Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MiMus (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
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 : 1341869.0 €

What was the role played by courtly musicians and poets in fostering a performative dimension of cultural life in the late Middle Ages? How did this contribute to the social value of the poet and musician as an artist? In the late medieval period the Crown of Aragon was a political and cultural crossroads, a coveted destination for artists of various kinds who attended the refined court of the Catalan kings. Musicians and performing entertainers with skills in the verbal and non-verbal domains were among the most sought after. This project will review and expand the corpus of documentary evidence informing us about musical activity and performing artists at the court of Aragon in the late medieval period, with the aim to analyse what this tells us about similar activity at other European courts. Thus, it will examine the professional profiles, cultural backgrounds and networks of patronage behind the minstrels who thrived in the Catalan court between 1235 and 1435. The main source of information will be the Archive of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona and the Archive of Valencia. The project will also consider the debt of Catalan poetry to foreign musicians, with the aim to establish whether any intertextuality exists between Catalan poetry and the poetry produced in the regions adjacent to the territories of the Crown of Aragon that was specifically mediated by the presence of foreign musicians at the Catalan court. Specific objectives of the project will be: 1) to establish whether the ideas of minstrelsy passed down to us by literature and scholarship fit the real profiles of minstrels provided by medieval documents; 2) to evaluate the impact, where appropriate, of contacts between religious and ethnic communities in the profession of minstrelsy in late medieval Iberia; 3) to assess the role of queenship in musical and poetic patronage; 4) to clarify the influence of foreign musical traditions on Catalan poetry.

Mots-clés : medieval catalan poetry,crown of aragon,cross cultural contacts,queenship studies,medieval system of genres,intertextuality,medieval iberia
Projet ERC : MiLifeStatus (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : European University Institute — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 194144.98 €

When does citizenship provide a boost to migrant integration? A fast-track to citizenship can maximise the potential for settlement success, though too short a pathway can disincentivise integration. Not all migrants have an equal interest in naturalising and some are discouraged by restrictive policies. Yet little is known about why, how and for whom legal status transition matters and, especially, how policy variation impacts on this relation. Which migrants are most discouraged by stricter requirements for naturalisation? For whom carries citizenship the largest pay-off? Does it still matter if a migrant acquires citizenship after a long waiting period? This project combines for the first time the ideas that a) migrants have different motivations to naturalise; b) legal status transitions are conditioned by the institutional and socioeconomic contexts in origin and destination countries and c) the potential ‘integration premium’ associated with naturalisation is conditioned by the trajectory into citizenship. The innovative project contributions are: 1. modelling migrants’ legal status transitions as life course events, which are shaped by migrants’ origin, their family context and societal structures and institutions; 2. analysing the relevance of citizenship for work and income, living conditions, health status and out-migration among immigrants and for educational attainment among their descendants; 3. developing novel methodologies to analyse step-to-citizenship trajectories and the impact of policy changes on status transitions and related outcomes among migrant groups and cohorts; 4. testing models on the basis of a unique combination of longitudinal register-based and survey-based micro-data in 8 European and North American countries, which provide the comparative context to analyse the impact of institutional variation; 5. yielding information for targeted citizenship policies to maximise settlement success for immigrants and their children.

Mots-clés : citizenship,naturalisation,migration,immigrant integration,life course
Projet ERC : A-FRO (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Champalimaud Foundation — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1969750.0 €

When faced with a threat, an animal must decide whether to freeze, reducing its chances of being noticed, or to flee to the safety of a refuge. Animals from fish to primates choose between these two alternatives when confronted by an attacking predator, a choice that largely depends on the context in which the threat occurs. Recent work has made strides identifying the pre-motor circuits, and their inputs, which control freezing behavior in rodents, but how contextual information is integrated to guide this choice is still far from understood. We recently found that fruit flies in response to visual looming stimuli, simulating a large object on collision course, make rapid freeze/flee choices that depend on the social and spatial environment, and the fly’s internal state. Further, identification of looming detector neurons was recently reported and we identified the descending command neurons, DNp09, responsible for freezing in the fly. Knowing the sensory input and descending output for looming-evoked freezing, two environmental factors that modulate its expression, and using a genetically tractable system affording the use of large sample sizes, places us in an unique position to understand how a information about a threat is integrated with cues from the environment to guide the choice of whether to freeze (our goal). To assess how social information impinges on the circuit for freezing, we will examine the sensory inputs and neuromodulators that mediate this process, mapping their connections to DNp09 neurons (Aim 1). We ask whether learning is required for the spatial modulation of freezing, which cues flies are using to discriminate different places and which brain circuits mediate this process (Aim 2). Finally, we will study how activity of DNp09 neurons drives freezing (Aim 3). This project will provide a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of freezing and its modulation by the environment, from single neurons to behaviour.

