Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : KAPTION (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1494774.0 €

Oncogenic viruses are the third most common cause of cancer in humans. Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) is an oncogenic virus that establishes life-long latent infection and can drive tumor development in immunocompromised individuals. To date no definitive treatment against KSHV has been developed and KSHV-derived cancers are uncurable. Despite the advances in understanding KSHV biology, many key aspects are still obscure, and detailed mechanistic studies are needed for the development of rational targeted therapies. During latency, KSHV exploits the host cell’s replication and segregation machineries to faithfully copy and transmit its genome during cell division. Which cellular proteins contribute to these processes and what mechanisms enable the virus to preserve its genome over time remain poorly dissected. I will remodel the Xenopus laevis egg extract in vitro system, which has been successfully applied to study eukaryotic replication and chromosome segregation, to incorporate the key components of KSHV maintenance and generate a unique tool to dissect the mechanisms of KSHV latency in a test tube. With this innovative system in hand and strong of a previously developed powerful mass-spectrometry workflow for protein identification, my group will overcome the limitations of the current methodologies to answer two main questions. (1) What is the extent of the host’s proteome that contributes to KSHV maintenance? (2) What are the molecular mechanisms that drive faithful segregation of the viral genome? Corroborated by parallel experiments in KSHV infected cells, these ground-breaking findings will answer long-standing questions on the latency of KSHV, setting a solid base for the development of targeted therapies. Furthermore, the newly developed latency system in Xenopus egg extract will emerge as a powerful tool for solving puzzling aspects of the biology of other latently infecting viruses.

Mots-clés : dna replication,xenopus egg extracts,g quadruplexes,viral latency,dna repair,mass spectrometry
Projet ERC : APPMARKETS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université de Mannheim — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1460446.05 €

App markets—such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play—have significant economic importance and drive digital innovation. In 2021, the App Store alone facilitated transactions worth over EUR 511 Bn, which equals the GDP of Sweden.  However, app market operators have also attracted severe scrutiny from regulators due to their integrated gatekeeper structure: they operate a marketplace while also competing within them with their own apps. This gives app market operators an incentive for self-preferencing: they promote their own apps over third-party apps, consequently distorting competition and harming app innovation.  Uncertainty remains regarding how self-preferencing can effectively be counteracted with public policy interventions. Although legislators have advanced bills to restrict self-preferencing, including the Digital Markets Act, existing theoretical models are scant, make mixed predictions, and lack empirical validation. This uncertainty is problematic because app markets represent a complex node of the digital economy where regulatory interference—if not done “right”—can likewise harm innovation.  This project will empirically evaluate which public-policy interventions against self-preferencing are effective in restoring app developers’ innovation incentives. It will (i) explain the effects, conditions, and mechanisms through which the interventions function and compare, (ii) permit a validation of existing theory, and (iii) aid stakeholders and government agencies in developing appropriate strategies.  To achieve this objective, this project will (i) conduct four in-depth quasi-experimental studies, (ii) which exploit plausibly exogenous policy-changes against self-preferencing, (iii) leverage unique time-series product-level data from mobile app markets, and (iv) integrate the findings into a holistic understanding using measurement and analyses protocols. An extensive communication plan ensures the transfer of scientific expertise into public knowledge.

Mots-clés : platforms,multi sided markets,network effects,app markets,regulations,innovation
Projet ERC : FloW (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498738.75 €

Chemical weathering of rocks is central to Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. It exchanges CO2 with the atmosphere, balances CO2 emission from the mantle, and stabilizes Earth’s climate. Years of research have established data and models of weathering in eroding landscapes, because erosion supplies unweathered rocks to the surface of the Earth. However, the sediment eroded from mountains can continue to weather during temporary storage in wide floodplains. Recent estimates indicate that floodplain sediments may contribute over 50% of the global weathering flux; yet, we do not have a framework to quantify floodplain weathering or predict its sensitivity to climate and tectonics. A quantitative understanding of floodplain weathering will allow building new models of the global carbon cycle, and it will increase the accuracy of tools to predict Earth’s response to natural and anthropogenic perturbations in CO2. I propose an ambitious, innovative, and multidisciplinary research program to develop, quantify, and test a model for weathering fluxes as a function of sediment transport and storage on floodplains. The predictive power of the model will be tested against new data from floodplains influenced by different tectonic and climatic boundary conditions. Thus, FloW will yield a novel framework to link physical and chemical mass fluxes across Earth’s surface, potentially transforming the power of simulations of Earth’s carbon cycle and climate evolution.

