Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PhotonFAB (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Conseil national de la recherche — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Quantum technologies promise to revolutionize the way we acquire, manipulate and communicate information. Photons are key players in quantum technologies with a transversal role in all applications. In particular, integrated photonics is the only viable approach to scale up quantum photonics to the level of real-world applications. In this context, many materials and fabrication tecnologies are being explored. Among them femtosecond laser writing of photonic circuits in transparent glasses is a powerful microfabrication technique with several advantages that could particularly benefit quantum applications. In particular, in a rapidly developing field such as that based on quantum technologies, there is a great need for rapid prototyping, easy customization and versatility in terms of layouts, materials and applications; all these features are specifically provided by femtosecond laser writing. In this project we would like to build from several key device demonstrations, achieved in the main ERC Advanced Grant, to develop their potential for commercial exploitation in the globally expanding market of quantum photonic devices. Femtosecond laser writing has already demonstrated its industrial viability with several existing companies based on this technology, however, none of them tackles the market of quantum integrated photonic devices. The PI and his team have a longstanding experience in designing and producing integrated photonic devices for quantum applications. The PhotonFAB project will focus on improving the production capability in terms of circuit complexity, efficiency and packaging. Together with a thorough market and IPR analysis, contacts with potential end users and stakeholders, and detailed cost estimation, this project will help shaping the exploitation strategy of the many groundbreaking results achieved in the ERC Advanced Grant project.
Projet ERC : WISH (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

In this ERC Proof of Concept, we want to develop a wearable fluidic force feedback device for upper and lower limb prostheses, composed by soft silicone chambers along with their actuation and control units, to exert pressures in multiple specific stump sites. This solution, named Wearable Integrated Soft Haptic device (WISH), strives to achieve both good modality matching (MM) and somatotopic matching (SM), while keeping non-invasive and practicable. The principle, preliminarily demonstrated on a single subject and one prosthesis type to display one type of force/tactile information, has the potential to generalize in several directions. Our goal is to transform WISH into a technology platform supporting different devices for different types of prosthesis available in the market, for both upper and lower limbs. We will depend on user involvement, team with hospitals and rehabilitation units, and work with companies producing prostheses (see endorsement letters) to acquire domain specific knowledge and to test our devices in real use cases. Through this project, our Technology Readiness Level will increase from 3 to 4/5 and enable us to apply for an EIC Transition for subsequent development and validation in a larger cohort. To the best of our knowledge, no other haptic display technology for prosthesis users has ever reached such maturity and readiness level, which makes this opportunity unique.
Projet ERC : microMESH (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Despite tremendous progress in the treatment of several malignancies, glioblastoma continues to be the less curable form of any cancer with an overall average survival of 20 months from diagnosis. In this PoC, an interdisciplinary team of engineers, biotechnologists and technology-transfer experts will work to prove that a ground-breaking drug delivery implant – microMESH – can be engineered to deploy intracranially a chemo-immuno-combination therapy to eradicate glioblastoma and minimize its life-long complications. microMESH will be engineered to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs (taxanes) and monoclonal antibodies (anti-CD47), that normally would not cross the blood brain barrier, uniformly and deep in the tumor bed. microMESH will comprise two physically distinct compartments – a micrometric network of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) strands, carrying taxane molecules; a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) microlayer, encapsulating anti-CD47. Upon deposition on the tumor mass, the PVA microlayer will dissolve in a few days releasing directly on the tumor margins anti-CD47 while the thin and flexible PLGA network will progressively conform to the surrounding surface, establishing an intimate interaction with the malignant cells, and release taxanes in a sustained fashion over several weeks. While taxanes will prevent the rapid proliferating glioblastoma cells from growing, anti-CD47 will stimulate the removal of cancer cells by resident and infiltrating immune cells. The success of this PoC will result in a preclinically validated microMESH for the treatment of newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma. Upon subsequent completion of GLP toxicological and cGMP manufacturing studies, microMESH will advance to a Phase 1/2 trial expected to start as early as 2024. In this space, companies with validated Phase 1/2 assets have market capitals ranging from 50M to 400M€. A successful microMESH could lead to revenues of 10M €/year starting already in 2027.
