Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : INSPIRE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Franche-Comté — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UFC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 80060.0 €

Neural networks revolutionize computation and already outperform humans according to many benchmarks. They have the potential to transform society and have already influenced Google to place artificial intelligence at the core (“AI first”) of business strategy. Governments and policy bodies worldwide focus on neural network-based computing as a vital future technology.  Despite the evident promise, however, current architectures severely lose computational efficiency when applied to large neural networks and scale badly. The performance of current neural network hardware is orders of magnitude below what is theoretically possible, and the future development of artificial intelligence is therefore in jeopardy.  I will solve this problem by developing neural network processors using advanced photonic components, specifically enabling a breakthrough with three-dimensional integrated photonic waveguides to implement a biologically inspired, fully parallel and scalable architecture. This is not an incremental improvement, but rather a completely new and never-explored approach, which will revolutionize neural network hardware. Based on this technology, I will create a fully programmable optical tensor processing unit by interfacing 3D waveguide Mach-Zehnder interferometers with a commercial SLM. The unit will calculate the connection of a neural network with speeds and energy efficiency exceeding the state of the art by two orders of magnitude, while programmability makes it widely applicable. A second system will go far beyond by implementing fully-fletched and programmable optical neural networks based on 3D waveguides and semiconductor lasers.  The proof of principle building blocks of the project are in place and I am recognized as a leading researcher in the field. The realisation of this project will unlock doors to scalability, cascadability, and parallelism, and stimulate new research as well as applications in artificial intelligence.
Projet ERC : EASE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1985871.0 €

The era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new chapter in exoplanetary research. We cannot understand exoplanets without looking back at the cradle of life as we know it - the Earth. Why did the Earth become a habitable planet? Why did Mars and Venus evolve differently? What would JWST see if it looked at the solar system planets as they were billions of years ago? My team will investigate the long-term evolution of the atmospheres and spectral fingerprints of Earth, Venus, and Mars.  I propose a unique joint evolutionary study of volcanism, atmospheric escape to space, and spectroscopy. My team will use numerical models at the cutting edge of modern development and connect their outputs to the growing list of JWST spectra of exoplanets. The team will model interior processes, the evolution of lower and upper atmospheres, and the evolving atmospheric spectra of Earth, Venus, and Mars and their possible exoplanetary analogues. Our predictions of spectral features of these three planets at different evolutionary stages will be critical for the astrophysics community to identify potential habitable worlds outside the solar system, and forecast their future evolution. My deep expertise in stellar and planetary evolution makes me uniquely well-placed to lead this project.  This project will not only significantly expand our current knowledge of the evolution of the Earth, Venus, and Mars, but will also place much better constrains on the probability for a terrestrial planet to evolve into a habitable world. The team will in particular characterize possible “failed” analogues of Earth and investigate if they could have become habitable planets under slightly different conditions. By studying for the first time this unique combination of factors that are crucial for the evolution of Earth-like worlds, my project will break new ground in the study of exoplanetary habitability.

Mots-clés : early earth,mars,and venus,evolution of planetary atmospheres,spectroscopy
Projet ERC : EXPOMET (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2937489.0 €

EXPOMET proposes a pioneering mass spectrometry-based platform for omic-scale assessment of chemical exposures. EXPOMET will revolutionize our perception of environmental contaminants and the influence these have on breast cancer (BC).  In our ageing society, the incidence of chronic disease is constantly rising; yet, environmental drivers of disease susceptibility are poorly understood. Measuring the myriad of chemicals that humans are constantly exposed to is immensely challenging; and identifying interactions and the molecular pathways that are disrupted is an even more complex task. To address this issue, the concept of the exposome, i.e., the totality of chemical exposures and the biological effects thereof, was proposed. Innovative analytical technology, however, is lacking and remains the major limitation in this emerging field.  EXPOMET aims to establish new avenues towards a comprehensive sequencing of the exposome and illuminating the role played in the etiology of BC. Affecting 1 in 8, BC is the most common cancer in European women. Novel workflows will overcome current limitations and enable high-throughput exposure and effect monitoring of a vast number of environmentally-relevant chemicals. The developed cutting-edge methods will be applied, and critically evaluated, in the first exposome-wide association (ExWAS) study on BC. A deeper understanding of the toxicological impact of co-exposure will be obtained from ensuing functional, systems-level experiments. Breakthrough metabolomic-guided pathway mapping and activity-screening technology will be utilized for investigating causative events. The project will provide unique insights into the impact of chemical exposure on the etiology of BC and ground-breaking exposomic technology. EXPOMET will revolutionize viewpoints on environmental contaminants and the influence these have on chronic disease. The PI has a uniquely interdisciplinary expertise to address the multi-facets of this exposome approach.