Mots-clés : carbon cycle,chemical weathering,sediment transport,sediment residence time
Projet ERC : ARISE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

The brain exhibits remarkable capacities to initiate self-repair mechanisms after brain injury as a prerequisite for the recovery of lost functions. ARISE will unveil fundamental, yet not understood principles how brain repair mechanisms are orchestrated and how they can be further enhanced. Due to technical constraints, it was previously impossible to uncover 1) how individual neurons rewire and reconnect after CNS injury, 2) why some surviving neurons participate in repair processes and others do not, and 3) how neuronal rewiring could be further stimulated to promote the restoration of impaired functions. But now, with technological advances at hand, I am in a unique position to tackle these major questions by examining causal relationships between neuronal rewiring and behavioral outcome. I have recently developed a mouse model for vascular dementia that enables the monitoring of the same neurons in the hippocampus over several weeks under healthy conditions and after induction of multiple microstrokes in relation to the spatial memory of the animal. Using sophisticated closed-loop experiments, combining chronic 2photon imaging in-vivo with optogenetics and machine learning, I will characterize neuronal recoding in relation to the behavioural performance of the animal. I hypothesize that principles of learning are key to understand how surviving cells are recruited to participate in new neuronal ensembles to restore lost memory engrams. Using local light stimulation I will manipulate surviving neurons to unveil their role in rewiring network dynamics and repair processes and to enhance their engagement in restorative operations. With ARISE I will establish a novel experimental pipeline to identify the cellular mechanisms of neuronal repair that are linked to distinct behavioural outcome parameters. This approach will also allow me to train generalized linear models (GLMs) to assess the efficiency and predict the outcome of novel restorative therapies in stroke.

Mots-clés : neuronal repair,stroke,vascular dementia,neuronal circuit rewiring,hippocampal plasticity
Projet ERC : MANDIST (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1487141.0 €

Multinationals (MNCs) are key drivers of economic growth, accounting for 33% of global output (OECD 2018). However, within MNCs, the economic performance of foreign affiliates declines markedly with distance from headquarters (HQ). This pattern implies the existence of frictions that restrict how much economic growth foreign direct investment (FDI) can generate in host countries. Understanding the underlying mechanisms has important implications for the economic benefits of FDI and FDI policy. Yet, they remain little understood. In this project, I propose a novel explanation: management problems at a distance. Management problems can be severe even in purely local settings (e.g., Gibbons and Roberts 2013). It is plausible that principal-agent (PA) problems between HQ and the foreign subsidiary manager rise disproportionately when different countries, cultures, languages, and institutions are involved. As previous research has been severely restricted by the scarcity of global organizational data on MNCs, so far, there exists no systematic evidence on PA problems within MNCs and how they can be resolved.  I will focus on two solutions: the employment of foreign subsidiary managers that have a certain connection to HQ, and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to improve monitoring problems. I have been able to identify several novel data sources that can be combined to create the first comprehensive datasets on managers and ICT use within multi-location firms in three historical and contemporaneous settings. Combined with innovative empirical approaches, this allows me to provide the first tests for the existence of PA problems within MNCs and study several channels through which PA problems can affect economic growth: managerial compensation, changes in risk-taking, and career incentives of middle managers. I will estimate how these channels affect the economic performance of subsidiaries, firms, and host economies.

