Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SYNDATA (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de York — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1248460.0 €

SYNDATA develops a novel approach to understanding the ethical consequences of synthetic data for contemporary societies. Machine learning algorithms and AI models such as Gemini and GPT-4 are increasingly used to generate data (called ‘synthetic data’), which is in turn used to train other algorithmic models. This is leading to transformations in social and political life, because synthetic data embody a promise to address an array of ethical challenges associated with AI, such as the lack of ethnic diversity and gender representation in large training datasets, in addition to issues of privacy and confidentiality in sensitive datasets. In short, if some data cannot be collected in the real world, it can be generated via algorithms. This is particularly relevant in societal domains – such as healthcare, finance, and government – where an ethical question in the use of sensitive personal data is common. While there is a substantive literature outlining the various effects of data and algorithms on society, the area of synthetic data remains both under-researched and under-theorised. As such, SYNDATA will pioneer the first large-scale, systematic social science study of synthetic data. By examining the three pressing issues of generativity, representation, and resistance, the project will take seriously the ways that synthetic data are generated whilst also transforming how contemporary algorithms and AI models are trained and deployed in society. In order to do this, the project will conduct both archival research into the historical antecedents of synthetic data as well as path-defining studies of different areas where synthetic data is currently being generated and deployed as a way to train algorithmic systems: biometrics and facial recognition as well as weapons ammunition detection. SYNDATA will provide cutting-edge social science knowledge on how the emergence of synthetic data is transforming the relationships between data, AI, and ethics in society.

Mots-clés : ai,algorithms,bias,data,ethics,synthetic,society,technology
Projet ERC : NanoSoil (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université rhénane Frédéric-Guillaume de Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1420836.0 €

Plastic pollution has been identified as a key to soil health. Yet, information on inputs and concentrations in agricultural soil is limited to microplastics (> 1 µm-5 mm) or larger particles, but nothing is known about submicron plastics, including colloidal plastics (CPs; 1-1000 nm) and nanoplastics (NPs; 1-100 nm), due to a lack of analytical methods. This is critical because mainly submicron plastics harm soil biota, are taken up by plants, and thus pose a risk to human health via the food chain. As plastic pollution is rising, we urgently need to quantify submicron plastics in agricultural soils and the resulting plant uptake and contamination of our food to safeguard our food production. Hence, the NanoSoil project is designed to test the following hypotheses: i) submicron plastics can be routinely detected using Field Flow Fractionation (FFF) with adaptions from environmental colloid tracing, ii) agricultural practices (compost and sludge application, wastewater irrigation, plastic mulching) are main pathways for submicron plastics into soil, as well as iii) the use of so-called biodegradable foils in agriculture. I further hypothesize that iv) uptake and accumulation of CPs and NPs in crops are polymer- and plant-specific, temperature- and humidity-dependent, with mainly NPs reaching edible parts. To quantify submicron plastics, I will i) optimize a recently developed method using FFF and pyrolysis gas chromatography. This method will then ii+iii) be used on soil samples from agricultural fields with known plastic input pathways for conventional and biodegradable plastics, including an Europe-wide survey and existing controlled field trials. Finally, iv) plant uptake will be assessed for representative crops. With my combined expertise in nanoparticle and plastic analysis in soil, NanoSoil will for the first time generate data that will form the basis for all future environmental fate and ecotoxicology studies of plastics and a robust risk assessment.

Mots-clés : microplastic,environmental pollution,soil pollution
Projet ERC : DEPOLARIZE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université Koç — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499740.0 €

We currently witness democratic backsliding around the world where political rights, civil liberties, and free and fair elections are under assault. At the same time, politics in many countries are increasingly characterized by hostility and distrust across partisan lines; a phenomenon called affective polarization. Could there be a causal link between the two? Despite several theoretical conjectures about how affective polarization erodes democracy through its negative effects on citizens’ democratic attitudes, we lack the evidence to support them. We also do not have reliable interventions to reduce affective polarization that are generalizable to different contexts.  DEPOLARIZE addresses these puzzles around affective polarization with two objectives. First, it will identify reliable and generalizable experimental interventions to reduce affective polarization in multiple contexts. Second, it will establish any causal relationship between affective polarization and changes in democratic attitudes through novel empirical approaches.  DEPOLARIZE will achieve these goals by producing and analysing high-quality observational and experimental data from multiple waves of surveys in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and the US. These countries are selected for analyses because they have recently experienced democratic backsliding to different degrees, and they are also examples of high levels of affective polarization in society.  The stakes for identifying factors contributing to democratic backsliding could not be any higher. DEPOLARIZE will contribute to this effort by establishing whether affective polarization is a factor driving democratic backsliding using state-of-the-art causal inference methods. DEPOLARIZE is also one of the first projects in political science to employ comprehensive measures for cumulative learning: coordinated and comparable randomized controlled trials in multiple contexts with pre-registration of experimental interventions.