Projet ERC : LoRaSpin (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Göteborg — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Wireless communication is an indispensable facet of modern society, offering remarkable performance and societal benefits. It promotes vast network coverage, scalability, and the ability to connect multiple devices simultaneously and in easily reconfigurable ways. These advantages have facilitated the growth of many sectors, including the Internet of Things (IoT), wireless sensor networks, telemedicine, and mobile commerce. The wireless communication market is valued at approximately €930B globally. With the continued integration of wireless technology into every aspect of our daily lives, this figure is expected to grow to over €1200B by 2027. There is particularly intense development in long-range wireless communication, where the LoRa communication protocol demonstrates the fastest market expansion thanks to its unique time-shifted chirp spread spectrum (CSS) modulation methods. CSS uses a correlation decoding technique for signal transmission over very long distances, largely immune to the significant reduction of amplitude below the noise level of the receiver. The main weak point of LoRa and other modern long-range wireless communication technologies is the relatively narrow bandwidth and slow chirp rate, which are limited by the physical properties of their CMOS local oscillator. The proposed project, LoRaSpin, will deliver a rapid, energy-efficient, affordable, long-range wireless communication system based on spintronic oscillators. LoRaSpin will combine the high data rates of Wi-Fi and Cellular 5G with the extremely long range of LoRa but without the high cost. The technology developed in LoRaSpin hence delivers a unique combination of high data rate, ultra-long communication range, and low cost that no other technology can match today.
Projet ERC : BacToMagicle (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Bayreuth — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Of tremendous biomedical and clinical interest are magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (MNP) that can be tailored to fulfil specific functions, for instance as actuated drug carriers, tracers for magnetic imaging modalities, or heat generators in magnetic hyperthermia for cancer therapy. However, their use in real-world applications has been hampered by lack of precise size control and magnetic tunability as well as by poor biocompatibility associated with their conventional synthesis. I propose a step-change approach for the light-powered bioproduction of high-quality magnetic nanoparticles by novel synthetic microbes generated in ERC-AdG Syntomagx, crafted precisely for their use in biomedical applications. Compared to commercial, chemically synthesized MNP, these novel bacterial MNP are expected to exhibit superior applicability and versatility, owing to their genetically tuned and uniform physicochemical and magnetic characteristics, available at high cost-efficiency and under sustainable manufacturing conditions. First, bacterial production and purification of the particles will be set up at large lab scale. In addition, their anticipated superior biocompatibility will be thoroughly assessed. Then, we will explore and demonstrate their performance in collaboration with various biomedical end users. As proof-of-concept we will deliver a formulation of bacterial MNP tailored as potent tracers in high-resolution magnetic particle imaging (MPI). With respect to the long-term goal of future commercial exploitation, we will explore patenting options and thoroughly assess the demand for such high quality biogenic MNP. I envision that our idea will revolutionize the biomedical MNP-market by opening it for the wealth of genetically tailored and highly functionalized bacterial MNP, suitable for a wide range of applications.
Projet ERC : CoolChips (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Bayreuth — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

CoolChips addresses two grant challenges of our modern society: 1) Global warming requires new technologies to mitigate the ever-accelerating consequences of climate change. Passive daytime cooling is such an emerging technology that requires intricate photonic engineering of materials. 2) Plastic waste is evolving as an increasing challenge to keep our environment pollution-free. We, therefore, will investigate an up-cycling strategy to put used food-packaging polymers to an even better use mitigating global warming. Consequently, we outline synthetic strategies to equip aluminum laminate polymer films, widely known for chips bags, etc., with an additional coating. This coating layer combination will be designed so that solar radiance will be fully reflected and thermal radiation in the mid-infrared range will be efficiently emitted. This unique combination of optical properties is the key to using cold outer space as a heat sink for our environment, day and night. We will achieve this goal by using our knowledge in polymer and composite materials synthesis and processing. We will further develop scalable processing strategies to glue or weld the individual recycling pieces to large passive cooling foils. This upcycling is vital for the envisioned transition to end-user products that can then be realized by established roll-to-roll processing technologies. Foreseeable application cases such as covers for tents, glue-able foils for blinds, or stand-alone parasols will be investigated with established industry partners. The development of the required processing steps and material selection will be tightly accompanied by an intellectual property patenting strategy and market analysis to ensure optimum exploitation of this promising novel material development. Overall, CoolChips will make passive daytime cooling materials accessible to various communities providing a green and affordable way to cooler environments.