Mots-clés : exposome,metabolomics,food safety,food contaminants,mass spectrometry
Projet ERC : ENERGISED (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : AP-HP
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 321015.0 €

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, are immune-related disorders characterized by inappropriate gut inflammation. Their incidence has increased dramatically in Western countries in recent decades, supporting a role for environmental factors. Despite the development of new treatments, IBD are insufficiently controlled in a large proportion of patients, inducing an alteration in quality of life and a socioeconomic burden. A better understanding of the pathogenesis and identification of new therapeutic targets are therefore urgently needed. In this context, the gut microbiota has been recognized as a strong actor in IBD. Additionally, an alteration in intestinal and immune cell energy metabolism has been suggested in the pathogenesis. Classical host-microbe interaction concepts rely on the recognition of conserved microbial motifs by innate immunity sensors or on the action of microbial molecules on a host cell receptor. However, energy metabolism plays a crucial role in mounting the appropriate cellular response, and emerging data indicate that the gut microbiota may directly affect it. I hypothesize that the altered gut microbiota in IBD contributes to the impairment of host cell energy metabolism and pathogenesis. The aims of ENERGISED are to (i) identify the microorganisms and microbiota-derived metabolites impacting host cell energy metabolism and the mechanisms involved and (ii) decipher the consequences of gut microbiota alterations on host cell energy metabolism in IBD and design new microbiota-based therapeutic strategies to manipulate the host cell energy state in IBD.  This challenging project involves multidisciplinary aspects from microbiology to immunology, metabolism, and medicine; the use of multiple cutting-edge technologies; and translational analysis from mice to humans. In addition to its scientific importance, it will have societal impacts due to the identification of new therapeutic strategies.

Mots-clés : microbiome,cellular energy metabolism,inflammatory bowel disease
Projet ERC : FORMALISM (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1987840.0 €

The philosophy of science and logic underwent a wide-ranging formal turn in the first half of the twentieth century. This shift is characterized by a new emphasis on formal methods and the adoption of a general formalist viewpoint towards the disciplines in question. The project will give a first interdisciplinary and comparative study of early contributions to formalism in twentieth-century thought. This general objective will be addressed in terms of three interrelated subprojects. The first subproject is historical in character and aims at a historical reconstruction of the emergence of formalist thinking in nineteenth-century mathematics and neo-Kantian epistemology. On the mathematical side, the project will retrace several methodological developments in geometry and algebra between 1860 and 1910 that contributed to a formalist conception of these fields. Regarding its philosophical roots, the focus will be on contributions to a formalist notion of scientific objectivity in the work of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism (Hermann Cohen, Ernst Cassirer, Paul Natorp). The second subproject will give a comparative study of the formal turn in logic and logical empiricism between 1920 and 1940. This includes research on the foundations of mathematics and the formality of logic by members of the Göttingen school (David Hilbert, Paul Bernays, Gerhard Gentzen) as well as central contributions to a scientific formalism in logical empiricism (Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick). The third subproject will analyze the philosophical implications of the formal turn for the subsequent shaping of these fields. The emergence of formalist thinking was closely related to the development of new theories of semantics in logic and philosophy. The aim will therefore be to connect the early contributions to formalism with contemporary debates on the philosophy of model theory and inferentialism as well as with the logical study of scientific theories.

