Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ENVIROSHIFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université Lumière - Lyon 2 — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Lyon-II
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1377190.0 €

This project investigates the history of Earth sciences in the mountainous regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus, addressing the underexplored contributions of non-Western perspectives to environmental change discourses. By focusing on geologists, glaciologists, and seismologists in these areas during the Tsarist and Soviet periods, the research aims to shift attention from dominant Euro-American narratives to the unique experiences and contributions of local scientists.  The study explores four main areas: 1) the management of science in the peripheries; 2) the production of localized knowledge; 3) the environmental and social impacts of resource extraction; and 4) the cultural representation of Earth scientists within Soviet ideology. This multidisciplinary approach integrates environmental history, the history of science, and post-colonial studies, challenging the notion of a uniform Soviet scientific enterprise and highlighting the diversity of environmental knowledge shaped by local contexts.  The research employs a combination of archival research, oral history, and qualitative analysis, with four research clusters focused on uranium mining, expeditions in the Pamirs, glacier studies, and seismological research in the Caucasus. The project will produce two PhD dissertations and two habilitation theses. By situating Central Asian and Caucasian scientific contributions within global environmental debates, the project aims to enrich our understanding of human-environment interactions in the context of the Anthropocene.

Mots-clés : earth system science,field sciences,geology,climatology,glaciology,seismology,soviet union,history of the russian empire and the soviet union
Projet ERC : ChloroMosaic (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Sorbonne Université — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Sorbonne U
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Photosynthesis in the ocean is as significant as that of land plants, and is performed by a wide range of cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae, the most abundant of which have originated through the secondary endosymbioses of red algae. Previously, I have shown that these "secondary red chloroplasts" are evolutionary mosaics, supported by nucleus-encoded proteins of symbiont, host and horizontally acquired origin; and that the most successful of these groups (diatoms, haptophytes and dinoflagellates) are connected to one another via chloroplast endosymbioses. My research programme will answer a question of fundamental importance to the evolutionary history, and future ecology of the planet: why is the secondary red chloroplast so successful in the modern ocean? I will perform next-generation proteomic (LOPIT) characterisation of the dinoflagellate chloroplast, whose composition remains unknown; phylogenomic and spatial reconstruction of the pan-secondary red chloroplast proteome, using environmental sequence data from the Tara Oceans expedition; and phenotyping of proteins via CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis in the model diatom Phaeodactylum. I will focus on defining the proteins that underpin the dominant contributions of secondary red chloroplasts to marine primary production; and their unique success in high oceanic latitudes. Thus far, I have characterised a mitochondria-associated transporter that facilitates photo-acclimation in secondary red chloroplasts under Fe limitation; and a complete glycolytic pathway that regulates diatom chloroplast metabolism in polar oceans. The phylogenetically-grounded insights from this project will connect a defining event in eukaryotic evolution, the endosymbiotic evolution of chloroplasts, to the functional biology of marine ecosystems; identify new proteins for optimising photosynthetic production in cultivable species; and define new biomarkers for the resilience of algal communities to anthropogenic climate change.

Mots-clés : dinoflagellates,diatoms,photosynthesis,endosymbiosis,environmental genomics,proteomics
Projet ERC : DIGIPORTS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université Érasme de Rotterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EUR
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499998.0 €

Container shipping has implications for everyone who has ever shopped in a store or online. Shipping is the backbone of the global economy. 90% of the world's goods travel by ship. The industry has a global reach and a highly diverse workforce. It is also structured by workers' nationalities, resulting in inequalities. Inequalities occur within ships, where some European workers systematically receive higher wages, and between regions, where labor conditions vary.  Shipping is currently undergoing rapid change as it digitalizes its workflows. It is unknown if digitalization will help or hinder worker equality, or for which groups. Technology can increase workers' skills and make travel safer and more efficient. Yet the benefits may only extend to some, while others face difficulties becoming skilled or lose their jobs altogether. Because pay and working conditions are structured by nationality, the digitalization of shipping will likely also affect labor's racialization, or how practices and ideas about race are constructed and employed, and related inequalities.  The aim of DIGIPORTS is to understand how and to what extent digitalization is reconfiguring the racialization of shipping labor. This project innovatively combines critical logistics and algorithm studies. It provides a groundbreaking study of how the on-the-ground implementation of digital infrastructures is reconfiguring four processes of racialization: the displacement, classification, potential for criminalization, and related precarity of work.  DIGIPORTS is the first ethnographic study of the digitalization of shipping. It will provide an integrated analysis of how digitalization is reshaping labor and racial inequalities, develop a four-part framework for studying racialization as sets of institutionalized practices that extend across space and time, and lay the groundwork for a new interdisciplinary field: digital logistics studies.