Mots-clés : multinationals,ict,managers,family firms,productivity,principal agent problems,fdi,expat managers,firm organization
Projet ERC : GLOBAL DECO PAPER (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1199997.5 €

Moving away from Eurocentric art historical to truly global and interdisciplinary approaches, this project aims at re-evaluating the early-modern history of the Islamicate arts of the book from a so-far not considered perspective: the border and background decoration of manuscripts. The manifold forms of paper decoration and their techniques have hitherto not been systematically analysed by historians of Islamic Art, who instead have focussed on manuscripts’ figurative illustrations. Labelling decorative devices as subordinate to text and images has proven limiting to a full comprehension of art and to the exploration of global artistic contacts between different cultures within the Islamicate world and between East Asia and the Middle East. Drawing upon previous research initiatives by the PI, this project will bring together scholars from humanities and natural sciences in an interdisciplinary approach to aesthetics, materials, techniques and meaning of decorated paper produced and used in early-modern China, Central Asia, Iran, India and the Ottoman Empire. Favouring objects in the historical centres over well-known materials from collections in the West, this research is designed to further collections in the Middle East and Asia and to bring their understudied artworks under broader scholarly attention through publications and an interactive database. The project has the potential to significantly re-shape the existing construct of Art History by shifting the attention to high-standard yet systematically ignored artistic production of decorated papers; meticulously investigating local traditions through innovative combinations of material analyses, the study of written sources and hardly applied comparisons with contemporary paper-decoration practices; and focussing on networks of trade, diplomacy and artistic exchange in Asia and the Middle East that paved the way for greatly varied and technically advanced forms of augmented paper decoration.

Mots-clés : decorated paper,islamic world,east asia,early modern period,scientific analysis,global art history
Projet ERC : METANEXT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498056.0 €

Atomically layered materials composed of individual atomic planes bonded together by weak van der Waals (vdW) interactions have sparked a revolution in solid state physics due to their unique electronic properties and capability for forming multi-material heterostructures with atomically sharp interfaces. However, accessing fundamental electronic excitations of two-dimensional (2D) materials optically has so far been a major challenge due to the associated low absorption cross sections and their low environmental stability. METANEXT will establish a new paradigm for amplifying and harnessing light-matter interactions in 2D materials by shaping vdW heterostructures into the resonant building blocks of optical metasurfaces. At the core of the proposed platform is the implementation of nanostructured hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as a photonically active material, pushing beyond its currently prevalent use as a passive buffer layer in optoelectronics. Leveraging the emerging concept of optical bound states in the continuum, I will use my extensive experience in nanophotonic engineering to design and experimentally realize hBN-based metasurfaces with ultrasharp resonances incorporating mono- and few-layer systems of vdW materials, allowing direct optical access to such 2D systems with unprecedented efficiency and spectral/spatial control over the excitation. Specifically, I will utilize the METANEXT platform to (1) push the limits of light-matter coupling in black phosphorus heterostructures, (2) greatly boost the efficiency of single-photon generation from localized defects in atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and to (3) realize a completely new concept for valley-dependent on-chip lasing from transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers. METANEXT will deliver both fundamental insights into the optical excitation mechanisms of current and future 2D materials as well as important conceptual advances for practical chip-integrated quantum light sources.

Mots-clés : nanophotonics,metasurfaces,bound states in the continuum,van der waals materials,2d materials,light matter coupling,single photon emission
Projet ERC : INPERSPACE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

INPERSPACE focuses on an emerging but extremely urgent challenge in Europe: meeting the sharply increasing demand for space-grade photovoltaics (PVs) due to the recent privatization of the space industry. Today’s modern III–V/Ge-based PVs fall short of answering this demand as the new space era requires cost-effective and high-speed processable PVs, on top of the existing high power density requirement. All-perovskite tandem PVs are excellent candidates fulfilling all these requirements. However, their stability must be ensured under ‘synergistic extremes’ from ground to orbit deployment such as high vacuum, particle radiation, high ultraviolet light, frequent temperature cycles (in orbit), vibrations (in flight), and humidity (before lift-off). Unless these concerns are addressed, we risk substantially underutilizing the emerging space technologies in the new space era. INPERSPACE aims to realize this with two core pillars: 1) creating ultra-efficient (>30% at space spectrum) all-perovskite tandem solar cells on lightweight substrates; 2) investigating the fundamental failure modes of these devices under synergistic stressors typical of the extreme space environment, focusing on combinations of stressors with thermal cycling as the most decisive, yet frequently overlooked, stressor for stability in space. I will achieve these goals by i) creating new perovskite compositions to eliminate the performance losses, ii) elucidating the origin of the instability of the devices from nano to macroscale and module level, iii) implementing groundbreaking methodologies to solve stability issues. INPERSPACE is an exceptionally timely and exciting research project. The created knowledge will immediately revolutionize the space PV market and set the agenda in other domains such as perovskite-based terrestrial PVs and other optoelectronic devices. The work realises the promise of a versatile PV technology envisaged to be part of life-changing technologies for billions of people.

