Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : HELD (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Valencia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UV
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499175.0 €

We propose to engineer stable-highly luminescent heterostructures based on defect tolerant benign perovskites and their integration into efficient planar/thin film optoelectronic devices. Primary targeted devices are: blue and white planar electroluminescent devices, high efficiency solar cells and electrically pumped lasers. We will use processing methods that are compatible with large area industrial processes, in particular focusing on vapour deposition using thermal sublimation of the perovskite precursors. The boundaries of this simple, scalable and economic coating method will be determined using an advanced real time in-situ optical monitoring system based on hyperspectral imaging. This tool will unveil the limits and processing conditions for the preparation of uniform and very thin (< 10 nm) crystalline thin-film semiconductors. We will also attempt to replace the toxic lead in today’s most studied perovskite materials, by less toxic materials such as tin and silver/bismuth mixtures. Here vacuum based processing is beneficial in view of the limited air-stability and solubility of their pre-cursor salts. Accurate vapour deposition methods will allow the fabrication of perovskites in multiple layered heterostructures (MLH) that passivate the perovskite crystal boundaries. This will increase their thermal and structural stability and above all their photoluminescence efficiency. With the sophisticated processing control, multiple quantum wells (MQWs) will be engineered. MQWs are promising for light-emitting devices, in particular for lasers. The impact of the project is large on various fields ranging from processes, materials and device engineering, physics, and energy. High efficiency, planar LEDs and solar cells, can shift the energy landscape and strongly help to meet the worlds CO2 reduction targets. The demonstration of electrically pumped lasing in easily processed thin film semiconductors will generate so far un-available fields of science.

Mots-clés : engineering semiconductors,luminescence,heterostructures,leds,solar cells,lasers
Projet ERC : IndiGene (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 4003625.0 €

We propose to thoroughly investigate and characterise the sources of variation that results in varying phenotypes in a complex vertebrate. As well as characterising the genetic and environmental sources of variation, we will also investigate individual stochastic variation present even in fixed settings (both genetically and environmentally). To achieve this we will exploit the unique properties of Medaka fish, which can be fully inbred from the wild. We have already inbred and performed whole genome sequencing of a panel of 111 diverse Medaka fish from a single location; we propose to phenotype these fish in depth with high replication structure, ranging from organismal to molecular phenotypes. We will also phenotype entirely wild fish from the same source population as the panel with a subset of the phenotypes. We will analyse the data using state of the art methods to partition variation between genetic, environmental and stochastic components, and their interactions. We will integrate across both the different levels of phenotypic information across the cardiovascular system, and also across vertebrate phenotypes, in particular the extensive human phenotypes. By using genetic crosses and CRISPR-Cas9 techniques we will definitively prove specific interactions. We will host a “Research Hotel” for other phenotyping schemes to be applied to this panel, in particular from the Zebrafish community. This comprehensive and carefully replicated study will allow us to understand the opportunities and limitations of genetic stratification and personalised medicine in humans.
Projet ERC : DIMR (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Southampton — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1996246.0 €

We rely on soil to support the crops on which we depend. Less obviously we also rely on soil for a host of 'free services' from which we benefit. For example, soil buffers the hydrological system greatly reducing the risk of flooding after heavy rain; soil contains very large quantities of carbon, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate change. Given its importance it is not surprising that soil, especially its interaction with plant roots, has been a focus of many researchers. However the complex and opaque nature of soil has always made it a difficult medium to study. In this ERC research program I will develop a state of the art image based model of the physical and chemical properties of soil and soil-root interactions, i.e., a quantitative, model of the rhizosphere based on fundamental scientific laws. This will be realised by a combination of innovative, data rich fusion of structural and chemical imaging methods, integration of experimental efforts to both support and challenge modelling capabilities at the scale of underpinning bio-physical processes, and application of mathematically sound homogenisation/scale-up techniques to translate knowledge from rhizosphere to field scale. The specific science questions I will address with these techniques are: (1) how does the soil around the root, the rhizosphere, function and influence the soil ecosystems at multiple scales, (2) what is the role of root-soil interface micro morphology and mycorrhizae on plant nutrient uptake, (3) what is the effect of plant exuded mucilage on the soil morphology, mechanics and resulting field and ecosystem scale soil function and (4) how to translate this knowledge from the single root scale to root system, field and ecosystem scale in order to predict how the climate change, different soil management strategies and plant breeding will influence the soil fertility.