Projet ERC : RoboChem (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

In the ERC Consolidator Grant FlowHAT, we developed RoboChem, a fully autonomous robotic platform capable of optimizing photocatalytic reactions with minimal human intervention. Despite its success, several key challenges emerged that limit its full potential, including overlooked reaction parameters in literature, the absence of a seamless workflow between high-throughput experimentation (HTE) and autonomous optimization, and inherent biases in published reaction datasets.  The ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) RoboChem project aims to address these limitations by integrating RoboChem with HTE technology, creating a hybrid workflow that enhances efficiency, reproducibility, and scalability in reaction optimization. HTE will provide rapid, broad screening of reaction parameters, systematically identifying key factors affecting yield and selectivity. RoboChem will then refine these parameters, delivering precise optimization while reducing material waste and development time from months to days. This dual approach mirrors traditional chemical discovery but significantly accelerates the process, ensuring robustness in both academic and industrial settings.  By integrating HTE-driven screening with AI-powered robotic optimization, this project will establish a data-driven reaction optimization framework that improves predictive modeling and enhances experimental reproducibility. Through validation in industrially relevant contexts, we seek to demonstrate RoboChem’s transformative potential and pave the way for a spin-off company dedicated to advancing automation in synthetic chemistry.
Projet ERC : MetaVib (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Vibrations cause unwanted noise and even failure in many areas, including vehicles such as spacecrafts, road vehicles and trains, sensitive optical or high-tech instruments and machinery. The market size for global vibration control systems was valued at 4.7 billion dollars in 2021 and is expected to expand to 8.1 billion dollars in 20302. This increase in demand is driven by a growing emphasis on the mechanical stability and balancing of industrial machines, which require ever growing precision and vehicles, which require ever growing safety.  To counter these vibrations, many strategies have been developed. One of the easiest ways is to use viscoelastic materials, but there is typically an inherent trade-off: high dissipation entails low stiffness, whereas many applications typically require both high dissipation and high specific stiffness. Another approach is to use active vibration damping, but these systems typically add an additional layer of complexity and weight.  Here, we propose to use Euler buckling as a functional mechanism to create vibrations absorbers. Buckling structures are simultaneously stiff and highly dissipative thanks to their high stiffness prior to buckling and highly nonlinear force and damping response during post-buckling. To this end, we will use flexible mechanical metamaterials made of metal and fibre-reinforced composites with tailored buckling and post-buckling. We will establish such metamaterials as a prime avenue to create lightweight structures that is orders of magnitude more dissipative than their linear viscoelastic counterparts. We will hence establish their potential as a competitive solution for lightweight structures combining high damping and high specific stiffness in high-tech and aerospace applications. In particular, our metamaterials will allow to reduce the weight and increase the damping of energy-absorbing components in vehicles, hence reducing their overall weight.
Projet ERC : LGSMAIZE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UvA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 100000.0 €

The parasitic witchweeds, such as Striga hermonthica and Striga asiatica, pose an enormous threat for production of cereal crops, such as sorghum, millet and maize, in the African continent, threatening the livelihood of millions of people, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Striga seeds lay dormant in the soil until their germination is triggered by strigolactones (SLs), signaling compounds exuded by roots of plants, including maize. Maize exudes at least six different SLs from its roots into the rhizosphere, two of which were structurally identified as zealactone and zeapyranolactone. In work on maize strigolactone biosynthesis that was part of the ERC Advanced grant CHEMCOMRHIZO we demonstrated that there is natural variation in the germination stimulant composition in the root exudate of maize varieties and that this results in a degree of Striga resistance. We have elucidated the entire biosynthetic pathway of all SLs in maize and we showed that the difference in strigolactone composition is the result of a difference in the expression of one of the genes in the pathway. The line with the strongest reduction in the expression of this gene, a North-American cultivar, displays almost full Striga resistance compared with a susceptible control. In collaboration with the CGIAR institute CIMMYT, we propose to create knock-out lines in this gene in two elite African maize varieties to deliver the proof-of-concept that this Striga resistance can be introduced into Africa.