Mots-clés : optoelectronics,green energy,space photovoltaics,metal halide perovskite,hybrid materials,bandgap engineering,tandem solar cells,multijunction solar cells,ultra efficient solar cells,lightweight solar cells,low cost solar cells,extreme space conditions,satellite constellations,thermomechanical properties,operational stability,thermal stability,real environment tests,encapsulation,delamination,thin films,molecular linkers,adhesion,radiation hardness,stress,defects,passivation,photophysical properties
Projet ERC : ActDisease (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499773.0 €

This project will provide crucial insights into the development of modern medicine and the role of lay involvement in science through analysis of so far largely neglected, but central actors in 20th century medical history: patient organizations. These groups first emerged in the late 19th century, and worked towards increased attention to particular illnesses, shared information on disease management, promoted treatments, and developed healthcare resources. This project is the first historical analysis of these early patient organizations' role in shaping ideas about illness and medical practices, and the first systematic account of how disease became an object of civic organization. It will argue that modern medicine was to a significant degree shaped by organized patients, who helped establish disease concepts and associated practices - and that this deep involvement of patients in medicine facilitated an extended reach of medical power which resonates in contemporary society. It will also investigate how patients, in acting out medical knowledge, assumed notions of selfhood that overlapped and interacted with those of medical scientists. I will lead a team of researchers to analyse the publications and archives of patient organizations from four European nations - Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom and France - a vast source material previously not considered by historians. Studying these rich sources will answer some of the core questions related to medicine in the 20th century, and in particular the role of patients: How was the idea of diseases as distinct entities established, how has it changed the medical landscape and the way we regard ourselves in relation to health and illness? What was the role of patients themselves in this transformative process, how has their involvement in knowledge generation and decision-making developed over the past century, and to what extent has it lived up to the hopes of being a democratizing force in medicine?

Mots-clés : history of medicine,patient history,patient organizations,history of knowledge,lay knowledge
Projet ERC : RaDe (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Collège universitaire de l'Innlandet — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : INN
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 998633.0 €

The standard framework for rational decision making is expected utility theory. In this framework, decision makers are modelled as having a probability function, which represents their degrees of belief about what is likely to happen, as well as a utility function that represents how desirable they find each possible outcome. Expected utility theory has been influential in many disciplines, including philosophy, but it has important limitations and flaws. In particular, desires are typically treated as subjective and hence not a suitable target of criticism, aside from the requirement that they obey very generic coherence constraints. Agents’ degrees of belief, on the other hand, are held to much more stringent standards. For example, most decision theorists maintain that degrees of belief should be mathematical probabilities and that agents should use a rule called “Bayesian updating” to adjust their degrees of belief in response to evidence.  This project will argue that the asymmetric way in which belief and desire are treated in the standard theory is unjustified. Desires can be misaligned with the world, just like beliefs can be false. For example, suppose you live in Alaska and you detest snow and desire tropical weather. Then your desires are clearly misaligned with the world—it would be better for you if you either (somehow) grew to like snow or if you moved to the tropics. In the same way that it is rational to aim to believe the truth, it seems rational to aim to have desires that are aligned with the world. The main goal of the project is to develop a novel theory of rational desire management that takes seriously the idea that our desires can align to a greater or lesser extent with our circumstances and values. In so doing, the project will inaugurate a completely new subfield of philosophy devoted to the formal study of what makes desires rational.

Mots-clés : decision theory,epistemology,ethics