Mots-clés : history of formalism,logical empiricism,philosophy of science,history of modern logic,philosophy of mathematics
Projet ERC : 3D.FETOPRINT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 175000.0 €

Currently available pre-birth surgical treatments for Spina Bifida Aperta (SBA) still do not provide a complete recovery in babies and would potentially benefit from a tissue engineering approach, indeed the first clinical trial using stem cells for SBA has recently started, however this is performed via an open-uterus approach. This made me wonder, what if we can develop an innovative system to deliver via fetoscopy a bioprinted tissue engineering costructfor SBA repair? Such an approach would promote tissue regeneration and ease the surgery.  In 3D.FETOPRINT I will develop a system for the in-situ fetoscopic bioprinting of a gel composed of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and amniotic fluid stem cells (AFSCs) to close the defect of spina bifida aperta (SBA) in a large animal model.  The project will be divided into three work packages. First work package will address the development and testing of the gel, by studying the interaction between fetal ECM proteins and AFSCs, to define a gel formulation that could be bioprinted in-utero. Second work package will focus on the design and development of an innovative fetoscopic bioprinting device capable of bioprinting a gel patch on the fetus. Last work package will finally validate the innovative approach. We will first validate through in-vitro testing using a laparoscopic simulator, then we will perform a sheep spina bifida aperta model where the innovative fetoscopic 3D bioprinting system will be vaildated.  We will leverage my expertise in biomaterials, cells and tissue engineering device design to carry out this project that will deliver a revolutionary system that will open up the possibility to bioprint tissue engineered constructs on the fetus.

Mots-clés : tissue engineering,bioprinting,biomaterials
Projet ERC : ChatEQUITY (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2195500.0 €

ChatEQUITY investigates the impact of generative AI (GenAI) on educational inequalities amid growing societal linguistic diversity. The central hypothesis is that although multilingual GenAI can overcome linguistic barriers, mere access to it is insufficient because competent use is essential. Moreover, since GenAI language models are trained on and steered by human language—which reflects social class, ethnic, and gender differences—GenAI might reproduce biases and educational disparities. Research on this is lacking due to underlying limitations in the prevailing concepts, methods and data. ChatEQUITY addresses these with three objectives:  1. To introduce prompting (l)iteracy (PIL) as a novel concept for competent human-GenAI interactions and develop a pioneering assessment instrument (PIL-AI) for its measurement. 2. To identify shifts from traditional digital divides to GenAI divides—social disparities in GenAI access, use and skills —with innovative data from 3,000 students and 700 teachers across 60 high schools. 3. To evaluate the impact of GenAI use and PIL-education on educational inequalities by examining their effects on teaching and learning with three refined RCTs.  ChatEQUITY enables researchers to move beyond merely observing the effects of GenAI, toward understanding why and how GenAI affects life outcomes. Because PIL-AI uniquely combines an authentic task-based approach with scalability, this tool marks a paradigm shift in the assessment of competencies that currently depends on self-reported measures. The open data on GenAI divides establish the groundwork for research into the interplay of sociological, pedagogical, linguistic, and technological factors. Finally, by refining traditional binary RCTs (moving beyond simple comparisons between tech and non-tech users), we recenter education in educational technology research. In essence, ChatEQUITY aligns with UNESCO’s call to promote equity through GenAI capacity-building in education and research.

Mots-clés : language diversity multilingualism educational inequality generative ai large language models
Projet ERC : Dynamyelo (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Institut Curie — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 750161.0 €