Projet ERC : Intra-RANKL (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Centre National de Recherches Oncologiques — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNIO
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among females in the western world, resulting in half a million deaths annually, mainly due to metastatic disease. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for 15–20% of all breast cancers (300.000 women diagnosed worldwide per year). Despite novel treatments, TNBC remains a clinical challenge due to high rate of relapse, a propensity to form visceral metastasis and its heterogeneity. There is an urgent need to identify novel targeted therapies and associated biomarkers for the treatment of the TNBC. IntraRANKL is based on the generation of innovative drugs targeting RANKL – for the treatment of TNBC, with a different mechanism of action than denosumab, the gold standard treatment against RANKL. Small molecule inhibitors generated in IntraRANKL could plausibly be positioned as a novel targeted therapy for TNBC. The main benefits of IntraRANKL are based on the unmet need to improve the treatment of TNBC patients, and the economic burden for public health systems generated by standard non-selected and ineffective cancer treatments. Although our drugs are aimed for TNBC, they can benefit other breast cancer subtypes and tumors expressing RANKL. Moreover, if drugs against RANKL prove to be efficient, they could also clinically benefit patients suffering bone metastasis that are currently treated with denosumab and bisphosphonates. Analyses of RANKL will allow to stratify patients that might benefit from IntraRANKL inhibitors, improving the existing treatments for skeletal-related events and reducing the main complications associated with lifealtering morbidity affecting several types of prevalent cancers.

Mots-clés : intracellular rankl,triple negative breast cancer,rank signaling pathways,small molecules
Projet ERC : SIS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Trinity College — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Building directly on the findings of a key output from the ERC project SHARECITY - the SHARE IT platform - SIS will upgrade the user experience of the platform and widen its user base to include food retailers and local governments, by designing, testing and validating the following solutions: - A consultancy service for FSIs that do not have capacity or capability to use SHARE IT autonomously. Based on findings from earlier trials and testing, this service would include one-to-one tutorials, group workshops, step-by-step reporting masterclasses, troubleshooting supports and other tailored responses. - A consultancy service for local governments that makes individual and aggregate impact of FSIs accessible to them. This will include a mapping service to identify and quantify food sharing activity within a jurisdiction, a method for aggregating impacts relating to the SDGs, and formulae for predicting the aggregate sustainability impact of expanding FSIs, filling the data gap faced by policy makers today. - A consultancy service for food retailers that details the impacts of the food donations they make to FSIs, including bespoke consultancy reports on the community impacts of food donation at store level and extrapolations of these impacts at national and international scales. The PoC will also identify a sustainable funding model to support the roll out of SIS.
Projet ERC : Emerald (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Trinity College — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Climate change is an urgent challenge and impacts ecosystems, society and economic activities. Here we focus on the problem of loss of fertile soil (soil degradation), a process that is induced and accelerated by extreme weather and climate change and affects, among other sectors, agriculture, land use planning and food security. Current tools to monitor soil health for commercial purposes or policymaking are either limited in scale due to high cost, or insufficiently accurate due to the lack of underlying robust models. The EMERALD Proof of Concept aims to test, further develop, and promote final users' uptake of a novel soil fertility monitoring and forecasting method founded in the statistical physics of disordered systems. The expertise built on the underlying physics of spin systems as part of the ERC starting grant will be applied to the accurate modelling of vegetation growth, substantially building on our promising preliminary results. This early warning and large scale survey of soil degradation offers an effective climate change adaptation tool, helping farmers, agricultural organization and governments in land use planning on the medium and long term. The use of earth observation data will ensure a scalable solution to tackle the problem of desertification globally. The final aim is to develop the research results into a service, evaluate the market, obtain the first users, evaluate its impact and develop a comprehensive non-profit commercial strategy for the uptake of this technology.