Mots-clés : drosophila melanogaster,defensive behaviours,circuit mapping,looming stimuli,social behaviour,learning
Projet ERC : ATMO (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Which molecules are present in the atmosphere of exoplanets? What are their mass, radius and age? Do they have clouds, convection (atmospheric turbulence), fingering convection, or a circulation induced by irradiation? These questions are fundamental in exoplanetology in order to study issues such as planet formation and exoplanet habitability. Yet, the impact of fingering convection and circulation induced by irradiation remain poorly understood: - Fingering convection (triggered by gradients of mean-molecular-weight) has already been suggested to happen in stars (accumulation of heavy elements) and in brown dwarfs and exoplanets (chemical transition e.g. CO/CH4). A large-scale efficient turbulent transport of energy through the fingering instability can reduce the temperature gradient in the atmosphere and explain many observed spectral properties of brown dwarfs and exoplanets. Nonetheless, this large-scale efficiency is not yet characterized and standard approximations (Boussinesq) cannot be used to achieve this goal. - The interaction between atmospheric circulation and the fingering instability is an open question in the case of irradiated exoplanets. Fingering convection can change the location and magnitude of the hot spot induced by irradiation, whereas the hot deep atmosphere induced by irradiation can change the location of the chemical transitions that trigger the fingering instability. This project will characterize the impact of fingering convection in the atmosphere of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets and its interaction with the circulation in the case of irradiated planets. By developing innovative numerical models, we will characterize the reduction of the temperature gradient of the atmosphere induced by the instability and study the impact of the circulation. We will then predict and interpret the mass, radius, and chemical composition of exoplanets that will be observed with future missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Mots-clés : atmospheres,stars,brown dwarfs,exoplanets,numerical simulations
Projet ERC : GlassUniversality (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator 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 : 1362125.0 €

While amorphous solids constitute most of the solid matter found in Nature, their understanding is much poorer than for crystalline solids, at the point that most solid state textbooks are entirely focused on crystals. The reason underlying this uncomfortable situation is that amorphous solids display all kind of anomalies with respect to a simple description in terms of phonon excitations around a perfect lattice. In particular, they display an excess of low-frequency vibrational modes, their thermodynamic and transport coefficients behave differently from crystals, they respond non-linearly to arbitrarily small strains, and have highly cooperative dynamics. Traditionally, each of these aspects has been studied independently of the others, by almost distinct communities, and in terms of microscopic elements that are specific to a given material. The objective of this proposal is to take a different approach and seek a universal explanation of all the anomalies of amorphous solids, in terms of criticality associated with a new phase transition between two distinct glass phases. This goal is both ambitious and reachable. It is reachable because such a phase transition has just been theoretically predicted to exist on rigorous grounds, in an abstract limit of infinite spatial dimensions; its existence allows one to compute the critical exponents of jamming, in strikingly good agreement with numerical simulations; and the transition has been observed numerically in a realistic model of glass. It is ambitious because it requires to firmly establish the universal nature of the transition, and connect it to the experimentally observed anomalies through concrete analytical and numerical calculations, which will open the way to a direct experimental test. Both tasks require solving a number of difficult conceptual and technical problems. But, if successful, this project could lead to a revolution in our understanding of amorphous solid matter.
Projet ERC : MetKnock (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