Although changes in immune blood cell number is commonly used as a sign of infection or inflammation in the clinics, the cell dynamics parameters controlling cell numbers during an immune response (division, differentiation, and death) are not well understood. As myeloid cells are short lived, changes in myeloid cell numbers comes from cell production by myelopoiesis. Given the importance of cell dynamics in immune response, we propose to unravel the cell dynamics of myelopoiesis during inflammation. However, few methods allow to measure in vivo the cell dynamics parameters. Methods to study division in vivo can trace up 10 divisions, apart for the telomere measures that have no maximum but is restricted to cell types without telomerase activity, unlike our cells of interest. As we estimate a minimum of 14 divisions from hematopoietic stem cells to myeloid cells, a new method to follow over 10 divisions is required. This proposal will overcome this methodological barrier by developing the DivCounter a new method, to count division in vivo in mice. Our innovation is: 1/ to implement a quantitative counter of division combining wet and dry lab. 2/ compatible with single cell transcriptomics to measure cell differentiation status with the required granularity. 3/ creating a new mouse model. Using the DivCounter, we will quantify for the first time the number of divisions in homeostatic myelopoiesis. We will also infer division, differentiation and death rate, uncovering the understudied role of death in myelopoiesis. We will also unravel how division and death change during emergency myelopoiesis and when and how myelopoiesis returns to homeostasis after inflammatory stimulations. This knowledge will shed light on which of the cell dynamics parameters to intervene to change myeloid cell numbers, opening therapeutic perspective for the design of vaccines and immunotherapies. The DivCounter will serve other fields in which cell dynamics is key (cancer, development).

Mots-clés : division,emergency myelopoiesis,mathematical model,cell dynamics
Projet ERC : AtomicPIE (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Consolidator grants)
Entité participante : Université de Lorraine — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 62674.5 €

Inorganic materials are integral to numerous fields, including transportation, electronics, and medical applications. Understanding their mechanical properties, particularly permanent inelastic deformation, has been a central pursuit in material science. My project, AtomicPIE, focuses on uncovering the key mechanisms driving plasticity in metallic alloys, emphasizing dislocation-interface interactions. These interactions occur at grain boundaries and phase boundaries, which significantly influence material strength, reliability, and lightweight properties. Despite extensive studies, a comprehensive understanding of slip transfer—how dislocations propagate across interfaces—remains elusive. AtomicPIE integrates atomistic simulations, generative machine learning models, and enhanced discrete dislocation dynamics to address this gap. By simulating crystalline defects and their interactions, the project employs Nye dislocation densities to bridge atomic- to micro-scale modeling. A key innovation is the use of machine learning to predict complex Nye dislocation fields for mesoscale simulations. The framework developed within AtomicPIE will be validated through experiments and cross-scale molecular dynamics, focusing on ultra-fine-grain aluminum alloys. AtomicPIE aims to establish a physics-based understanding of slip transfer at interfaces, paving the way for advanced materials design and interface engineering.
Projet ERC : URBAN-DELTA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995000.0 €

Deltas are among the most urbanised and wealthiest regions of the world. Today, their very existence is threatened by climate change. Innovative solutions are urgently needed, and delta cities around the globe have joined forces to confront the climate crisis. The dependence on innovation for their survival is however not a recent phenomenon but has a longer history. Surprisingly, little is known about the specialised skills and knowledge shown by earlier civilisations in constructing and protecting these cities. URBAN-DELTA hypothesizes that major advances in the history of water-related engineering were not random but occurred at specific places and times. Several pioneering hotspots in the pre-industrial age seem to have existed. Therefore, the aim of URBAN-DELTA is to attain an entirely new, multidisciplinary understanding of technological innovations by tracing and explaining their historical emergence in the production of the built environment in Eurasian deltas before 1800.  This project is the first in-depth comparative study of construction techniques for marshy conditions. It examines three key deltas in Europe and China and questions how builders overcame technological limitations. Did innovation occur incrementally or were there spurts at specific times and places? What were the dynamics of these processes and what factors stimulated innovation?  URBAN-DELTA’s methodological innovation is to study the built environment from a comparative perspective, combining approaches from Engineering, Economic and Architectural History. It tests hypotheses central to the debate on the conditions for innovation by looking at a vital industry, hitherto ignored in scholarship. This will result in a fundamental rethinking of how architecture comes into being and provides an entirely new explanatory framework for future research. In addition, it generates new knowledge that is urgently needed for the preservation of heritage threatened by climate change.

Mots-clés : history of technology building industry technological innovation building knowledge mechanical engineering practical knowledge design practices