Mots-clés : soil science,rhizosphere science and modelling,plant soil interaction
Projet ERC : WhiskTrackGP (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Erasmus MC — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149938.0 €

We study the sensorimotor adaptation in the cerebellum with the whiskers of the mouse as a model system. The whiskers are a sophisticated sensorimotor apparatus with which the mouse actively profiles its immediate 3D environment by swiftly whisking. To estimate distances, orientation and texture of its surroundings, the mouse uses a ‘maximum contact, minimum penetration’ scheme, with sensorimotor decisions taking place within as little as 10 ms. This scheme imposes the main experimental challenge to whisker-based studies: hair-like structures moving at high speeds need to be tracked accurately to ascribe whisker motion to cerebellar function. In order to capture the motion of the whiskers accurately, high-speed image acquisition at high frame rates (ca. 1000 fps) is required. On account of the paradigms developed to relate neural activity to whisker behavior, high-throughput and real-time whisker tracking are required. We have evaluated all presently available whisker-tracking tools that delivered the desired kinematics of whisker behavior. However, all have failed in terms of computational time and/or acquisition frequency, which rendered them unsuited both for offline use and for real-time applications. To address these limitations, we propose the commercialization of WhiskTrackGP, a high-performance image-acquisition and -processing platform for bleeding-edge neuroscientific experiments on behavior. WhiskTrackGP is a hardware-software platform that can recognize the kinematics of multiple whiskers simultaneously with minimal intervention from the experimenter. It is realized as powerful whisker-tracking software ported on a special hardware platform based on NVidia GP-GPUs and Maxeler Dataflow-Engines. We demonstrate accelerated offline video analysis in the order of 10000x (from an original processing time of 9.4 sec down to 0.9 msec). WhiskTrackGP comprises a “one-stop shop” solution for labs and companies active in the field of behavioral studies.

Mots-clés : whisker tracking,behavior,cerebellum,whisket kinematics,high performance computing,nvidia,maxeler,image acquisition,pharmaceuticals,pharmacogenetics
Projet ERC : BALANCE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2446125.0 €

We use IR spectroscopy of trapped ions in a cryogenic FT-ICR spectrometer to probe non-covalent, “dispersion” interactions in large, gas-phase molecular ions. We will measure conformational equilibria by N-H frequency shifts, and correlate gas-phase IR frequency to the N-H-N bond angle in an ionic H-bond. Substituents on “onium” cations can adopt various conformations, whose energies map interaction potentials. Substituents on their proton-bound dimers interact non-covalently through dispersion forces, whose quantitative evaluation in large molecules has remained difficult despite dispersion becoming increasingly cited as a design principle in the construction of catalysts and materials. The non-covalent interactions bend the N-H-N bond, leading to large shifts in the IR frequency. The proton-bound dimer acts like a molecular balance where the non-covalent interaction, is set against the bending potential in an ionic hydrogen bond. Despite encouragingly accurate calculations for small molecules, experimental benchmarks for large molecules in the gas phase remain scarce, and there is evidence that the good results for small molecules may not extrapolate reliably to large molecules. The present proposal introduces a new experimental probe of non-covalent interactions, providing a sensitive test of the diverging results coming from various computational methods and other experiments. The experiment must be done on isolated molecules in the gas phase, as previous work has shown that solvation substantially cancels out the attractive potential. Accordingly, the proposed experimental design, which involves a custom-built spectrometer, newly available tunable IR sources, chemical synthesis of custom substrates, and quantum calculations up to coupled-cluster levels of theory, showcases how an interdisciplinary approach combining physical and organic chemistry can solve a fundamental problem that impacts how we understand steric effects in organic chemistry.