Mots-clés : affective polarization,democracy,democratic attitudes,democratic backsliding
Projet ERC : LAND-POLICY (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université rhénane Frédéric-Guillaume de Bonn — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1452644.0 €

Land degradation is one of the major sustainability challenges of our time. It is a driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, and water pollution, and reduces global agricultural productivity. This requires effective and economically efficient policies. Here, I outline a project that combines the global measurement and modelling of land degradation trends with econometric research designs to estimate policy effectiveness, their benefit cost ratios, and how design features and contextual factors explain policy performance. This research builds on the unique expertise I have developed over the last 5 years. The project consists of four work packages. In the first WP, global datasets will be build, including a new database of public policies relevant to land conditions, maps of different land degradation indicators, such as soil productivity trends, vegetation and agricultural yield changes, soil erosion and pollution, and land cover changes, such as cropland expansion and forest loss. In the second WP, econometric research designs (such as difference-in-differences, difference-in discontinuities, and synthetic control) will be used to estimate the causal effect(s) of public policies on land conditions. The comprehensiveness and global scope of the analysis means that for the first time, we will have the “full picture”, largely free of selection and publication biases, and methodologically unified. In the third WP, all the policies’ costs and benefits will be compared to each other and we will quantify how much benefit each policy has been generating per its costs. In the fourth WP, we will use both conventional econometric techniques and novel machine learning approaches to systematically explain when and why some public policies perform better than others. This research will generate new insights on how to improve public policies to mitigate and reverse land degradation. I expect it will generate high interest among academics, policy makers, and the public.

Mots-clés : land degradation public policies impact evaluation cost benefit analysis heterogeneous treatment effects
Projet ERC : THINGSTIGATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Göteborg — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499586.0 €

THINGSTIGATE aims to theorize how aesthetic objects mediate sociopolitical transformation. In a world where affective imagination increasingly sways society and politics, it is urgent to grasp the link between imagination, emotions, and sociopolitical institutions. Art for social change, ‘socially engaged art’, is pertinent, but its theories now dwell on usefulness. Imbued in a post-object relational art tradition despite the material turn in humanities and social sciences, these theories overlook aesthetic objects’ role in social processes. Tackling this, THINGSTIGATE draws on empirical hypotheses to assess aesthetic objects as a pivot of imagination, emotions, institutions. It extends aesthetic cosmopolitanism in confronting the imagined community of the nation-state as an institution. How do aesthetic objects behave in social relations, instigate change through imagination, intervene in the nation-states’ institutionalizing paths? How can they transform the imaginaries of a specific nation-state, and of a world beyond the nation-states? The study’s novel interdisciplinary methodology dissects the making of sociopolitical cultures by empirically tracing socially engaged objects – physical and digital – while they are in action, via artistic practice-based research. A posited framework will link imagination, institutions, and a relational objects typology distilled from major archives worldwide. It is then tested in two quantitative and qualitative fieldwork streams: iterative – via Make Your Own Passport workshop series in highly diverse public spaces in Sweden, Italy, and USA– and longitudinal –via 1965 Setiap Hari, a transnational social media initiative for Indonesia. The study’s impacts are manifold: in opening up a new, theoretically grounded methodological field of artistic practice-based research, it will advance the discourse on humans' relations with others in sociopolitical imagination and institution, a long debate since antiquity, in art and beyond.

Mots-clés : socially engaged art,imagination and institution,emotions,aesthetic objects,boundary objects,social change,transformation,social movements,liminality,vernacularization,spheres of citizenship,materiality and immateriality,aesthetic cosmopolitanism
Projet ERC : CELL-ENEITY (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Public University of Navarre — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UPNA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499439.0 €

Clonal microorganisms display cellular heterogeneity at the transcriptional level, to survive under unfavourable conditions or differentiate into specialised structures. This is the basis of antibiotic and fungicide resistance, but very little is known about how cellular heterogeneity originates and operates in the infection biology of agricultural fungi. Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most devastating fungal pathogens in the world that destroys enough rice to feed 60M people every year. It produces ~50,000 new spores a day from a single lesion in the fields, but it remains unknown whether they are transcriptionally different. Spores contain three cells that display cellular heterogeneity between them during appressorium development, a specialised cell necessary for infection. Two of the cells undergo autophagy rapidly and the third undergoes a mitotic division leading to the formation of the appressorium. The mechanism by which cellular heterogeneity operates in spores has never been elucidated. This proposal will identify, for the first time, the molecular mechanisms driving cellular heterogeneity and genes subjected to it. An unparalleled resolution of the infection-associated developmental program of individual spore cells will be obtained by scRNA-seq, which will identify a cohort of virulence factors critical for infection. I propose that the underlying mechanism of cellular heterogeneity is the cell cycle, through the activity of Cyclin Dependent Kinases (CDKs) and a novel group called non-PSTARE CDKs, reported to be regulators of transcription in other organisms. By a state-of-the-art chemical genetic approach combined with phosphoproteomics, their role and signalling pathways will be determined. Overall, with this proposal, novel components associated to the infection process of one of the most threatening fungal pathogens in the world will be determined, opening avenues that up to date have not been explored and whose potential is inestimable.