While great attention has been given to increase nutritional substances in food plants only limited efforts have been made for using biotechnology to reduce the level of endogenous, anti-nutritional factors (e.g. toxic compounds) in existing crops. Anti-nutritional substances not only affect the digestion and absorption of nutrients, but can also be lethal to humans or feeding animals and are responsible for food spoilage. Glycoalkaloids (GLAs) produced by crops of the Solanacea family, namely, potato and eggplant, are a major problem for breeders and farmers, as their level must be tightly regulated. Worldwide, between 13 and 27% of the potato crops are discarded because GLA levels are above the maximum currently deemed to be safe. In this PoC project we propose to redesign the potato GLAs metabolic pathway in a precise manner without the insertion of foreign genes, through targeted gene knockouts. Our strategy will be based on the discovery and intellectual property of genes part of the GLAs biosynthetic pathway obtained in the course of the ERC SAMIT project (Aharoni lab; ID-204575) that will be targets for precise, non-GMO metabolic engineering of potato. Know-how from TRACTAR, an ERC project (ID-268646) in the collaborating lab (A. Levy), will serve as the base for generating custom-designed nucleases (i.e. CRISPR/Cas) to be employed for targeted knockouts of potato GLAs genes. We will develop new potato cultivars with low GLAs content and with minimum impact on other plant characteristics, providing a proof-of-concept for potato breeding. In parallel to the technical testing, we will build a strategy to commercialize the IP and prototypes that have been or will be developed in the course of this project. We will identify and contact the relevant partners or investors who have an interest in potato quality and/or in the production of functional health food.

Mots-clés : antinutritional,crispr,non gmo,alkaloids,crops,potato,gene targeting
Projet ERC : GroundForce (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149867.0 €

While language is a natural way to interact with artificial characters or agents in video games, communication with agents currently tends to be limited to menu systems. To achieve smooth linguistic communication, utterances need to be grounded in the situation in which they occur. That is, the meanings of utterances must be learned from observing their use in some naturally occurring perceptual context. Recent years have seen much progress in the development of visually- or auditorily-grounded language understanding using novel machine learning techniques such as deep learning. At the same time, companies like Google DeepMind have introduced deep learning models that can learn to play games at super-human levels. We propose to take this research to the next step, by grounding natural language in video games. Grounding natural language in video games yields two main benefits. The first benefit is commercial in nature: with the global market for video games expected to reach $100 billion by 2017, there is clearly a large demand for more sophisticated interaction with in-game agents. Secondly, video games are a natural way to explore artificial intelligence techniques in a "simulated" world that is easier to understand computationally than the extremely complicated "real" world. The current project will explore natural language grounding in a small number of appropriate games. Once we are capable of grounding natural language in these games, we can translate utterances into straightforward actions for artificial agents. An example might be telling your team members to follow you, to take the left flank, or to duck when they are being shot at. Given the recent developments in machine learning and grounded language understanding, we believe that now is the perfect moment to explore these possibilities further.

Mots-clés : video games,natural language processing,machine learning,deep learning,neural networks
Projet ERC : MaTissE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Université Paris Cité — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UP Cité
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1307625.0 €

While magnetic nanomaterials are increasingly used as clinical agents for imaging and therapy, their use as a tool for tissue engineering opens up challenging perspectives that have rarely been explored. Lying at the interface between biophysics and nanomedicine, and based on magnetic techniques, the proposed project aims to magnetically design functional tissues and to explore the tissular fate of nanomaterials. Magnetic nanoparticles will be safely introduced into therapeutic cells, thus allowing them to be remotely manipulated by external magnets. 3D manipulations of the magnetized cells (patented in 2012) will be used to form tissues with a controlled size and shape through the development of a unique magnetic bioreactor. In a self-integrating all-in-one process, 3D tissue will be shaped from cellular "bricks" without the need for a scaffold. The magnetic tissue will be amenable to mechanical stimulation and in situ imaging at each step of its maturation. The project is inherently multidisciplinary: 1) From a biophysics standpoint, controlled tissue stimulation, forced cell alignment, and mapping of cell-cell forces, will be used to answer pressing questions on the role of physical stresses in cell and tissue functions, such as differentiation. 2) From a regenerative medicine standpoint, this magnetic technology will be applied to cartilage and cardiac tissue repair. The functionality of the constructs and their centimetric size range, combined with a surgeon-friendly tissue handling with a dedicated magnetic tool, and the inherent magnetic resonance imaging properties of the constructs will be major advantages for clinical translation. 3) From a nanomaterials standpoint, nanomaterial fate will be explored in situ using nanomagnetic methods, both at the tissue scale (macroscopic) and at the nanoscale. This is a necessary corollary for the use of nanomaterials in regenerative medicine, and one that is largely unexplored.

