena to quantum information science and technology. Their study often requires non-perturbative numerical simulations and several regimes of interest remain inaccessible due to the numerical sign problem of Monte-Carlo simulations. Motivated by recent advances in the control of synthetic quantum systems QS-Gauge addresses the quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories (LGTs) beyond the reach of classical computations. Our objectives are (i) to establish a class of regularized gauge theories co-designed for quantum simulation, enabling (ii) the construction of digital quantum algorithms tailored to “LGT-aware” hardware, and (iii) to analyze paradigmatic phenomena such as confinement using classical tensor network (TN) simulations which serve as benchmarks for quantum devices. QS-Gauge is based on an unconventional generalization of the well-established Kogut-Susskind Hamiltonian formulation of LGTs, where the defining non-abelian Lie algebra is deformed to a quantum group. The resulting theories are related to string-net models employed for the classification of topological order in condensed matter which we will leverage to adapt TNs to HEP applications. As these truncated non-abelian LGTs are efficiently represented as multi-level systems, we pursue the development of quantum algorithms for qudits instead of qubits as elementary information carriers. In close collaboration with experimental colleagues and in synergy with the development of early fault-tolerant hardware, we focus on trapped-ion qudit quantum computers and fermionic alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms for optimized (fermion-)qudit architectures. Our results are expected to have far-reaching interdisciplinary impact and inform the development of future quantum devices, also for condensed matter physics, quantum chemistry and general quantum information processing.

Mots-clés : quantum simulation,trapped ions,rydberg atoms,tensor network methods
Projet ERC : MaglevHunt (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Académie autrichienne des sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ÖAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2436971.0 €

Magnetically-levitated superconductors have strong potential to revolutionise inertial sensing and magnetic field sensing. In this project I will develop levitated superconductor sensors with unprecedented sensitivities, and use an array of these sensors to search for well-motivated dark matter candidates in unexplored parameter regimes.  The sensors will consist of gram-scale superconducting particles stably confined within anti-Helmholtz-like magnetic traps. I will precisely measure the motion of the levitated particles using superconducting quantum circuits. The particle motion will be highly isolated from unwanted effects of the surroundings, since the particles will levitate far from surfaces, in ultrahigh vacuum, at millikelvin temperatures, within nearly dissipationless traps. Passive and active vibration isolation will be used to mitigate vibrational noise, and magnetic shielding will diminish magnetic field noise. Furthermore, the sensor array will be configured to reject common noise.  The mechanical sensors will be sensitive to oscillatory forces caused by axion-like particles, dark photons and vector B-L dark matter. Additionally, they will be sensitive to impulses caused by ultraheavy dark matter near the Planck mass. The primary focus of this project is to hunt these diverse dark matter candidates. This project will also establish the groundwork for future searches with this innovative platform. In the long term, levitated superconductor sensors hold the potential to search for dark matter through its gravitational interaction with ordinary matter. Such a search would be able to conclusively probe the existence of dark matter near the Planck mass.

Mots-clés : quantum sensing,direct detection of dark matter,magnetomechanics,levitated superconductors
Projet ERC : PhagoPhoRe (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AWI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1489028.0 €

Photosymbioses between heterotrophic hosts and phototrophic algal endosymbionts have repeatedly and independently evolved across the tree of life. The immense productivity of photosymbioses affects global nutrient cycles, yet global warming is disrupting these nutrient-exchange symbioses, destabilizing the ecosystems they support. Heat stress erodes the metabolic controls underlying the establishment and maintenance of mutualistic carbon recycling in these symbioses. A link between endosymbiont nutrient release and their intracellular maintenance could thus explain the evolutionary establishment as well as the ecological collapse of photosymbioses in the Anthropocene. Harnessing recent advances in cell isolation and culture techniques, PhagoPhoRe seeks to understand the processes underlying the establishment, maintenance, and breakdown of the cnidarian-algal symbiosis. Specifically, I will investigate the idea that the release of photosynthates enables algal endosymbionts to evade phagosomal digestion and autophagic immune responses of the host by mimicking ongoing digestion processes. In three complementary work packages that combine state-of-the-art single-cell transcriptomics, proteomics, and isotopic imaging techniques, I will: 1) Characterize the role of host phagosome maturation processes in the intracellular establishment and maintenance of algal endosymbionts. 2) Investigate the postulated link between algal nutrient release and host phagosome arrest and immune suppression. 3) Examine the drivers of co-evolution towards obligate metabolic interactions in photosymbioses. Deciphering the interplay between symbiotic nutrient cycling and host phagosome maturation will be key to understanding the establishment and subsequent breakdown of photosymbioses. These processes are unlikely restricted to photosymbioses and could reveal fundamental mechanisms enabling the establishment of endosymbioses and, as such, eukaryotic life itself.