Mots-clés : infrared spectroscopy,mass spectrometry,non covalent interactions
Projet ERC : SleepCirc (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2311197.5 €

We will address fundamental questions about sleep mechanisms, function and evolution, and about the role of the claustrum, a forebrain area with hypothetical roles in attention and consciousness. These results are interesting in part because the claustrum has an ill-defined evolutionary origin and because its potential involvement in sleep has, to our knowledge, not been reported previously. This proposal exploits three new and previously unrelated results from the reptilian brain. (i) We discovered recently that, in the lizard Pogona vitticeps, slow-wave and REM sleep alternate in a clock-like fashion, suggesting the existence of regular sleep pattern generators in the brainstem. (ii) More recently, a single-cell RNA sequencing study of the reptilian brain by our laboratory, hinted that a small pallial area may be homologous to the mammalian claustrum. This homology acquired functional importance in a third, independent finding, based on electrophysiological recordings: (iii) sharp-wave ripples, a hallmark of Pogona slow-wave sleep, can be generated autonomously from an area that corresponds precisely to the transcriptomically-identified claustrum. This convergence provides a potential clue about claustrum function and evolution, especially because, in mammals at least, the claustrum is densely interconnected with the rest of the brain, especially cortex. Our neuroethological approach will exploit the unique advantages of Pogona sleep, combining scRNA-seq, tract-tracing, optogenetic, behavioral and electrophysiological approaches.

Mots-clés : sleep,brainstream,claustrum,behavioural,electrophysiological,single cell rna seq,tract tracing,neuroethology,reptile,pogona vitticeps
Projet ERC : nanoAXON (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Hungarian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MTA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1994025.0 €

We will reveal the neuronal mechanisms of fundamental hippocampal and axonal functions using direct patch clamp recordings from the small axon terminals of the major glutamatergic afferent and efferent pathways of the dentate gyrus region. Specifically, we will investigate the intrinsic axonal properties and unitary synaptic functions of the axons in the dentate gyrus that originate from the entorhinal cortex, the hilar mossy cells and the hypothalamic supramammillary nucleus. The fully controlled access to the activity of individual neuronal projections allows us to address the crucial questions how upstream regions of the dentate gyrus convey physiologically relevant spike activities and how these activities are translated to unitary synaptic responses in individual dentate gyrus neurons. The successful information transfers by these mechanisms ultimately generate specific dentate gyrus cell activity that contributes to hippocampal memory functions. Comprehensive mechanistic insights are essential to understand the impacts of the activity patterns associated with fundamental physiological functions and attainable with the necessary details only with direct recordings from individual axons. For example, these knowledge are necessary to understand how single cell activities in the entorhinal cortex (carrying primary spatial information) contribute to spatial representation in the dentate (i.e. place fields). Furthermore, because the size of these recorded axon terminals matches that of the majority of cortical synapses, our discoveries will demonstrate basic biophysical and neuronal principles of axonal signaling that are relevant for universal neuronal functions throughout the CNS. Thus, an exceptional repertoire of methods, including recording from anatomically identified individual small axon terminals, voltage- and calcium imaging and computational simulations, places us in an advantaged position for revealing unprecedented information about neuronal circuits.

Mots-clés : electrophysiology,synaptic release,voltage sensitive sensors
Projet ERC : MIRAGE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Koç University — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Wear3D display technology project is an ERC-Advanced project and offers novel optical solutions for wearable (or head-mounted) displays to achieve very wide field-of-view and natural-looking 3D. The Wear3D technology has a lot of potential as the global consumer market for AR and VR are expected to reach more than US$30 billion and US$120 billion by 2022, respectively. Hardware devices will be more than 30% of the total market. Within the ERC-AdG, our team developed a novel head-worn system named CYCLOPS and transparent augmented reality screens named MIRAGE. CYCLOPS platform consists of a head-mounted projection display (HMPD), imaging and depth sensors. We filed 3 international PCT patent applications protecting the technology. The objective of this proposal is to exploit the commercial potential of the CYCLOPS platform and the MIRAGE AR screens. Proposed platform has key advantages compared to existing AR glasses as it does not obstruct the visual field of the user, does not cause any viewing discomfort, fully integrated (including mobile processor) and consume low-power. MIRAGE screens enable telepresence using AR headsets and a passive screen. Such a display integrated with imagers and sensors and AR screens is a breakthrough technology and offers a very promising AR solution especially for industrial and medical applications.