Mots-clés : nanomagnetism,iron oxide nanoparticles,nanobiodegradation,nanomedicine,magnetic manipulation,tissue engineering,stem cells,tissue mechanics
Projet ERC : BREATHE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
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 : 2499160.0 €

While the human lung is undoubtedly an essential organ, and respiratory diseases are leading causes of death and disability in the world, there still exist a lot of mysteries wrt vital processes. The main reason for this is the complete lack of measurement methods or medical imaging techniques that would allow to study dynamic processes in essential parts of a living human lung. While this would be a perfect setup for computational modeling, existing models suffer from severe constraints disabling them to unveil those essential secrets. This project aims to build on a number of most promising recent advances in modeling and high-performance simulation to present the first comprehensive computational model of the respiratory system. For this purpose, it builds upon a recent exascale-ready incompressible flow solver, toughen it up for lung specific challenges and enrich it with multiphysics capabilities to capture tissue interaction and gas transport. Parts of the respiratory zone will be represented by multiphase poroelastic media and novel pleural boundary conditions will be developed. The coupled pulmonary circulation will be included and represented by an embedded reduced dimensional network and additional phases. In order to appropriately individualize the model and also being able to adapt it during disease progression, a novel physics-based probabilistic learning approach will be developed. This will allow to use most of the very diverse and scarce data in clinical settings. Finally, special models will be developed to bridge to the micro scale. The models developed and studied here will provide unprecedented insights for biomedical scientists, and practitioners at the same time, and will help to substantially reduce elaborate animal and multicenter studies. This will be a crucial step in order to establish a shift of paradigm in health care. Novel models/tools developed here will also be very useful in other areas of biomedical engineering and beyond.

Mots-clés : computational biomechanics,respiratory system,coupled multiphysics,high performance computing,physics based probabilistic learning
Projet ERC : ALLOCHRONY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : TU Dresden — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1043400.0 €

While the mechanisms of embryonic development are well conserved, the progression speed differs among animal species. The molecular cause of ‘allochrony’, interspecies differences in developmental tempo, remains unclear due to lack of an appropriate experimental model. In vitro differentiation of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) offers unique opportunities to compare the same cell type among diverse species in a similar condition. We have previously recapitulated the oscillatory gene expression of the segmentation clock with PSCs, demonstrating ~2 hour and ~5 hour oscillation periods in murine and human induced presomitic mesoderm (PSM) cells, respectively. We have further found that the period difference stems from differential biochemical reaction speeds of HES7, a core segmentation clock gene, between the species: human PSM cells show slower degradation rates of HES7 and longer delays in its production processes than mouse cells. Here we aim to investigate the deeper origin of developmental allochrony, the molecular mechanism by which human cells exhibit slower biochemical reactions. We will systematically and quantitatively measure the degradation rates and delays to reveal commonalities of the genes that show differential reaction speeds between murine and human cells (Aim 1). In parallel, we will test two working hypotheses that nuclear/cytoplasmic transport rates or metabolic rates might be lower in human cells, which should lead to slower biochemical reactions (Aim 2). The other objective is to test the universality of the mechanism of allochrony. We will create gastruloids, organoids mimicking early embryogenesis, from PSCs of diverse mammalian species to investigate what cell types, in addition to PSM cells, and what species exhibit the differential biochemical reaction speeds (Aim 3). This study will tackle a fundamental question in biology by using quantitative, cutting-edge technologies, ultimately enabling manipulation of developmental time.

Mots-clés : interspecies difference,developmental tempo