Mots-clés : fungi,plant pathogen,transcription,cell cycle,cdk,single cell rna seq,food security,heterogeneity,spore,magnaporthe oryzae,rice blast disease
Projet ERC : MagneticTWIST (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université d'Umeå — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2048115.0 €

Harnessing twisted light (light carrying orbital angular momentum) on the nanoscale, and its interaction with magnetism, can revolutionize how we encode and process information. In fact, twisted electromagnetic fields can enable a superior control over the motion of the electrons and their spin compared to circularly polarized light. Yet, a clear demonstration that it is possible to act on magnetism using twisted light has still to be established. The main challenge is to find an approach to generate nanoscale electromagnetic fields carrying orbital angular momentum, which can be exploited to drive magnetism with extreme (few nanometers) spatial resolution, at the intrinsic time scale (few tens of femtoseconds) of the fundamental magnetic interactions (exchange and spin-orbit coupling) responsible for the magnetic order in matter. This feature is essential for the development of ultrafast opto-magnetic applications in spintronics, where a major goal is the coherent control of nanoscale magnetic bits. In MagneticTWIST I tackle this challenge and propose the way towards nanoscale control of ultrafast magnetic phenomena by exploiting twisted plasmons, that is plasmon polaritons (light-induced coherent collective oscillations of free electrons in metals) carrying orbital angular momentum and driven by femtosecond light pulses. This strategy will enable a coherent transfer of orbital angular momentum to the electronic spin and orbital degrees of freedom at the nanoscale. In this way, I will disclose new types of light-matter interactions and new kinds of opto-magnetic effects, with a ground-breaking impact on ultrafast magnetism, spintronics and light-driven electronics. Beyond this, MagneticTWIST will open a radically new path enabling to store and process an infinite amount of information on different spatiotemporal levels, impacting also other research fields such as cryptography, artificial intelligence, and quantum technology.

Mots-clés : magnetoplasmonics,ultrafast plasmonics,magneto optics,ultrafast magnetism,angular momentum of light,opto magnetism,magnetization dynamics,exchange interaction,spin orbit coupling
Projet ERC : NeuroVitalizer (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de médecine de Graz — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 221241.0 €

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when mechanical forces shake the brain and disrupt normal brain function, affecting biological processes like cellular, molecular, and electrical functions. These processes are highly interconnected, making it difficult to fully understand TBI recovery with traditional single-discipline methods. Current approaches often fail to address the complexity of TBI even in mild to moderate cases, creating an urgent need for new methods to overcome existing limits in data collection, integration, and interpretation across multiple subdisciplines. In this project, I will set up a new framework for a comprehensive and systematic analysis of recovery processes post-trauma and the effect of electrical stimulation (ES) in in vitro models for mild to moderate TBI, which allows for a detailed examination in a controlled environment. Our experimental workflow will integrate insights on cellular morphology and structure from microscopy images, electrical activity, and network synchronization from multi-electrode array recordings, protein expression changes from immunostaining, and cell viability and stress markers found in the cell medium. Calcium imaging will provide insights into ionic homeostasis maintenance. An AI-driven data fusion approach will facilitate the analysis of these multimodal datasets revealing hidden patterns and relationships that traditional approaches cannot uncover. Specifically, we want to address questions such as • How do astrocyte protein expression and neuronal electrical activity relate to repair after TBI? • To what extent can ES prevent neuronal death, and what are the best stimulation protocols? When should we start the treatment? • Are there early biomarkers that can predict recovery success or delays? This project introduces a cutting-edge method by integrating a multimodal data fusion setup and AI-based synthesis to tackle TBI recovery from multiple angles, capturing the complexity that standard approaches miss.
Projet ERC : TEMPRODROME (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université de médecine de Graz — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1294994.0 €

All information processing in nervous systems relies on spatial and temporal patterns of neural activity. While spatial patterns are dictated by neuroanatomy, the mechanisms that give rise to temporal activity patterns are diverse. They range from fast voltage dynamics of single neurons at one end of the spectrum to slow transcriptional and structural changes at the other, but the rules that shape signals at timescales in between milliseconds and minutes are poorly understood. The proposed research aims to uncover mechanisms of temporal information processing at these intermediate timescales, at which temporal patterns are thought to emerge from recurrently connected circuits. Detailed insight into the function of these circuits has been limited by the large number of circuit elements, by the lack of knowledge about their connectivity, and by the impracticability of recording from all circuit elements under naturalistic conditions. In Drosophila melanogaster, these limitations no longer apply. The comparatively low number of neurons, their well-mapped connectivity, and our ability to record and control their activities make mechanistic concepts testable. We will focus on three processes in the brain of Drosophila that unfold over three timescales ranging from milliseconds to minutes: 1) temporal filtering in the motion vision system, 2) sequential sampling of motion information in the lead-up to a perceptual judgement, and 3) temporal integration of distance during locomotion. Patch clamp experiments in the smallest of invertebrate neurons in vivo will allow us to record activity at the highest temporal resolution. We will combine this technique with behavioural, genetic, and imaging experiments to test the roles of individual neurons, their biophysical properties, and their synaptic connections in processing signals at intermediate timescales. The proposed experiments will further our understanding of motion vision, perceptual decision-making, and path integration.

Mots-clés : drosophila,motion vision,synapse,temporal processing,path integration