Mots-clés : container shipping,labor,digitalization,racialization,digital infrastructures,ports,global capitalism,critical logistics,algorithm studies,science and technology studies sts,data practices
Projet ERC : BATOFF (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : University Hospital Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499526.0 €

Free-ranging animals are continuously exposed to fluctuating ambient temperature, therefore rapid fine-tuning of thermogenesis to maintain core temperature homeostasis is critical for survival. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) evolves as a thermogenic organ, the rapid switching on and off is essential for thermal regulation. Of note, thermogenesis inevitably comes at high energetic cost and BAT ultimately is an energy-wasting organ. A constrained strategy that minimizes BAT activity unless obligate will have been favored during natural selection to safeguard metabolic thriftiness. However, this tenet and the molecular basis that constrain BAT activity remain unappreciated, unexplored and unexploited. Filling this fundamental knowledge gap will unlock endogenous constraints and allow efficiently and fully harness the energy-consuming potential of BAT for therapeutic interventions. To this end, I identify that a phase separation-aided molecular event, a lipolysis-stimulated feedforward regulatory circuit with negative feedback loop, and a purinergic nucleotides flux-based inhibitory mechanism, are synergistically involved in rapidly terminating heat production. BATOFF aims to study: 1) how these previously unappreciated mechanisms allow mammals to effectively orchestrate dynamics of BAT activity; 2) whether these constraining brake systems are malfunction under pathophysiological conditions; and 3) the translational potential of targeting these brakes. I will address these questions using state-of-the-art gain and loss-of-function in vitro and in vivo studies, newly-generated mouse models, high-resolution cellular respirometry, live cell imaging, and cutting-edge 'omics'. Results of BATOFF will not only provide a transformative molecular understanding of the cellular processes enabling physiological adaptation to thermogenic demand, but also with translational potential for prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes by harnessing the calorie-burning potential of BAT.

Mots-clés : brown fat,metabolism,body temperature homeostasis,molecular brakes,lipolysis,energy balance,ucp1,thermogenesis
Projet ERC : SCRIBEMUS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Pavie — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1464672.0 €

From Bach to Beethoven, Verdi to The Beatles, whether elite or popular genres, our collective musical culture was shaped by complex technologies of music writing first invented c.1200 years ago in western Europe. SCRIBEMUS will elucidate the first spreading of musical notation in Latin Europe, one of the most debated topics in historical musicology since the 19th c. The project will address significant lacunae in our understanding of how music scripts were shaped and exchanged within transregional networks of singer-scribes. It will assess how scribes mediated contemporary writing practices and visual culture in the creation of musical notation, as well as the impact of politics and monastic institutions–especially convents–in the first adoption and diffusion of the musical staff. The project's international team will undertake the first large-scale and fully interdisciplinary analysis of hundreds of surviving musical sources across two centuries (c.900–1100); we will literally read beyond the surface of extant palimpsests manuscripts using multi-spectral imaging and digital processing to reveal a corpus of so-far 'hidden' melodies. SCRIBEMUS will go significantly beyond the state of the art in the field by exploring the scribes' intellectual approaches that guided their graphic representation of sound; this will be achieved through the development of software NeumSyntax. We will combine innovatively computational musicology and machine learning for the study of early musical notation with vocal performance practice through a collaboration with the music ensemble Dialogos. In three intersecting work packages, the project will cross the disciplinary boundaries between music, Latin palaeography, linguistics, the study of past musical cultures, and computational science. SCRIBEMUS will fundamentally advance our understanding of how early singers developed sophisticated ways to visualise, read, and perform musical sound, changing the course of music history to this day.