Mots-clés : coral bleaching,endosymbiosis,host microbe interactions,nutrient cycling,tor signaling
Projet ERC : PHAST (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : AWI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 615680.0 €

Ice streams are river-like corridors of fast flowing ice that account for the vast majority of ice discharge to the ocean in continental ice sheets. Their most outstanding feature is that they can appear spontaneously within a slowly moving ice sheet, self-organize in evenly spaced patterns, and switch on and off over time. Yet, a full explanation of ice stream formation and evolution is one of the longest standing open problems in glaciology. This knowledge gap has precluded fundamental investigations on the role of ice streams in driving ice sheet change, and also casts doubt on the ability of state-of-the-art ice sheet simulation codes to project future sea levels. Recent work by the PI identified an entirely novel class of feedbacks related to the onset of basal sliding which could be the missing ingredient needed to fully explain observed ice stream dynamic behaviors. Drawing on a unique combination of novel glaciological observations, first-principle theoretical work, and ice-sheet-wide numerical simulations, PHAST builds on this insight to: 1. Develop a complete and coherent theory of ice stream spatial and temporal dynamics that clarifies under what environmental conditions these dynamics are to be expected.  2. Test the hypothesis that sliding onset physics play a central role in ice stream dynamics through a targeted field experiment.  3. Build a new ice sheet simulation code that resolves sliding onset and ice stream margin physics at low computational cost thanks to emerging domain partitioning methods.  4. Assess for the first time the sensitivity of Antarctic and Greenland mass loss to ice stream dynamics. By developing new modeling tools and generating process-level understanding across scales ranging from few tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, PHAST will lead the way towards unraveling the complex interplay between internal ice sheet dynamics and climate over timescales ranging from decades to millennia.

Mots-clés : ice streams,mathematical modeling,theoretical glaciology,basal sliding,ice mechanics fieldwork,ice sheet modeling
Projet ERC : DELaw (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : FUNDECYT PCTEX — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1425000.0 €

Research shows that six of the nine identified planetary boundaries have already been crossed. For Earth to once again become a safe operating space for humanity, it is urgent to turn to a degrowth economy. Degrowth means a democratically planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human wellbeing. Although the idea of degrowth dates back to the 1970s, its development in scholarly work significantly gained traction during the 2010s, especially insofar as it was embedded in ecological economics discourse. Yet, degrowth as a research topic for legal scholars is barely nascent.  DELaw aims to find ways to integrate the principles of degrowth into the law, in order to reorientate our society at the required scale and pace. To do so, DELaw proposes an ambitious comparative interdisciplinary analysis of EU and Member States’ energy laws, with a focus on the legal regime for energy storage and especially batteries. Indeed, batteries are at the crossroads between two of the most pressing environmental threats. They are needed to allow higher levels of renewable energy sources and fight climate change, but they rely on critical raw materials such as nickel, cobalt or lithium, the mining of which accelerates biodiversity loss and wreaks havoc on local communities.  Through a solid mix of legal methods, DELaw will generate two ground-breaking results for legal research and for society as a whole. Firstly, the team will create a new methodological framework for the inclusion of degrowth principles into the law, tested with the regulation of batteries in the EU but applicable to other legal fields and jurisdictions. Secondly, DELaw will propose a set of recommendations for when lawmakers both at EU and national levels will look at adopting degrowth-focused legal amendments, a moment that draws closer as time passes and the environmental situation worsens.

Mots-clés : energy law degrowth
Projet ERC : A3M-transform (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AWI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1468938.0 €

We expect that temperatures over the wintertime central Arctic will increase by 20 degrees - and precipitation will double - by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Arctic sea-ice is projected to completely melt in summer within the next decades, and may cease to form in winter in the coming century. The traditional framework to understand this Arctic amplification of climate change focuses on the steady-state mean Arctic climate. However, the Arctic wintertime atmosphere has two preferred states that are largely controlled by initially warm and moist air masses that cool and dry after being advected from lower latitudes. We understand little about how these air masses cool and dry, and what controls the sudden transition from a cloudy state to a clear state along their trajectory. This lack of understanding is a major obstacle to scientific progress and improved climate models. To achieve groundbreaking progress, I will analyze the warm, moist poleward flows, cold, dry equatorward flows and the air-mass transformations that lead from one to the other. I will observe and model such air masses along their trajectories using recently developed air-mass following balloons and customized model setups. Cooling of air in the Arctic mirrors heating in the Tropics. Together, these drive the global atmospheric circulation, but the Arctic’s role in this picture has largely been overlooked. My team will investigate how the Arctic couples to the global climate system using a novel concept of averaging the atmospheric circulation. We will focus on how and why both the heat and moisture content and the amount of air transported into and out of the Arctic change in a warming world and contribute and respond to Arctic amplification. A3M-transform will deliver a step change in understanding the air-mass transformation processes that shape Arctic amplification and transform our view of how the Arctic couples to the global climate system.

Mots-clés : arctic amplification,climate change,clouds,atmospheric boundary layer