Mots-clés : augmented reality,head mounted projector,wearable systems,ar screens
Projet ERC : WEAR3D-POC (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Koç University — Pays : Turquie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Wear3D display technology project is an ERC-Advanced project and offers novel optical solutions for wearable (or head-mounted) displays to achieve very wide field-of-view and natural-looking 3D. The Wear3D technology has a lot of potential as the global consumer market for Head Mounted Displays market was valued at USD 342.7 million in 2011, and is expected to reach US$9.3 billion by 2019. The Wear3D technology is very strong on IPR position and the initial results obtained in the lab are very promising. The objective of this proposal is to exploit the commercial potential of the Wear3D display technology. Such a display integrated with imagers and sensors is a breakthrough technology for the next generation human computer interface

Mots-clés : wearable devices,3d displays,head worn displays
Projet ERC : GeoViSense (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Well-designed mobile, human responsive geographic information technology could improve the lives of millions who daily need to make time critical and societally relevant decisions on the go. However, what are the basic processes with which humans make visuo-spatial decisions when guided by responsive geographic information displays? Visualization research todate has been driven by technical and computational advances to overcome data deluges, but we still have a poor understanding whether, how, and when visual displays support spatio-temporal decision making and action, and for which kinds of users. We will break new ground to overcome this transdisciplinary knowledge gap and aim to: (1) integrate fragmented human-visualization-environment research across the sciences including natural, social/behavioral, and the engineering sciences, all critical to tackle this interdisciplinary problem, (2) develop missing, empirically evaluated design guidelines for human-computer interfaces of current/emerging mobile geographic information technology to support affective, effective, and efficient spatio-temporal decision-making, (3) develop unconventional evaluation methods by critical examination of how perceptual, cognitive, psycho-physiological, and display design factors might influence visuo-spatio-temporal decision making across broad ranges of users and mobile use contexts, and (4) scale up empirical methods from to-date controlled behavioral lab paradigms towards a new in-situ mobile human sensor science. A paradigm shift from current lab-based neuro-cognitive and affective science towards a location-based, close human sensing science will radically change the way we study human behavior across science. In doing so, we can improve spatio-temporal every-day decision making with graphic displays, and facilitate sustainable solutions for the increasingly mobile digital information society having to mitigate environmental emergencies, human refugee crises, or terror attacks.

Mots-clés : cartography,geographic information visualization,psycho physiology,methods
Projet ERC : GeoMeG (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : University of Jyväskylä — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 567369.51 €

What are the best trajectories to park a truck with several trailers? How fast can a lattice grow? These are some of the questions studied in this project because both the infinitesimal control structure of movement of a truck and the asymptotic geometry of a (nilpotent) lattice are examples of metric groups: Lie groups with homogeneous distances. The PI plans to study geometric properties of metric groups and their implications to control systems and nilpotent groups. In particular, the plan is to exploit the relation between the regularity of distinguished curves, sets, and maps in subRiemannian groups, volume asymptotics in nilpotent groups, and embedding results. The general goal is to develop an adapted geometric measure theory. SubRiemannian spaces, and in particular Carnot groups, appear in various areas of mathematics, such as control theory, harmonic and complex analysis, asymptotic geometry, subelliptic PDE's and geometric group theory. The results in this project will provide more links between such areas. The PI has developed a net of high-level international collaborations and obtained several results via a combination of analysis on metric spaces (differentiation of Lipschitz maps, tangents of measures, and Gromov-Hausdorff limits) and the theory of locally compact groups (Lie group techniques and the solutions of the Hilbert 5th problem). This allowed the PI to solve a number of open problems in the field, such as the analogue of Myers-Steenrod theorem on the smoothness of isometries, the analogue of Nash isometric embedding and the non-minimality of curves with corners. Some of the next aims are to establish an analogue of the De Giorgi's rectifiability result for finite-perimeter sets and prove the smoothness of geodesics, a 30-year-old open problem. The goal of this project is to tackle them, together with many more related questions. The PI received his first degree at SNS Pisa (advisor: M.Abate) and his PhD from Yale University (advisor: B.Kleiner). Before obtaining a permanent position only three years after graduation, he was at ETH, Orsay, and MSRI. He received the prestigious position of research fellow of the Academy of Finland.

Mots-clés : analysis on metric spaces,subriemannian geometry,geometric group theory