Mots-clés : musical notation,gregorian chant,manuscript studies,palimpsests,liturgy,digital imaging
Projet ERC : CoDe4Bio (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Pavie — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1495100.0 €

Cancer is a global health burden. In-vitro pre-clinical models play a key role in fighting this burden by encompassing all the activities prior to clinical trials, from tumor microenvironment reconstruction to drug candidate selection. However, the frequent failure of promising pre-clinical drug candidates highlights two major drawbacks of these models: (i) the difficult reproduction of the dynamic cancer structure related to numerous physical cues; (ii) their experimental nature that suffers from high costs, long times, and limited understanding. Consequently, the relationship between dynamic physical cues, cell behavior, and drug efficacy is still unknown. CoDe4Bio tackles such a huge knowledge deficiency. We propose a radical methodology shift to a computational approach to harness programmable materials, able to change properties on demand, and realize dynamic 4D biofabricated models whose stimuli-triggered evolution over time (4th dimension) induces targeted physical cues on cancer cells. We will leverage my extensive experience with smart materials and structures to address the challenges of this multidisciplinary project. Specifically, we will develop a computational design framework for 4D biofabrication that combines new data-, geometry-, and model-based methods with additive manufacturing and in-vitro observations. This framework will allow us to develop customized stimuli-responsive materials and engineer a new generation of 4D constructs with programmable mechano-structural properties and acting as mechanical regulators. We will assess the constructs in-vitro on chronic lymphocytic leukemia to achieve a deep understanding on how complex physical cues within lymph nodes and bone marrow affect this incurable cancer in relation to chemoimmuno and targeted therapies. CoDe4Bio will push the frontiers of solid and computational mechanics to unveil unconventional routes for pre-clinical drug screening and lay the foundation for effective dynamic cancer models.

Mots-clés : computational mechanics solid and structural mechanics 4d biofabrication stimuli responsive materials pre clinical models of leukemia
Projet ERC : SMHEART (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Centre hospitalier universitaire de Bordeaux — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CHU Bordeaux
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 83154.0 €

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes at least 1.8 million European deaths annually, exceeding fatalities from cancer, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes. Consequently, the fight against CVD has become the main priority of the World Health Organization.  In the pursuit of understanding and treating CVD, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) has remained the only modality capable of providing a comprehensive assessment of the heart’s function and structure without harmful radiation. Unfortunately, current CMR systems remain too slow, too complex, require highly trained specialists and, as such, have presented a barrier to a wider adoption of CMR.  The aim of my ERC project is to unleash the full potential of CMR to transform patient trajectories by introducing a fast, one-click, fully automated, and comprehensive imaging pipeline applicable to diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy selection in cardiology.  This aim will be achieved by (i) creating a novel imaging technology that collects CMR data in a single continuous free-breathing scan, taking into account post-processing requirements at the very origin of CMR sequence design; (ii) exploiting the unique contrasts generated by this technology to automatically extract quantitative markers on cardiac anatomy, function, and tissue characteristics; and (iii) translating this transformative technology from a pre-clinical to a clinical setting.  This will be the first-ever integrated cardiac imaging pipeline in which CMR images are acquired in a single click, jointly represented in a single volume, and automatically analysed. This will unlock obstacles for broader acceptance of CMR and unleash the full potential of CMR to maximize its impact on patient trajectories. The results of this project will pave the way towards robust image-based strategies for personalized patient care (diagnosis, risk stratification, therapy selection, monitoring, and image-guided interventions).

Mots-clés : cardiology,mri,artificial intelligence,imaging
Projet ERC : 5D ULTRAFAST-HCM (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Centre hospitalier universitaire de Bordeaux — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CHU Bordeaux
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1312425.0 €

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common form of cardiomyopathy, affecting 1 in 500 individuals globally. When HCM presents in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood (0-30yo), it carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality, threatening young lives. Notably, HCM is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in adolescents and young adults without prior warning – a devastating condition affecting over 8000 European youths per year. Despite genetic advances, this knowledge has yet to prevent HCM progression or major complications like arrhythmias, stroke, heart failure, or SCD. Early prediction of adverse outcomes is crucial to identify patients who may benefit from advanced therapies like implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD) and heart transplantation. 5D ULTRAFAST-HCM will develop new biomarkers using advanced ultrasound to address the limitations of 2D ultrafast ultrasound imaging (UUI) in capturing the heart's complex 3D structure over cardiac cycles (4D), emphasizing the need for volumetric imaging. It will develop innovative 5D-UUI technology (4D with real-time AI-driven post-processing) for unprecedented whole-heart imaging, enabling assessment of new biomarkers. Preliminary data show that increased myocardial stiffness, abnormal fiber organization, and reduced microperfusion are key indicators in young HCM patients. We hypothesize that these factors, quantified through 5D-UUI, are directly linked to adverse outcomes. We will (i) refine 5D-UUI for clinical use, automate acquisition and analysis, (ii) validate new biomarkers predicting high-risk cases, and (iii) develop a new risk prediction model for improved ICD indication. 5D ULTRAFAST-HCM will establish this groundbreaking bedside imaging technology and revolutionize patient management. Its success will create a pioneering diagnostic tool that simplifies data collection, enhances patient experience, and offers AI-driven, operator-independent analysis for precise risk assessment.

Mots-clés : cardiology pediatrics ultrafast ultrasound hypertrophic cardiomyopathy diagnosis
Projet ERC : NextGeneTx (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Innovavector srl — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 62500.0 €

Despite 6 products on the market and dozens in advanced phases of clinical development, in vivo gene therapy with vectors derived from adeno-associated viruses (AAV) still faces the major challenge of the limited vector cargo capacity (< 5kb). This prevents AAV application for treatment of inherited diseases caused by mutations in large genes. To address this, we have recently developed an AAV-based strategy relying on the use of short protein elements called inteins. These, when fused at the extremities of fragments of a large protein delivered to cells through AAV, can mediate joining of the fragments in a traceless manner, resulting in the reconstitution of the intact target protein. However, despite being extensively utilized as biotechnological tools in vitro, the in vivo application of inteins for therapeutic purposes comes with several limitations. These include: insufficient levels of full-length protein reconstitution for some applications; complex design; and production of undesired, potentially harmful by-products. NextGeneTx aims to expand the potential of AAV-inteins as an innovative in vivo biotechnological tool for therapeutic purposes, by addressing each of these limitations. To achieve this, we will leverage cutting-edge technologies to: i. engineer inteins with improved efficiency and greater design flexibility; ii. modulate intracellular trafficking of intein-containing protein fragments to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of full-length protein reconstitution; iii. develop strategies to reduce the production of unwanted by-products. We will test the therapeutic relevance of evolved AAV-inteins in both gene therapy and genome editing applications, using human retinal organoids and animal models of retinal diseases. The outcomes of NextGeneTx will define a highly adaptable, safe, and effective next-generation AAV-based approach to deliver large genes, thus significantly expanding the patient population that can benefit from in vivo gene therapy.

Mots-clés : aav,gene therapy,genome editing,large gene delivery,retinal organoids,animal models,inherited retinal diseases,directed evolution
Projet ERC : ARTIFACT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inria
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499955.0 €

Today’s robots are confined to tightly controlled environments: even the complex choreographies that the Atlas humanoid flawlessly executes heavily rely on handcrafted control strategies and detailed workspace models, with little place for sensing. To put it bluntly, robots are nowhere near the level of agility, dexterity, and even less so autonomy, robustness, and safety required for their deployment “in the wild” alongside people. The tenet of ARTIFACT is that the key to an actual revolution will come from the algorithmic foundations of artificial motion intelligence, an AI challenged from the start to interact physically with dynamic environments and, ultimately, people. To do so, we will break away from the dichotomy between optimal control, where the role of perception is traditionally limited to an early state estimation stage, and reinforcement learning, where control policies are typically learned model-free with no guarantee to cope with the curse of dimensionality. In ARTIFACT, we will devise a unified, structured, modular, and learnable control architecture for providing robots with advanced decision-making capabilities to solve complex tasks and face new interactions as they experience the world. It will leverage the notion of differentiable programming at all scales to enable robots to (i) capture models of their interactions directly from a sound combination of sensor data and first principles from physics, (ii) autonomously discover new complex gestures and movements leveraging their past experiences, and (iii) learn embodied representations to control their interactions finely and reason about the physical world. It will be implemented in open-source software and shown in real-world and challenging scenarios requiring fine dexterity and high agility. Altogether, these contributions will be the key enablers to enhance robot autonomy fundamentally, thus opening the age of ubiquitous robots at the service of mankind.

Mots-clés : machine learning optimization computer vision optimal control reinforcement learning simulation